Ascended Master Maitreya through Kim Michaels, May 24, 2026. This dictation was given at the conference in Kazakhstan: Co-creating with the ascended masters on the seven rays.

I AM the Ascended Master Maitreya. I have been called the Great Initiator, but let us dispense with the word great and focus on initiator. Now, why do you need an initiator in an environment that is set up to give you feedback on what you are sending out? Well, this is because there is nothing in a manifest universe, in a world of form, that cannot become a trap for self-aware beings.

The need for initiators

We have said that you start out as a new co-creator in a predefined environment. We also say that you start out with a very point-like sense of self. You have an I AM Presence in the spiritual realm. The Conscious You descends as an extension of the I AM Presence into the unascended sphere where you start out your journey. It is not only the Conscious You that starts the journey, it is also the I AM Presence. What you see is that the Conscious You starts out with a point-like sense of self, meaning it has, as we have said, a subtle sense of connection to something outside its own mind but it does not have a clear connection.

Now in the first spheres, the dynamic was somewhat different from what you have in this sphere, because the first spheres were not as dense, but still there was the initiation that new co-creators, even in the first sphere, started out with that very localized sense of self and gradually expanded it. However, in the first spheres there was no need for an initiator. But as the spheres have gotten denser, more layers, so to speak, have been added between the I AM Presence and the Conscious You. Just to avoid confusing you about the conditions in previous spheres which are not particularly relevant to you, let us focus on this sphere, the seventh sphere.

You have the I AM Presence in the lower spiritual realm. You have a layer that is the identity octave. You have another layer that is the mental octave, another layer that is the emotional and then the physical. When the Conscious You first descends to embodiment, it descends, of course, to the physical level. And that means even though it has a sense that there is something beyond its emotional, mental and identity minds, it does not have a clear view, vision, of what that is. That is why as the spheres have gotten denser, the ascended masters in previous spheres have seen the need to have an intermediary between the Conscious You and the I AM Presence, between the Conscious You and the spiritual realm and that has then become the masters that ascended in the previous sphere. Some of them serve as initiators, teachers, gurus, whatever you call it, for the lifestreams.

The role of the initiator

Now again, as the spheres have become denser, it has also become more probable that some of these new co-creators can become stuck in their sphere. Essentially you can say that there is always the potential that a co-creator can experience its environment, can experiment with its environment and co-create a situation that it finds very enjoyable and therefore, it can decide to experience that situation indefinitely. Now you can say, well what is wrong with that if the law is free will? Why would you not allow a lifestream, a co-creator to experience its own creation or its environment for as long as it wants? Well, it is not that we do not allow it, but it is simply that the role of the initiator is to at least provide a frame of reference that there is something beyond a lifestream’s current sense of self.

In the original situation on earth, when the earth was a natural planet, the lifestreams that descended had contact with an initiator. It was not forced by any means, it was just there. It is kind of like if people wanted to go into a dark cave and live there, they were allowed to do so. But still the sun was shining, so if they decided to go out of the cave again, they could at least experience that there is an alternative to the darkness of the cave. It is, in other words, not forcing them to make a choice, but making them aware there is a choice, because if you forget that there is something beyond, well, if you cannot see the option, you cannot choose it.

The role of the conceptual mind

Now we need to grasp that a new co-creator creates by using the conceptual mind. Other masters have talked about it, but I want to emphasize it again. Before you have anyone on earth go into duality, the earth was serving as a reality simulator, as the cosmic mirror, as a feedback device. In other words, co-creators formulated a mental image with a conceptual mind. They projected it out and then they experienced, observed what came back. Then, based on that observation, they adjusted their mental image a little bit, sent it out again, observed what came back.

What I am pointing out is that the conceptual mind was used to send out, but the conceptual mind was not used in evaluating what came back. That was just experienced. When something came back, the co-creators used what we could call the rational, logical mind, but those who had developed more experience also used their intuitive minds. But now the question becomes, will the co-creators gradually grow in self-awareness so they expand their sense of connection to something beyond their own minds? And the question there is really that in the beginning, a co-creator is not conscious that it is a co-creator. It sees itself as a creator: I am sending something out, something is coming back. It is not aware that it is receiving light and consciousness from the ascended realm.

Expanding horizontally vs. expanding vertically

A co-creator can continue to focus on itself, sending something out, seeing what comes back from the environment, and that is how some co-creators can then become so fascinated by this process that they just experience that for a long time. Other co-creators will, after having experience with the outgoing and ingoing process, will begin to expand their connection to something beyond their own minds and explore: “What is that?” And that is when they gradually develop the awareness that they are not independent creators, they are co-creators because the energy they use to create comes from above and they become curious: “What is up there? What am I connected to?”

Naturally we can say that those co-creators who are just experimenting with their environment a horizontal way, they are also growing in their abilities to interact with their environment, but they are still at that horizontal level. They are, we might say, expanding horizontally but not expanding vertically. The co-creators who begin to expand their connection, they are expanding both horizontally and vertically, which, of course, is the ideal scenario we might say.

Now because of the density of this sphere, it is mandated that after some time an initiator must approach the lifestreams who are only expanding horizontally and just demonstrate that there is some vertical connection possible. Some will make use of this, others will say: “I am not done exploring what can be done horizontally, leave me alone.”

The lifestreams of course, who are beginning to expand vertically, we will begin to work with them immediately and help them raise themselves up towards higher levels. In other words, there is, as with everything else, an alpha and omega aspect of expanding self-awareness. The omega is you expand horizontally by coming to understand your environment better. The alpha is that you also expand vertically by exploring who you are and where you came from. We can say that exploring horizontally, you are exploring how things work but not what they are or why they are the way they are. When you expand vertically, you are, among other things, exploring why are things designed the way they are: “Why does my environment work this way?”

Identifying yourself with the conceptual mind

What now happens is that those lifestreams who are focused on expanding horizontally, they become more and more skilled at using the conceptual mind to change their environment and they experience that the environment is very fluid. They can, within very wide boundaries, change their environment and gain whatever experience they want to have.

But it is still this process that you formulate an image with the conceptual mind, you project it out and then you experience what comes back. Now as you become more experienced with this process, what happens is that you are living yourself more and more into it. It is not that you are actually sitting here in your little center of awareness and you are formulating an image with a conceptual mind that you see as different from yourself and then you are projecting that into an environment. No, you begin to live yourself into the image you are formulating. You really feel that you are the image, you are becoming the image. You might compare it to a movie projector again. There is a white light bulb, that is the Conscious You. There is the film strip, that is the conceptual mind. And there is the movie screen, that is your environment. But if you do not build that vertical connection, if you do not build the vertical connection, the Conscious You will begin to live itself more and more into the co-creative process and it will forget that there is a connection and it will identify itself with the conceptual mind. It will literally begin to believe that it is the images created in the conceptual mind. It is almost like the light bulb in the movie projector beginning to think that it is the film strip.

Evaluating with neutral mind vs. evaluating with the conceptual mind

This means that these lifestreams will now forget that they are more than the conceptual mind and over time they can begin to forget that they need to evaluate what comes back with the logical rational mind. And they can begin to evaluate what comes back with the conceptual mind. And this is what causes them to go into duality and separation.

Now before they do this, again it is mandated, an initiator must appear to them and try to explain to them how the conceptual mind works. And some will listen to this and they will still experiment with the conceptual mind, but they will not become identified with it. They will be able to go out of it again. But there are others, as we have explained, who decide to separate from the teacher and go into separation and duality. They do not make this as a conscious choice where they really understand what is happening. They just gradually slip into it.

And the reason why it is important for you as ascended master students who are close to the 96th level to understand this, is that you can now begin to grasp the challenge you face at the 96th level.

Because you see, as we have said, on an unnatural planet like earth, even an avatar who did not, as I said, get lost in the conceptual mind, but even an avatar in order to take embodiment here must descend to the 48th level and that is very dense on a planet like earth. What you need to understand is that the main characteristic of duality is that instead of using the conceptual mind to formulate an image, project it into the environment, and then evaluate what comes back with the rational mind, beings in duality and separation have now formulated an image in the conceptual mind of what should come back. You understand? There is now a layer between you and what comes back.

Originally, you are creating an image in a conceptual mind. You are sending it out. But you are directly experiencing what is coming back and therefore, you can evaluate it neutrally with the rational mind: “Do I want more of this? Do I want more than this?” But now, when you go into duality, you are creating another mental image—not of what you are projecting out, but what should come back. Instead of just observing what is coming back, you are wanting to change what is coming back. You see? And this is what can cause people to get lost in duality for a very long time. It is also what makes it very difficult for people to come back.

Contemplate this difference. You are formulating a mental image. You are projecting it into the cosmic mirror. Something is reflected back to you but you are just neutrally observing because your purpose is really to learn: “How does my environment work?” You do not have any evaluation of how your environment should work. You are just exploring: “When I send this out— oh, that comes back. When I send that out—oh, this comes back.” You are gradually learning how to get back what you want by changing what you are sending out. And that is, of course, the entire co-creative process.

This process actually goes all the way up through the ascended spheres to the Creator level. You are gradually rising to the same level of awareness as our Creator by simply sending something out, seeing what comes back, adjusting what you send out, adjusting your self-awareness, and you continue to become more and more conscious of how the world is designed by our Creator, why it is designed that way. And that is, of course, how you gain the experience that allows you to become a Creator, creating a world that does not self-destruct. But in duality, you are not simply, you are, in fact, not trying to figure out how the environment works. You are projecting an image of how it should work.

The central challenge for co-creators

Now, those of you who are willing to contemplate this, and I am not saying you need to grasp it immediately when I say this, but if you are willing to contemplate this over time, you can realize why duality is so subtle. Because what is it you are doing with a conceptual mind? You are formulating an image in your mind of what circumstances you want to co-create, and you are experiencing that your environment does take on the form of what you are projecting out.

Over time, as you become more and more capable of getting back exactly what you are projecting out, you can very easily begin to wonder: “Can I get anything back I want? Where are the limits to how much I can get my environment to conform to my mental image?” You see, the central challenge for co-creators is, will you continue to explore how your environment actually works, or will you gradually, very subtly slip into thinking that in your mind you can determine how your environment should work? This really is the central challenge in our world of form. And it is a very subtle challenge, as I said, because your environment is very fluid and very flexible, can give you back almost anything you want. It is very subtle to come to believe that you have now figured out how your environment works. And that is how you can get lost in your own co-creation because you now begin to believe that you have reached some ultimate level of ability as a co-creator, and this means that you are now building two images with a conceptual mind.

You are building an image you are projecting out. But as I said, instead of just experiencing what comes back, you have built another image of what should come back and that image of what should come back colors what actually comes back. There are still things coming back, of course, from the cosmic mirror, but you are not observing it neutrally. You are superimposing another image upon what is coming back. And now you become trapped in these dual images, because when what is coming back is colored by an image in your mind, it seems to validate this belief that you know how your environment works. What is the need to adjust? Why do you need to change your sense of self? And why do you need anything from outside your mind, such as an initiator, to transcend your current sense of self? You begin to believe that you have attained a sense of self that is the master of the universe. You do not need feedback horizontally from the environment. You do not need a vertical connection to the hierarchy of ascended beings or your I AM Presence. When the Conscious You identifies itself with the conceptual mind, you begin to believe this is who you are.

The self-validating system of the dualistic mind

When a sphere is gradually nearing the ascension point, there can, as happened in the fourth sphere, be certain planetary units where there is a group of beings who have been pulled into this self-deception that they are masters of their universe, masters of their world, and they know how the entire world should work. And that is when it can become necessary that the ascended masters will appear and demonstrate that there is more to know about how the world works than what these beings believe or project in their minds. We have to appear to give them the option to choose differently. And that is when in the fourth sphere, some of these lifestreams rejected us, our appearance, and decided to stay in that state of mind where they felt they were masters of the universe. Then they fell into the fifth sphere and so on. But what I am seeking to help you grasp here is a deeper understanding than we have given before of the conceptual mind and the risk built into the conceptual mind, where you become so convinced that your image of how the world should work is so accurate that you do not need feedback horizontally, you do not need feedback vertically, because you think that the feedback that is filtered through your mental image is enough.

You see, you have an alpha mental image, which is what you are projecting out, but you have an omega mental image which filters what is coming back. And that is why you are stuck. Your mind has become, as we have said, a self-validating system. Now mind you, there will be horizontal feedback coming back that shows you that you have not grasped fully how your environment works. And that is as we have said, when you go into duality you become subject to the second law of thermodynamics where things will begin to break down, things in your environment. You do not get back exactly what you wanted to get back.

Plausible plausibility and plausible deniability

There are signs at a horizontal level, there are signs that you do not fully understand how your environment works. But if you refuse to adjust your sense that you have mastered your environment, and if you refuse to adjust the alpha image you are projecting out and the omega image filtering what is coming back, then you will refuse to heed those signs. And what you will do instead is, when you experience a breakdown in your environment, you will adjust the alpha portion of your mental image to explain this. You will explain it in some way so that it seems like you do not have to change your sense that you have mastered the universe. You see? And that is where we have pointed out that in duality, in the duality consciousness, you can justify anything, you can explain anything, you can have plausible plausibility for explaining why the universe does not work the way you think it works. You can also have plausible deniability so that you can say that even though what comes back is not what I expected, I do not have to adjust my sense that I know how the universe works.

The limits of horizontal expansion

There is a reason for this. You see, once you go into this mindset of being trapped in the conceptual mind, you are essentially believing, experiencing that the conceptual mind can explain anything. But you see, originally, the conceptual mind is just a tool for exploring how your environment works and it is in this interaction between projecting out and evaluating what is coming back that you expand your sense of self vertically. The beings who have lost the vertical connection, they are still experiencing, they are expanding their sense of self, but it is horizontally. And then they get deceived by coming to a point where they think they now have expanded it as much as they can horizontally. And in a sense, that is correct.

Let me try to give you a visual illustration of this. Let us take the earth. The earth has a limited size, physically. You can say, here is a being that starts out in one particular spot on earth. And gradually, it begins to travel out from that spot and explore the surface of the earth. And after a long time, it feels like: “I have been everywhere, I have investigated every nook and cranny, I am a master of the earth.” And the being has expanded its sense of self as much as it can in its environment. It has explored everything it can see and mastered everything it can see horizontally. But if it had been willing to expand its vertical connection, it would have raised its sense of self so it could see that beyond the horizon that it sees horizontally, there is more to explore.

It is like an observation tower in the forest. At the bottom levels, you can see the tree trunks, but only when you go to the top can you see beyond the forest. Even the fallen beings have just expanded their sense of self horizontally, and they believe they know the whole forest, but they cannot see beyond it.

The self-focused self

Again, why is it important for you, as you approach the 96th level, to understand this dynamic? Well, because you have descended into embodiment on earth, and you have gone below the 48th level to experiment with the duality consciousness as it is currently out-pictured on earth. Now you have reversed your direction, climbed back up beyond the 48th level. You have followed the spiritual path, whether you were in ascended master teachings or in other ways, you have followed the spiritual path closer and closer to the 96th level. As we have said, most of you started this lifetimes ago where you followed other spiritual teachings. But now you have found ascended master teachings, you are close to the 96th level, and we have said, there is that last self-focused self that you have to give up in order to go beyond, into the realm of personal Christhood.

What is that self-focused self? It is the belief that the conceptual mind can determine how the universe works. You understand what I have been telling you here? The conceptual mind is not a mind that helps you understand and explain. The conceptual mind simply creates an image. You project that image out, something comes back. You do not evaluate that with a conceptual mind. You evaluate with a logical rational mind. But when you get trapped in duality, you may still use the rational mind, but it has now become subservient to the conceptual mind. It does not question the images of the conceptual mind that you have mastered your environment. When you are at the 48th level, you are still very much identified with a conceptual mind but you reconnect that there is something beyond the horizontal level. In other words, you are shifting, you are not completely identified with a conceptual mind. You reconnect that there is something beyond your own mind and you decide you want to explore what it is. But you see, at the 48th level, you will use the conceptual mind to project an image upon that process, the spiritual path: “What does it mean? How do you do it? What does it lead to? What is the end goal?”

What you see about the spiritual path at the 48th level is almost entirely colored by the conceptual mind. Or we can say, you do not actually see the path, you see your own concept of a path. Now you may have found some valid spiritual teaching that tells you something about the spiritual path, but what you are taking in is still colored by the conceptual mind. That is why we have said that as you rise from the 48th to the 96th level, you are building a spiritual sense of self. But that sense of self is still being built within the overall framework that you think you have it all figured out, that you know how your environment should work. That self, the self-focused self, or the ego or whatever you want to call it, that self thinks that even though there may be some spiritual masters that know more than it does, it still thinks that in the end it will be validated by those spiritual masters. In other words, you are not walking between the 48th and the 96th level to overcome the self-focused self. You are walking that path to seek validation for the self and the self thinks that at some level of the spiritual path, it will be validated. If you are an ascended master student, you think that as you continue to raise your consciousness, perhaps at the 96th level, the masters will appear and validate your self, the conceptual self.

Getting stuck in the immersion experience

Now, I want to add another layer to this. I know it is already complex, but I want to add another layer. The Conscious You, what is the Conscious You? As we have said, it is pure awareness. That is why it can descend into an unascended sphere and experience that sphere from within because, as pure awareness, it can adapt itself to just about any environment. But the central challenge for the Conscious You is, will it identify itself with its environment or will it retain some awareness that it came from somewhere outside its environment? And we have talked about, you can have two experiences in the reality simulator, immersion and awakening.

You see that it is simply part of the growth of a lifestream, that you go into immersion in your environment and you become completely immersed in your environment. That is part of the experience as a co-creator. But the question is, when the Conscious You has become completely immersed in its environment and has become completely identified with the concept of itself, how can it get out of it again? You see, the Conscious You is pure awareness. When it descends into an unascended sphere, it is meant to experiment, but how does it really experiment? I have said you create a mental image, you project it out, yes, but we have also said you actually become the image you are projecting out. In order to act as a human being on earth, you have to identify yourself as a human being who can operate a physical body and do what a physical body can do.

You see, the Conscious You is meant to go through a phase where it forgets that it is pure awareness, it creates an identity with a conceptual mind and then immerses itself in that identity until it thinks: “This is who I am.” It experiences: “This is who I am.” It does not experience itself as pure awareness, but as the self that it has created with a conceptual mind. But of course, when you are immersed, the Conscious You does not realize that it has created the sense of self, it thinks that : “This is who I am.” It does not realize: “This sense of who I am, what kind of a being I am, I have created with a conceptual mind and I can change it.” That is why in this phase of the growth of a co-creator, it is, as I said, easy to get lost in your sense of self, it is easy to stay there for a very long time. And that is why as the spheres have gotten denser, there is more of a risk that beings can get stuck and that is why there is the need for an initiator who can at least show them there is a way out of immersion, there is a way to awaken.

The images of the conceptual self

Now, back to you as an ascended master student, you are climbing towards the 96th level, but you are still identified with that core self that is so focused on itself and is so focused on feeling that it has mastered its environment, it knows how the world works. We have said you think you are projecting how the world should work, but you are not seeing it that way, you are seeing that you know how the world actually works. But what have I explained?

You can come to have a certain horizontal mastery of your environment and you can think you have reached some ultimate mastery and you in a sense have at that level, but because the spheres were created in succession, there is, of course, a higher level of mastery than any mastery you could attain in an unascended sphere. Even though you may have a certain horizontal mastery, there is a higher level of mastery, and that is what you begin to suspect as you find a spiritual path and decide to climb it. But the way you see the path, the way you see the end goal is colored by that self that you do not realize that you created with a conceptual mind.

You see again the subtlety. I am trying to explain it from a different perspective. The conceptual mind allows you to formulate an image, you project it into your environment and your environment takes on the form of the image. “Wow”, you are saying: “I can create anything I can imagine”, but you are meant to evaluate what comes back with a rational mind. But at some point you start thinking that you do not need to evaluate because you can just create another image that filters what comes back and therefore, you can get yourself gradually into this state of mind where you believe you are in control and you essentially forget that your sense of who you are was just created by the conceptual mind. This is not actually who you are because in reality you are not this outer personality, you are not this self, you are the Conscious You which is pure awareness but it is also an extension of the I AM Presence. And not only are you an extension of the I AM Presence, you are the I AM Presence and therefore, the will of the I AM Presence is your own higher will. But you see, when you have created this conceptual self, that self, when you are inside of it you see yourself as being different from the I AM Presence. You might even hear about the concept of your I AM Presence but you think it is some external being that has a different will than you have and wants to force its will upon you.

And true, that is how it looks through that self: The I AM Presence is external, your ascended masters are external, we are trying to force you. The I AM Presence is trying to force you to transcend the sense of self that you have because the I AM Presence has had enough of that experience and it is saying to the Conscious You: “Let us go higher, let us go higher.” But the conceptual self says: “Oh no, why would I go higher, I am the master of the universe.” But then there comes that point where you have had enough of that experience, even the Conscious You has had enough, now you start walking the spiritual path. But again, as I have now said several times, the self that thinks it has everything under control will color how you see the spiritual path and to that self it will seem as though walking the spiritual path means that you are seeking a validation of the self from a higher level.

The self already feels it has been validated horizontally because it knows how the world works, at least at that level. But now it thinks: “Oh, maybe there is a higher level of validation. I already got the Nobel Prize, but maybe there is a higher prize I can get.” And now the whole purpose for this self, for walking the spiritual path, is to seek that higher validation. And if you do not grasp this, you can actually, as we see in some students, you can climb to the 95th level and you are thinking: “Oh, the masters are going to appear and open the gates of heaven and honor me and validate the sense that I am right.”

The sense of shock at the 96th level

What instead happens is that somehow something happens that challenges your sense that you have everything under control and often this happens through other people who are trying to tell you something or who are just refusing to obey you. But it can also happen through a spiritual teaching where you suddenly read something that shocks you, or it can happen that the Conscious You steps outside the outer mind and actually experiences the ascended masters and this challenges the Conscious You identification with that conceptual self. But if you have never considered that this self is just a temporary thing, and if you have not understood that at the 96th level, in order to manifest Christhood, you have to give up that self, then this can be a very great shock to the Conscious You.

And that is when you can start going into using the conceptual mind to project all kinds of images on basically why your conceptualized self is right after all, why these other people are not right, why they do not have a right to challenge you. Or you can project: “Oh, well, the messenger was a valid messenger for a while. But now that he said this thing that challenges me in the sense that I am right, he has just lost it. He is no longer working with the real masters because the real masters would never say something that contradicts my sense that I am an advanced spiritual student and that I have it all figured out.”

In other words, the conceptual self has had this image that: “I am walking the path outlined by the ascended masters, and when I reach a certain level, the masters will validate me, my sense of self, the conceptualized self.” The masters will actually say: “Oh, this was not a conceptualized self, this is a real self. You really are this advanced being.”

And now, somehow, that belief is abruptly challenged at the 95th level, and the question now is, will the Conscious You be willing to question the image of the spiritual path that you have built through that self? Will you be willing to realize that there is something you did not grasp about the spiritual path because that self could not grasp it? What we have been doing, even through the course of self-mastery, starting at the 48th level, what we have been doing with all of our teachings in this dispensation, basically, is to prepare you for that initiation at the 96th level, so that it will not be a shock to you. Unfortunately, we have also observed, which was not really a surprise to us, that even though we have given all these preparations, some people did not quite grasp it. They did not grasp the need to give up the self. They thought they could somehow transform it.

Questioning your image of the spiritual path

What we are hoping with these teachings about co-creating is that whatever level of consciousness you are at when you come across this teaching, you can make a shift where you make yourself consciously decide you are willing to question your image of the spiritual path. You are willing to realize whether there is more to it or not. One way to make this shift is to come to understand with a rational mind what I have told you about the conceptual mind.

You can consciously shift, the Conscious You can consciously shift. You can realize, you can understand first what the conceptual mind is and what its original role is. You can reason about this with a rational mind—as Jesus said: “Let us reason together”—and therefore, the Conscious You can shift your focus away from the conceptual mind towards the rational mind. And the shift you can make is this—I said originally that you formulate an image with a conceptual mind, you send it into your environment. When it comes back, you evaluate with a rational mind because you are trying to explore how your environment actually works. You can adopt that same approach to the spiritual path. Whatever level you are at when you find this teaching, you can say: “I see logically, rationally that the spiritual path is different from horizontal co-creation because the spiritual path is about raising myself, my sense of self, my level of consciousness vertically. It is not about horizontal mastery, it is about raising myself higher. What I will do is, I will accept that my conceptual self has a certain view of the spiritual path but I will use my rational mind to study the teachings of the ascended masters and compare it to my conceptual image of the path. Does my conceptual image correspond to what the masters are actually saying?”

The shift you are making is you are saying: “The spiritual path is an experimental process just like horizontal co-creation. It is just a different direction. But I allow my conceptual mind to project an image of what the path is about, but then I use my rational mind to study the teachings that are coming from above, from the Ascended Masters. And I evaluate, is what my conceptual mind is projecting out the same that is coming back from the masters. And if it is not, then I must adjust the image I have of the spiritual path.” You see, you can start this at any level, even at the 94th, 95th level. You can shift and say: “Am I projecting an image on the masters that is preventing me from hearing what the masters are actually saying?” and then you can evaluate with a rational mind: “What are the masters actually saying?” And then you can avoid the shock of arriving there at that final initiation at the 96th level and rebelling against it. You can avoid that you want to continue to project with a conceptual mind what the spiritual path is about.

What is Christhood?

We can say this in another way. What is Christhood? What is personal Christhood? When do you cross that line where before you were not the Christ, the Living Christ in embodiment and now you are? You may not have the full level of Christhood, but you have crossed the line. You have gone above the 96th level, you have passed that initiation. What is the difference? Well, the difference is that the Living Christ has given up the conceptual self, let it die. “He who seeks to save his life shall lose it. He who is willing to lose his life for my sake shall find it.” If you are willing to lose the conceptual self, you shall find the real self of the Christ mind. This is an absolute dividing line. It is binary. You are either the Christ or you are not the Christ. You have either let go of that separate self, that self-focused self, that conceptual self, or you are still trying to make the universe, the spiritual path and the ascended masters conform to it.

You have either let go of the self and you are experiencing the ascended masters as we are, or you have not let go of the self and you are still projecting an image upon us of how we should be so we can validate your sense that you are right. It is essentially a question: “Do you want to maintain the experience that you are right horizontally or do you want to be right with us because you are willing to connect to us how we are?” As we have said throughout this conference, it is inevitable that at the lower levels of the path you have an image of what we are. But you cannot co-create with us through that image.

Co-creation is an interactive process

You can only co-create with us when you are connected to us and you see us as we are instead of how you want us to be. Because again, what have I said—you formulate an image with a conceptual mind, you project it out and you directly experience what comes back. But when you create that additional layer of the conceptual self, you are not experiencing directly what is coming back because instead of just experiencing what comes back, the image is based on what you want to come back, a sense of what should come back.

When you have an image of us, you cannot reach us because the image creates that distance and you cannot cross the distance, and we of course, cannot cross the distance because that would violate your free will. You see again, co-creation means that you have to connect to us as we are, otherwise how can you co-create with us? Co-creation, contrary to what the conceptualized self wants to believe, does not mean that you are perfect. It does not mean that when you cross that line at the 96th level, now you are perfect, the Christ is perfect as many people still want to believe, both ascended master students and Christians. It is still a process. Co-creation is still an interactive process. It is essentially the same as originally, you are formulating an image, you are sending it out, you see what comes back. The difference is you are not formulating an image only in your mind, you are now reaching up to us, you are connecting to us and you are receiving something from us, an image from us. You then use what you get from us to create a conceptual image in your mind, but that image is not based on separation, but it is still based on your individuality in your I AM Presence.

You see, it is not that you are a slave and pass on what we are giving to you, but you are starting with what we are giving to you, then you are individualizing it, then you project it out and then you neutrally observe what comes back. When you experience what comes back, you use the rational mind to say: “do I need to make adjustments based on what is coming back?” And then you also reach up and see, do you get something adjusted from us? You see, it is again an experimental process. You get something from us, you individualize, you project out, you evaluate what comes back, but you evaluate now from two perspectives, both your own mind and from us so you have a broader frame of reference. That is how you co-create with us.

Do you have enough?

Now again, if you are not willing to give up that self, I respect your free will. I do not judge you, condemn you in any way. I have been an initiator for some time. I have seen millions of students come to this point, not being willing to give up the self, and therefore, starting to go down again, seeking some ultimate validation. We can say that as you are walking the path from the 48th to the 96th level, you are seeking validation for the conceptual self. You realize at some level, at the 96th level, that is never going to happen. You have to give up the self. If you are not willing to give it up, you are saying: “Okay, so the ascended masters will not validate myself. Well, I am going to go out into the world and seek validation for it.” Now, instead of seeking a vertical validation, you seek a horizontal validation, and you are perfectly allowed to do this.

The only thing I would say is, if you have taken in this teaching, you have a higher understanding of the dynamic than you have ever had before. You can still reject what I am saying. When you go through this long, arduous route of seeking the horizontal validation until you have had enough of it, and again start climbing, do not come to me at the 96th level again and say: “Maitreya, why did you not warn me? Why did you not tell me this?” Because, my beloved, I have told you. Again, I am not judging you. I am not condemning you. I am just trying to shock you a little bit by realizing that if you reject what I am saying now, it is because you have rejected it before.

The question is, how many times do you want to take this long, arduous route, climbing to the 96th level, rejecting the teacher, rejecting the initiator, going out into the world seeking validation from the fallen beings and human beings, eventually having enough, coming back up here, how many times do you want to do that and reject the teacher? Is it perhaps time, whether this is your first time or not your first time at the 96th level, is it perhaps time to pull the Conscious You out of that conceptual self and say: “I have had enough, I am done with you, get thee behind me Satan, for I savor the things that be of God, no longer the things that be of men.” Again, I am not trying to force your decision, but I am trying to present you with a clear understanding and awareness of what the decision actually means, what it entails.

And first of all, the awareness that at the 96th level, there is no amount of attainment, understanding, advanced concept of spiritual teachings—none of this is going to help you because there is only one thing that will get you above the 96th level and that is complete surrender of the self, complete surrender. The willingness, as Jesus was hanging on the cross, to give up the ghost, that last self, to let it die and say: “Come what may.”

With this, I am very joyful, very grateful that so many of you, both here physically and on the webinars, have been willing to co-create this release with me. It was not a given when this conference started that I would be able to release this teaching, but so many of you that have followed these teachings for a while have made so much progress, have been so willing to look at your subconscious selves, your primal selves, so many of you have been willing to engage in this process and so many of you have made progress, that I could give this teaching, which truly has never been given on earth before. And I am not saying this to cause pride, obviously, but to help you realize and acknowledge that you as a community have truly made progress and you have demonstrated a willingness to discover the true path of initiation under the ascended masters and Maitreya. And for this I am grateful and again I encourage you to give the aums and visualize how the impact in the collective consciousness that this dictation has made, spreads like rings in the water going all the way around the earth.

Let us say together, OM OM OM.
Again, I thank you, the Ascended Master Maitreya I AM.

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