Listen to a recording of this dictation (subscribers only)
Ascended Master Master MORE through Kim Michaels, September 5, 2021. This dictation was given during the 2021 Webinar for America –Towards Golden Age Relationships.
I AM the Ascended Master MORE, Chohan of the First Ray. We, the seven Chohans, have met in council and we have decided that we will give you a specific offering for this conference. The releases that you have been given so far have cast a somewhat wide net, talking about overall philosophical aspects of relationships in the golden age. But we, the seven Chohans, will give you something a little more practical, a little more closer to your present situation that can help you then take some of the next steps up on your personal path.
I will begin this offering and I will begin by talking about what a relationship actually can be, how it can be seen. Now, you know very well that we have given you many teachings about the spiritual path. We have given you different levels of teachings about the spiritual path for people at different levels of consciousness. However, what I want to do here is give you sort of the essence of the spiritual path.
What is the spiritual path in a nutshell, as the saying goes? And the simplest way to explain this is to recognize that there are different levels of consciousness. We have given you the teaching that there are 144 levels of consciousness but even beyond this, most people who are spiritually interested are open to the idea that there are different levels of consciousness. You look at the behavior of human beings, you look at how they talk, what they talk about, what they write about on social media and so forth and you can clearly see that people are at different levels of consciousness.
Therefore, we can say that the essence of the spiritual path is that right now you are at a certain level of consciousness and the goal of the spiritual path is to raise your consciousness to progressively higher levels.We have, of course, also given you the teaching which is not found in all spiritual teachings that the ultimate goal of the spiritual path is to qualify you for your ascension so that you do not have to come back into embodiment on earth. You become an ascended master.
It is helpful for you to contemplate what it takes to become an ascended master. What is the difference between an ascended master and an unascended being on earth? We have said before that you cannot really fully comprehend this, but you can at least consider it. And you need to consider here that some of the things you see unfolding on earth, some of the selfishness, some of the hostility, the anger, even the fear, even the submissiveness that you see on earth, many of these human characteristics, you need to consider whether you think they can exist in the spiritual realm whether you want to call it heaven or the ascended realm or the spiritual realm.
Do you think ascended masters go around behaving like you see human beings behaving on earth? And obviously, most of you who are ascended master students will realize that ascended masters do not behave the way human beings do. We do not talk the way human beings do. But why is that? It is, of course, because we have a different level of consciousness, a higher level of consciousness than any human being on earth.
The question now is how have we attained that higher level of consciousness? Well, we have done it, of course, by rising up through the different levels that are possible on earth until we reached the highest level and could then ascend. But what does this actually mean? What is it that we have done in order to qualify for our ascensions? What is it that takes anyone from one level of consciousness to the next? We have explained this in great detail but I want to summarize it here again just to clarify this, and also so that people who are new and may find this release will know what I am talking about.
What we have said is that right now, you are at a certain level of consciousness. That means that you have a certain view of yourself and of the world, your interaction with the world and with other people. The topic of this conference is relationships so you have a certain view of relationships, yourself in relation to other people. We have also said that, for each of the 144 levels of consciousness there is a certain illusion. There is a certain perception filter, a certain set of beliefs that characterize that level and it is precisely this perception filter, this illusion, these beliefs that blind you so there is something you cannot see.
It is comparable, and we have given a comparison before, that you are in the forest, you find an observation tower and there is a ladder that leads up to the observation tower. You are at a certain point on that ladder and you can see certain things from that vantage point but you cannot see above the treetops. At any stage on the spiritual path there is something you can see on that level and there is something you cannot see, namely what is at the higher levels than where you are at.
What is the essence of spiritual growth? It is that you come to see what you cannot see right now. But how do you do this? You come to see the illusion that you have at your current level of consciousness. You come to see that it is a limited view that you are having right now. You see how it is limiting you and then you see a higher view and when you let go of the limited view, embrace the higher view, you have taken – listen carefully – you have taken one step up on the staircase that leads to the ascension. You have not reached the highest level by taking that one step up you have reached the next level up.
You may be, let us say, at the 60th level of consciousness. You see through the illusion that corresponds to that level, you take one step up. You are now at the 61st level of consciousness not the 144th. There are many, many levels between the 61st and the 144th. You cannot see and you are not meant to see (you are, of course, in no way being blamed for this), you cannot see at the 61st level what you can see at 144th level. Why is that? Because at the 61st level there is another illusion that is limiting your view and there is one at the 62nd level, the 63rd and all the way up to the 144th. We can say that when you are at the 61st level, you are, as Saint Paul mentioned it, “seeing through a glass darkly” because you are seeing through all of these layers of illusions that correspond to the levels of consciousness above yours, whatever your level is.
There will always be something you are not seeing and that means that the essence of the spiritual path is that you are always having an illusion that limits your view and you always need to be willing to see that illusion, see its limitations and see the higher view for the next step up. This is an ongoing process my beloved, an ongoing process. It will not end as long as you are on earth. It will only end when you see through the illusion of the 144th level and then you cannot hold on to a physical body and therefore you ascend. There is nobody on earth who does not have some illusion they have not seen. Will you please allow me to repeat that sentence! There is no one on earth who does not have some illusion they have not seen!
It does not matter who they claim to be, how highly evolved they claim to be, whether they claim to be enlightened or not, whether they claim to be some superhuman being or not. Whether they claim to be God in embodiment – they still have an illusion they have not seen through or they would not be in a physical body on a planet like earth! I know this will be shocking to many spiritual people out there. So be it, it is reality.
Now, what does it then take? How do you come to see an illusion and rise from one level of consciousness to the next? There are three basic ways.
One is the experiential way. You act out your present level of consciousness and you will then continue to act it out in more and more extreme ways. It is clear that if you go to the very low levels of consciousness, say the 10th level of consciousness, acting out the 10th level of consciousness to its extreme is very extreme behavior. Most people, of course, are not at that level. If you are at the 60th level of consciousness you can still act out the 60th level of consciousness to one or the other extreme but it will not be as violent of extremes as at the 10th level, of course. But nevertheless, at any level of consciousness there will be two polarities and you can act out that level of consciousness to one of these extremes until you have had enough of it. You simply get tired of experiencing life through that rather extreme filter and therefore, you become open to seeing the illusion, giving it up, and rising to a higher level.
This is what we have called the School of Hard Knocks. There will be external circumstances, often in the form of other people who are going to give you feedback on your state of consciousness, give you opposition or however you see it, until you have had enough of this and rise above. It is the School of Hard Knocks. You are at that point we might say, still walking the path in an unconscious way. You are not directly in your mind thinking: “What do I need to see in order to get to the next level?” You are letting circumstances push you around until you feel cornered and now you rise. This is how most people grow below the 48th level. In fact, this is how all people grow below the 48th level. But there are some people that continue to grow that way even when they have gone above the 48th level.
We, of course, hope that all of our students who know about ascended master teachings will internalize what we have given you about the path and therefore take the next approach. The next approach is that you are consciously aware that there is something you need to see, some illusion you need to overcome and therefore you begin to actively look for it. In other words, what I am saying here is that those who are in the first state, or take the first approach they are not actually willing to look at themselves. They are not truly looking at themselves. They are not as Jesus said, looking for the beam in their own eye. They are projecting out, only looking at the splinters in the eyes of other people.
This is also something that profoundly affects your relationships. You can probably all see people who are not looking at themselves, who are always projecting out that it is your fault or other people’s fault and it is never their fault. Certainly you can see this outplayed on the world stage.
When you take that step onto the conscious path, it is when you realize that you do need to look at yourself. Now, in the beginning, I admit fully, that many people do not have the full grasp of what this means. You can take this messenger, who has been on the path now for 45 years and who, since he read Yogananda’s book 45 years ago, has been quite conscious of what the path is about. He has been aware that there is something called the ego, that you need to overcome it and that you need to look at yourself. Because even before he found the path, he was observing himself during childhood as he has done for many embodiments, many of you having done the same thing.
In all of that time, he has been aware that the spiritual path requires you to look at yourself, but he has not been fully aware of what that really meant. That means that for the first many years he was on the path, he had a selective willingness to look at himself. He was willing to look at certain things in his psychology, but there were other things that he was not willing to look at because he still had some separate selves that would have made it very painful for him to look at certain things. In other words, he thought that as a spiritual person there were certain things you should not do, say or believe and if he saw that he had that aspect of ego, he was afraid he would condemn himself and therefore there was a subconscious resistance towards openly looking at himself.
Many of you will recognize this in yourselves. Perhaps you are still in that phase. Perhaps you have as a considerable part of you have gone beyond that stage. For this messenger, it took him many years on the path before he fully got to the point where he could say to us as the ascended masters: “I am willing to look at anything in my psychology.” He went through various stages but there came a point some years ago now where he was willing to look at anything. I am not trying to say that you should immediately come to the point where you could look at anything. On the contrary, the reason for giving you this story is to show you that it is alright that you have a certain period where you are selectively looking at yourself. This is perfectly fine because you do not need to see all your illusions at the 48th level of consciousness. You only need to see the illusion at the 48th level so you can rise to the 49th. You do not need to deal with everything at once. That is the whole idea of the path, and of giving you this teaching of the 144 levels, so that we break the path into the smaller units that are much more manageable for you.
However, you do need to be aware that at each step there is something you have to see in yourself, in your own psychology and this requires you to be willing to look. And you need to be aware that there are people who have been on the path for decades and who have made progress but they have come to a point where there is something they are not willing to look at and then the progress stalls. It comes to a halt. And these people are treading water and they can tread water for quite a long period of time, even for the rest of a lifetime. We have seen this in ascended master students from previous dispensations. We see it in a few for this [dispensation]. We would prefer that none of our students in this dispensation would get stuck there. But it requires your willingness to look at yourself.
What does this mean in practical terms? It does mean that you have to be willing to observe yourself, to ask questions, but of course, this is not an approach that is easy because the whole nature of the path is that you are at your present level of consciousness and at this present level of consciousness there is something you cannot see because you have a perception filter, an illusion that blocks it. How do you come to see what you cannot see? Well, you can question, you can analyze, you can observe and you can make some progress but ultimately, the way to see what you cannot see is to have some frame of reference from outside the perception filter. That frame of reference can be a spiritual teaching, it can be an observation, but the fastest way to make progress is, of course, to receive input from outside your self that gives you that frame of reference, that challenges your perception and therefore helps you question it.
This, my beloved is the third way to make progress and, of course, real progress is an interchange between the second, observing yourself and the third, getting input from outside your self. This third way of getting input from outside your self is the foundation for what has been called the guru-chela relationship. The word guru, of course, is an Indian or Sanskrit word. The word chela is an Indian word and in India you have this very old tradition for the emergence of a person who sets himself up, because they are usually men, as a guru. Perhaps he has an ashram, a house where he lives and he attracts students who come and are part of that ashram and they will, not all of the time but at least from time to time, have personal interaction with a guru. The guru can personally advise them or even challenge them in their illusions. This is what has been called the guru-chela relationship. We have in previous dispensations, especially the Summit Lighthouse, talked much more about it and in this dispensation less so and I want to explain why this is the case.
This messenger found the spiritual path when he was 18 by finding the book by Paramahansa Yogananda, “The Autobiography of a Yogi.” Yogananda talks extensively about how he found his personal guru and how he became part of this entire Indian tradition of one guru attracting at least one student who raises his consciousness to the point where he can become a guru of his own right and this is how the tradition has been perpetuated. This messenger realized even at that point, that even though this was a valid tradition, it was not for him. He never felt an urge to go to India and he never actually felt an urge to find a personal, physical guru as it is conceived in the Indian tradition. Why is this? It is because this messenger had in his divine plan the potential to become a messenger for the ascended masters who could receive these teachings we are giving that are primarily for the Aquarian Age and the Aquarian Age mindset.
He did not realize this at the age of 18 but he realized later that in the Aquarian Age it is meant that there are many more people who will find a spiritual path, who will be conscious that there is a way to systematically not only heal your psychology, but actually raise your consciousness to higher levels. We have said before that we have moved into an age where a considerable portion of the population in many of the modern nations have entered the self-actualization needs and when you enter that stage, then you are open to the concept of a spiritual path, a systematic way to improve yourself and that means that many people also become open to the concept of a guru, a teacher, a guide, a coach whatever it is called.
This messenger came to the realization at some point or rather we gave him the realization that the traditional Indian guru-chela relationship simply was not practical for the Aquarian Age. When you have a physical guru who lives in an ashram, that guru can only have personal interactions with a limited number of students. You have seen, there was a certain period where there was the emergence of these Indian gurus who became known in the West. You have seen sometimes thousands of people who will travel to a guru’s ashram and they would live there and work there and they might be in a big group listening to the guru, but very few of them had personal interactions with a guru.
Clearly, when you have a situation where millions of people in the West are open to the spiritual path, it just is not possible that they can all travel to India or even in the West, find a personal physical guru, which there are millions of people open to the process, you would need tens of thousands of gurus to give them all personal attention and there are not that many gurus in embodiment who are qualified. This would mean many of them would then come in contact with false gurus who would lead them astray on the path.
What is the practical solution to this? Well, one aspect of the solution is, of course, that people find an ascended master teaching, they embrace that teaching to the point where they begin to have personal contact with the ascended masters, so that you can get personal feedback, personal guidance from us but it happens within yourself not through a physical guru, not even through a physical messenger. This is, as we have said many times, the ultimate goal of our teachings that you become self- sufficient where you are no longer actually need the outer teaching. You do not need the outer messenger but you have direct contact with the ascended masters within yourself. We are not limited by time and space. We have unlimited attention span. We can deal with literally millions of students at the same time. You will not be able to understand this with the linear mind but that is because we have transcended the linear mind. We are not limited in that way.
Now, the question is, for you who are spiritual students: “Can you actually receive directions directly from us inside yourself?” What you will see is, for many of you, you are not at the point where you can have clear directions from us. You may occasionally have it but you do not have it that often and many of you will also see that you are in a period where you do get some directions from within, you get some intuitive insights but your outer mind often begins to question it, to doubt it, to explain it away so that you can ignore it or so that you can somehow fit it into your existing worldview.
The reality is that even if you find an ascended master teaching, there is still a period where you very much have a need for a physical guru. What we give you is, of course not, as we have said before, that we appear to you in some undeniable manifestation or that you suddenly see flaming letters written on the wall. What we give you is an inner intuitive sense that the outer mind can overlook, ignore or explain away. This is part of the whole plausible deniability of the law of free will. From time to time, it can be very, very helpful for you to have a physical person who is telling you something or giving you feedback in other ways in a way that is more difficult for your mind to deny or explain away.
In other words, even though you have found the ascended master teaching, you still can benefit from having a physical, quote unquote, “guru.” It is not a person who is set up as a guru who has taken on the title of guru, but it is a person who is acting as a guru for you by presenting you with something that can help you challenge your current illusion and overcome it. What kind of a guru is this?
Well, those of you who are familiar with the Summit Lighthouse will know that I, under the name El Morya back then, had a motto: “If the guru be an ant, heed him.” This does not, of course, mean that I encourage my students to take a magnifying glass and go out and kneel by an anthill and study the behavior of ants. It means that if a human being does not have the title of a guru but appears to be just like any other human being, but they still present you with something that you need to hear then heed them anyway even though they do not have a title, even though they do not seem to have any authority.
Do you see where I am going with this? It leads to the point where you can shift your attitude to relationships, any kind of relationship. You can shift it where you consciously are willing to acknowledge that any person you have a relationship with can be the guru disguised as an ant and they can, at any time, tell you something or give you some kind of feedback that you need to hear, and it is something that you can hear or see physically and therefore, it is more difficult for your mind, your ego, to deny it or explain it away. In other words, what I am saying here is this, the most constructive attitude you can adopt with regarding your relationships is that any person you are in a relationship with could be the guru in disguise.
Now, obviously this requires some discretion and discernment. I am not telling you that you should go around and listen to all the people you have a relationship with and think that anything they say is something you should heed and you should now change your life or change your attitude because of what they said. Naturally, you need to make your own decisions. But what you can learn relatively quickly to recognize is that, once in a while somebody will say or do something and there is a certain reaction in your heart chakra.
In the beginning, this may seem like just there is a pause. There is a vacuum, there is a stillness, there is a moment of stillness. There is almost like a hesitation in your heart chakra. Many of you will already know this but all of you can learn to recognize this fairly quickly by putting your attention on it and when you will feel this reaction in your heart chakra, then you know, there is something there in that person’s actions or in what they are saying that you need to pay attention to. This does not mean you are necessarily take it literally what they are saying and literally do what they say, but you realize there is something there that you need to ponder that you need to reflect on. And one of the primary things you need to reflect on is, of course, your own reaction. Can you see that there is a certain reaction in your outer mind that is in contrast to this stillness, this pause in your heart chakra?
What I am really saying here is that this is one way to experience in a milder form what we have talked about with the Conscious You as pure awareness. It is the beginning way to stepping outside of your perception filter, when you are not quite ready to step completely out and experience pure awareness in its full form. But you realize there is something. There was some kind of a shift that happened there, some kind of reaction beyond the ordinary and when you learn to pay attention to this, then you can say: “Oh, there is something here. What is it”? You can then ask your spiritual teacher, your ascended master however you see it, or you can ask other people. It may not be the person who is telling you this that can help you gain clarity on it, but you can at least begin to talk about it with some people. You can look at it in books. You can look at our teachings. You can attempt to gain clarity on it.
This is the main practical guideline that I want to give you as the Chohan of the First Ray. Look upon any relationship you have as a potential encounter with a guru disguised as an ant. This can truly shift your attitude to relationships in a profound way. Much of what you get, of course, you can safely ignore. The challenge is always to discern between what to ignore and what not to ignore but this is something you can learn by practicing and, of course, the other Chohans will give you advice as well.
Now, before I have fulfilled my allotted time here, there is one topic that I want to go into in a little more detail. I AM the Chohan of the First Ray. If you read my book recently republished with the invocations, you will see that I talked about the fact that there is a certain initiation people have to pass when they come to my retreat in Darjeeling, and until they have passed that initiation they cannot move on. They cannot move to the other Chohans, they cannot really move on in the path.
And quite frankly there has, going back through ascended master dispensations over the past century, always been a certain percentage of students who came, they found the teachings, they got very enthusiastic with their outer minds. They got on fire as they sometimes called it, and they studied the teachings very eagerly. They engaged in the organization, gave hours upon hours of decrees but they came to a point fairly quickly, after they found the teachings, where they formed the belief in their minds that now they had the basic understanding or perhaps sometimes even the full understanding of what the path was about. They had a mental image of what it meant to be a chela, what you needed to do and not do and they thought that if they continue to do this for the rest of their time in embodiment, they would automatically qualify for their ascension.
These are the kinds of students who do not pass that first initiation and therefore, they get stuck. Now, in reality there is, of course, just not just one initiation because you can get stuck at any level of the 144 levels because you for some reason think that now you have figured it out, how the path works, and there is no more illusions for you to see and therefore, you stop questioning your perception filter. I want to give you a very, very simple guideline that you, if you are willing, can apply to yourself and see, have you gotten stuck. And the reality of the situation is that at any of the 144 levels you have a certain illusion and this illusion means that there will be certain viewpoints, certain ideas certain beliefs that you will be very attached to at that level. Without going too deeply into this, we can say very briefly that you have an ego at each of the levels and the ego always needs security. It needs to feel it is in control, because it knows how life works. The ego gets the feeling of being controlled by adopting a certain viewpoint, and saying: “This is the absolute understanding. This is the final understanding.” This can be viewpoints about the path but it can also be viewpoints in the world.
What you can do is you can look at yourself, you can look at your reaction to certain situations and you can say: “Is there an outer viewpoint that I am attached to, that is very, very important for me, that I find myself arguing for, trying to persuade other people that this is the right viewpoint and arguing against anybody who questions it or has a different viewpoint?”
Some of you, if you are willing to be neutral about this, will see that over the last couple of years, with the pandemic, with the election in the United States, with other issues you have had some very strongly held beliefs that you have been very attached to. You have argued ferociously sometimes with other people about it and this is a sign that you have become stuck at a certain level. It is simply a sign that you have become stuck at a certain level and you will not get beyond it until you begin to question: “Why am I so attached to this particular viewpoint? Why is it so important for me?”
The simple reality is that, as you rise higher and come closer to the 144th level, outer viewpoints and beliefs become less and less important to you. You come to the 144th level and what have we said? You need to look back at earth and see if you have any attachment, anything that pulls you back here. Well, if you have a viewpoint that you are strongly attached to, how can you ascend? Of course, you will have to let go of these viewpoints before you come to the 144th level, but you get my point. The higher you move on the spiritual path, the less attached you are to these outer viewpoints. You can look at this and see that you have an attachment, it is holding you back, holding back your progress, keeping you treading water at a certain level of a path and then you can decide whether you want to question that viewpoint or whether you want to stay there and have more of that experience. This I leave entirely up to you.
Another measure I want to give you is that there are some of you, that we observe, who have been on the path for a long time and who have formed a certain opinion. Let me just give you one example. Some of you found the teachings given through this messenger at a fairly early level. You started with the books by Maitreya, “Master Keys to Spiritual Freedom”, the book by Jesus on the Christhood course and you gave the Christhood course and then when we started giving the books on the Seven Rays, starting with the Maha Chohan’s book, the Course to Self-Mastery, some of you decided that: “Oh, I have already given these more advanced teachings in Maitreya’s and Jesus’s book. I do not need to give these teachings from the Chohans because surely Maitreya is higher than the Chohans.”
Well, my beloved, certainly Maitreya is at a higher level of hierarchy than the Chohans, but what have we told you many times we have been doing through this and previous messengers? We have been giving progressive revelation. We did not give the highest possible teaching in the beginning of this dispensation. We gave teachings for certain level of consciousness.
Now, one of the goals in the early age where we started with the Ask Real Jesus website, was to give teachings for people who had been trapped in the Christian tradition for many embodiments, so they could free themselves from this, have a higher understanding than before. We also gave some teachings that were meant for people from previous dispensations, especially the Summit Lighthouse who have moved on to this dispensation and we then gave them a higher teaching than we could give in the dispensation of the Summit Lighthouse. But this was still a teaching measured for the level of consciousness that the student body had at the time, that the collective consciousness was at, at the time.
So actually, even though you may think that our teaching on the seven levels from the 48th to the 96th level is for a lower level than these previous teachings, it is still a progressive teaching. Because what we have done with the Course to Self-Mastery is set a very clearly outlined foundation for the spiritual path that has never been outlined so clearly before. Now, of course, there can be some students that are beyond the 96th level but even if you are beyond the 96th level, you can still benefit from the Course to Self-Mastery because it makes sure that there is not some steps you have missed or overlooked, there is not some foundation for the path that you have not fully internalized.
All of you can benefit from the Course to Self-Mastery as a strong foundation before you move on to higher teachings. You will also see that when we gave the book on My Lives and the teachings coming later on your separate selves and your birth trauma, this was also a step up to a higher level of teaching that is more directly for people who are willing to work on their, the deepest aspects of their personal psychology.
If you look at the path and the teachings and thinking you have it all figured out and you know exactly what to do, and you just need to keep doing that for the rest of your lives, then I submit to you that you have gotten yourself stuck. And if you really want to fulfill your highest potential that you yourself outlined in your divine plan, you need to get yourself unstuck. And there are teachings that can help you certainly, if you diligently apply the Course to Self-Mastery, most of you will be able to get yourself unstuck.
I will suggest, we the Seven Chohans suggest that, you start after the next webinar for Korea and you as the student body worldwide, give a vigil of giving the invocations in each of the eight books for the Course to Self-Mastery. The messenger can give you further directions* on how the practical aspects of this will be done but I encourage all of you to participate in this. And if you have not read the books, then also study the chapters that correspond to the invocations you are giving.
This concludes the remarks that I wanted to give you as the Chohan of the First Ray and I will now seal you in a flame, the Blue Flame of the Will and the Power of God which is really the creativity, the creative drive of God and therefore, I thank you for your attention.
*The Chohans vigil will start on November 1st, 2021. The directions are posted on the Transcendencetoolbox website. You will find them in the Chohans Vigil category.
Copyright © 2021 Kim Michaels