TOPICS: Christ is beyond any authority on earth – In oneness, no one is Lord or King over another – Find the Living Christ in the kingdom within – Any scripture is outdated before it can be written down – Quantum physics: the interplay of consciousness and the Cosmic Mirror – The mind is a radio receiver – Experiencing circumstances according to your state of consciousness – You are one Being, existing in multiple dimensions – Consciousness on a scale of higher or lower frequencies – Consciousness as a gravitational force – The top 10% must bring positive change – Parallel universes in consciousness – Christhood shifts the entire spectrum of consciousness – Victory is oneness of hearts united – Hear Jesus inside yourself –

Listen to the recording of this dictation (Subscribers only)

Ascended Master Jesus, November 2, 2008 through Kim Michaels. (Before the dictation, the audience listened to the Hallelujah Chorus from Messiah, by G.F. Handel)

“Lord God on High, omnipotent reigneth” thus are the words of the song you have heard, taken from the scriptures.  But I, Jesus, did not come to awaken humankind to the Lord God on High who is omnipotent.  I came to awaken them to the God within—who is the respecter of his own Law of Free Will and thus does not seek to control you. But he seeks to help you unfold all that you are, all that you were created to be—even being more than you were created to be. For your God loves to be surprised by the creativity of the extensions of itself, my beloved.

He is not the tyrant up in heaven, who wants you to conform to a certain belief system, a certain ritual of outer behavior or ritualistic coming together in worship or prayer. The Lord God on High – meaning the Lord God that is in a higher vibration than the material universe – that Lord, that God, wants to be expressed through you in a spontaneous, creative flow of new ways of manifesting the abundant life on earth.

Christ is beyond any authority on earth

It is not God who wants to control your thoughts and your behavior. It is those who have attempted to set themselves up as gods on earth—or as the only representatives of Gods on earth. Inserting themselves as the High Priests of the temple – as the alpha perversion of the power elite – and the money changers in the temple—as the perversion of the ego, the perversion of the feminine, the omega polarity.

There have always been two main groupings in the power elite, in the false teachers: Those who pervert the expanding force of the Father, those who pervert the contracting force of the Mother. And in many cases, they have formed an unholy alliance, and this can be seen out-pictured here in Europe, going back many centuries. For go back to the song you have just heard, “King of Kings and Lord of Lords.” Well, that original statement was meant to signify that Christ is beyond any ideas and graven images created by the consciousness of anti-Christ. And therefore, Christ is beyond any authority on earth – whether it be the king, or the emperor, or the Lord, or the Pope, or the priest, or the cardinal or the bishop. It matters not, for Christ is beyond all of them. For Christ cannot be corrupted by the dualistic consciousness, Christ cannot be forced into a mental box created by the consciousness of anti-Christ—which is – as we have said many times – based on the illusion of separation, whereas Christ is based on the reality of oneness, the oneness of all life.

In oneness, no one is Lord or King over another

So you see; when life is one, no one is in control. No one is lord over another; no one is king over another. When the ancient Israelites demanded a king, well then they only reinforced the illusion of separation—and it was not truly the people who demanded a king. It was the aspiring power elite at the time; those who lusted after the power held by the high priests and wanted their own share of that power—out of their perversion of the omega aspect of wanting to control the people’s daily lives, whereas the high priests wanted to control their minds.  Here in Europe, the concept that Christ is King of Kings was perverted to the point, where the kings started claiming that they were representatives of Christ—that they were standing between the people and Christ, and that they had the ordination of Christ for their kingship and for the fact that the son of the previous king, the oldest son, would always become the next king.

Well, if you go back to ancient times, they had kings but the kings were not simply appointed in succession. You were appointed through some agency of the spiritual realm, be it an oracle or in other manners whereby the Spirit could appoint the king. Often, it raised up a person who was born and raised as a commoner to be the next king, so that that king knew what it was like to live among the people and had not been born in a royal castle, far removed from the ordinary people, growing up in this closed environment, and therefore naturally becoming halfway insane, so to speak, being brought up to be insane in the sense that he was insensitive to the plight of the people. This then, is indeed one of the great problems; perhaps one might say the great problem on earth, especially here in Europe.

Find the Living Christ in the kingdom within

Europe is in many ways intended to be what it to some degree has been, the cradle of new ideas, of new inventions, of new philosophies and ideologies, that can bring progress and freedom to the people.  And precisely because this is the divine intention for this land, those of the power elites – the two power elites – have congregated here and have attempted to divide the people amongst each other and divide the people from their God within.

This is the pattern, that you will see on this continent, over and over again, successfully completed by the Catholic Church who used my teachings about the inner kingdom to set themselves up as the spiritual representatives of Christ on earth. They claimed that you could only be saved and reach Christ through the hierarchy of the church.

Now my beloved, it is true that you can only reach Christ through a certain hierarchy—you will see that we have often talked about you seeing yourselves as part of a certain hierarchy of Light.  But as I came to demonstrate 2000 years ago, you do not need a hierarchy on earth in order to claim your oneness with the hierarchy of light. For the kingdom of God is within, and you have the key of knowledge, you have the ability to know truth in your own heart. And therefore, you do not need an outer authority to define dogma and doctrine for you, based on some literal interpretation of a scripture that was outdated before it was even written down.

Any scripture is outdated before it can be written down

Master MORE has said, that if you were to paint a portrait of him, he would have transcended himself before the paint was dry. Well, I can assure you that I, Jesus, transcended myself many times before the early gospel writers decided to put pen to paper and write down the story of my life. From the very beginning, the Catholic Church was based on this falsified concept, that you can make Christ conform to worldly ideas, beliefs, mental boxes, graven images. They have attempted to turn the living Christ into a graven image, and they have been successful in swaying many people to worship this image.  Many souls have worshipped this image over and over again over the past 2,000 years, coming from one embodiment into the next, being born into a Christian culture where they were then, again, exposed to this rigid view, this rigid image of Christ.

How many lifetimes does a soul need to spend sitting in a Christian church – looking up at the crucified Christ at the head of the church – before that soul begins to feel, that there must be more to the inner message of Christ? Ah my beloved, that is a question that I wish I could answer. But I look upon humankind and I scratch my head and I say, “How come they have not yet had enough? How can they still be sitting there every Sunday, singing these same old hymns, listening to the same old sermons, given by the same old priest—who has seen this as a lifetime calling to basically give the same sermon over and over again every Sunday?” He might think there is a variation, but it is the same sermon, for it reinforces the graven image of the external Christ, who will one day come back and save you. Whereas I wanted to be seen as the internal Christ, who will help you transcend yourself, so that you might indeed experience the kingdom of God right where you are.

Quantum physics: the interplay of consciousness and the Cosmic Mirror

What is the essence of the message I preached 2,000 years ago? Well, let me make a leap in consciousness to the present age and explain to you, how the message of Christ can be understood through the discoveries of quantum mechanics, quantum physics.

Quantum physics has discovered and proven, that when you interact with the material universe, that interaction is not physical—it is not bodily, for the universe is made of tiny subatomic particles that are actually simply energy waves. And your consciousness can interact with them, meaning that your consciousness can interact with the most fundamental level of matter. Well, right there, is proof of what I attempted to explain 2,000 years ago in my statement, “Do unto others as you want them to do unto you.”

For do you see, that what you do unto others is an expression of your consciousness? And your consciousness interacts with the most fundamental level of matter itself, which is what we have called the Cosmic Mirror. And what quantum physics has discovered is, that before a scientist makes an observation, there is no manifest matter particle, there is no manifest electron. You cannot determine the exact position and momentum of the electron, for it does not exist as an exact quantity before the observation is made; it exists only as a potential. And then, there are even a number of potentials, and scientists have discovered, that there is a fundamental uncertainty built into the universe, which is in stark contrast to the world view that has been promoted by both materialistic science and traditional Christianity, and before that, even by traditional religions, such as the Jewish religion that I came to renew.

Or there is the view, that you have no influence over the matter realm, that God created the world the way it is, and therefore so many people have been lured into the illusion, that they look at the conditions of the world as unchangeable. In the middle ages, they looked at the suffering, and their souls cried out, “Why did God create a world with such suffering?” But the only answer they got from the Church was, “It’s a mystery, we cannot know. It must be the will of God that we suffer, so we should be content in our suffering and not try to do what Christ exemplified—turn the water into wine, raise the dead, heal the sick, walk on the water of the human consciousness and raise our consciousness to the wine of the Christ Consciousness.”

Do you see the insanity of this? And then see, that what science has proven is exactly the fact, that God has given human beings dominion over the earth, he has given them free will, and he has given them a mind that can interact with the Cosmic Mirror itself. So that what they project upon that very fundamental level of matter, is what will be out-pictured in the physical circumstances in which you live.

The mind is a radio receiver

What physicists have discovered is, that before they make an observation of an electron, the electron does not exist as an actual particle but as a potential to manifest in a certain location. They can calculate the probability that the electron will manifest in a certain location, but they cannot know for certain until they make the observation. And why is this, my beloved? It is because it is only when your consciousness interacts with the deeper level of reality, that God has created, it is only then, that things become manifest in the level of vibration where your consciousness is currently identifying itself.

As we have said before, your mind is like a radio receiver, that has the ability to tune in to different stations. But most people on earth have been conditioned to tune their minds to the vibrational spectrum of the material universe – to that radio station of the material universe – and to think that that is the only level of reality they can experience and that there is nothing beyond it. Or they think there is something beyond, but they cannot contact it themselves, within their hearts, for only the priest or the Pope has the bigger radio that can tune in to heaven. Well, I tell you, my beloved—there is no super radio station in the Vatican or anywhere else. For there is only one radio – one kind of radio on earth – and that is the one each of you have in your own hearts.

That, my beloved, is the only way to tune in to heaven. And those who claim otherwise, are simply representatives of the power elites, that in their separation from God are seeking to control humankind. And they know that they can only ultimately control you through the mind, by making you believe, that there is nothing outside the prison in which you are currently abiding.

Experiencing circumstances according to your state of consciousness

Back to quantum physics. There is a theory in quantum physics, that when an observation is made, one particular event or particle becomes a physical manifestation in this universe. The question then arose, “Well what about all the other potentialities that could have come to pass, what happened to them? Do they simply disappear as the waveform collapses, or is it possible that each of them is actually manifested in a parallel universe?”

This is the so-called “Many-worlds interpretation,” stating that there are an infinite number of universes. And each time you make a choice, well there is an exact copy of yourself who makes another choice that you might have made. If you choose A, your double will choose B and live in a parallel universe to experience the consequences of that choice. Well, my beloved, this is not reality, for you are one Being. And I can assure you, that even God saw that it would be a little too much to expect, that there could be an infinite number of copies and you could still maintain some kind of integrity. So, you are one Being but of course there are levels of your Being.

So there is a certain reality here, that if you make one particular choice here in the physical realm, then you do not experience the consequences of that choice only with your conscious mind—for your greater mind extends into the emotional, the mental, and the etheric realms of planet earth.  And you will experience the consequences of your choice at those levels, depending on your state of consciousness and where you fit in. For as Maitreya has explained in his book, there is only one level of the material universe, but there are many levels of the emotional and the mental especially, and even some divisions in the etheric.

You are one Being, existing in multiple dimensions

It is possible, that you can live here on earth in a physical body, but you have a low state of consciousness that attunes your emotional body to one of the lower levels in the emotional realm. And thus, it is entirely possible, that you can experience a particular physical event, yet in your mind your experience becomes very negative, very dominated by fear. Whereas another person may have a higher state of consciousness, that is attuned to one of the higher levels of the emotional realm, and therefore can experience the exact same physical situation but have a vastly different experience—a much less fearful experience.

What I aim to give you here is the concept, that you are one Being but you exist in multiple dimensions. And one might indeed consider the physical, emotional, mental, and etheric levels of the material universe as parallel universes, as parallel worlds. Here in the physical, your body might take a certain action, but what determines your life experience is not the outer action but actually how you perceive the action or its consequences, how you experience your circumstances.

What I am endeavoring to explain is, that there is a reality here, so that if you look at humankind, you will see that there are many groupings of people where you can put them on a scale according to their level of consciousness. And each of these levels are, so to speak, living in a parallel universe. For even though they all have a physical body, they are in their consciousness attuned to various levels of the emotional and mental realm. And the level to which they are attuned will determine, how they look at the material world, and how they experience life—it will determine their life-experience.

Consciousness on a scale of higher or lower frequencies

This very much ties in with the teaching I have been giving for some time, where you can divide the population into the top 10% – or the most spiritually aware people – the bottom 10% are the most self-centered, ego-centered people and the 80% of the general population who are somewhere in between those two. So, what I desire you to understand here is, that it is the level of consciousness that determines where people fit into this scale—it is not their outer power.

Obviously, the most powerful people on earth are not necessarily – and in fact are rarely – in the top 10%. The top 10% are not somehow superior to others, for in order to enter the top 10% you must overcome duality and the need to feel better than others. You must not go into the false humility that is the opposite, but the realism that we have talked about in previous dictations at this conference, of simply realizing who you are, as a co-creator with God. That is what determines your entry into the top 10%, so we are not here giving a teaching, that the ego should be allowed to turn into a teaching of superiority giving rise to pride, for then you have not understood the teaching.

It is indeed a reality, that there are those who have attuned their consciousness to higher frequencies, to the higher radio stations that are broadcasting the truth from the ascended master’s octave. And they, then, have raised their consciousness to the point, where they can attune to a different radio station than the general population, and certainly the lowest 10% who are often attuning to the radio station that has traditionally been called hell.

For you see, hell exists in the emotional realm, where those beings who have become completely self-centered – have become so eaten up by the their own anger against God, and their anger against themselves – that they have formed the realm, where the anger has become so intense, so hot, that it will be experienced as a hell with flames that burn you in eternal torment. For the beings that are trapped there, are in eternal torment, even though they do not always see this, because they are so focused on their anger against God, that their anger is consuming their awareness to the point, that they cannot even realize that this is uncomfortable to them and that they wish they could get out of it.

Consciousness as a gravitational force

When you look at the scale of the bottom 10%, the top 10% and the 80% in the middle, you see that there are many different levels on that scale. And you can then go to the people who are in embodiment and who are part of the lowest 10%, and you will see that there are people at the very lowest level, who embody a certain state of consciousness. And they are forming a gravitational force, that seeks to pull the minds of everyone else down to their level of consciousness.

They do this not only through their minds, they do it through their actions, where they have attempted to embroil people into wars so that when people are trapped in war, trapped in battle, some people will rise in honor, whereas others will descend to the very animalistic tendencies of killing anyone who seems to get in their way, or conquering a village and raping the women, or otherwise displaying complete disrespect for life. Thereby, they pull them down to that level of being an animal, and they pull those down who look at these atrocities and become angry and seek revenge. So they create this downward spiral, where people are pulled down more and more and more.

There are those in the lowest 10% who are living in a particular universe, that you who are spiritual people can scarcely imagine. And I do not in fact encourage you to try to imagine how these people experience life. For I myself descended into hell – meaning I descended into their level of consciousness to seek to raise them up – but I did not do this until I was resurrected, and therefore had shed the body and the human consciousness. And certainly, I do not encourage you to descend to that level while you are still in a physical body.  This will only be reserved for a very few people, and so you strive to raise your consciousness rather than lowering it. Unless, of course, you need to go down and look at something in your psychology from past lives and undo a decision that you made at a lower level of consciousness. But you do not attune to the consciousness of others, for you do not need to undo the decisions made by others—as only they can do that.

The top 10% must bring positive change

The message I want to get across here is that God gave human beings dominion over the earth. You have people in the lowest 10% who are the blind, and they are the blind seeking to lead the blind of the general population. They are aggressive, they are completely self-centered and focused on themselves, and you cannot expect these people to suddenly awaken and start raising their own consciousness and that of the 80% of the people.

I am not saying that people from the lowest 10% have not been awakened; it does happen but only a small percentage. So what I am saying is, that you cannot expect positive change on this planet to come from the lowest 10%. So where must positive change come from? Well, if you look at the 80%, they tend to be followers; they do not have a strong enough sense of self to go against the grain, to refuse to fit into the mold defined by society. And so, who must then bring positive change? Well, it can only be the top 10%, my beloved, and this is what you need to realize.

As an example of this, look at Europe during the Second World War. It was a conflict that killed millions and millions of people on this continent. Millions of people lost loved ones, millions of people saw their homes destroyed, their cities destroyed—even a nation destroyed. Yet if you go to other parts of the European continent, you can find people who lived almost normal lives during the five years of the Second World War. And why is that, my beloved? Because they were at a different level of consciousness than the people who were directly involved in the war!

Do not believe that things just happen to happen a certain way. Everything is a manifestation of consciousness. There is a reason why certain people had congregated and embodied in the same areas, the geographical areas, where they became embroiled in the direct war. There is a reason why other people had embodied in other parts of Europe, where they were not so directly involved. There is a reason for this, and it is their level of consciousness. So what I am endeavoring to explain is, that even in a conflict as serious as the Second World War, you will see that people at different levels of consciousness had very different experiences of the physical events.

Parallel universes in consciousness

Today – as the spiritual people – you are, so to speak, living in a parallel universe, compared to the greater population and those in the lower 10%.  Consider the very fact, that you are sitting in a room here, in a monastery of a particular Christian order that has existed for a very long time, and has a very set, rigid organized tradition. Consider that you are sitting here listening to a person who claims to give voice to the real Jesus Christ, whereas right below you are the monks of this order who are doing their Sunday service, claiming that they are worshipping the real Jesus Christ and would be shocked to really understand what is happening here. Do you see, that even though you are in such physical proximity, you are living in parallel universes in the mind?

So the idea from quantum physics of parallel universes is not wrong; only they are not physically parallel universes – they are not parallel universes in the material vibrational spectrum – they are parallel universes in consciousness.  And this is the magic of planet earth in the material realm—that it allows people to exist – as Maitreya explains in greater detail in his book – in the same physical location yet be in parallel universes in consciousness.

Christhood shifts the entire spectrum of consciousness

Now, what that means is, that there is a correspondence between the parallel universe that you live in as the spiritual people, and the parallel universe of the lowest 10%. It is a law of God, that before a certain manifestation of duality – a certain manifestation of darkness, of evil, can be removed from the earth – before that can happen, there must be those in the top 10% who have raised their consciousness to a certain level, where they have freed themselves from those aspects of the ego that are being out-pictured as that manifestation of darkness.

They must free themselves, but they must also then take a stand and say, “This manifestation of evil is no longer acceptable in my world!” And only when you stand on the Rock of Christ – because you have been willing to remove the beam in your eye, that aspect of the ego which is being out-pictured as that manifestation – only then, when you stand on that Rock of Christ, will you have the authority – or we might say, you will give God the authority – to remove that manifestation of evil from this planet and remove those who will not voluntarily raise their consciousness beyond it.

Do you see that this is how progress occurs on this planet? There must be some in the top 10%, who have reached the level of Christhood, that corresponds to the perversion of that level among the bottom 10%. And only when we have those – a critical mass of people at that level of Christhood – can the perversion of that level be removed. And that way, the entire spectrum of consciousness is shifted upwards. If you look at the spectrum of human consciousness, that you find on this earth, then you will see, that the way progress happens is that the entire spectrum is shifted upwards. It is now possible to go one step higher for the top 10%, but those in the bottom 10% cannot go below a certain level or they will be removed from the earth.

This is the only way that progress can happen; it cannot happen in any other way. It cannot happen through force. It cannot happen by one totalitarian nation conquering the world and establishing the kingdom of God through force. It cannot happen through one religion conquering the world. It cannot happen in any other way but a shift in consciousness, whereby those who have the potential must rise, claim their Christhood, purify their own minds of a certain manifestation of the duality consciousness; and then declare with one voice, with one mind, with one heart, that this must stop, for enough is enough!

Victory is oneness of hearts united

This is what you have done by following our teachings, by giving the rosaries and invocations—you have done this step by step. But the reason why we had a victory, as Saint Germain explained last night, was that you came into oneness. Perhaps all of you were not aware of this, but you came into oneness of mind and heart, wanting to raise Europe beyond the past, beyond being stuck in the past. And you were willing to transcend the outer divisions, that have been used to divide and conquer the people on this continent for so long. And this is indeed the essential key, that you need to become more aware of, and that you need to continue to apply in your lives, and that you need to continue to apply as you come together. For we are greatly encouraged by your willingness to come together as a community.

You need to see, that what we desire to establish here is a figure-eight flow between Europe and the United States, so that we have the polarities of the students in the United States and the students in Europe – and I certainly count Europe going far east into Russia – and they come together, forming that oneness and that figure-eight flow that will then meet. The nexus being in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, where there once was an entire continent, where I served as the leader of a spiritual evolution of people. And yet that civilization could not be maintained at that level, and eventually sunk into a lower level of consciousness.

But it can rise again, and the momentums and the science and the ideas that were brought forth on that continent can be brought forth once again. But only when there are those who can hold the spiritual balance for it by raising their consciousness.  So we strongly encourage you to form that bond – to form that figure-eight flow – and see what can be done to create that sense of community that truly unites you.

Hear Jesus inside yourself

[Period of silence by Jesus]. I am silent because I wanted you to experience that the omega polarity to our speaking is indeed silence. Do not fall into the trap of thinking that you always need to listen to an outer teaching, to an outer voice. For if you think that I, Jesus Christ, can only speak to you through an external messenger, then you are missing the Omega aspect of my ministry. For I can indeed speak to each one of you in your heart. But in order to hear me, you must create a space of silence in your mind. For I am not as loud and boisterous as you might think, based on the music that was played before I started speaking.

But this is, again, how they want to see Christ as the triumphant king, who comes in and overthrows all of the powers of this world. But you see, I was not the loud and boisterous king, that marched into the cities of Israel. I was, was I not, the humble person who rode on a donkey? And this is a symbol for the fact, that I do not come to you individually with a loud, boisterous voice trying to force you. I come as a very quiet voice, that seeks to encourage you to gain a higher understanding, that you may make better choices on your own instead of being told what to do.

I have no desire to tell every human being on this planet what to do, for even I desire to have my quiet moments. Why would I take on the job of thinking, that I know how everyone on earth should behave, thereby also being responsible for the choices they make, yet being unable – according to free will – to influence their life experience. So many times a spiritual guru has told people what to do – for example told people whom to marry – and then when the marriage does not work out – because the people had a naïve expectation that if they were told by the guru everything should be “happy ever after” – and then when they have to work on their problems, they become dissatisfied with the guru, feel like they got wrong advice, and now they go into a negative state of consciousness.

It is a pattern that you see over and over again with those who have allowed themselves to follow an external authority of any kind.  And indeed, you will see it here in Germany, where the German people in the 1930’s wanted to follow an external authority, and so a person arose who could fill that role in the German nation. And then, certainly, the German people later regretted having followed that leader, and now they blamed the leader instead of recognizing, that the leader was a manifestation of their own consciousness, their own unwillingness to take responsibility.

So you see, again, if your consciousness is at a certain level, you will attract to you – or rather, you will attract yourself to – a particular parallel universe, where whatever is in your consciousness will manifest. So, you who are the spiritual people, what I would like to encourage you to consider is, that you might attune your consciousness to the vibration of my beloved brother Saint Germain and his vision for a Golden Age in Europe. And then accept that that Golden Age is the manifest reality in your world.

For this to be successful, you need, as I said, to raise your own consciousness beyond the manifestations of ego that cannot exist in the Golden Age. And this is then where I will offer my assistance as the quiet voice within—if you will indeed give me a little time once in awhile, where you seek to quiet the mind and just sit in silence. Turn off the iPod, my beloved! For I do not wish to compete with this technological wonder. Give me silence and I will give you direction. Do we have a deal? Then I seal you in the peace of my heart.

Copyright © 2008 by Kim Michaels

TOPICS: The vigil for the Olympics – The Russian incursion in Georgia – The judgment of the warmongers – Why Christ came to earth – The Olympics and oneness – Understanding the consciousness of the multitudes – Understanding the transition from personal growth to Christhood – The high and the low road – Understanding the role of money – Can individualists build community? –

Listen to the recording of this dictation (Subscribers only)

Ascended Master Jesus, August 24, 2008 through Kim Michaels.

In the peace of Christ you are, as I, Jesus, manifest my Presence with each one of you, wherever you are around this planet. For truly, I am everywhere in the consciousness of God. And as you come together in the Spirit of Oneness, you too are in the consciousness of God. And thus, you earn my Presence with you—each one of you, as you are willing to receive me, and as you are able and willing to step outside of your normal sense of consciousness, your normal sense of identity, and indeed accept my Presence with you, instead of affirming the idol, the graven image of Christ as the remote being in the sky, or as the one hanging up there on the cross at the end of the church.

Truly, it was never my intention, that people should see me so remote from themselves. Those who wanted to distort the true message of Christ were very clever in putting the crucified Christ up on a cross in most Christian churches, in order to give people an image of Christ as the one bleeding and suffering on the cross, so that people would not identify with me. For surely, who would want to share the fate of being crucified and hanging, bleeding on a cross with a crown of thorns on his head, having spikes through his arms and legs?

Can you see, my beloved, that this was a deliberate ploy to make the image of Christ associated with bloodshed and suffering? And therefore, also send the subconscious message, “Do not dare to manifest your personal Christhood, or this is what will happen to you!” Yet, we have reached a cycle in earth’s history where this old-fashioned, dualistic, fear-based image of Christ has had its day. For indeed, 10,000 people will rise up and dethrone it. And millions more will refuse to be ensnared by it, and will indeed dare to consider the true meaning of my words, “The kingdom of God is within you.”

The vigil for the Olympics

I come on behalf of Mother Mary as well, to extend our gratitude and our congratulations for the vigil you have performed during these Olympic games. For you see, it was indeed, as Mother Mary said, a unique opportunity to focus the consciousness of the world. And thereby, when that consciousness is focused on one event, we in the spiritual realm can send – through your calls and decrees, through your invocations, through the authority you have given us – we can send a return current to all people who are focused on this event.

And we have indeed made full use of the authority and the energy you have given us, multiplying it 10,000 times, and sending that Spirit of Oneness, that vision of oneness, that vision that there is something beyond duality, there is something beyond division, beyond suffering, beyond strife, beyond conflict, beyond warfare.

The Russian incursion in Georgia

In a sense, it was truly to our advantage, that the Russian government decided to do what they did in Georgia. For did it not provide the perfect contrast between the peaceful coming together of the world in a sporting event and then, such an act of aggression and war, that truly was deliberately designed to take place when the world’s attention was elsewhere.

But you see, my beloved, the people of the world are not as stupid as the people who ran the Soviet Union believe. For they are still trapped in the old mindset of the old Soviet Union and the KGB, when they thought that their propaganda apparatus could control the thinking of the Russian people, and even to some degree control the thinking of the world, or at least their perception of the Soviet Union and communism. But the Russian people themselves are waking up and realizing what is going on. But we desire you to see even beyond the Russian government.

The judgment of the warmongers

For surely, my beloved, you do not believe, do you, that this was only the decision and the doing of the Russian government? For they too are pawns, as even the communist government of the old Soviet Union was a pawn in a greater game—what we have called the false hierarchy or the international power elite, who are seeking to always stir up conflict as a way to divide and conquer the people. And to force them into a war, that allows the elite to control the people and also to milk the people from their lifeblood, their spiritual energy, and of course, let us not forget money. For truly, you must see the footprints of the moneychangers in this event, of seeking to create a new arms race between Russia and the United States, so that they can get even more money from the people.

You might think they would have had enough money, as a result of the conflict in Iraq. But you see, for these people, and the spirits behind them, there is no such thing as enough. They are trapped in a never-ending downward spiral, that can only lead to their own destruction. But we do not desire to see that destruction being outplayed here on this planet.

We instead desire to see the people rise up to acknowledge the truth of Christ, and to choose to go beyond the dualistic struggle and to not engage in this meaningless warfare and conflict. So that the people through that oneness will bring about the judgment of those in the power elite who are in embodiment, and those in the false hierarchy who are out of embodiment. That they may be removed from this planet and go through the downward spiral of self-destruction in another realm, where they will not pull the earth and the beautiful people on this planet down with them. This invocation you have given, the One World Invocation has indeed brought forth a very important action, that serves as the judgment of the forces of division on this planet—those who have plotted to divide the people, not only amongst themselves, but to divide the people from their God.

Why Christ came to earth

Which is precisely why I came to earth 2,000 years ago—to give people a bridge to reunite with their God through the consciousness of Christ, the one truth of the Christ mind, as opposed to the dualistic “truth” of the dualistic mind, the mind of anti-christ. And this work has not been in vain, even though it has taken 2,000 years to cycle through to the physical. You yourselves are proof. All those who have studied my website and my teachings on the ego, and our books on non-duality—you are our proof that they are not winning. We are indeed winning. And we were winning from the beginning, as Master MORE is fond of saying. For it is indeed the truth.

When you study Maitreya’s teachings on the spheres you will see, that it simply is not possible that the false hierarchy and those who embody it on planet earth can pull against the entire upward movement of the material universe. And thus, it is inevitable that the earth and the universe will be raised into the permanent perfection of the spiritual realm. It is only a matter of time. Yet time is NOT—for the Buddha. And thus, even though the false hierarchy think they can delay what they know is inevitable, yet they have not delayed anything. For time is the ever-flowing stream of the River of Life. And my beloved, in that stream nothing can stand still, nothing can pull in the opposite direction.

For everything must inevitably flow with the greater River of Life. It can only be the illusion maintained in the consciousness of the people, that makes it seem like a planet or a people can be outside that River, even going in the opposite direction. It is nothing but an illusion, my beloved, and you have taken a mighty action to shatter that illusion in the collective consciousness. Of course, more is needed, but this will come forth as we trust you will continue to make use of this tool of the broadcast as you see fit.

The Olympics and oneness

So now, let me turn my attention to the Olympic games. For surely, as spiritual students you realize that any human activity can teach you important lessons about the consciousness of humankind. So let me give you somewhat of a secret that not many people are aware of. Now take a look at a sporting event, such as the Olympic games or the soccer and football games or other games that may take place in your local area every week. You see that the people come together in one place, in a big hall, and they cheer on their team. And they go through either elation or heartbreak, depending on whether their team wins or loses.

But what is the underlying desire, that makes the people come together for such an event? Well, is it not that they long for something more than their regular, normal daily lives, that are filled with routine and do not offer them anything beyond the ordinary? What is it they are longing for? What do they long for beyond the ordinary? Well, they long for oneness, but they do not know this, they do not fully understand this. Yet, they sense that by coming together in a great multitude of people, there is some degree of oneness there, in rooting for their team. Of course, in many cases there are also representatives for the opposite team who are rooting for their team.

And so what they often experience is a dualistic state, where a group – the followers of one team – come together in a state of oneness, but it is defined in opposition to the followers of the opposite team. And thus you see the outplaying – even in the sporting arenas – of the dualistic struggle that has been going on for so long. Yet, my point here is to help you see, that the underlying desire is that people long for something more. And that more is an experience of oneness. Now, it is indeed possible to experience a material state of oneness, what we might call an Omega state of oneness here below, where people feel oneness amongst each other. And it can give them a sense of having experienced something unique, beyond their normal daily lives.

Understanding the consciousness of the multitudes

In many cases such sporting events do not give people what they really long for. Because even though they come together in a certain sense of oneness, it is colored by the spirit of competition, the desire to have their team win. Yet, even this is to some degree an expression of that longing for oneness, longing for something more, something beyond the ordinary. Only again, people do not understand that for which they are longing.

But you see, most people on this planet are not in a state of consciousness, where they can grasp the true Spirit of Oneness. And thus, they are in fact in a certain level of consciousness that I referred to 2,000 years ago as “the multitudes.” The multitudes, are wonderful people but they have not yet manifested a high enough degree of individuality to stand above the crowd, to go beyond that level of consciousness, that we might call the mass consciousness or the consciousness of the multitude.

Surely, they have some individuality, but it is not strong enough to go against the crowd, and thus they follow the crowd. Not only in sporting events but in all aspects of life, including what they believe in, how they worship, what churches they go to, what political parties they vote for, and so forth and so on. Even down to the details of how they dress or cut their hair. So, what I am endeavoring to explain to you is, that many people on earth – in fact the majority of the people on earth – are indeed at this level of the consciousness of the multitude. They do not have sufficient individuality, but they long for that individuality. And thus, they seek to find it in rooting for their team.

For who are the people on the team? Well, they are, indeed, people who have more individuality, a more strong individuality than the multitudes. And that is why they desire to be on a sporting team, where they excel beyond this “ordinary person.” And where they can stand out from the crowd—and even many of them desire to be worshiped by the crowd. For you see, when you begin to raise yourself above the consciousness of the multitude, you will build a stronger sense of individuality. But it is inevitable that that sense of individuality will be colored by – even to a large degree based on – the illusion of separation, that makes people seek to build their individuality as a separate individuality. And thus, they strive to excel, in order to build that sense that they are different, they are better than others. And what they seek to raise is, of course, the separate self.

However, what I desire you to understand is, that this is an inevitable stage in the forward progression of the individual. For as long as you are blindly following the currents of the mass consciousness, you cannot actually walk the spiritual path and manifest personal Christhood. For personal Christhood is individual Christhood. Individual Christhood must be won by you as an individual being, raising up and attaining a direct contact with your own higher being and with your spiritual teachers.

Understanding the transition from personal growth to Christhood

This never has been – and never will be, and never can be – a collective path. You can form a community, and you can help each other, but you must go each one individually. For each one individually must establish that contact to his or her Christ Self and I AM Presence and spiritual teacher. For only when that vertical degree of oneness is there, can there be true horizontal oneness.

Even those on the sporting teams of the world, or those who are individually striving for excellence, are in a sense on the path of personal growth – of raising up that separate self above the multitude – so that they can earn the potential to turn that separate self towards a higher quest. Many of the people that you have seen at these Olympic games are indeed people who have risen above that collective consciousness of the multitudes and manifested a stronger sense of individuality. Many of them have made great personal sacrifices in order to excel in their sport, setting aside many normal endeavors. And this has caused them to develop great self-discipline, great focus, great dedication to a cause, that can indeed be turned into a higher pursuit of going beyond seeking to raise the separate self.

I can tell you, that many of the people who have tasted this excellence in the sporting world will – during this lifetime – come to realize, that even though they were caught up in this pursuit of excellence and competition – even though it gave them a great adrenalin rush, a great sense of accomplishment, even superiority – it still left them empty. It still left them wanting more. It still made it difficult for them to come back to an “ordinary life” after they could no longer excel in their sport.

Some of them will indeed go beyond that stage of the warrior consciousness, to the beginning stages of the consciousness of the sage, who begins to look for something more than this world can offer. For you see, when you have stood in a sporting arena and had billions of people focus their attention upon you – through the television – well, then you have indeed, in a certain sense, tasted some of the highest of what this world can offer, in terms of giving attention to the separate self.

And then, when the conscious self begins to realize, that this was not enough, that there has to be something more, well, then the lifestream has the potential to engage in the true path to Christhood—of seeking not to raise up itself for the sake of raising itself, but seeking to raise up its separate self in order to go beyond that separate self and use its attainment and accomplishment to serve the All. So that the ultimate stand-out individual is indeed the one who gives the greatest service. For did I not say, that he who would be greatest among you should be the servant of all?

In their next embodiment, many of these sporting stars will indeed become more spiritual and will begin to walk the spiritual path in earnest. Some of you who are walking the spiritual path today have indeed tasted that fame or glory in past lifetimes, whether through sports, through wars, politics, or in other fields of human endeavor, such as the arts. This is a perfectly natural part of the evolution of an individual. Of course, I look to you, who have come to a conscious awareness of the spiritual path, to go beyond this and to see that there is something beyond these outer pursuits of material excellence—and that is spiritual excellence. Which is not as some of you still think – dedicated to raising up the separate self, but to raising up the All in service to all life.

The high and the low road

What I am telling you here is, indeed, that many of the people who make up the bottom 10 percent, as we call them, are indeed also people who have walked this path of raising their individual sense of self beyond the multitudes. Even before you can – so to speak – excel in the control games, in the money-making games, well, you still have to attain some individuality—to even have that drive for power, for control or for money, concentrated in the hands of one person.

When an individual being reaches beyond the consciousness of the multitude, it has the potential to find the path of personal Christhood. But it also has the potential to find the left-handed path – not the broad way that leads to destruction that is taken by the multitudes – but the false path, the path of anti-christ, of indeed using one’s attainment to raise up that separate self for the glorification of the separate self or some material cause.

Some of the people who have attained great power or great money on this planet, have indeed walked that path of first raising the separate self on the path of personal growth, but then turning it into the left-handed path, the path of anti-christ, of using their attainment to attain power and glory for the separate self. If you want examples, look to China, to the chairman Mao Tse-Tung, who was an example of this. Look to North Korea, look to the former Soviet Union—Stalin and Lenin. Look to Hitler. Look to Napoleon, who had the opportunity to work with Saint Germain, but ultimately took the left-handed path.

Look to many other world leaders who have taken that path. And then learn from their example, and realize that even you, who are the spiritual students – even you who are students of my course in Christhood – face that initiation—that very subtle initiation, where you know you have great attainment, where you know you have reached a high level in terms of raising up your individual self. But now the question is, will you then take the path of continuing to raise the separate self for the sake of the separate self, or will you take the path of Christ, where you realize the truth in my statement—that he who seeks to save his life shall lose it, he who seeks to save that separate self shall eventually lose it. But he who is willing to lay down that life, that separate self, for the sake of following Christ, shall indeed find the eternal life through the Spirit of Oneness with all life. This is the challenge that all of you face, this is the challenge to which I call you in my course to Christhood.

Understanding the role of money

As the conclusion of this address, I would like to give you some remarks on the topic of money. For you see, on a regular basis I see people who find my website, and they are somewhat critical – and whether they realize this consciously or not – they are looking for a way to reject it, as the scribes and Pharisees did to me personally 2,000 years ago. And so some of them come to the point where they see a donation button, or they see that we are charging money for the books. And they say, “Oh, this cannot be the real Jesus Christ, for when he walked the earth 2,000 years ago, he gave his teachings freely. And thus, this must be a false Christ. For the real Christ would never ask for money.”

As I started out talking about the false image of me hanging on the cross, there are many false images of Christ. And one of them is indeed the image that I had no need for money. For even though society was very different back then, you must ask yourself, “Did I eat during those last three years—besides the Last Supper?” And when you realize that I did, you must ask yourself, where did that food come from? Do you think I had time to grow it myself? Do you think I had time to work in a carpenter shop and buy the food for the money I made? No. You see the reality—I focused all my attention on my mission and traveling around with my disciples.

And those disciples likewise did not grow their food and did not work, for they spent their entire time traveling with me. So we depended on the charity of people who were willing to give us of their food, of their hospitality, and fulfill whatever else needs we had, that were surely modest. But why were they modest, my beloved? Because I was a practical realist, and I realized that given the state of society at the time, the state of technology, there was no way for me to reach a larger audience than the small area in which I could travel physically.

I knew there was no way to reach beyond that area while I was still in embodiment, as I was indeed focused on setting an example by working with the most recalcitrant people on the planet. Those who were so stuck in their graven image of being the chosen people, that they were the perfect test subjects to see, whether they were willing to abandon that spiritual pride and lose their life – their sense of superiority, their identity of superiority – in order to lay down that life and follow Christ into a higher identity, based on oneness that cannot see one people as being God’s favorite or God’s chosen people.

I focused on my mission back then, but I can assure you that – had the technology been available – I would have made use of it in order to spread my message beyond that localized geographical area. And thus, I trust you can see that in today’s world, conditions are very different. If I walked the earth in a physical body today – as I indeed hope to do through many of you – do you think I would walk around barefoot in the desert in the Middle East? Or do you think I would be making use of the technology that is available today to spread my message far and wide?

Surely, you must see that I will always adapt—that the Living Christ will always adapt to current conditions. And therefore, you live in a society where there are simply many things that you cannot do without money. And therefore the question is again: Will you focus a big part of your time and attention on making that money, and then you can give away the teachings that you can bring forth in your spare time? Or will you focus on being a messenger full time and then let other people provide the increase, by donating or by buying the services and the products you provide?

You see, my beloved, this is a perfectly legal exchange. For when you dedicate your life to the service of all life, then you are entitled to a return from life, even a material return. So that you can continue to do what you are doing, and even expand your work and reach more people. You will know, that even the ancient gurus would always ask for some token offering, whether it be food or flowers, from the student who came to the feet of the guru. As I indeed did myself on many occasions that are not recorded in the Bible. And as the churches do today when they ask for tithing, for even this is, of course, a legal exchange—although in many cases the churches are misusing the money given to them by their followers, as they are not in alignment with the reality of Christ.

Nevertheless, it is indeed legal – according to the laws of God – that people give of their abundance. And I am in no way asking anyone to give irresponsibly, but I am asking you to give of your abundance, keeping in mind my parable about the servants who multiplied their talents and were given more.

Can individualists build community?

What we have always faced as spiritual teachers of humankind is the challenge, that the path to Christhood is indeed an individual path—a walk between you and God, between you and your Higher Self. Yet, in order for that path to ultimately be successful, it must be expressed through service to life. And that means some form of community, as indeed you saw the Buddha establish the Sangha, as you saw me establish the community, not only of my disciples and my apostles, but many who supported them.

There is always the Alpha and Omega, and the challenge then is: how can those who have walked the individual path of personal growth for many lifetimes and decades in this lifetime, how can they transcend that focus on themselves and their own growth and come together and form a community? How indeed? This is the challenge that you who have studied our websites, you who have bought books and come to conferences, this is the challenge you face right now. As we explained in Hawaii, you are so close that we at least can taste it. Can you taste it, my beloved?

For I tell you, it is a matter of you individually overcoming those last hurdles that prevent you from seeing yourself as part of a community. And then acting accordingly, saying: the community, the greater cause, the service to other people is more important than my individual path, even than my individual material circumstances. And thus, I am willing to transcend, I am willing to lay down my life, my separate life – materially and spiritually – in order to come into oneness with the greater life of the community.

Thus, I leave you with this challenge, which I know will cause quite a stir in some of you—who have been so used to focusing on yourselves as the solitary wanderer. And it will take a retuning of your consciousness, even a rethinking – a re-experiencing – of your identity, for you to come into unity, as the community of the Christ and the Buddha and the Mother and of Saint Germain—in the Aquarian age. Thus be sealed in the peace of Christ, and the peace of Buddha, and the peace of Jesus Christ as the Buddha. Beloved, I give you my peace, the Buddhic peace of Jesus Christ.

Copyright © 2008 by Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

My goal for this course has been based on practical realism. What can be done in a book, where you cannot interact with an outer teacher? Thus, my goal has been to help you establish contact with the inner teacher and thus anchor yourself firmly on the path to personal Christhood. If you make use of what is given in this book and what you will be given from within, you have everything needed to get yourself on the right path. And you can then continue to make progress according to your willingness to multiply what you have received. However, making progress on the path to personal Christhood cannot go on forever. For there must come a point where you transcend even the path. Why is that so? Because as long as you see yourself moving forward on a path, you obviously envision yourself as a being who has not yet arrived. And how will you ever arrive, unless you transcend the very concept that you are moving toward a goal but you are not there yet?

As I have said over and over again, it is the role of the Living Christ to help you transcend any mental box. Thus, I must do my work and seek to shatter the mental box based on the concept of a path toward a goal that is seen as remote—and will thus remain remote until you change your vision and accept that you have arrived.

Do not misunderstand me. There are phases in Christhood, and it is necessary and unavoidable that you go through a phase, where you see yourself as a being walking a gradual path toward the remote goal of the Christ consciousness. And in order to traverse this part of the path, you need to go out and render service to other forms of life until you find oneness with me within yourself by seeing me in all life. The goal of this course has been to give you the understanding and the vision to help you navigate this phase. Yet as the last act of this course, I will point you beyond this phase to the logical conclusion.

For the concept of a path implies that there is an end goal. Yet how will you reach that goal as long as you think you are still separated from it? The path of Christhood is the path of oneness, and the logical conclusion is that you arrive at a point where you accept that you are not separated from the end goal—you now accept that you have arrived—you are one with Christ.

This is where things get subtle. There is a phase on the path where you are simply not ready to accept that you have arrived—because you still have too many divisions in your being, too much untransmuted energy and too many dualistic beliefs and images. Yet there will come a point where you have attained enough inner wholeness that you are ready to stop seeing a gap between yourself and Christhood. Yet because of the intense and subtle programming in this world, it is quite possible that you can be ready at inner levels, but your outer mind simply cannot accept this. One of the most unfortunate effects of official Christianity is that it has prevented a considerable number of people from claiming their Christhood, thinking it was something reserved for me or something they could attain only after they leave this world. So it is my hope that this course can help people – who are ready for it – overcome this last hurdle and consciously accept that they have arrived, thus claiming their Christhood and proclaiming it as directed from above.

If you think of me as a teacher, you might realize that I came to this planet 2,000 years ago to teach people how to attain Christhood. Yet after 2,000 years, how many of my students have actually graduated? And what kind of a teacher can engage his students in pursuing a course yet not have any of them make it through the final exam? So it is my hope that this course can help correct the obvious deficiency, so that my teaching efforts can finally – and not a moment too soon – bear fruit and produce students who are no longer students but who are ready to be teachers and do the same works that I did, and even greater works by building on the momentum created by my ascension to the Father.

***

The danger of giving you the image of a path is that you will see Christhood as always being in the future, as being away from where you are right now. Thus, you are always seeing a gap between yourself and Christhood, and the fact is that as long as you accept that there is a gap, you will never cross the gap. This is illustrated by the ancient Greek philosophers in what is called Zeno’s paradox. The concept is that a person is trying to get to another location by first crossing half the distance, then half of the remaining distance, then half of that distance and so on. Yet because you can always keep dividing the remaining distance in half, you can never make it—there will always always a gap between you and the destination.

The ego can never cross that gap and move from separation to oneness. So the only way for you to cross the gap is that your conscious self keeps moving closer to the goal until the distance is so short that you can cross it in one leap. The ego cannot make that leap, but the conscious self can. Yet you will not make it until you make what is traditionally called a “leap of faith” but which I hope you can see is truly a leap of inner knowing. When you know you are more than the ego, you can give up the ego and let the mortal identity die, knowing that the real you will not disappear but will be reborn into your true spiritual identity.

If you take an honest look at spiritual seekers and religious people, you will see that many of them have – some for decades, some for lifetimes – been chasing some goal that always seems to elude them. So many religious people are seeking a paradise that they think is far way and far into the future. Others are chasing some big breakthrough on Earth, but they also seem to always be one step away from it. Or they realize they have been chasing an impossible dream—only to turn right around and start chasing the pot of gold at the end of another rainbow. I hope you can see that in the realm of duality there will always be another rainbow, for the ego and the false teachers can come up with an infinite variety of them. Yet none of them have a pot of gold at the end, for the pot of gold is the Christ consciousness, which is found only by looking for it inside yourself.

If you have diligently followed this course and gone through all of the exercises – especially the writing exercises – you should have gone through a dramatic transformation of consciousness. Yet in case you have not experienced this transformation, I submit to you that the reason is that you are still looking at this course through the filter of the ego and its never-ending dream that someone will do it all for you. Thus, it would be wise to take an honest look at your unfulfilled expectations about this course, for behind them you will find how your personal ego is trying to prevent you from making the decision to take full responsibility for your path by acknowledging that if the equation of your life is to change, you must begin by changing yourself. As I have said, I cannot do it for you—I can only set before you life and death and then leave it up to you whether you choose oneness or separation.

My point being that you won’t find Christhood until you stop seeing it as “out there” or in the future. You won’t find it until you accept that ultimately, you must make the decision to be the Christ. And you must do so by accepting that Christhood is HERE NOW. However, only you can determine when that point in time and space has arrived. In some cases it has not yet arrived and in some cases all that is missing is your decision that the acceptable time is NOW.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book: Master Keys to Personal Christhoood.

Copyright © 2008 Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

As I have said, Christhood has an Alpha and an Omega side. To give you a deeper understanding, study this excerpt from a dictation I gave at the Easter conference in 2008:

The kingdom of God is at hand—through the union of the Divine Father and the Divine Mother

Greetings, my beloved, on this Easter Morning—meant to symbolize my resurrection from the grave, from the tomb. But yet I, Jesus, did not come to this Earth to symbolize this for myself, I came to symbolize the potential – for all human beings – to let the human self, the mortal self, die. And thereby be resurrected – not into a new physical life or spiritual life in some higher realm – but to be resurrected, my beloved, into a new sense of identity, where you no longer deny the reality that you are a co-creator with God.

Thus, you acknowledge that the kingdom of God is within you, that you are one with your Father, that your Father has worked hitherto, and that you are willing to work by being the co-creator that you were sent here to be. So that you can play a part in bringing the kingdom of God to Earth. This is the purpose for which I came, this is the purpose for which I went through the physical events of the crucifixion, my death on the cross—in order to symbolize what is possible for all human beings spiritually, my beloved.

***

For you see, 2,000 years ago, it was indeed necessary to give people physical, visible, outer manifestations, or they would not have been able to lock in to the potential for overcoming death, the consciousness of death. But of course, in giving those outer manifestations, it was foreseeable and inevitable that many people would focus on the outer manifestations, failing to see the hidden symbolism behind them, and thereby failing to see the universal aspects of my mission and message. Thinking that it only applied to the Jews, thinking that certain things only applied to me, or that certain things only applied to Christians.

For truly, my beloved, the Christ consciousness is universal. The entire idea of the Christ Consciousness, my beloved, is that it unifies the material and the spiritual. It unifies what you might call the Divine Father, and the Divine Mother, so that there is no separation between the Creator and its creation. For of course, as it is stated in the Gospel of John, without him was not anything made that was made.

And that is precisely why the kingdom of God is within you, because God – God’s Being, and God’s Presence – is embedded within everything, my beloved. And it is only a religion that is based on separation that could have turned Christianity into a monotheistic religion, thereby raising up the graven image of the external God. The angry, remote being in the sky, looking down upon you, ready to judge you for any transgression and send you to hell for all eternity.

My beloved, it is time that the Christian people, those who call themselves Christians today, wake up to the reality of my true message—that I did not come to create another religion that denies their Christ potential, as the Jewish religion did at the time (and still does, for that matter). I came to awaken all people to the potential to find the kingdom of God within you, and thereby become an extension of that kingdom on Earth, the co-creator who co-creates that kingdom and brings it into manifestation. Thereby giving the abundant life to all people, both the abundant material life and the abundant spiritual life.

***

For you see, my beloved, in God’s mind, in God’s vision, there is no difference between the material and the spiritual. This is an illusion created from the duality consciousness, the consciousness of separation that was brought to this planet by the fallen beings from higher spheres, but that has also been espoused by many people on this Earth. And you see, my beloved, only the duality consciousness makes it possible for the ego to exist. And the duality consciousness also gives the ego the potential for creating the illusion that the ego has attained what it craves the most, namely some kind of superior status, compared to other people on Earth.

And that, my beloved, is precisely why so many people in so many different areas of the world – and in so many cultures and religions – will not let go of the duality consciousness. This even applies to those who call themselves Christians. They will not let go of the duality consciousness, for if they were to let go of it, they would have to realize and recognize that the salvation I brought to this Earth is not exclusive to themselves, to the members of their own particular little church—that they have defined for themselves, thinking that they can thereby exclude all others from being saved.

So my beloved, what does it then take to overcome that duality consciousness? Well my beloved, it takes a recognition, a realization, that God the Father was never separated from God the Mother. For you see, what has happened in the duality consciousness is that you have created these gender roles, and you have created these images – dualistic images – that makes it almost impossible for us to communicate the reality, the spiritual reality. For when we say a word, you immediately start – you meaning the people on Earth – to impose your dualistic images upon them.

So when I say “God the Father,” immediately people project an image based on the gender roles that have been defined in human society. And when I say “God the Mother,” they project another image based on their image of women. But those images are both dualistic, are both unbalanced, and thus they cannot lead you to the correct understanding of what it actually takes to be saved, as the Christians call it. Which truly means that you enter the kingdom of God—which as I said is within you, as the symbol for the fact that the kingdom of God is not a physical state, is not a spiritual state; it is a state of consciousness.

It is not that you have to travel somewhere physically in order to enter the kingdom of Heaven. It is not even that you have to shed the body and ascend to some spiritual realm in order to enter the kingdom of Heaven. The message I came to bring to Earth was embodied in the saying I preached in my early days, where I said, “The Kingdom of God is at hand.” Meaning you can experience it right now by entering the state of consciousness that is the Kingdom of God.

And what is that state of consciousness? It is the state where you have overcome the illusion of this world, the illusion created by the prince of this world, so that you overcome the illusion that God in the Father aspect, in the Alpha aspect, could ever be separated from God in the Mother, Omega aspect. For you see, my beloved, it is true that there are two aspects of God. There is the one Creator which is the Infinite, which is undivided, indivisible. Yet that infinite Creator has expressed itself in the world of form, but in so doing has expressed itself as form, has embedded its own Being in form, has created everything out of its own Being. And therefore, even though there is still an aspect of God that is the undivided Creator, nevertheless God has also divided itself into the world of form, the Ma-ter light that has taken on form.

***

So you see that God the Father is not separated or distinct from God the Mother in the way you think of it, based on gender roles on Earth. God the Mother is another expression of God the Father, and your role as self-aware beings in the matter realm is to awaken to the reality that you are extensions of God the Creator. And thus, you can be the open doors for God the Creator to bring its kingdom into manifestation on Earth. But you can be those open doors only when you overcome the sense of separation from your source, from your Creator, so that you finally say, “I and my Creator are One.” And you recognize that you were never separated in reality.

For my beloved, if God is infinite, it must mean that the Creator is everywhere, so how could you ever be separated from the Creator, separated from your source? It cannot happen, except as an illusion created in the mind that is based on separation.

So you see how this relates to the topic for this conference, of restoring the Divine Mother, the Divine Feminine. For do you see, my beloved, that in order to walk the path of Christhood, you have to overcome the illusion that the Divine Mother – that the feminine aspect of God, that the matter realm – could ever be separated from the Father, the Creator?

You then become the open door for spreading that truth to others, for giving that life-giving truth to others, that they too might be awakened, and realize that they are extensions of God the Father. But when they attain union with that God the Father, then they become God the Mother, they become the representatives of God in the matter realm. And thus, you become the Father-Mother God in embodiment. You become the union of the Father-Mother God right here in this realm.

This is the role of the Christed being. This, my beloved, is the true path to Christhood. There are levels of the path, but as you go toward the higher levels of the path to Christhood, you need to integrate the Father and Mother aspects of your being. Where you realize that your lower being – the identity you have built in order to express yourself in this world – needs to come into oneness with God the Father, whereby you actually become God the Mother in the pure sense of God the Mother.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book: Master Keys to Personal Christhoood.

Copyright © 2008 Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

Before you can begin to understand what it takes to come into oneness with me, you need to have a clearer understanding of who I really am. This will require you to consider what images of Christ you were brought up with—as it is virtually impossible to grow up on this planet without having been affected by one of the many false images of Christ floating around in the turbulent sea of the mass consciousness.

Obviously, you have already started to challenge and leave behind your childhood images of Christ—or you would not have been able to follow the course up until this point. In fact, I have systematically challenged many of these images in previous keys. Yet I still want you to take some time during the next 33 days to consider your images of me as Jesus and your more general images of Christ. What does it mean for you to be the Christ—what images and what limitations are associated with the concept of Christ? Do you see it as something exclusive to me, or do you see that “Christ” is more than Jesus? And thus, there is a potential that other people could attain Christhood and that other people have.

As I am sure you are aware, language has certain limitations. For example, I have said that you are God in the sense that you are an extension of the Creator, an individualization of the Creator’s Being. Yet I have also said that you are not God, meaning that you are not all that God is, you are not the fullness of God. You are an expression of the whole but not the whole.

Now, it would be inaccurate to say that the Creator has no individuality, but the individuality of the Creator is far beyond that of any human being, in fact so far beyond that no human being can fathom the individuality of the Creator. So I propose we say that the Creator has a universal sense of identity and that you have an individual or localized sense of identity.

The important point here is that every being in the world of form has such an individual sense of identity. As I have said, there is a spiritual hierarchy stretching from human beings to the highest spiritual Beings. Yet even these Beings are still individualizations of the Creator. So what happens as you move up into the layers of this hierarchy? You encounter beings who have moved away from a very localized sense of identity and toward the universal identity of the Creator. Yet even the highest Beings in the spiritual hierarchy have not lost their individuality—in fact they have strengthened it, but not in the sense you see on Earth. So we might say that rising in the spiritual hierarchy means moving toward a universal form of identity, and this is actually a strengthening of a being’s identity as an individual. However, this strengthening happens by the Being growing toward a more universal sense of identity—which to a human being sounds contradictory, again, the limitations of human language. So to make this clearer, take another look at my saying:

For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. (Matthew 16:25)

What I am saying between the lines is that in order to move up to the next level of the spiritual hierarchy and become a Christed being, you must be willing to lose your life for my sake. If you seek to save “it,” you will lose “it.” Yet if you are willing to lose “it,” you will find “it.” The key is to realize that it is not the same “it” I am talking about.

My point here is to show you that even the highest Beings in the spiritual hierarchy have not lost their individuality. They have actually found a more expanded, more universal individuality. Yet what is it you have to lose in order to find this new individuality? You have to lose your present sense of individuality—whatever that is.

The highest Beings in the spiritual hierarchy are Beings known on Earth only as Alpha and Omega. Yet “Alpha and Omega” is actually a spiritual office, much like the president of a country. At any given time, the office is held by an individual, but the office is more than that particular individual. This is also the case with the office of Alpha and Omega. It is currently held by two individual Beings, but there have been other individual beings in that office before and there will be others after.

So in one sense, the image I am painting here is that even spiritual beings have to be willing to let go of their old identity in order to move to a higher level in the spiritual hierarchy. It is possible that even a spiritual being can become attached to a particular sense of identity and refuse to let it die, which explains why spiritual beings – such as angels – can fall. This is all explained in greater detail by Maitreya, so I will not go further into it here. However, I will point out that the way a spiritual being moves to a higher level in the spiritual world is that it makes itself a servant of those below it in hierarchy. For the Creator is the ultimate servant and only those who serve unconditionally can approach the Creator’s level of consciousness.

The big difference between human beings and spiritual beings is that you are living in a sphere that has not yet ascended, meaning there is room for duality. Thus, you have built a sense of identity based on the duality consciousness, which means you see yourself as a separate being. And it is this separate sense of identity that must die, for only when you lose the “it” of the separate identity can you find the “it” of your true, spiritual identity. And only then will you be a whole being instead of a house divided against itself. Only then have you been reborn of fire.

My purpose for bringing this up is to address the only type of fear that has any hold over the conscious self, namely that it could lose its individuality, lose its existence. The conscious self is born as an individual being, and it is charged with the desire to expand and strengthen its individuality, until it reaches the level of the universal where it then becomes a God in its own right—a being who can create its own world of form, if it so desires. Yet because the conscious self has come to identify itself fully or partially based on the separate, dualistic identity, it can come to believe that if the separate self dies, it will die. And this will obviously be a belief that will stop you from going beyond a specific point of the spiritual path. Thus, it is essential – absolutely essential – for your conscious self – for you – to overcome this illusion and realize that the separate self is not you. You are MORE than the separate self.

If you want a metaphor for this, consider the concept of an office, as I just spoke about. The separate self you currently have is like an office on Earth, for example like the headmaster of a school. You may choose to take on that job and even hold it for many years, which means you come to see yourself as “the headmaster.” Yet you know you are more than the job, and even though it will require some adjustment to let go of the office, you know there is life beyond the job—or at least there should be. In other words, you have simply chosen to step into a separate sense of identity, but you are more than that identity and can step outside of it any time. Stepping outside this separate self does not mean that your life comes to an end—it means you find a new life, a new sense of identity, that offers you greater freedom. For, of course, in stepping into the “office” of your separate self, you also have to take on all of the duties of that office, which eats up most of your attention. For while you are “the headmaster” you cannot be someone else.

So do you see my point? It is to help you overcome the fear that “coming into oneness with me” means that you lose your individuality, your identity. You only lose the separate identity but find a new one that is much more than the old one. What I am saying here is that the ego will actually see Christhood as a loss, so it is up to the conscious self to step outside that self-centered viewpoint and gain a less localized perspective. Whereby you will see Christhood as a gain of spiritual freedom that is far more attractive than anything offered by the limited identity of the ego.

***

So let us go over – again – the characteristics of the separate self. The first characteristic we notice about the ego is, of course, that it is focused on itself. We might say that the ego is a localized sense of awareness that has become so localized that it sees itself as the center of the universe with all other beings – from other humans to God – there only to serve itself and fulfill its needs. As people become more egotistical, they become less sensitive to other forms of life and more willing to control others in order to fulfill their own desires—regardless of what consequences that has for others.

Obviously, spiritual seekers have moved beyond these forms of ego-centeredness and would not knowingly hurt other people. Yet there can still be remnants of ego-centeredness left in how people pursue the spiritual path. As I have tried to explain, this can still propel you forward on the path of personal growth, but it will get you nowhere on the path of personal Christhood.

What are some of the more obvious signs of self-centeredness on the path? Here are a few:

• The desire to raise one’s own consciousness purely for one’s own sake. It may be a desire to escape negative self-esteem, fear or other hurtful feelings. It may be to build one’s pride and sense of being better than others.
• The desire to acquire special powers to either impress other people and establish superiority, or to control other people, the world and even God. Some people actually come to spiritual teachers hoping to learn magical powers that will allow them to control their environment—the ego’s ultimate dream.
• The desire to feel like an important person who is doing work to save humanity or the planet or who is doing something for God that will be recognized in heaven. This can also be a desire for fame or celebrity status in human society.
• The desire to acquire special powers in order to – supposedly – awaken other people to the spiritual path. Nevertheless, the desire is to be the only one who does this, even on a planetary scale.
• A savior complex, where the person’s ego wants to be seen as the ultimate savior. I have had many people approach me as an ascended master wanting to learn my “secret” so they could set themselves up as being as important as they think I was when I walked the Earth. It might help to consider that in my lifetime I had very few followers and a very localized “fame.”
• Many variations of the desire to receive something in return for one’s efforts to grow spiritually or to help other people by converting them to one’s beliefs. This can even be an expression of the ego’s desire for ultimate security, which it thinks will come if everyone else is converted to its religion or political belief system.

Behind all of these approaches is the essential mechanism of the ego, based on its self-centered way of thinking: “What’s in it for me?” The ego cannot stop thinking this way, so again it is up to the conscious self to step outside the reality distortion field of the ego. Take a look at this passage:

27 Then answered Peter and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?

28 And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

29 And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.

30 But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first. (Matthew, Chapter 19)

For 2,000 years this has been a guiding rod for many Christians who have sincerely pursued the path of growth—as they saw it based on the distorted doctrines available to them. They have reasoned that I came to Earth to offer them something that they could not have in this world but only in the next world. In other words, they have thought that if they did the right outer things in this life, they would reap the reward in the future—thus seeing a gap between themselves and the reward. This is not necessarily wrong in that many people have had such karma that they could not manifest their Christhood in the current lifetime. Thus, they had to be willing to work in the now in order to gain an advantage in a distant future, for this was the only way they could make progress. Thus, my teaching was adapted to the state of consciousness that humankind had 2,000 years ago and which many people still have.

Yet we are now moving into the final stages of the spiritual cycle I came to inaugurate, which means there are many people in embodiment who do have the potential to manifest full Christhood in this lifetime, and many more who can manifest a degree of Christhood. And this, of course, relates to the third challenge of Christ, which is that you begin to see yourself as the Christ. In the above quote, you can see that Peter was the archetypical example of a person who has mastered the first challenge of Christ but has become stuck in the second one. Thus, while he is willing to follow me – even give up much to do so – he is still doing this from a self-centered motive of wanting a reward. He is still feeling he has to give up something to follow Christ and that he should be entitled to a compensation for doing so.

But now look even deeper. What is Peter actually doing? He is feeling that he has to discipline his separate self and give up part of his separate self in order to follow me, and he is willing to do so. Yet in following me, he is seeking a reward for the separate self. So even in his willingness to follow me, he is affirming the reality of his separate self—which, of course, means he cannot follow me beyond a certain point as the separate self cannot enter the kingdom. So we now see that you can master the first challenge of Christ – and think you are a real disciple of Christ or in other ways define yourself as a very spiritual person – while still being stuck in the consciousness of seeking to elevate the separate self. This is the consciousness that you need to overcome in order to master the second challenge of Christ and move on to the third challenge.

I know I have said this before, but it is consistently the one thing that trips up sincere spiritual seekers and takes them into a blind alley for lifetimes. It is essential that you uncover, examine and leave behind all desire to walk the path in order to get something in return, even – or especially – the tendency to do good on Earth in order to receive a reward in heaven. You must overcome all tendency to pursue the path for self-gratification, for this can only come from the ego. And as long as you seek to gain anything for the separate self, you will not be able to follow Christ into oneness. Look at this quote:

36 Simon Peter said unto him, Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus answered him, Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards.

37 Peter said unto him, Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy sake.

38 Jesus answered him, Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not crow, till thou hast denied me thrice. (John, Chapter 13)

Again, Peter represents the consciousness of a person stuck in the second challenge, thus thinking he is ready to follow me even though he has not given up the separate self. The lesson here is that Peter did indeed deny me three times, thus denying his oneness with me. This denial came from his identification with the separate self, which is also why he wanted to follow me—thinking he would gain something for the separate self by following me. This, of course, shows that he had not understood what it means to follow Christ because he had not understood the consciousness of Christ. So let us do what we can to make sure you will not get stuck at the level of Peter. For whereas the Catholic church might be content to follow Peter, I desire my true disciples to go beyond that level of consciousness entirely. I desire them to follow me—not Peter.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book: Master Keys to Personal Christhoood.

Copyright © 2008 Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

Let us begin this key by talking about what I call the guru paradox. As I have explained, once you are trapped in the duality consciousness, your conscious self is effectively inside a mental box of its own making, and it has forgotten that it has an existence outside the box. We might say the conscious self cannot actually see the box, for since it has no contact with anything outside the box, it has no comeasurement to help it see that it is in a box. If you go back a thousand years, you will see that there were several cultures that lived in isolation from each other. Each culture thought theirs was the only possible culture, and since they had no contact with other cultures, they had no comeasurement to see that it was possible to live in a very different culture.

As I have said, the problem is that the conscious self has become fixated on a localized perspective of the world and has forgotten that it is out of the universal mind. It has forgotten that it has the ability to connect to the overall perspective while being focused in a particular point—thus it has become trapped in the localized view. In order to help lifestreams escape this trap, we of the Ascended Host send teachers to Earth to show people that there is something outside the mental box created by individuals or an entire culture. So the very foundation for spiritual growth is that you have contact with a teacher, or guru, who is outside your personal mental box. The teacher can give you a sense of comeasurement that empowers you to see that there is indeed something outside the box—and thus your conscious self does not have to remain trapped in the box.

Yet as everything else, your interaction with a guru will very much be influenced by your current state of consciousness. Your separate self will indeed project graven images upon the guru and will then demand that the guru lives up to them. If he or she does not, then the ego will declare that it must be a false guru or deny that the person is qualified to be your guru (making you seem superior). This brings us to a trap that many spiritual seekers have been led into because they could not see the dynamics of their egos.

The ego is based on duality, which means it has a built-in contradiction that the ego cannot escape because it will refuse to see the inconsistency of its approach to life. The conscious self is capable of seeing this contradiction, and it is indeed one of the primary ways in which people grow—they see an inconsistency in their viewpoints and start looking for a higher understanding. Take the story of how I confronted a group of people who were ready to stone a woman caught in adultery. They were blinded by their egos, but when I asked that the person who was without sin should cast the first stone, they saw the inconsistencies in their approach and walked away (John 8:7).

So here is the paradox created by the way in which the ego approaches any guru. The ego is looking for a way to build its sense of superiority, so it wants to find a guru who appears to have some kind of status according to the norms of its society. The ego is seeing only the outer path, so it feels that if it follows a guru who has superior abilities or status, then the guru can do something for it. This is exactly why orthodox Christianity has built me up to be an absolutely unique individual – the only son of God, as if an almighty God could have only one son – who has the power to absolve all sins committed by humankind, past, present and future. The paradox is, of course, that this pacifies you and causes you to look outside yourself for your salvation. In other words, the ego puts you in a situation where you cannot be saved, and thus the ego’s expectations must be shattered before the real you has an opportunity to find the true path to salvation.

Another aspect of this quest for the ultimate guru is that many otherwise sincere spiritual students think they cannot learn from other people. This is especially true of those who have been on the path for a long time and have attained some kind of position in a spiritual organization or in society. Such people often fall into the subtle trap of spiritual pride and think they cannot learn from those who are beneath them in their self-created hierarchy. Yet as I have explained, the only true teacher is the Christ and he/she can appear in many disguises. And this is the reason for Master MORE’s saying that you must heed the guru even when he appears in the form of an ant. In many cases, we test our students by sending them someone who appears in a humble form, so we can see if the student is willing to listen for the truth regardless of the disguise in which it is presented. As I said, inasmuch as you have done it to the least of these my little ones, you have done it unto me. My point being – again – that your concept of the guru can block you from heeding the guru, and thus your graven images of the “ultimate guru” must be shattered before you can truly step onto the path to Christhood. The problem is how the conscious self reacts when the ego’s expectations are shattered.

Do you see the paradox? A false guru will use the ego’s expectations to bind you more firmly to the guru, meaning that a false guru will not threaten but confirm your ego’s expectations and sense of superiority. Yet a true guru has the goal of setting the conscious self free, so a true guru must of necessity shatter your ego’s expectations and sense of superiority. And in so doing, the true guru must run the risk that if the conscious self cannot free itself from identification with the ego, it will believe the ego’s reasoning that the true guru must be a false or incompetent guru because he or she does not live up to the ego’s dualistic expectations. Once again, a catch-22 that can be broken only by the conscious self overcoming its ignorance.

What is the real problem with building up the guru as an idol? An idol is a mental image that the ego creates and then elevates to the status of infallibility, which means it becomes a graven image because you never question it. One problem with this is that no human being can possibly live up to the ego’s desire for perfection, so any guru on Earth will eventually fail to live up to your ego-based expectations. This often causes people to become either angry with the guru or discouraged about the spiritual path, which is exactly what the false teachers want. Yet how can you become angry because a guru did not live up to your expectations? Only because you refuse to take responsibility for yourself! Thus, you feel you cannot secure your salvation on your own power, and you then project the image that the guru will do it for you. When that illusion is shattered, you feel you have been cheated, which only blocks you from taking responsibility. It is much the same with discouragement—you have given away your power over your own growth and believe in the illusion that the guru will do it for you. When this expectation is shattered, you feel discouraged and give up on the path.

***

Another problem is that no true guru can possibly live up to the ego-based dualistic illusions, so such expectations often block people from following a true guru and steer them onto the outer path offered by the false gurus—of which there are many. My point being that idolatry is very much a spiritual poison that must be overcome. An idol actually has the effect of standing between you and the true God, between you and the freedom that can be found only in oneness. Thus, when you have allowed your ego to set up an idol, the idol must be broken down before the conscious self can be free. In many cases, people’s egos actually break down their idols, for the ego is dualistic, so it is easy for it to switch from seeing nothing wrong with a person to seeing everything wrong with that person. This is the basis for the love-hate relationship that is readily observed by any student of psychology.

The fact is that only when you stop idolizing the guru, can you develop a true relationship with the guru. Which means you do not expect the guru to elevate the separate self but to help the real you transcend the separate self. The ego will always see the guru as superior as long as its expectations are intact. When they are shattered, the ego will dethrone the guru and see it as a false guru, projecting all kinds of negative images upon the guru—images that reflect the ego’s internal division rather than an external reality. So the ego will always have a superiority-inferiority interaction with the guru. A “true” guru will always be seen as superior, whereas a “fallen” guru will always be seen as inferior.

The highest relationship with a true guru is one of equals, or rather a relationship where value judgments – that create the superiority-inferiority dynamic – have fallen away. The core of my Being is the conscious self, which is an extension of the Creator’s Being. The core of your Being is the conscious self, which is also an extension of the Creator. The Creator is Infinite, thus it is meaningless to compare the value or status of one extension of the infinite to another extension of the Infinite. You and I are both extensions of the same God, which means it has no meaning for one to be superior to the other.

I have no desire to be seen as superior by you, for as long as you see me as superior, you will always see a distance, a space, between yourself and me. Can you see why this is so? Superiority can exist only when there is separation, for only then can there be a comparison between two separated entities. When there is oneness, no comparison is possible and thus inferiority and superiority are irrelevant.

I am a true spiritual teacher, which means I teach the path of oneness. You can follow my teaching only by coming into oneness with me, and you cannot do that as long as your view of me is filtered through the inferiority-superiority glasses of the ego. As I said when I won my Christhood, “I and my Father are one.” Yet as a teacher I long to say, “I and my student – you – are one.” Which requires you to come to the point where you can say, “I and my Father – my guru – are one!”

Take note of a subtle point. The ego can twist anything through the duality consciousness. Thus, when I say we are equals, that too can be misused by people’s egos by making them think that if we are equals, they don’t need to listen to me. The reality is that you and I are equals in terms of our intrinsic value. Yet you have not fully realized and accepted your potential, whereas I have. Thus, I serve as the teacher, meaning that you need to respect that I have insights that are beyond your mental box, and thus you need me in order to see beyond the ego. You need to see me as having higher authority than your ego and the false teachers of this world—so that you will listen to me even when they tell you the opposite.

We might also say that your ego is not an equal with me—although it very much thinks it is, even that it is superior to me. Thus, your conscious self needs to see that I do indeed have a greater insight than the ego and the false teachers, which is why you need to pay attention when I tell you something that is beyond what your ego wants you to hear. We might also say that the reason why there is an advantage to you in coming into oneness with me is that I have a less localized perspective, and this is the only way for you to transcend your current perspective. Do you see the point? Separation is based on division, so the only way to overcome it is to come into oneness with a Being who is beyond duality. You cannot overcome duality while retaining a sense of identity as a separate being.

Obviously, coming into oneness with the teacher means you have to stop seeing me as a teacher, for the student-teacher relationship implies distance between student and teacher.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book: Master Keys to Personal Christhoood.

Copyright © 2008 Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

It is time to step back and take a look at what we have achieved so far. If you have performed the exercises, you have gone through a period of purification. This is always the first stage when a student comes to a spiritual teacher. The teacher must require new students to cut the ties to the energies, beings and beliefs that will prevent the students from following the teacher’s instructions. Thus, the students must learn to protect themselves from influences from the world, and they must learn how to expose and let go of the impulses that have already entered their beings. The students must move toward the point where the prince of this world will come and have nothing in them that can pull them away from the teacher.

Each teacher has a right to define his or her own process for allowing students to enter the teacher’s Circle of Oneness. Each teacher has a right to set his or her own barrier of entry for those who want to be students of that teacher. Students who are not willing to go through the process of purification defined by the teacher, are simply not a match for that teacher and should thus seek out a different one. You see, a true spiritual teacher has no judgments. True teachers do not say that those students who will not follow their instructions are bad or will go to hell. They simply say that such students are not a fit for the teacher, because their consciousness does not resonate with the consciousness of the teacher—as that consciousness is expressed through a specific vessel. Thus, the teacher cannot help that student.

I am the Ascended Jesus Christ, and I cannot be restricted by any expression on Earth, whether the Bible, this course or anything else. I can and do express myself in many different ways. This course is a true expression of my Being, but it is not the only one. Thus, if you do not resonate with this course, you should seek out another expression of the one true teacher.

Why am I telling you this at this late stage in the course? Well, perhaps you haven’t noticed, but I have been telling you this indirectly in every key. Why have I done this? Because as a spiritual teacher I have learned that it is impossible to bring forth any manifestation that will help everyone. Thus, my overall goal is to show you that behind this and any other true expression is an inner path. Your primary concern should be to lock yourself on that inner path and to seek out a teacher that can help you take the next step on your personal path—continuing to seek out the teacher who can take you to the next level.

However, I also have a more subtle reason, which is to test my students—as it is my right and my commitment to do. What am I doing by telling you to abandon this course if you do not resonate with it? I am offering your ego an easy way out! You see, the ego is constantly looking for a way to pull you away from the true path and back onto the outer path. And by offering you a way out I am – now that you have purified your being from the more obvious spiritual poisons – giving you an opportunity to unmask the ego. If you will look honestly at your reactions to this course, you might indeed spot the ego’s attempts to pull you back into the fold. And this can then assist you in separating the real you even more from the ego. Certainly, I hope you can avoid the trap of “guru-hopping,” where people jump from guru to guru – thinking the next one will be the right one who will do all the work for them – instead of looking at the beam in their own eyes. Or they find a guru who tells them exactly what their egos want to hear.

I do, however, have another reason for talking about whether you should continue with this course. The reason is that we have reached a turning point. Beginning with this key, the course will take a different direction. It is possible you are not yet ready to go in this direction and that you need more time to integrate the lessons learned so far. There is not necessarily anything wrong with this, as each person has an individual path to walk and should not try to take growth by force. Some people will have such deep psychological wounds that they need time to heal and are not yet ready to engage in the next stage of this course. In fact, many people could benefit immensely from seeking the help of a professional in the field of psychological healing before they continue with the course or as they continue with the course. I hope you will be sensitive to your personal situation and follow your inner direction in seeking out the healing that can help you heal your personal wounds and see through the blocks in your psyche. A professional can be the personal extension of the teacher in the sense that such a practitioner will not be inside your personal mental box.

I have no illusions of creating a course that fits everyone. It simply is not possible to take people through a 10-11 month period and have them all be at the same level at the end. So if you feel you are not yet ready, then do not seek to force yourself. On the other hand, recognize that your ego can also use this to get you to procrastinate making the decision to be ready—and to do so indefinitely. For in the end, “being ready” is all about making the decision to be ready—it is not something that happens as a result of external conditions.

Take note of how you respond to these statements. Do you sense a frustration or anger over me saying that the course cannot guarantee results? If so, recognize that it comes from the ego, which is still desperately seeking to use this course to build a sense of outer security—to reinforce its sense of equilibrium, its sense of having control over you and the world. “Surely, if this course is a real course, following it diligently for so many months should entitle me to some kind of status! And if I am not getting it, then there must be something wrong with the course or the teacher.”

But what did I show you in the last key? I showed you that the path to Christhood is not a mechanical process. It is a creative process! Thus, there is no way to guarantee results—for how do you even define what the results of a creative process should be? Everything is a matter of how well you integrate the lessons I offer and how willing you are to express what you have internalized. I can only offer the lessons, I can only lead you to water—I cannot make you drink.

Furthermore, there is no standard outcome, as you see in many schools on Earth. Contrary to popular belief – even among ascended master students – there is no standard for what it means to be the Christ. Thus, a true course in Christhood cannot take you to a final exam in which every student gives the same answers to a set of standardized questions. As I said, Christhood is a creative process, and how can you standardize creativity? It is not my goal to make you a clone of me. It is my goal to help you be the unique individual that you were created to be and to express your unique gift to this world—for this is Christhood.

What is the new direction we will take in this and coming keys? Well, we will finally get started on giving you the keys to walking the path to Christhood. What is that? You thought I have been giving you the keys to the path to Christhood all along? Not exactly! So far I have been giving you the keys to the path of personal growth, the path of raising your consciousness. For a time, the path of raising your consciousness overlaps the path to Christhood in the sense that you do need to raise your consciousness to a certain level before you can even begin the path to Christhood. Yet it is now time for you to acknowledge that the path to Christhood is not the same as the path to personal growth. There will come a point on the path of personal growth where you must make a choice. You can continue on the path of personal growth or you can enter the path to Christhood. In this key, we will explore the differences, so you can make an informed choice.

If you want the difference in a nutshell, here it is: The path of personal growth is the path of raising your consciousness. The path of Christhood is the path of raising consciousness.

***

So far we have talked about the first two challenges of Christ. The first one is that you recognize the Living Christ and recognize that it is possible for you to attain a higher state of consciousness, a higher form of life. The second challenge is that you allow the Living Christ to help you attain that higher state of consciousness by taking you beyond your mental boxes, your mortal sense of identity. Can you see that until you are willing to let the Living Christ take you beyond your mental box, you cannot actually start the path of Christhood? Instead, you will be seeking to use the Living Christ to elevate the separate self, which is the path of personal growth.

It is now time to talk about the third challenge of Christ, which is that you recognize that you can go beyond simply following an external teacher. You can actually become one with the teacher, whereby you become the Living Christ.

Do you see the progression here? We can also describe it in terms of the separate self. Most people are trapped in a state of consciousness that is spiritual death, meaning that they are entirely blinded by the dualistic illusions of the separate self. They are completely convinced that they are the separate self, that they are mortal, human beings—however they define that based on their religious or materialistic world view. The first challenge of Christ is to recognize that there is a reality beyond the world created by the separate self, that it is possible to escape the mortal identity of the separate self and attain a higher sense of identity.

The second challenge of Christ is to go through the process of systematically exposing, consciously recognizing and then letting go of the illusions that make up your personal separate self. As you do this, you will gradually attain a higher understanding, a higher sense of freedom and a higher sense of self—yet you still have not necessarily challenged the basic illusion of the separate self, namely that it is real and separate. In other words, it is possible to go through the process of raising your consciousness – making genuine progress – but still maintaining the sense that you are raising your consciousness. You can come to see through many of the illusions created by the dualistic mind while still not seeing the basic illusion of separateness—and this truly is the hardest illusion to overcome. Which is why death is called the last enemy:

20 But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.

21 For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.

22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

23 But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming.

24 Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power.

25 For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet.

26 The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. (1Corinthians, Chapter 15)

My point is that if you take an honest look at spiritual seekers, you will see that one of the primary motivations that drives people is the desire to attain a higher state of consciousness, but to do so in a way that is still focused on the self—the separate self. This is not necessarily done in a prideful or comparative way, as we have talked about in the last few keys. It is done in a very subtle way that gives people the impression that raising your consciousness is a personal goal. You are seeking to attain a state of enlightenment in which you understand everything, you are seeking to attain a state of bliss, you are seeking to attain mastery over matter, you are seeking to attain oneness with God—or however the ultimate goal might be defined.

Now, here comes the subtle distinction. There is not necessarily anything wrong with seeking enlightenment, bliss or union with God, but the crucial question is why you are seeking this? Are you seeking this with a sense that you – meaning the separate self – can attain this and that this is desirable for the separate self? Or are you able and willing to raise your motivation to a higher level?

Do you see the subtlety? As you start the path, you need to have a motivation. Yet what motivates you at the level where you start the path must of necessity be a reflection of your state of consciousness at that point. And what is that state of consciousness? It is that you are still very much identified with and as a separate self. So to get started on the path, you need a motivation that makes it seem like the path offers something that is valuable to the separate self—otherwise why go through the trouble of seeking spiritual growth, why not simply eat, drink and be merry? So people formulate their own individual motives in order to start the path. As they climb the path, they attain a greater understanding, which forces them to face a choice.

The question is whether people can raise their motives based on their new understanding? You see, as you acquire a higher understanding, you will come to a “moment of truth” that makes you see that the path will not actually give you what you were seeking when you started. In other words, you started with a motivation centered around the separate self, but as you grow in understanding, you begin to see that this motivation was a house built on sand. Some people go through a period of experiencing a sense of disappointment or even anger, perhaps by feeling they were lied to by an outer teacher or religion. That is why you see many people in the modern age who become disgruntled with religion in general or with a specific religion or teacher. Some go into a blind alley of blaming a religion or teacher, whereas others raise their motivation and formulate a new goal. This new motivation will be higher than the previous one, but it will still be a reflection of your state of consciousness at the time. So the process of refining your motives will be ongoing.

For some people this becomes a source of stress, where they feel each cycle like a traumatic event that causes them a sense of grief or loss. What I am hoping to help you see here is that you can shift your perspective and overcome this pain.

You simply need to realize that as your understanding grows, it is only natural that your motivation will shift. On top of that, you can now begin to realize that you must of necessity start out with a motivation centered around the separate self. The separate self thinks it can gain something from walking the spiritual path. Yet when you walk the true path, the separate self actually will not gain anything, as the path is all about the real you overcoming identification with the separate self, whereby the separate self dies. So what you realize is that every motive that is influenced by the separate self is bound to lead to disappointment (unless you switch to the false path that does offer the separate self the illusion that it is superior to others).

So when you realize the mechanics of this, your conscious self can now step back and look at the process from an overall perspective. Thus, you can decide not to identify with the disappointment of the separate self, whereby you will avoid feeling its pain and loss. You can then begin to look for a higher motivation by contemplating the third challenge of Christ. Let us take a closer look.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book: Master Keys to Personal Christhoood.

Copyright © 2008 Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

The spiritual poison for this key is called non-will and non-being. This may mean little to you at first, but I will explain it as we go along. The Buddha who is the antidote to this poison is named Vajrasattva, and his wisdom is the Wisdom of God’s Diamond Will. You might notice that a diamond is the hardest substance and thus not affected by anything on Earth. You may also notice that a diamond has many facets that shine individually but together form the beautiful whole. As you study the following teaching, focus on the Buddha and use his mantra:

OM VAJRASATTVA HUM

If you read Maitreya’s 600-page book and then step back in order to look at the big picture, you will see that the entire purpose of the book is to help people understand and overcome the psychological mechanism that caused them to be separated from their spiritual teachers—thereby condemning themselves to the learning environment of the “school of hard knocks” rather than the Divine Direction found in the Garden of Eden. Maitreya does everything possible to explain how a spiritual teacher is always and exclusively seeking to help the students grow. The concept that the teacher is seeking to point out the students’ mistakes is a projection upon the teacher, born from the fact that the students have been blinded by the ego and are thus projecting a dualistic image upon the teacher. The central feature of the ego, of course, being that it projects its dualistic images upon everything.

So let me briefly summarize the essence of the master-disciple relationship. A lifestream is created as an individualization of the Creator, but it starts out with a very limited sense of self that is naturally focused on itself and its immediate environment. As an example, go back several centuries and you will see that most people lived in a small village and had little awareness of what was going on outside a 20-mile radius around their birthplace—which would often also be the place where they died. Today, most people have an awareness that the Earth is very large and they know about, or have even traveled to, countries far away, countries that have a culture very different from their own. So we can see that humankind has moved from a localized toward a more global form of awareness. Yet how did this shift in consciousness happen? It happened because people were forced to acknowledge that there was a reality outside their mental box—there was a world outside their immediate environment. So the function of a spiritual teacher is to help a new lifestream expand its mental box by demonstrating that there is a larger reality outside the box—and thus growth is both possible and desirable. Now look at my statement:

Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:3)

What is the characteristic of children that gives them entry into the kingdom? As I have attempted to explain over and over again, the kingdom of God is not a static state of “perfection.” It is an ongoing process of self-transcendence, the River of Life. And because children are open to learning, are always seeking to grow, they have access to that kingdom. Look at a small child who is learning to walk. The child often falls down, and sometimes it hurts itself. But what you do not see in the child is an overlay of guilt or blame, causing the child to blame itself for falling down. In other words, the child learns from every experience. If it falls down, it does not waste time blaming itself for not being perfect. It simply gets up and keeps experimenting. Sometimes the child makes the same mistake over and over again, but because it keeps experimenting, it will eventually get it right and learn to walk. Every single child, who is not physically impaired, eventually learns to walk. Yet the reason for this is that the child keeps experimenting without having the interference of guilt or blame.

As Maitreya explains, this was precisely the learning environment that he attempted to create in the Garden of Eden. I say attempted to create because, as he also explains, the garden was a mixed environment with lifestreams who had fallen into the duality consciousness in higher spheres. And these lifestreams found it very difficult to enter into the childlike mind, which means they projected their own dualistic state of consciousness upon the garden and the teacher. They also attempted to pull other students into their mindset, as demonstrated by the story of the Serpent. So what is that mindset?

Well, as I have explained, when a lifestream accepts the illusion of separation, it creates a separate self – the ego – which is born from duality. The ego is on an impossible quest of seeking to make itself acceptable to God, of seeking to force its way into the kingdom. It attempts to do this through the outer path, which essentially divides human actions according to a dualistic standard. Some actions are right and some are wrong. Thus, if you train yourself to avoid wrong actions and only perform right actions, the ego reasons that you are guaranteed to be saved. However, this dualistic path is based on an inescapable fear. For in dividing actions into right and wrong, there inevitably comes the fear that if you cannot avoid wrong actions, you could fail to be saved. It also introduces guilt, for if you commit a wrong action, you should feel guilty as a way to “force” yourself to avoid such actions in the future.

What is the psychological effect of this? It is that it kills the innocence of the childlike mind, and this aborts experimentation. What drives the child to learn to walk is that it has a desire to walk, but underneath it is a desire to “get it right.” The love for getting it right is what drives the child to keep experimenting. However, the dualistic mind is not driven by a love for what is right; it is driven by a fear of what is wrong. The childlike mind is seeking to get closer to what it loves, whereas the dualistic mind is seeking to get away from what it fears.

We can also say that the childlike mind is innocent because there is no fear or guilt associated with learning, there is no risk involved in learning. Everything the child does is part of the process of experimentation, and the process goes in only one direction, namely toward a positive goal of self-transcendence. There are no mistakes, for the child can learn from every experience. If it falls down, it learns that this was not how to walk, and when it does not fall down, it learns that this is how to walk. Thus, there is never a failed experiment, only experiments that did not produce the desired outcome, but since you can learn from those experiments, they still bring you closer to the goal. And when you have learned from an action, what is the point of calling it a failure and feeling guilty for it? The real purpose of life is growth, and anything that helps you grow is a success, regardless of the physical outcome.

Do you see the subtle difference? The material world is a schoolroom, a laboratory, created for the sole purpose of your growth in self-awareness. The material world is not ultimately real, so it really doesn’t matter what happens in this world. The Christ mind is exclusively focused on your growth and puts no ultimate importance or permanence on what happens in this world. The Christ is not concerned about you making a few mistakes, the Christ is exclusively concerned about bringing you closer to the ultimate goal of oneness with your Creator. In contrast, the mind of anti-christ is based on separation, so it cannot conceive of the real goal for this universe. It sees the material universe not as a means to an end but as an end in itself. Thus, it places undue importance on what happens in this world, meaning that certain actions are seen as mistakes or sins and are now given some ultimate and permanent importance.

Do you understand what I am saying here? When your conscious self is unimpaired by the filter of duality, you are in the childlike mind. Life is a continuous process of experimentation, and there are no failed experiments, for every action becomes a learning experience that expands your mental box and increases your sense of self. This is precisely what you were created to do—you were created in order to grow toward an expanded sense of self, leading to God consciousness. And you can do this in only one way, namely by experimenting and learning from your experiments. Some experiments teach you what works and some teach you what doesn’t work, but they all teach you something that brings you higher in awareness. Thus, as long as you are in this childlike mind, you are always right because you are in alignment with God’s purpose of growth! You were not created to be perfect in doing everything that can be done in this or any other world. For the only way to know how to do everything is to be in God consciousness. You were not created in God consciousness; you were created to grow toward God consciousness. And as long as you are transcending your sense of self, you are right with God.

Yet what is the one condition that must be fulfilled in order for you to grow? It is that you are willing to experiment, you are willing to act and to learn from every action. In order to do this, you must be willing to observe yourself and evaluate your actions based on the consideration, “Did it work or didn’t it work—did it take me closer to oneness with God or did it take me further into separation?”

Do you see that this is a fundamentally different equation than what you have in the duality consciousness? The ego does not ask, “Did it work or didn’t it work?” The ego asks, “Was it right or was it wrong?” The first evaluation encourages experimentation, whereas the second one kills experimentation. When you are in the childlike mind, you want to experiment, for every experiment helps you grow and this is rewarding. When you are in the dualistic mind, you do not want to experiment, for every experiment carries the risk that it could be wrong, increasing your fear and guilt. Thus, you want to only do what you know to be right according to a worldly standard, and this – of course – stops you from expressing your built-in creativity. Instead of acting like the creative spiritual being you truly are, you begin to act like a mechanized being, a kind of robot that mindlessly repeats patterns that have been programmed into it—you become a blind follower of the blind leaders. And such mechanized beings have no place in the perpetually creative world that is God’s kingdom. For they violate one of the basic creative principles, a principle I expressed this way:

Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment. (John 7:24)

Do you see the point? The dualistic mind is a relative mind in that it always relates everything to a worldly standard—to the appearances of this world, which it sees as real. It is also a judgmental mind in that it always judges whether something is right (causing it to feel pride) or wrong (causing it to feel guilt). The net effect is that it kills experimentation, kills creativity. In contrast, the childlike mind – the mind of Christ – is not relative, for it has no standard and thus cannot judge based on any appearance in this world. The Christ mind does know God’s reality, but as I have said, God’s reality is the River of Life, which is constantly transcending itself—so the Christ mind does not have a fixed standard. The Christ mind does not ask whether something is right or wrong, but whether something helps you grow or impedes your growth. And what is growth? You grow when you express your God-given creativity and thus become more than you thought you were—you transcend your sense of self.

The Christ mind is not even comparing to some divine standard, for God is infinite and you are created as an extension of the Infinite. You are meant to express the infinite creativity of God in a localized place, and when you do, the finite world is raised up toward the Infinite. Thus, there is no standard for how you should behave when you are expressing your unique, spiritual individuality. Creativity cannot be related to any standard, nor can it be judged in terms of right or wrong. It simply is what it is. Which is why God said to Moses, “I am that I am,” which is more correctly translated as, “I will be who I will be!”

***

We now need to take this one step further by considering what it really means that something works or doesn’t work. As you should be beginning to realize by now, the dualistic mind can pervert anything, so it can play the game of asking whether it works rather than whether it is right or wrong. Yet what the dualistic mind cannot do is to step outside its inherent duality. Thus, the dualistic mind will define what works and doesn’t work based on a dualistic view, which means it invariably defines it as what works for the separate self in terms of elevating it toward the superior status that it invariably sees as the end goal.

So what is the real definition? Well, the Creator has created innumerable extensions of itself. God loves all of its offspring with an infinite love, which means it has no meaning to consider that God loves some beings more than others. There can be no comparisons in infinity (obviously, the dualistic mind cannot fathom infinity, other than as a theoretical, mathematical concept). As the Bible says, “God is no respecter of persons.”

So the Creator did not create the world of form for the purpose of elevating some extensions of itself to a superior status and setting them up as overlords over other extensions of itself. As Maitreya explains, there is a natural hierarchy in that some beings have transcended themselves and thus hold certain positions in hierarchy, but this does not make them better than others. It simply makes them better qualified to fill that position, as a teacher is better qualified to teach than those who have not yet learned to read. Yet by applying themselves, the students can obviously qualify to become teachers.

What the Creator wants is for all extensions of itself to engage in the River of Life, whereby they continuously transcend their sense of self until they reach full God consciousness. When you are trapped in duality, you see yourself as a separate being, and thus you believe in the illusion that you can raise yourself in comparison to others. When you see the reality of the Christ mind, you see all beings as part of the Body of God, and thus you see that the only way to truly raise yourself is to raise the All. This is what I expressed when I said, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” In other words, the real definition is that what “works” is what raises up all life and what “doesn’t work” is what seeks to raise up the separate self but in reality limits all life—including the separate self.

One example is what Mother Mary explains in her book, where she says that those blinded by the ego seek to hoard the abundance that is already in the material world, whereas those who are not blinded use their God-given ability to draw spiritual energy into the material world and thereby expand the total amount of abundance available in this world. The first action seems to raise the separate self, whereas the second action truly raises the All. And this is what works for God. So what is the second action based on? It is based on creativity, the creative potential that is built into every lifestream. God is obviously the ultimate creative being, but since you are an extension of the Creator, you have the potential to express infinite creativity in a finite situation. Doing so is what works for God, for it raises all life.

When you compare this to my parable about the talents, you will see that if everyone is multiplying their talents, God will multiply their offering and the total multiplication will be exponential. In other words, if everyone is selflessly seeking to increase the abundance on Earth, God will give such a huge increase that poverty could be eradicated very quickly. The present poverty is a function of the fact that some people have sought to monopolize and hoard abundance by taking from others—and that those others have allowed the elite to get away with it. The net effect is that there is not as much for God to multiply, which is why there is not enough abundance in the material world to raise all above poverty.

So what is the function of the spiritual teacher? The teacher has escaped the illusions of duality and is no longer seeking to raise the separate self. The teacher has seen through the illusions of duality and can see that what truly raises up the individual being is actions that serve to raise up all life. Thus, the function of the teacher is to give the student a standard, a measuring rod, whereby the student can see which actions work for the greater good and which actions don’t. The function of the teacher is to give the student a glimpse of what his or her actions look like when they are not seen through the filter of duality, when they are not seen from inside the student’s own mental box.

You can now see the essential problem between student and teacher. When students have become blinded by duality, they are seeking to raise the separate self to a standard of perfection defined by some system in this world. They think they are well on their way toward or have already achieved this goal, yet it is all an illusion. Seeing this, the teacher can help these students only by helping them see that they are living a lie and that they will not go to the real heaven—and not even to the imagined heaven they have created. Yet the students – blinded by the duality of their egos – will see this as a threat and will see the teacher as an unwelcome intruder. The ego might even conjure up the belief that the teacher is a threat to their religion, and since that religion is the only true one, the teacher is a threat to God’s plan for salvation—and thus must be an agent of the devil. Which is precisely why the scribes and Pharisees rejected me and called me a tool of the devil.

As I said, “I have come that all might have life,” and the reality is that “life” means that you are in the River of Life, in the childlike mind where you are experimenting and transcending your sense of self. You are being, which means that you are living a spontaneously joyful life—as the child who expresses spontaneous joy. Going around putting yourself down through fear or guilt or raising yourself up through pride (to cover over the fear) is no way to live—it is not life. When you have stopped experimenting, or when you are experimenting only to raise the separate self, you are in a state of consciousness that is spiritual death. Yet since you think you are guaranteed to be saved, this could also be called an extreme form of ignorance or a state of non-being. You are not being who you were created to be, you are being less than you were created to be.

What will it take for people to escape this state of non-being? Well, somehow their sense that they know everything, or know everything they need to know, must be shattered. This can happen the hard way—for example by people pounding their heads against a concrete wall until they finally realize they cannot break down the wall. Or it can happen through the divine direction of the teacher, which the student uses to trigger an “Aha-experience.” When people are completely blinded by duality, they can only awaken the hard way. As a side note, this awakening happens because duality always has or creates two opposing forces. Thus, people can never attain complete peace in the consciousness of death, since the contradicting dualistic forces will always threaten their peace. And this conflict is precisely what gives people opportunities to awaken from the illusion, thereby sensing that there must be something outside duality, there must be a better way to live.

When a person begins to awaken from duality, that person becomes open to direction from a spiritual teacher. This often starts with openness to an outer teaching, but will eventually lead to an openness to inner direction, both from the student’s Christ self and from the Ascended Host. Obviously, you have already come to this point, so why this long discourse? Because I need you to see that the illusions of the ego are subtle. And although you have so far been willing to grow, it is virtually inevitable – having incarnated on Earth a number of times – that there are still remnants of the ego’s resistance toward the teacher left in your subconscious mind.

As long as these elements of willful, or sophisticated, ignorance remain in your being, you will resist the teacher when he comes to point out that you are still repeating patterns of beliefs or actions that “don’t work” because they do not raise the All but seek to raise the separate self. Obviously, this resistance will slow down your progress, but more importantly, it will actually prevent you from going beyond a certain level of the path to Christhood.

Specifically, it will prevent you from going beyond the level demonstrated by Peter, who recognized the Living Christ but would not let the Living Christ take him beyond his mental box, thus seeking to force the Christ into his box. As I have said, this is what mainstream Christianity – building on the foundation of the Catholic Church – has been doing for 2,000 years. But – as I trust is obvious to you – you cannot become a disciple of the Living Christ by repeating this pattern. Thus, it is an absolute, inescapable requirement that you free yourself from the last elements of resistance toward the teacher. You cannot BE my disciple as long as you are trapped in non-being.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book: Master Keys to Personal Christhoood.

Copyright © 2008 Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

In this key we will tackle the most subtle form of sophisticated ignorance. Again, the Buddha who is the antidote for this poison is Vairochana and his wisdom is the All-pervading Wisdom. As you study the following teachings, use his mantra:

OM VAIROCHANA OM

In a sense, one might say that I have been talking about sophisticated ignorance since the beginning of this course:

• I have said that the essence of the path to personal Christhood is that you come to see what you cannot see, that you come to see the beam in your own eye.
• I have said that the second challenge of Christ is whether you will allow the Living Christ to take you beyond your current mental box, which means you must be willing to see and acknowledge the limitations of that box.
• I have talked about the outer path versus the inner path and said you need to leave behind all of the illusions of the outer path.

Yet what exactly does that mean for you at your current level on the path? The most dangerous aspect of sophisticated ignorance is that it makes you absolutely convinced that you are right, while in reality you are wrong. You are out of alignment with God’s reality because – in your mind – you have elevated an illusion to the status of “reality.” And when you have this belief, you obviously will not be willing to heed the Living Christ, when he or she comes to take you beyond your current mental box. You see no need to go beyond that box, since you are convinced it is complete and infallible—which means you have to reject the teacher. In effect, sophisticated ignorance makes you think that you know better than the teacher how to walk the path to Christhood. You think you have found the ultimate knowledge, belief or understanding and that you have no need to question it. This reaction is typical for people who are trapped in both black-and-white and gray thinking, as both forms of thinking offer the ego plenty of justification for staying where it is comfortable and rejecting the teacher.

So what is wrong with your current mental box? Isn’t it possible that you really have found the ultimate understanding of life and the spiritual path? Well, as we saw in the previous key, there is no such thing as the ultimate spiritual teaching. However, just to make sure you understand this point, let me propose a simple way to determine whether you need to question your current mental box. You need to consider the fact that you are sitting on Earth reading this book, while I am dictating it from the spiritual realm. This means that you have not ascended, while I have made my ascension. So the essential question here is why you have not ascended and I have?

The logical answer is that I must have figured out something that you have not – yet – figured out. Why is that so—could it not be that you have all the knowledge you need for your ascension but it simply isn’t your time to leave the Earth behind (the ego can always reason with any argument raised by the teacher, which is a good way to expose the ego)? Well, consider a simple test. Can you – this instant – raise yourself into the spiritual realm? If you can, then come up here and join me, so we can continue this conversation “face to face.”

If you are still reading this, it can mean only one thing. No matter how sophisticated you think your knowledge is, it is still not sophisticated enough to propel you to the spiritual realm at will. You still have a ways to go before you get here—for if you did not have a ways to go, you would already be here!

If your conscious self is willing to acknowledge that I have ascended and you have not, then you should be able to accept a couple of conclusions. One is that since I have ascended, I really do know something you don’t know. Thus, you should listen to me rather than one of the many false teachers found in the material world or in the emotional, mental and etheric realms—including your own ego.

Another conclusion is that since I have ascended, I must have figured out something your conscious self has not yet figured out and which your ego will never figure out. So what might that be? Well, let me expose to you the ultimate secret about the spiritual path.

Now, I want you to take a few seconds to consider what kind of reaction you notice inside yourself to the statement that I will give you the ultimate secret. Do you notice any particular thoughts or sensations? If so, explore them to find out what they are.

No matter what sensations you might have noticed, they came from the ego. How can I say that? Because – as I have attempted to explain in previous keys – the ego is always on the impossible quest of finding the ultimate secret that will make it acceptable to God. So what is the ultimate secret?

It is that there is NO ultimate secret!

There is no magical formula that will suddenly take you to a higher state of consciousness. There is no outer path that will automatically make you qualify for salvation, ascension, enlightenment or whatever you want to call it.

The essential key to reaching the spiritual realm is the process of ongoing growth that I have called the River of Life. And the essence of this growth is that you are constantly expanding your mental box, your sense of identity. You are constantly questioning your beliefs and even the way you look at yourself. You are willing to let your old identity die, so that you can be born again – of water and of fire – into a higher sense of identity. Yet this does not happen in one dramatic moment – where the heavens open and you see flashes of light and hear angels singing, or whatever people imagine – it happens as the result of daily choices to put off the old man and put on the new man—as Paul put it. He also said, “I die daily!”

So you should now be willing to question one of the most dearly held illusions of the ego, namely that you are working toward some ultimate peak experience that will suddenly turn you into an entirely different person. I can assure you that every person who discovers the spiritual path – even the inner path – must face the temptation to deal with this illusion. And although you might have overcome it at the layers of your mind that are close to your conscious awareness, it is time to dig deeper and make sure you have overcome it at deeper levels as well.

You see, this dream of an ultimate breakthrough is the carrot that the ego is dangling in front of the nose of the conscious self. And as long as the conscious self believes in the illusion, you will keep running after the carrot—and in doing so, you will be running away from the true key to growth. What is that key? It is that you stop looking for an experience from outside yourself and start looking for the kingdom of God inside yourself—realizing you will reach it only by taking small, daily steps toward expanding your sense of identity—until you fully accept yourself as a co-creator with God and thus find yourself in the state of oneness that IS the kingdom of God.

We might say that the ego is on a quest to perfect your mental box and reach some ultimate state where your salvation is guaranteed. The real key to the path is that you continue to expand your mental box—which means you never hold on to your current box. You gladly let it go, knowing you will only gain greater freedom. There is an ultimate expansion, which is God consciousness, but the more important intermediate stage for you is to reach the Christ consciousness, which opens you to a perception of the spiritual realm—whereby you will be in the kingdom of God even while still in a physical body.

Do you see that Christhood is not a mechanical process, but a creative process in which you expand the self consciously? You are charged with defining the self through which you co-create in the material world, so you must define your identity as a Christed Being. This will not happen as a result of you doing outer things, not even following this course.

***

If you will take a look at spiritual people, you will see that many of them are chasing what they call “peak experiences.” Some are traveling to what they see as the spiritual places on the planet in order to be there at just the right time to get a peak experience. Others seek it in meditation, retreats or other spiritual courses. Others chase for the ultimate spiritual teacher who can give them the experience and still others look for the ultimate chemical high. Yet can you see that they are all looking for an experience coming as the result of something outside themselves?

Now, I know very well that if your conscious self truly is beginning to awaken from the ego’s ultimate illusion, you will be feeling something that is akin to the withdrawal symptoms that addicts experience when they give up their addictive substance. It is quite possible that you have actually been addicted to this chase for some kind of spiritual fix, and it is inevitable that you will have to go through a period of recovery to overcome the addiction.

What I have done here – that is, if you have understood and acknowledged what I have been saying – is that I have taken all the mystery – some will say all the fun – out of the spiritual path. Look at how many people think there needs to be some kind of mystery involved with religion and spirituality. Many spiritual seekers talk about mystery schools and a mystical path—and they love the sense that they know something most people don’t know or receive secret initiations. They love the concept of a path of initiation, where there is still something unknown ahead of you, but on the other hand you are ahead of those who are below you.

What I am saying here is that there truly is no mystery. The path is a very pragmatic process of taking one small step at a time. It is a matter of always looking for the next illusion you need to overcome, seeing why it is an illusion and then consciously dismissing it. This is how you make progress on the path—by letting the old sense of identity die and being reborn into a new identity that is only a degree beyond the old one.

But what about the mystery? Am I saying that there are no breakthrough experiences that suddenly expand your vision? Well, there are certainly breakthroughs, but the further along you move on the path, the less dramatic they become. And the final shift between being unascended and ascended is not nearly as dramatic as some people – especially ascended master students – tend to think. It is extremely important that you understand why this is so.

You may look back at your own path and realize that you have had some dramatic breakthrough experiences. Many spiritual seekers had such dramatic experiences when they first found the path, feeling that an entirely new world, an entirely new world view, opened up to them. You may even have felt that after that initial phase, you have had few or no dramatic experiences. You may even feel like something must have gone wrong and that you must have lost something you had in the beginning. In fact, this sense of a let-down, of an anti-climax, of feeling the path has become routine or dull might have been part of what motivated you to begin this course—hoping I could provide the drama you perceive to be missing. So let me explain to you what has happened.

What is the mechanical aspect of a dramatic experience of any kind? It is contrast! For there to be drama, there must be contrast, meaning that there must be two opposites. And this mention of opposites should make alarm bells start ringing, for what is the very nature of the ego? It is that it is based on duality—the duality that always has two opposite polarities.

So why was it such a dramatic experience to find the spiritual path? It was because you were brought up in a culture that has no knowledge of the spiritual path. Thus, you were brought up in very deep ignorance, which means finding the spiritual path provided a dramatic contrast. Yet can you see that the intensity of the contrast was determined by the depth of your ignorance? The deeper the darkness, the starker the contrast when the light starts shining!

You may have heard that heroin addicts have a dramatic experience on their first fix and spend the rest of their lives chasing that ultimate fix. Well, the reason is that it is only the first time that there can be the ultimate contrast between people’s normal state of consciousness and whatever experience they have on drugs—which I can assure you is never a true spiritual experience. My point here is that there are spiritual people who likewise had a very dramatic experience upon finding the path and who have become addicted to chasing that ultimate experience.

Obviously, I don’t want you to be among them, for this chase can never take you to Christhood. Why not? Well, the essence of Christhood is that you rise above the ego, meaning that you rise above the consciousness of death, the consciousness of anti-christ. And what is the nature of this consciousness? It is that it is dualistic, meaning that it will always have two opposite polarities. And precisely because it always has two opposites, it will always provide plenty of contrast. Meaning that the consciousness of anti-christ can offer you dramatic experiences—which the consciousness of Christ simply cannot offer.

Why not? Because the consciousness of Christ is above duality. It has no opposite polarities, only the oneness with God, the oneness with all life. This is a state of peace that is very joyful. In fact, Buddhism calls it bliss or Nirvana and I called it the kingdom of God. Yet this bliss is not the kind of happiness that most people long for on Earth. For on Earth, happiness is currently seen as a dualistic concept. Happiness is opposed to unhappiness, whereas bliss has no opposite. Bliss has no contrast, meaning that there cannot be the dramatic shift from darkness to light.

Do you see what I am saying here? When you first found the spiritual path, you had a lot of false beliefs and imperfect energies in your mind and energy field. You had a lot of darkness, which means that when you first saw the light, you experienced a dramatic contrast between the light and the darkness. And this contrast is what gave you what seemed like a peak experience. Yet do you see that the intensity of this experience was in direct proportion to the amount of darkness in your being? The more darkness, the more intense the experience, for the greater the contrast?

Yet what is the path to Christhood all about? It is about overcoming your false beliefs and purifying your energy field from all lower vibrations. So if you successfully walk the path, you will decrease the intensity of the darkness in your being. Meaning that when you have breakthrough experiences, there will no longer be the dramatic contrast between light and darkness—and thus the experiences will inevitably seem less intense. In fact, they will gradually begin to seem perfectly natural.

Can you see that this is actually a sign that you have made real progress? Yet the ego and the false teachers are always looking for a way to nullify your progress, so they have created the very clever concept of seeking for the ultimate breakthrough experience. And since you are not experiencing anything dramatic, they can make you believe that you are no longer making progress. So you must be doing something wrong, which means you can easily be diverted into the following extremes or one of the blind alleys in between the extremes:

• You become discouraged, feeling like what you are doing is not working, perhaps giving up on the path or resigning yourself to the fact that you will never break through.
• You begin the quest for finding the ultimate way to force a breakthrough experience, thus seeking to take heaven by force. This actually “works” for some people in the sense that they open themselves up to dark forces that enter their beings, whereby there is once again enough darkness to provide contrast. Yet the drama does not equate with true spiritual progress. Thus, these people are not moving closer to Christhood, for they are tied up in a see-saw that takes them up, then down, then up, then down—ad infinitum.

What I want you to see here is the fact that as you move higher on the real path to Christhood, you remove darkness from your being, and thus there will be less contrast to provide you with dramatic experiences. Thus, you need to let go of the dream of having dramatic experiences and instead begin to look for the “ultimate” experience, namely that of constant, unwavering peace of mind—which is truly a state of bliss, only it is not a state that has an opposite.

This points to a new definition of “ultimate.” The dualistic definition is that an ultimate experience is one that provides maximum drama, which can come only from maximum contrast. A non-dualistic definition is that ultimate means that opposites have been eliminated or transcended, so that there is no longer any contrast.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book: Master Keys to Personal Christhoood.

Copyright © 2008 Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

In this key we will tackle another version of the poison of ignorance. Again, the Buddha is Vairochana. Use his mantra as you study this key:

OM VAIROCHANA OM

As I have described, there is a gradual process that leads from total spiritual blindness toward the complete awakening of the Christ consciousness. As they begin to awaken from being self-absorbed, people typically espouse a cause, but they often go through a phase of approaching that cause based on black-and-white thinking, causing them to participate in the dualistic struggle by battling an enemy who opposes their cause. After they have pursued a cause in this way – often for many lifetimes – they begin to see the limitations of black-and-white thinking, and they mature to the point where they can begin to question the idea that there is one absolute truth, or even that it is possible to find absolute truth in this world.

This leads to the next phase, where it is likely that people will have to go through what I call gray thinking, before they finally find the Middle Way of Christ discernment. So I ask you to study the teachings from my website on gray thinking, as it will set a foundation for a deeper understanding of how to find the Middle Way.

Why the ego wants you to think the world is gray

As I have explained in previous discourses, the ego operates entirely in the realm of duality. When you go to the lowest aspect of dualistic thinking, you end up seeing the world as black and white, meaning that you are always right and anyone opposing you is always wrong. The reasoning is simple. People define a belief system as infallible and as the only true one, meaning that they think it is entirely true and not influenced by error at all. In the terminology I use in these discourses, people think their belief system springs entirely from the truth of Christ and is not influenced by the illusions of the mind of anti-christ.

In reality this line of thinking springs from the ego’s desire to set itself up as an authority figure that cannot be questioned. It is an attempt to create the outer appearance that because you belong to the only true belief system, you are guaranteed to be saved. It also gives many people the sense that they are better than those who do not belong to their belief system. If you take an honest look at the world, you will see that even today many people are caught in this approach to life. They have a very obvious sense of righteousness, they judge others and they feel better than others. An obvious example is fundamentalists of any religion, including the religion of materialism.

If you have ever interacted with such people, you will know that it can be extremely difficult to carry on a normal conversation with them. And it is virtually impossible to discuss anything that goes beyond or seems to contradict their beliefs. If you try to make them see that their beliefs are limited or even incorrect, you are usually met with a very hostile reaction. In extreme cases, such people are willing to kill anyone who threatens their belief system, as for example a Muslim fundamentalist who carries out a suicide bombing to defend Islam. Or a Christian crusader defending a piece of real estate in the Holy Land—as if God – a spiritual being – ever wanted people to kill each other over anything in the material world. When people are less extreme, they will label you as being of the devil (or any number of other negative labels) and refuse to talk with you. This, of course, makes such people unreachable for a spiritual teacher.

***

What can bring people out of this state of having closed their minds completely? Well, the reality of the situation is that the conscious selves of such people have refused to make decisions. The conscious self has retreated into a self-made fortress and it has assigned the ego as a guard. The role of the ego is to build fortress walls that are impenetrable to anything that would require the conscious self to wake up and start making decisions again. Of course, as the medieval castles proved, any fortress built to keep the world out, will also keep its inhabitants in, thus becoming a prison.

The inevitable result is that the ego will act as a computer that mindlessly carries out its programming, taking the person further and further into the extreme of black-and-white thinking. This will cause the person to be in continuous conflict with other people, and when the conflict becomes extreme enough, the conscious self might finally wake up and realize, “I can’t do this anymore. There must be a better way!”

If the conscious self is willing to take at least some responsibility for its situation, it can now reverse the downward trend, and it can then start the upward path that gradually leads it out of the prison built by the ego. Yet there are three main factors that can impede this growth:

• The mental prison was built as a fortress designed to “defend” the conscious self from having to make decisions. Thus, the conscious self might be emotionally attached to the security and comfortability of the prison. This might manifest as an unwillingness to run the risk of making decisions or as an attachment to the beliefs out of which the fortress is built. It might cling to this security in order to avoid feeling vulnerable.
• The ego wants the conscious self to believe in the lie that if you don’t make any decisions, you can’t make mistakes. Yet the reality is that because you have free will, not making decisions is still making a decision. If you don’t make decisions, you are allowing the ego to make decisions for you. All of the ego’s decisions are mistakes, in the sense that they will not bring you closer to oneness with God.
• The ego’s survival instinct will seek to keep you inside the walls where it feels like it has you and the world under some form of control. So the ego will actively and aggressively seek to prevent you from rising to a new level of the spiritual path.

What do I mean when I talk about rising to a new level of the path? Well, there are many valid ways to divide the spiritual path into levels or stages. In this context, what I am talking about is that you come to the point where you begin to see the fallacy of dualistic thinking. You begin to see the forest itself rather than being blinded by the individual trees. This is when you can begin to consciously reach for the non-dual truth of Christ.

The ego and the forces of this world will mount a major offensive against any person who begins to rise above duality. They will do anything they can think of to keep you trapped in dualistic thinking. Yet their only way of doing this is to use the duality of the mind of anti-christ. However, this is a formidable weapon because it is much more subtle than most spiritual seekers realize.

***

As I explained in the previous discourse, many people have started rising out of extreme selfishness by being converted to a religion that talks about heaven and hell. These are what we normally call religious people, and they are still very much trapped in black-and-white thinking. They are largely unreachable to me, and most of them would reject this website outright.

In today’s world, many people have started seeing the limitations of a black-and-white approach to religion. Some are still members of traditional religions while others seek a more universal spirituality or belong to a New Age organization. Common for all these people is that they have started to rise above the black-and-white, fear-based, judgmental approach to religion. Thus, they are what I call spiritual seekers. They realize there is more to know about the spiritual side of life than what can be found in black-and-white doctrines, and they are actively looking for a higher understanding. These are the kind of people who are open to the teachings that the Ascended Host are bringing forth in this age, whether through this website or other means.

My point is that spiritual seekers represent the greatest potential for turning around planet Earth and bringing humankind to a higher level. The problem is that at the present time this is only a potential. What keeps it from becoming a manifest reality is that too many spiritual seekers have become trapped in a form of dualistic thinking that is so different from black-and-white thinking that people believe it is above duality. Yet in reality, it is simply the opposite extreme of black-and-white thinking.

Here is one concept that I would like all sincere spiritual seekers to understand. You live on a planet that is like a twilight zone. Some spiritual light has started to penetrate the density of humankind’s consciousness. Yet there is still so much darkness left that the light and the darkness can mix into shades of gray that make it very difficult to tell the difference between what is real and unreal. Therefore, the human ego and the prince of this world can still use the subtlety of the duality consciousness to blur the distinction between what is real and unreal.

The result is that there is currently no concept, truth or spiritual teaching on this planet that cannot be perverted by the human ego. The ego will try to turn any idea into a dualistic idea by putting it on a scale with other dualistic ideas—usually by setting up the idea in opposition to another idea. The consequence is that whenever you take a major step forward on the spiritual path, your ego will repeat its never-ending game of seeking to create two extremes and polarize you toward either one. When you come to the realization that you have had enough of one extreme, your ego will instantly try to make you jump into the opposite extreme. The purpose is to prevent you from leaving behind the dualistic way of thinking and rising to a higher plateau by finding the Middle Way.

As I have said, most spiritual seekers have had enough of the black-and-white approach to religion. They are done with the fanaticism and they see the fallacy of the value judgment that “Our religion is the only true one and thus we are always right and those who disagree with us are bad people and will go to hell.” Most of them have distanced themselves from this approach, which is a step in the right direction. The problem is that the ego will try to make such people go into the opposite extreme, and in too many cases it is successful.

What is the opposite extreme of black-and-white thinking? It is a form of thinking in which nothing is black and white because everything is gray. This gives rise to a number of problems, but let me briefly outline the main ones:

• Religious people tend to think there is only one true religion—their own, which inevitably leads to religious intolerance. Spiritual seekers have distanced themselves from religious intolerance, but many have come to believe that religious tolerance means you must accept all religions as equally valid, meaning that you don’t need to evaluate whether an idea is true or false. Just believe and let believe.
• Many religious people are judgmental and intolerant toward members of other religions. Most spiritual seekers make it a virtue to be non-judgmental, but the extreme outcome is that they see almost any type of belief or behavior as acceptable. Or at least they think you should never speak out against other people’s beliefs or behavior.
• Many religious people feel threatened by those who disagree with them and often respond with hostility and anger. Obviously, this prevents them from following my command to love one-another as I love them—which leads to hypocrisy. They claim to be Christians, but they don’t act lovingly. Most spiritual seekers see through such hypocrisy and are sincerely striving to be loving toward everyone. However, they also believe that being loving means you should be gentle and never challenge people’s illusions.

The net outcome of this approach is that many spiritual seekers have come to believe that in order to do God’s work and raise the consciousness of the planet, they simply have to avoid the obvious extremism of black-and-white thinking. They think it is enough to be tolerant and loving, but they do not see that this is simply another fortress built to prevent their conscious selves from making its own decisions. They do not realize that the ego that used to be judgmental when – in past lives – they were trapped in black-and-white thinking, has now morphed into an ego that is loving and kind toward everyone. Instead of truly overcoming their egos, they have allowed the chameleon of the ego to change color so that it blends in with their new world view, where being gray has become a virtue that is seen as being superior to being black-and-white. Let us take a closer look at the points raised above.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book: Master Keys to Personal Christhoood.

Copyright © 2008 Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

In this and the next keys we will tackle the spiritual poison of ignorance. The Buddha who is the antidote for this poison is named Vairochana and his wisdom is the All-pervading Wisdom. His mantra is:

OM VAIROCHANA OM

Use it as you study the following teachings.

Ignorance might seem to be the first hurdle you have to overcome before you can begin walking the spiritual path. After all, when you look at humanity, you see that most people are ignorant of the spiritual path. They either deny the existence of God or they follow – blindly – a mainstream religion that promises the outer path to salvation instead of the true inner path. So why didn’t I start out by talking about the poison of ignorance? Well, the reason is that there are layers of ignorance. Those who are open to this course are not new to the spiritual path, so they have usually overcome the outer or innocent ignorance that affects most people on this planet. We can now define two layers of ignorance:

• Innocent ignorance is when you simply don’t know. You are probably innocently ignorant of the latest discoveries of quantum physics, for example.
• Sophisticated ignorance is when you actually know something in the higher part of your being, but your conscious mind refuses to recognize it or to make the choices that follow from your knowledge. In a sense we can say that you do know better, but you refuse to do better. A practical example is that all people know smoking is dangerous to your health but some people continue to smoke anyway.

Why do I still call this ignorance? Because the conscious self really would do better if it truly knew better—if it consciously saw how it is refusing to acknowledge what it knows and how this is hurting itself. The problem is that the conscious self has come to believe in one or several of the dualistic illusions, and thus the conscious self cannot “see” that it actually knows better. So we might say that sophisticated ignorance is when you actually know better but you are not consciously acknowledging this. You have not actually seen the beam in your own eye, or you have not seen it for what it is.

You now see why I have started out by talking about the more obvious spiritual poisons, saving the more subtle poison of sophisticated ignorance until you had cleared away some of the energies that are covering over the deeper ignorance. Thus, we now have the foundation – provided you have actually done the exercises in the previous keys – for tackling sophisticated ignorance.

***

The problem with sophisticated ignorance is not that it causes people to know nothing. The problem is that it causes people to think that whatever they know – be it much or little – is all they need to know or all there is to know. Thus, they are not open to expanding or transcending their mental boxes, which means they have shut themselves off from the spiritual teachers of humankind. They think they know so much that they can safely reject the Living Christ, when he or she comes to free them from their mental prisons. This ignorance can, however, take two distinct forms, meaning that it leads to two distinct forms of thinking. We will tackle them in this and the next key, and I want you to begin by reading an excerpt from my website. You might have read this before, but I ask you to study it again with the deeper understanding you have as a result of following this course. You are bound to see deeper layers of understanding.

Why the ego wants you to think the world is black and white

The most obvious example of the ego’s relativistic, dualistic way of thinking is what I prefer to call black-and-white thinking. This plot by the ego makes blatant use of the basic duality built into the mind of anti-christ. It defines two opposites that are opposites in every way, meaning that there is no overlap or potential for compromise. There is no gray zone because the opposites cannot coexist but must cancel out each other—or so it seems. One opposite is defined as being absolutely good and the other is defined as being absolutely evil, thus setting up an inevitable, to-the-death struggle between them.

The ego makes people believe that the only way for them to please God and be saved is to take the side of good and to fight against evil. An extreme outcome of this scenario is the definition of two religions or ideologies that both claim to be the only true one, making their respective followers believe it is their duty to fight the other. The ultimate triumph of the prince of this world is to get two groups of religious people to kill each other in the name of the same God, as for example in the Crusades.

The result of this ego-manipulation is that people adopt a very simplistic view of the world. Their religion is completely true and all others are completely false. There is no room for any nuances in between, which means that people almost inevitably become extremists and fanatics. This is a very easy approach to life because it really does not require people to think for themselves. They simply accept the definitions created by the leaders of their society without making any personal attempts to discern whether their leaders are right according to the Christ standard. They believe these leaders are absolutely right and that God himself would agree with them.

The consequence of this approach to life is that once people have accepted that a particular belief system is absolutely good, they will never question it. Thus, they will blindly follow what the leaders of their religion have defined as absolutely right, and this has led to some of the worst atrocities in history. I described this scenario as follows:

Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch. (Matthew 15:14)

Yet instead of leaving the blind leaders alone, people follow them uncritically. They never question that the black-and-white definition of life might not be in alignment with God’s truth. As a result, many people have spent one or more lifetimes engaging all of their energy and attention in this dualistic struggle between two relative opposites. Such people have defined an enemy or scapegoat and they believe they must do God’s work by destroying the enemy.

As long as people are trapped in this extreme form of black-and-white thinking, they are absolutely convinced that they are working for good and will be saved. Yet the stark reality is that everything they do to fight the self-defined enemy only serves to trap them more firmly in the dualistic state of consciousness. This obviously prevents them from putting on the wedding garment of the Christ consciousness, that is the only way to enter Heaven.

It can be extremely difficult for extremists to admit that they are wrong. They cannot admit that what they have seen as a work for God has not promoted God’s cause but has only served to reinforce the dualistic struggle created by the forces of anti-christ. Such people tend to become very defensive and hostile toward anyone who questions the validity of their approach. This is why the scribes and the Pharisees wanted me dead and why some people in today’s world become fanatical in defending their “truth.”

The sad fact is that such people are unapproachable for a spiritual teacher. You see this illustrated in how the scribes and Pharisees rejected my attempts to show them the higher Way of Christ. They literally used their black-and-white viewpoints to justify rejecting the Living Christ, meaning that they had put their own graven image before the Living God. They used a relative image to justify not reaching for the direct experience of God’s absolute reality—the experience I came to offer to all who were willing to lose their mortal sense of identity for my sake.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book: Master Keys to Personal Christhoood.

Copyright © 2008 Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

In this key, we will deal with the spiritual poison of pride, specifically spiritual and intellectual pride. The Buddha who is the antidote to pride is called Ratnasambhava and his wisdom is the wisdom of equality. His mantra is:

OM RATNASAMBHAVA TRAM

Again, tune in to the Buddha as you study this lesson, and repeat his mantra as you deal with the energies and the illusions of pride.

What exactly is pride? It is the sense that you don’t need to look at the beam in your own eye, or even the belief that there is not – and could not possibly be – anything to look for. In other words, it is the sense that you don’t need to change, don’t need to grow, don’t need to self-transcend, for you have reached some kind of ultimate stage from which progress is neither possible nor necessary. It is the sense that you are already saved and thus have no need to transcend yourself in order to qualify for salvation. It is the sense that – because of some criteria in this world – you are superior to others—even in the eyes of God.

Yet if all beings are created out of God’s Being, then would that not mean all are created with equal value in the eyes of God? For how could one extension of the Infinite be superior to another extension of the Infinite—how can there be comparisons in infinity? Thus, we see that pride springs from an illusion, from ignorance. The most prideful people are simply the most ignorant. This does not mean they know the least in this world—it means they do not know the reality of who they are and where they come from. Thus, contemplate the wisdom of equality, which says all beings came from the One God who is the All in all.

Pride is one of the most dangerous of all traps on the spiritual path because it primarily affects those who have started to mature. These are people who are ready to start the path to personal Christhood, but they are too often diverted into the blind alley of pride, in which they think they are very religious or spiritual. They think they are doing everything God wants them to do in this world and that they have already qualified for their entry into the next world. Thus, they refuse to grow any further, and – as I might have mentioned – continual growth, perpetual self-transcendence is the essence of Christhood. So pride has the effect of taking some of the more mature students and diverting them from the path of Christhood—just as they are getting ready to truly follow that path.

The net effect of pride is that it makes a person unreachable to a true spiritual teacher—the person is not teachable. People who are blinded by pride often take one of the following approaches:

• They reject a true spiritual teacher based on some criteria defined by their outer religion. This is why the scribes and Pharisees rejected me.
• They reject a true teacher based on a set of criteria defined in this world but outside religion. One example is materialistic science which denies the existence of the spiritual realm and thus denies the existence of spiritual teachers or the need for them.
• They reject a true teacher based on a set of personal criteria, which often makes them believe they are so sophisticated that they don’t need a specific teacher because he or she doesn’t live up to their standard for how the perfect teacher should be.
• They reject the need to follow any teacher and believe they don’t need a teacher.
• They follow one of the many false teachers, elevating him or her to some ultimate status by idolizing the teacher.
• They reject a true spiritual teacher because they are not willing to look at the beam in their own eyes. A true spiritual teacher tells the students what they need to hear, what they cannot see because their vision is blocked by the ego.
• They follow a false teacher who tells them exactly what their egos want to hear—which makes them feel they are more special than other people.

Take note that people who are affected by pride are not completely ignorant or blind. Many of them have a sophisticated understanding of the spiritual path, and many of them can recognize the Living Christ in some form. Yet pride is the main reason why people fail the second challenge of Christ, namely whether you will allow the Living Christ to take you beyond the dualistic illusions of the ego or whether you will cling to those illusions and seek to force the living Christ into the mold. This is what Peter did, and based on that you might reason that Peter exemplifies a person who is affected by pride. Thus, the church based on Peter is likewise deeply affected by pride, which can be seen by its unwillingness to change and its failure to recognize its own shortcomings.

***

My esteemed colleague, Master MORE, has a saying, “If people knew better, they would do better.” Thus, the essence of the spiritual path is to strive to get to know better. When you have an “Aha” experience and suddenly know better – thus having used the “Key of Knowledge” – you will effortlessly do better. You will have removed the beam from your own eye, and thus you will spontaneously do what you see as being in your own best interest.

The problem is that pride prevents people from getting to know better because it makes them think they already know better. They think they know all they need to know, even all there is to know. And if you are not willing to know better, how can you possibly do better? This becomes another catch-22 that closes people’s minds and prevents them from having the openness that is the foundation for an “Aha experience.” That is why I said:

Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:3)

This is what Zen Buddhists call the “beginner’s mind” and without it you have no opening for escaping the duality consciousness. Do you see that pride closes off the beginner’s mind by making you think you are so sophisticated because you know the things of this world? Yet the things of this world are defined by the duality consciousness, and you cannot use the duality consciousness to escape the duality consciousness.

As I have been saying from the beginning, the essence of the path is that you come to see something that you do not currently see—and only then will you grow. So pride presents one of the greatest challenges for the true spiritual teachers of humankind. For how can you help students see what they cannot see, when the students believe there is nothing more to be seen or when they are unwilling to consider the need to look for even a splinter in their own eyes?

The unfortunate reality is that most students affected by pride leave off the true path of divine direction and thus join the school of hard knocks. Only when the knocks become so hard that their pride can no longer ignore or explain them away, do they wake up to the need to look in the mirror and change themselves. And even then, some do not truly get back on the true path. They only seek to make the minimal changes required to avoid the worst of the hard knocks. Thus, they seek to maintain their prideful, separate outlook on life instead of sincerely abandoning it and making themselves open to learning from the true teachers. I would like to see that anyone who studies this course escapes the trap of pride, but it is not my choice to make—it is yours.

Am I hereby hinting that all people are affected by pride? Well, here is a good working hypothesis: If you are on Earth studying this course, you are affected by pride. For if you were not affected by pride, you would be up here with me.

The brutal fact is that although you might not have personal pride, it is difficult to be in embodiment without being affected by the collective pride that hangs over this planet like a gray cloud—the gray fog of ignorance that makes it hard to distinguish between reality and unreality. So even if you have overcome personal pride, you have likely taken on a portion of the collective consciousness. In any event, pride will be a temptation for as long as you have not permanently ascended, so the wise disciple is always on the lookout for the subtle energies of pride.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book: Master Keys to Personal Christhoood.

Copyright © 2008 Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

In this key we will deal with the spiritual poison of envy and jealousy. The Dhyani Buddha who is the antidote to this poison is called Amogasiddhi. His wisdom is the all-accomplishing wisdom and his mantra is:

OM AMOGASIDDHI AH

As you study this key, tune in to the Buddha and repeat his mantra when you feel the energies we are dealing with.

As you will have learned by now, every human quality is the perversion of a divine quality, and the divine quality that corresponds to envy and jealousy is the desire to do well, the desire to achieve victory. There is a certain irony to the fact that the students who are most susceptible to envy and jealousy are the ones who have the greatest desire to do well. In other words, these are the most eager and dedicated students, the ones who truly want to follow their spiritual teacher and meet all requirements on the path. The problem comes in when these beings develop an attachment to doing well, an unbalanced desire to do well, an attachment to measuring “doing well” by the results achieved in this world.

Where does an imbalance come from? You will have realized by now that any imbalance comes from the illusion of separation. This illusion creates a “space” or distance between your conscious self and your Creator, which inevitably leads to fear—the fear that you could be lost. It is in this space, this no-God’s land of fear, that the consciousness of anti-christ can exist and give rise to countless illusions that are designed to hide the basic fact that no part of God can be apart from God.

Since you are now beyond the beginning stages of this course, let me go right to the core of the issue. God is infinite, in fact a better word for God would be “The Infinite.” Your conscious self is an individualization of the infinite Creator. As such, you are both infinite and an individual. As we have said, the conscious self is what it thinks it is. Your conscious self is created as an individual being, and as such it will look at the world from the perspective of an individual being. We might say that your conscious self is the Creator looking at creation from a particular vantage point—instead of the overall, omnipresent perspective of the Creator. God is looking at the world from the inside—through the prism of your identity. Because of that, the conscious self has the ability to instantly switch its perspective and see the overall perspective of the Creator.

Imagine that you are standing on a tall hill and have a commanding panoramic view. You now put a pair of strong binoculars in front of your eyes. Suddenly, you cannot see most of the view but see only a small slice of the whole. Furthermore, what you see is greatly magnified and thus seems more important. Yet you still have the potential to remove the binoculars and take in the entire view. The conscious self can always switch its perspective and see the world from God’s perspective—it is often called a mystical experience but there is nothing mystical about it. It only seems mystical because most people have forgotten they are more than their separate selves, and thus they think they can see the world only through the “binoculars” of the separate self. Originally – meaning before you fell into duality – these binoculars showed simply a magnified view of reality. However, after you became influenced by duality, your personal binoculars showed a distorted or colored view of everything.

The conscious self can – so to speak – merge itself back into the Infinite from which it emerged—without losing its individuality. It can be both infinite and an individual at the same time—it can know that it IS the Infinite expressing itself through an individual identity. It is the Infinite expressing itself in the finite world. The importance of this is, of course, that when the conscious self knows that it is one with the Infinite, it can never be trapped in the illusion of separation. For the very nature of this illusion is that there is a finite world that is either set apart from God or is all that exists. When the conscious self believes in this illusion, it feels trapped in the finite world, and it then becomes vulnerable to all kinds of illusions for how to avoid this sense of being trapped—including the illusion that it needs to be better than other beings.

In reality, the only true antidote is the realization that although you live in a world that appears to be finite, even the finite world is created from the infinite energy and Being of the Creator. Thus, nothing is truly separated from the Infinite, which means there is no reason to feel trapped in the finite world. Simply go into the kingdom of the Infinite that is within you and reconnect to your true Being. When you realize you are an expression of the Infinite, how can you feel trapped in the finite world? For you will no longer believe in the illusion of separation, namely that the finite world is separated from God or that there is no God. Instead, you will do what you came for, namely to let the Infinite express its infinity through you, thereby bringing the finite world closer to infinity.

***

As Maitreya explains, a new lifestream is naturally focused on exploring its individuality, especially as it relates to expressing its creative abilities in the world where it is born. Yet a new lifestream always starts in a cosmic schoolroom under the tutelage of a spiritual teacher. Thus, a new lifestream has some awareness that it is part of something greater than the individual self and it has the loving guidance of an enlightened teacher. The goal of the teacher is to take the lifestream to the point where it becomes spiritually self-sufficient by becoming one with the Infinite—which is what some call enlightenment. Enlightenment means true self-knowledge, meaning that you fully know and accept that you are the Infinite expressing itself – through the prism of individuality – in the finite world.

The reason why you are not enlightened and why you are studying this course in Christhood is that you have come to believe in the illusion of separation. This illusion creates the sense that there is a gap between the conscious self and the Infinite, and this makes it seem like your individuality is what sets you apart from God, rather than making you a facet of the diamond of God’s Being. In other words, when you believe in the illusion of separation, your individuality becomes a stumbling block that makes you think you are separated from God or that you will have to lose your individuality in order to become one with God (as some unenlightened teachers teach). In other words, you now begin to believe that individuality is synonymous with separation—that your individuality sets you apart from the Infinite and from other individualizations of the Infinite.

My point here is that in every spiritual school there are always some students who want to do well and some that are a bit more easy-going. When those who want to do well begin to believe in the illusion of separation, they become susceptible to three of the main illusions created by the consciousness of anti-christ:

• You are a separate being living in a world with other separate beings. You have your free will, but so do all other beings. And since their will is separate from your will, it is possible that they will do something that hurts you or makes you look bad in the eyes of the teacher/God. In other words, free will means separate wills that can only create conflict.
• By becoming focused on your own separation from others, it becomes very easy to believe in the need to compare yourself to others. In other words, in order to do well and impress the teacher, you need to do better than others. This gives rise to the sense of competition and the need to rise above others—the desire to be a favorite son.
• When you believe in the illusion of separation, you inevitably come to focus attention on the material world. Thus, you become susceptible to the basic illusion of the outer path, namely that you gain entry into the kingdom of God by doing something in this world. In other words, the way to impress the teacher – the key to “doing well” or being saved – is to achieve certain results in this world. Of course, almost anything you can achieve in this world will depend on the choices of other beings, and this opens up another level of not simply competition but the need to control others. Some beings now become trapped in the further illusion that in order to make themselves look better than others, they not only have to raise up themselves, they also have to keep others down. Instead of focusing on bettering themselves, some beings now begin to focus on holding back others. And thus, the ongoing dualistic struggle is born.

***

When a being begins to believe in the illusion of separation and the dualistic illusions described above, that being now begins to believe that comparisons are not only possible but necessary. Do you truly understand what I just said?

Your outer mind has been programmed for your entire life – even for lifetimes – to believe in comparisons and to – automatically and without conscious thought – perform comparisons of many different kinds. You have grown up in a society that is based on and encourages the consciousness of comparisons, from grades in school to the social status or wealth of your parents to the importance of your nation or religion compared to others. In other words, your outer mind is so thoroughly programmed to engage in comparisons in the material world that it will require a major effort for your conscious self to disentangle itself from this consciousness – this energy vortex, this black hole – of comparisons.

As a student of the Living Christ, you are walking the path toward absolute spiritual freedom, and one aspect of this is that you rise above the consciousness of comparisons. Why is this important? Well, it should be fairly obvious that if you are to escape the spiritual poison of envy and jealousy, you have to rise above the illusion of comparison. For is it not obvious that envy springs from the illusion that it is possible or relevant to compare yourself to other people or to some standard defined in this world? If there is no comparison, how could there be a basis for envy?

Now consider the commonly known fact that although a snowstorm may produce billions of snowflakes, no two of them are alike. This has two implications that are relevant for our discussion. One is that a snowflake is a relatively simple structure. A co-creator with God is an almost infinitely more complex “structure” than a snowflake. In other words, the potential to create individual uniqueness is far higher in a complex than a simple structure. So if God can create individual uniqueness in as simple of a structure as snowflakes, do you see that it is far easier for God to create uniqueness in co-creators? My point being that you are created as an absolutely unique individual. There is no one like you in the entire world of form. You have the potential to bring a gift to planet Earth that no other being could bring. You are truly unique.

Now for the second point. Imagine you meet a scientist who has made it his life’s work to study snowflakes. This isn’t necessarily odd, but this scientist has taken his study in a peculiar direction. He has set up an entire system for comparing snowflakes and classifying them into “good” and “bad” flakes. He has created a scale upon which the value of snowflakes can be measured, and at the top of the scale is the perfect snowflake, which it is his life’s goal to discover. Thus, he spends his entire life on a quest that is not aimed at helping humankind make better use of snow but is aimed entirely at finding the perfect snowflake and sorting snowflakes based on his self-created scale of value.

You would probably think this was an odd way to spend your life, and there are several reasons for this. One is that it is not a useful activity—it doesn’t have any practical value that helps improve life on this planet. Another is that it is an impossible quest. When you think about it, you realize that snowflakes are unique, so what is the point of comparing them? How can you make comparisons between objects that are unique? And what is the point of assigning values to something like snowflakes? Can you really talk about good and bad snowflakes? And how could there be a perfect snowflake when they are all unique, since perfection implies a comparison to something imperfect?

Well, what is the point in making comparisons between people, when each person is a unique individual? What is the point in assigning values to people’s uniqueness? And can you really talk about good and bad people according to some standard in this world? Is there any value judgment in the mind of God—who, after all, created all co-creators as unique individuals?

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book: Master Keys to Personal Christhoood.

Copyright © 2008 Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

In this key we will deal with the spiritual poison of anger. The Dhyani Buddha who is the antidote to this poison is called Akshobya. His wisdom is the mirror-like wisdom and his mantra is:

OM AKSHOBYA HUM

As you study this key, tune in to the Buddha and repeat the mantra when you feel the poison of anger.

You should have learned something important from the last key. As a spiritual person, you obviously cannot allow your life to be controlled by cravings for the things of this world – you cannot serve God and mammon – and thus, from a certain viewpoint, one might say that you need to get rid of cravings. Yet as I showed you, it is not a matter of eradicating desires completely. For if you did so, what would be the point of you being in embodiment? You would actually be aborting the very purpose that brought you into this world, namely your higher self’s desire to co-create with God, thus manifesting God’s kingdom in the material world.

I also taught you about the four levels of your mind that correspond to the four levels of the material universe. I told you about the flow of spiritual energy through your four lower bodies. I told you about the higher purpose of raising up the material universe to the level of the kingdom of God, which can only be done by a critical mass of people becoming the open doors for God’s light to stream through the four levels of their minds. So the last thing you want to do is to shut off this flow, and if you uncritically tried to extinguish all desires, you would be doing just that—stopping the flow of God’s light through your energy field, the flow that springs from the deity’s siring to be more through you.

As a spiritual person, you would probably say that anger is wrong, and it is something you need to get rid of. However, what I have been telling you is that human cravings are perversions of God’s own desires. Thus, is it not likely that anger is also the perversion of a divine quality? And if you were to remove—not simply anger but the divine quality behind it, you would end up being completely passive?

Take note of what I am saying. Many spiritual seekers have an image that being truly spiritual means to be completely at peace, perhaps by sitting in a cave in the Himalayas and mediating on God 24 hours a day. I am not saying there is anything wrong with some people doing just that, but if you have been attracted to this course, it is most likely because part of your divine plan is to perform some active service to improve society. And you will not fulfill that purpose by making yourself completely passive.

Take a look at my life and see how I – in many instances – displayed something that could easily be interpreted as anger. See how I challenged the scribes and Pharisees and how I overturned the tables of the moneychangers in the temple. These were not the actions of a pacifist, in fact some have said they were not the actions of a spiritual master. However, here is where it is necessary to discern between various aspects of spiritual mastery.

To exemplify this, look at the difference between the Buddha and the Christ. What is your image of the Buddha? Is it not that of a spiritual master who sits in quiet contemplation and has withdrawn from the hustle and bustle of the world? And what is your image of Christ? Well, because Christianity has been so perverted, it is most likely the image of me hanging on the cross—the image that has been splashed in front of people’s vision for almost 2,000 years. However, look behind that image. Why was I crucified? Was it not because I did not withdraw from the world but went out into the world to awaken the people and challenge the power elite who controlled them? I went out into the world to challenge the world’s self-image by demonstrating that there is more to being human than the death consciousness.

I have talked about the Alpha and Omega aspect of God, and you now see that the Buddha represents the Alpha or father aspect, whereas the Christ represents the Omega or mother aspect. The Buddha withdraws from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, sits in complete peace and lets people come to him. However, who can come to the Buddha? Only those who are not completely trapped in the struggle of life. So how can those who are too overwhelmed by the struggle to even seek the Buddha be saved? Someone has to go where they are and show them that there is a way out of the struggle—and that is precisely the role of the Christ.

Do you see that both are expressions of spiritual mastery? It is not that one is right and one is wrong. It is not that one is better than the other. They are both equally valid and equally important—they are simply the two sides of the coin of spiritual mastery. God sends the Buddha to awaken those who can follow the path on their own and God sends the Christ to awaken those who cannot follow the path on their own. The Buddha is focused within, focused on the mind itself and on the spiritual world beyond this world. The Christ is focused without, focused on helping people improve this world. I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly—not tomorrow, not in the next world, but now, in this world. For the kingdom of God is at hand!

It is possible that you are meant to live the path of the Buddha, but if so I can assure you that this will become clear as you follow the path to Christhood. Yet because you have been attracted to this course, it is more likely that you are meant to exemplify the path of Christ, which is why this is a good working hypothesis for you. However, in the end, both paths lead to the same point of oneness with your source. In fact, only those who have walked the path of Christ will be able to truly become one with the Buddha—to become the Buddha.

Now, I am not trying to imply that the Buddha is a pacifist or is passive. What I am saying is that many spiritual people have adopted the mental image that in order to be truly spiritual, they have to sit passively in meditation and never rock the boat. And that is a viewpoint which for many people is detrimental to the fulfillment of their divine plans. As we will discuss in greater depth later, walking the path to Christhood will not pacify you, nor will it require you to withdraw from the world. As I said:

For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world through him might be saved. (John 3:17)

The purpose of the Living Christ is to awaken the world from the consciousness of death, and that can be done only by going into the hustle and bustle of the marketplace in order to demonstrate to people that there is a higher way. What has that got to do with anger?

When you step back and look at humankind from an overall perspective, you see that the one word that characterizes life on Earth is the word “struggle.” The Buddha said that one of the four noble truths is that life is a struggle. He also said that struggle is born from wrong desire. Well, wrong desire is a desire that springs from the duality consciousness, and as I have mentioned, this consciousness always has two opposites that are locked in a never-ending struggle. So we might say that the death consciousness has changed this planet from its original design – that was meant to give all people the abundant life – and has turned it into a giant struggle in which people are constantly battling each other, even battling the planet that gives them life.

Thus, we might say that there is a magnetic or gravitational force that is constantly pulling on your mind for the one purpose of somehow getting you to engage in this never-ending, pointless dualistic struggle. The cravings we talked about in the previous key is one way to pull you into the struggle by getting you to seek the fulfillment of desires that can never be satisfied. Yet there are many other ways, and one of the most effective ones is precisely anger. Thus, if you are to fulfill your Christ potential – by going into the marketplace to show people that there is a higher way – you absolutely have to overcome anger. For if you do not, you are sure to be pulled into the dualistic struggle by fighting for some cause or another, as has happened to many well-meaning people over the course of history. This is precisely one of the reasons why I said that until you pull the beam from your own eye, you cannot see clearly how to help others. So let us take a closer look at where anger comes from.

***

In order to illustrate the origin of anger, let me ask you to do something for me. Please go to your filing cabinet, or wherever you keep important legal papers, and pull out your Life Contract. This is the contract – signed by God – which specifies your rights as a human being on Earth, such as what you can expect from life, what you are entitled to have and what you are entitled not to experience. I would like to go over that contract with you, so please go get it.

What was that? You are saying you don’t have any contract signed by God? Hmm? Well, then how come 99.9 percent of humanity respond to life as if they did have a contract from the highest authority, saying they are entitled to this and should never experience that? The result being, that when life does not meet their expectations, they get angry, often even blaming God for their problems!

Do you see what I am getting at? The origin of anger is your expectations about life. Now, the Buddha said that the cause of suffering is wrong desire, so one might think that the cause of anger is wrong expectations. But I will go one step further and state that the cause of anger is any expectation. Am I saying you should have no expectations about life? Precisely!

When you understand the reality of life on Earth, you know what kind of planet you live on, and thus you see the wisdom in not expecting anything! As the Living Christ you have no use for expectations, for you simply take life as it comes and respond to any situation in a way that will raise up all life.

I know this will require a major adjustment of your thinking, because from the cradle you have been programmed to have expectations about life. Some of these expectations may seem innocent, even reasonable or necessary, but I assure you that they are not. Don’t be fooled by the fact that almost everyone has expectations about life, for have I not told you that almost everyone is trapped in the death consciousness? I know that many of your expectations have been taken over from parents or other people who had the best of intentions. I am not saying these are bad people. I am simply saying that today we have a situation on this planet where almost all people are blinded by the death consciousness, and thus they have accepted expectations that spring from that consciousness. And if you trace those seemingly innocent expectations back to their origin, you will see that they were deliberately crafted for the purpose of controlling people by manipulating them into a self-debilitating, disempowering response to life.

What is the nature of an expectation? An expectation is a mental image of how life should, or should not, unfold. Right there, you see that an expectation is separated from reality. There is a division, a space, between reality and the mental image that causes the expectation.

This should cause alarm bells to ring, because you are beginning to understand that the consciousness of death, the consciousness of anti-christ, is born from a separation from God’s reality. As Maitreya explains in great detail in his book, the consciousness of Christ sees the reality of God, whereas the consciousness of anti-christ cannot see this reality. The consequence is that the consciousness of anti-christ sees only mental images that are created out of the separation from reality, meaning that they are all illusions. Once you are separated from reality, you see only illusions—mirages.

An expectation is always separated from reality. Why is this so? Because an expectation is about a future event that has not yet come to pass—it is about something that has not yet become reality. Thus, when the event actually happens, you are perceiving reality and have no need for an expectation. As an example, say you check the weather forecast at night and they promise sunny weather the next day. So you go to sleep expecting that you will wake up to a sunny day. Yet that expectation is only a mental image of what might happen at some future time. When you wake up and look out the window, you are perceiving the actual weather, so now you have no need for an expectation. You have direct perception of reality instead of a mental image.

I am sure you will agree that expecting sunny weather has little impact on the actual weather. So your expectation will have no influence on whether it will be sunny or cloudy in the morning. Yet your expectation does have an impact on whether it will be sunny or cloudy inside your own mind. If you expect sunshine but wake up to a cloudy day, you might have some kind of negative reaction, possibly even a reaction that puts you in a bad mood for the rest of the day. Do you see what I am saying? An expectation has no positive impact on what will actually happen in the world outside of you, but it has a potentially negative impact on what will happen inside of you.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book: Master Keys to Personal Christhoood.

Copyright © 2008 Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

In this and the following keys I will address some of the more obvious blocks that prevent you from being in the natural state of having God’s wisdom and love flowing through your being. As you will see, these blocks are very much human in nature, and we might consider them kindergarten stuff for a sincere spiritual seeker. Yet there is great value in going over them with me, for these human conditions have inundated the collective consciousness. Unless you have a deeper understanding of them, it can be difficult for you to free yourself completely from all remnants of them. And I might say that unless you do free yourself completely from them, you will not attain ultimate freedom. Indeed, many sincere spiritual seekers have become stuck at a certain level precisely because they have not completely overcome one of these basic blocks. Thus, it is time to let them go, for you cannot pursue the path to Christhood while being burdened by these toxins.

In order to address the blocks, I need to give you some basic information. Some readers will already know this, but I need to make sure that all are on the same page. First of all, you need to have a clear understanding of your energy field. As you know from science, Einstein’s theory of relativity states that the world is not made up of two separate substances, namely matter and energy. Einstein discovered that everything is energy, and by doing so he broke down the barrier between mind and matter. Energy is a more fundamental element than matter, which proves that thoughts are more fundamental than matter. This one realization is the foundation for all of my so-called miracles. Science has consistently proven that the more fundamental elements have power over the grosser elements. For example, all matter is made of subatomic particles, so the laws that work at the level of these particles have a fundamental influence on what form anything in the material universe can take.

Let me give a more visual example. You can carve a block of wood, and there are certain laws that guide how you work with wood, such as not cutting against the grain. Yet these laws function within a larger framework, namely the laws that guide how wood is formed at the molecular level. And these laws function within an even larger framework, namely the subatomic level, where pure energy is transformed into subatomic particles that can take on the form of any matter substance known on Earth. Do you see what I am saying? The same subatomic particles can form both wood, metal, water and air molecules. Thus, you see that all visible phenomena are created from a deeper underlying reality, which has a fundamental influence on everything in the material universe. Visible phenomena represent the level of effects, and the invisible reality represents the level of the real causes.

My point here is that in order to really change your life, you need to deal with causes and not effects, which means you need to look behind surface appearances. For example, as I said in the last key, many Christians traditionally seek to change certain types of behavior by suppressing them. Yet what I want is for you to go to the cause of these types of behavior and remove the cause – the beam in your own eye – so there is nothing left to suppress. And in order to do that, you need to know where the cause is located.

You need to understand that your total being – your mind – has more than one level. When you perform an action, it involves your physical body, your brain and your conscious mind. Yet you will never understand why you take certain actions by only looking at the brain and the conscious mind. You have no doubt heard the old saying, “Man, know thyself,” and the deeper meaning is that you – man or woman – must know all levels of your mind. You must take command over your container of self.

The basic understanding you need is that your mind is an energy field, and as such it is made up of energies that vibrate at different levels. In fact, there are four main levels of your energy field, which in some esoteric traditions have been called your four lower bodies. However, I prefer to call them the four levels of the mind. They are:

• The outer mind that is closely linked to your physical body. This is the mind where you make conscious decisions and take many actions. This mind is very much affected by the physical brain and your environment, and for some people their conscious awareness is limited to this mind. Yet most spiritual seekers have expanded their conscious awareness to go beyond this mind, which is why they are open to the spiritual side of life. One of the main elements of spiritual growth is to expand one’s conscious awareness beyond the physical mind, thus incorporating all levels of the mind and coming to know your full identity. Yet expansion is not enough, since it must be followed by purification of all levels of the mind.
• The emotional mind. This is obviously the level of your feelings, and as you know, feelings are very volatile and can easily be pointed in this or that direction. The emotional mind is above the outer mind, and thus feelings are a very powerful force for controlling your physical actions. You have experienced that when certain feelings build in intensity, the compulsion to take a certain action overpowers your conscious will. People who are completely controlled by their emotions have very little self-control, and thus they find it extremely difficult to make progress on the spiritual path. The reason being that since the emotional mind is more fundamental than the conscious mind, seeking to consciously suppress feelings is an uphill battle. As a sincere spiritual seeker, you need to attain control over your emotions, and one element of this is to remove the energies that pollute the emotional mind. Another is understanding where feelings originate.
• The mental mind. This is the seat of the intellect and your ability to understand the world. It is here that you analyze everything and can make more level-headed decisions. Ideally, your thoughts should lead to balanced emotions that lead to balanced actions. The problem is that the intellect is an analytical faculty, and I have already explained its inherent weakness. Thus, the intellect can find it difficult to know what is right, and this is what often plunges people into unbalanced emotions. They use the intellect to convince themselves that what they are thinking is right, which then gives them the belief that it is acceptable, necessary or unavoidable that they engage in certain limiting feelings. To overcome this pattern, you need to purify your mental mind from the energies and the dualistic illusions that prevent you from seeing that there is a deeper reality beyond the mental level—a reality that is not a matter of having the best intellectual analysis and argument.
• The identity mind. This is the highest level of your lower being, and it is the seat of your deepest sense of who you are in relation to the material universe (Your spiritual identity is anchored in your I AM Presence and can be accessed only by your conscious self, not by any of the lower minds.). As the most fundamental part of the lower being, the identity mind has a major impact on every aspect of your life, yet most people are unaware of its existence and thus have no control over it. They uncritically accept the sense of identity that is put upon them as they grow up, which then forms the foundation for all of their thoughts, feelings and actions. If people’s identity is based on the consciousness of death, can their thoughts, feelings and actions do anything but follow? Thus, it is essential for a spiritual seeker to become aware of the identity mind and begin to purify it of all mortal elements.

We now need to add the fact that everything in the material universe is made from energy and that visible matter is actually a grosser manifestation of finer or more fundamental energies. Science has discovered how an energy wave can take on the form of a subatomic particle, even switching back and forth between a particle and a wave form. The implication is that beyond the material universe is a realm of finer energies – energies of a higher vibration – and this is, of course, what religious and spiritual teachings for thousands of years have referred to as heaven or the spiritual realm. My point being that the matter universe is created by lowering the vibration of spiritual energy, and thus this world is sustained only by a constant stream of energy from the spiritual into the material spectrum of vibrations. This flow of energy is replicated in the four levels of your mind.

You now see that the ideal state for a human being is that there is nothing to impede the natural flow of energy through the four levels of your mind. The spiritual energy flows from your Higher Being, your I AM Presence, and it first enters your identity mind. Here it is colored by your sense of identity, almost as if it passes through a filter. Yet if your sense of identity is based on your spiritual self, the energy flow will not be diminished but will simply be stepped down in vibration so it can enter the mental mind with full force. Again, the mental mind will color the energy, but if the images in this mind are based on the reality of Christ, the energy flow will not be diminished. It then enters the emotional mind, and if your emotions are pure, they will give the energy a positive direction that will be aimed at raising up all life. This will result in life-supporting actions that enrich both yourself and everyone else.

In the natural state, the energy that flows from your I AM Presence is stepped down and directed by your total being, and this happens in such a way that all life is enhanced. This is the form of life that I came to give all people by helping them reconnect to who they truly are. As I said:

I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. (John 10:10)

When you express your spiritual identity through all of your thoughts, feelings and actions, you multiply the talents and thus God will give you even more creative energy. This is what gives you the truly abundant life.

So what happens when the four levels of your mind are polluted by imperfect beliefs and energies? Well, the natural flow is blocked and your creative power is limited. In reality, most of the energy that flows from your I AM Presence is blocked in your higher bodies and never reaches the level of the physical body, which means there is very little energy available for the person to be creative. In fact, many people have limited the energy flow to the point where there is barely enough to keep the physical body alive. Such people have very little energy left over to express their individuality, and thus they often mindlessly follow the mass consciousness.

How does this happen? Well, if you take God’s energy and use it for selfish purposes, you are obviously not multiplying your talents and thus God has no return current that can be multiplied. You are limited to a certain amount of energy that enters your identity body. As you adopt selfish beliefs – meaning beliefs based on the mind of anti-christ that sees you as a separate being – you create certain blocks in the four levels of your mind.

To give you a visual illustration, compare the flow of energy to the flow of electricity coming into your house, the house being a symbol for the conscious mind. Now imagine that someone sneaks in and hooks up an electrical device to your power line before it enters your house—and that there is only a fixed amount of electricity coming to the house. One device might not make a noticeable difference, but as more and more devices are plugged in, there is not enough power to run everything in your house, so you are forced to shut something down. Furthermore, the devices that are plugged in before your house do not produce any useful output. All of the energy going into them is consumed by their own internal functions and there is nothing coming out that is useful to you or the world. The devices are simply spinning their wheels and producing heat that makes your house too hot for comfort.

My point being that the blocks in the higher levels of the mind are like devices that continually consume energy. As you become increasingly selfish, more and more of the fixed amount that enters your lower being is used up by your internal divisions, thus being blocked from flowing through you. As a result, you use up internally what should have been expressed externally to enrich yourself and all life. This is essentially the process behind what psychologists today call clinical depression. However, it can also lead to all other psychological imbalances, including a constant state of agitation, which is caused by the excess energy that makes your energy field an unpleasant place to be. The symptoms can be varied, and this can account for most psychological problems.

How do you break this self-reinforcing spiral? You do so by purifying the four levels of your mind from the energies that have accumulated there. And to do that, you must also overcome the dualistic beliefs that caused the downward spiral to start. This is the subject of this and the coming keys.

***

Now for another piece of basic information. As you might know, there is no record of my activities between the age of 12 and the age of 30. The last record of my early life is this:

41 Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the passover.

42 And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast.

43 And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and his mother knew not of it.

44 But they, supposing him to have been in the company, went a day’s journey; and they sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance.

45 And when they found him not, they turned back again to Jerusalem, seeking him.

46 And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions.

47 And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers.

48 And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.

49 And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business? (Luke, Chapter 2)

The next record of me is when I appear at the wedding in Cana, turning the water into wine (John 2:1). So what did I do in the meantime? Well, some assume I worked as a carpenter, others that I apparently did nothing, simply sitting around waiting for my mission to start. These assumptions are based on the mainstream Christian idol that says I was God incarnate and thus had to have been born already perfect. Yet is it not more logical to assume that in the 17 “missing” years I was not simply passively waiting for my mission to start but was doing what I said I was going to do, namely being about my Father’s business? And what does that mean? Well, if I knew I had a mission for God, does it not seem logical that I was doing everything possible to prepare myself for that mission? In other words, I was walking the path of Christhood by studying and applying whatever spiritual teachings I could find?

The reality is that I did indeed engage in a pilgrimage of seeking out various spiritual teachings and teachers, and this journey brought me far and wide, from Egypt to India and Tibet. Many Christians vehemently deny this, but they do so because they fail to realize that I did not grow up in the Christian mental box in which they have grown up—there was no Christian mental box at the time. Thus, I was not a Christian, and if you want to put a label on me, you would have to say I was a mystic or a universal spiritual seeker who sought truth wherever it could be found. I knew – as all true mystics do – that God cannot be confined to any of the mental boxes – religious or otherwise – found on Earth. Thus, I knew that in order to prepare myself for my mission, I would have to find the universal spiritual path that runs like an unseen thread behind the world’s outer religions. In fact, I knew that my immediate mission was to teach that path to the Jewish people—and beyond that to all.

During my spiritual journey, I studied – among others – the philosophy of Buddhism, which has many profound teachings and practical tools. In fact, some people have found parallels between my sayings and the sayings of the Buddha, which is not a coincidence. Partly because I did study the teachings of the Buddha and partly because we both drank from the same universal fount of truth. So what I want to do at this point is to introduce a teaching from esoteric Buddhism that relates to the topic of the blocks in your mind.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book: Master Keys to Personal Christhoood.

Copyright © 2008 Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

We have now set a good foundation, and in this key, we will build upon it. I have had you go through the process of coming to a greater understanding of the path to Christhood and deciding to be teachable. I have had you tackle fear and work on loving yourself. Thus, you should now have reached a state of consciousness in which you are open to learning the deeper truths about life. This is a frame of mind in which you are not afraid to look beyond your existing beliefs and in which you are not paralyzed by guilt or a sense of being unworthy or incapable of following the path. Thus, you have the foundation for anchoring yourself on the path, and we now need to take a closer look at what exactly it will take for you to remove yourself from the path taken by most people – the broad way that leads to destruction – and place yourself permanently on the Way of Christ, the strait and narrow way that leads to eternal life.

As the next step, you need to realize that although I clearly want you to be open to receiving a higher understanding of the path, it is not my intention to turn you into a person who only understands the path to Christhood. I have no intention of turning you into a scribe who has the perfect intellectual understanding of how to follow that path but who has not internalized or applied that understanding.

I know I have not given a very flattering view of the scribes and Pharisees, and this might have given you the impression that they were stupid or malevolent people. In reality, most of them were highly intelligent people and they also had the best of intentions. They actually had a sincere desire to do the right thing, and in a sense we can say that they were actually doing the right thing—as they saw it. Yet how could they then fail to recognize the Living Christ and even want him condemned to death? The reason is that the human intellect cannot recognize Christ truth.

The human intellect is an analytical faculty, which means that it is designed to analyze by comparing any idea to what is known to be “true.” In the spiritual field, the analytical mind works by comparing every new idea to a database of what it has defined as true and false ideas. Every new idea must be labeled, so it can fit within the categories defined in the database. Once labeled, it can easily be categorized as true or false, good or evil.

Do you understand the implication of this? The intellect has accepted a database which it believes is accurate, complete, infallible and thus beyond questioning. So if a new idea does not fit into any of the labeled boxes in the database, then it must per definition be false. The consequence is that the intellect can argue for or against any issue in a way that seems perfectly logical and rational to itself. Yet the outcome is predefined by the contents of the database that it uses as a frame of reference.

The problem is, of course, that because the collective consciousness of humankind has been dominated by the duality consciousness for so long, all of the man-made thought systems, all of the databases, are based on the duality consciousness. Thus, the Living Truth of Christ simply will not fit into any of the categories in such religious – or non-religious – databases. This means that people who cling to the security of the database – being unwilling to question it as the absolute frame of reference – will label the truth of Christ as evil or bad, thus being unable to recognize the Living Christ in any form. Consider how the scribes and Pharisees used their database – a particular interpretation of the Jewish belief system – to convince themselves that the truth I stated was of the devil. The only way they could not have reached that conclusion was if they had been willing to question their database, what in modern times is called their paradigms.

Do you see that the purpose of my mission was not to simply bring forth a few new ideas that could take the Jewish religion forward a notch? My purpose was to challenge people to fundamentally change their view of what it means to be human. I was challenging people to rethink the database that they saw as an infallible reference, the paradigm that defined what they thought was possible and impossible for human beings.

My point for bringing this up is to show you that the scribes and Pharisees were not stupid and they were not evil. They were very intelligent people and they were well-meaning. Yet you might have heard the saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The real truth behind that saying is that the road to hell is paved with good intentions that are based on dualistic illusions. In other words, most of the scribes and Pharisees actually had the best of intentions. The problem was that they were so intelligent that they had used their intellects to convince themselves that they were already guaranteed to be saved, and thus they did not need the Living Truth that I brought. They had used their intellects – which could only refer to the database they had elevated to the status of infallibility – to convince themselves that the truth I expressed was not the truth but a lie. They were not willing to let me challenge their sense of equilibrium, in which they felt secure and comfortable because they had intellectually convinced themselves that they were sure to be saved. Thus, they were not willing to look for the beam in their own eyes when I pointed to such a beam.

This is the danger of the human intellect. It convinces people that they do not need to change because they are absolutely right. And this is what makes it possible that people can have a very sophisticated intellectual understanding of the spiritual path, but they nevertheless have not applied that understanding and actually changed their state of consciousness. They have taken certain outer steps, but they have not taken the all-important step of recognizing that there is a beam in their own eye and that they need to take active measures to remove it. Thus, they have used their sophisticated intellectual understanding of spiritual principles to convince themselves – as I explained earlier – that they can be saved without removing the beam, without looking in the mirror. They understand perfectly how others need to change or how “one” in general needs to change, but they have not looked in the mirror and acknowledged that they too need to change.

If you will take an honest look at history, you will see that every religion has had its scribes and Pharisees. If you take an honest look at the spiritual landscape of today, you will see that every spiritual movement has a group of people who think they understand the teaching and thus – because of the outer actions they have taken – they have actually applied the teaching to the fullest. They walk around like peacocks, strutting their superior knowledge and attainment, while in reality they have not even taken the first step onto the real path.

I need you to contemplate that it is perfectly possible for the intellect to use any spiritual teaching expressed in words to create a database and then use it as a justification for not looking for the beam in one’s own eye. Yet I am determined to do everything possible to make sure that you will not be fooled by this subtle temptation, and thus I will give you certain teachings that might seem repetitive, but that nevertheless seek to shave off layers of illusions. You might consider your human identity as an onion that has many layers. If I were to remove all of them at once, you would lose all sense of continuity and experience an identity crisis. Thus, I take off one layer at a time, giving the Conscious You time to adjust to a new identity that is higher than the old one but not so much higher that you lose your bearings.

So what does it actually take to step onto the real path to Christhood? Well, you need to make decisions, but you need to make a special kind of decisions.

***

Take another look at the following passage:

16 And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?

17 And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.

18 He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness,

19 Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

20 The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?

21 Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.

22 But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.

23 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.

24 And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

25 When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved?

26 But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible. (Matthew, Chapter 19)

What is important here is the fact that the young man is telling me that he has followed the outer path all of his life, but now he wants more. I then offer him that more, namely that he can become one of my disciples and follow the path to Christhood. Obviously, I also tell him what is the first requirement he must meet in order to follow me, namely that he lets go of all attachments to anything on Earth.

Take note of a couple of things. One is that when I walked the Earth physically, I only had a short time, and thus I had to set some rather radical demands for those who were my direct disciples. Another is that it really isn’t important that you let go of all your possessions. What is important is that you prioritize the path to Christhood higher than your Earthly possessions. Thus, I was giving this young man a test to see where his priorities were.

My point is that in today’s world, I don’t require my disciples to sell all their material possessions and withdraw from society. On the contrary, I generally prefer my disciples to be integrated in society, so they can demonstrate to others that there is an alternative to the typical materialistic lifestyle, even the typical religious lifestyle.

Yet it is still essential that you set your priorities straight. Why is this so? Because if you give your ego an inch, it will take a mile. If you prioritize anything in this world as being more important than the path to Christhood, your ego will trick you into stopping your progress at a certain point. And you will not progress beyond that point until you decide that you are willing to give up whatever is holding you back.

I am aware that we are at an early point in the course, and you may not yet be ready to give up everything on Earth. Yet I need to plant a seed in your mind so that you can begin to understand just how absolutely ruthless your ego and the prince of this world are in terms of using any opportunity to stop your progress. It is simply a basic fact of life that as long as your priorities and loyalties are divided, you cannot make maximum progress on the path. Here is why:

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. (Matthew 6:24)

Trying to serve the master of this world and the Master of the Living Christ will only make things harder for yourself, for you will be pulled in two opposite directions until something breaks—and that something is you. Incidentally, this is a point very few Christians have understood, for Christianity has been turned into an outer path based on the illusion of Peter, namely that you can be a disciple of Christ without removing the beam from your own eye. Why has Christianity perverted my teachings to the point of literally turning them upside down? Because the influence of the ego and the prince of this world is so subtle that it can use any spiritual teaching to justify the outer path. Yet look at how many attempts I made at explaining the essential, uncompromising nature of the path to Christhood:

19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon Earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (Matthew, Chapter 6)

44 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.

45 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls:

46 Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.

47 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind:

48 Which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away. (Matthew, Chapter 13)

16 And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully:

17 And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits?

18 And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods.

19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.

20 But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?

21 So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God. (Luke, Chapter 12)

24 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.

25 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.

26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

27 For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works. (Matthew, Chapter 16)

Why is the path so uncompromising? Because for your ego, it is a matter of life or death to stop you from walking the path to Christhood! And you know very well that when people are in a survival situation, they will do almost anything to survive. Thus, you should never expect your ego to simply lay down and die. It will fight you every step of the way, and it will exploit any opening you give it. Meaning that as long as you have any attachment to anything on Earth, your ego will use it against you.

The simple fact is that your ego doesn’t actually care about you at all—it only cares about itself. Take note of the following quote:

35 Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying,

36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?

37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. (Matthew, Chapter 22)

The fact is that your ego loves itself with all its heart, soul and mind. Love is an attractive force, so the real factor that decides your progress on the path is the ratio between your ego’s love for itself and the Conscious You’s love for something beyond the ego. You have to decide that you love something more than your ego loves itself. Take note of my statement:

If ye love me, keep my commandments. (John 14:15)

And my foremost commandment was to love God. Now, I am well aware that for many people in the modern world this is difficult because they have been brought up with such a distorted view of God. Yet if you cannot love God, then you must love something else, be it me, another person or your higher self.

And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself (Matthew 22:39)

How can you love your neighbor as yourself unless you also love yourself? Obviously, I am well aware that many spiritual seekers find it difficult to love themselves, yet you have started to overcome this condition, and I will give you further teachings and tools on this. For now I want you to contemplate what is your motivation for wanting to walk the path.

I especially want you to look for a motivation based on love, for if you look deeply enough, you will surely find it. You see, traditional religion has often sought to control people through fear, which has given many people a negative motivation. For example, many Christians seek to be saved because they are afraid of burning forever in hell. Such a negative motivation can be constructive for people in a low state of consciousness, because it can help them change their behavior and turn their lives around. However, a negative motivation will not get you very far on the path of Christhood.

As I explained in the last key, you were designed to have God’s love flowing through you. And that is why I know that when you reconnect to your Higher Being, you will rediscover the positive motivation that made you decide to take embodiment on Earth. That motivation was based on love for something, and it is a stronger love than the ego’s love for itself.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book: Master Keys to Personal Christhoood.

Copyright © 2008 Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

One of the important lessons from Mother Mary’s book is that God has both a masculine and a feminine side. For disciples of the Living Christ, it is extremely important to contemplate and internalize this teaching, especially given the fact that mainstream Christianity has become part of the so-called monotheistic religions that largely ignore or deny the feminine aspect of God. Thus, you have likely been brought up with little understanding of the feminine aspect of God, possibly programmed to ignore or even degrade it. As Mother Mary explains, God the Creator started by dividing itself into two polarities, which I undeniably explained in the Book of Revelation:

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty. (Revelation 1:8)

Everything in the world of form is created from the interplay of these two complementary forces. Yet only when the two forces are in a harmonious balance, will their creation be sustainable. What is designed to balance the two is the Divine Son, namely the Christ mind. This Christ mind has a universal aspect, which unites all life and unites all that is created with the Creator. It also has an individual aspect that can be expressed through any co-creator, even those in embodiment on Earth. I came to demonstrate this potential and also demonstrate that when you become the individual expression of the Christ mind, you become one with both the Creator and with all life. This is embedded in the following quotes:

I and my Father are one. (John 10:30)

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. (Matthew 25:40)

Yet because self-aware beings have been given free will, it is possible that they can create by using the masculine and feminine – expansive and contracting, Alpha and Omega, yang and yin – forces in an unbalanced manner. By doing this, co-creators separate themselves from the oneness of all life, seeking to gain advantage for themselves as separate beings rather than seeking to raise up the All—often seeking to raise themselves in comparison to others.

This, of course, can be done only through the mind of anti-christ, which is a mind that is separated from the oneness of all life – the River of Life – and contains two polarities that do not complement and enhance each other but instead cancel out and diminish each other. This makes it possible that you can use one unbalanced polarity to raise yourself while using the other polarity to degrade others.

My purpose for giving you this teaching is to make you aware that in the realm of anti-christ, there are always two opposing polarities. In the previous key, I have had you invoke the higher will of your own being because overcoming fear must begin with an act of will. However, as I also explained in the last lesson, will power itself cannot banish fear, for only the perfect love will cast out fear. So to fully overcome fear, you must allow the unconditional love of God to flow through you, and thus we also need to address the factors that prevent this love from flowing through your being and expressing itself in the material world.

I have said that fear is dangerous because it paralyzes you, so you dare not move, dare not change. Instead, you cling to status quo, even a status quo that causes constant suffering. And since creation starts with an act of will – I will to create – fear is a perversion of will. Yet there are other paralyzing emotions, or one might say that fear has many expressions. Thus, we will next look at a variant of fear that can stop you from stepping onto the path of Christhood, even though you have recognized the path and started to overcome your fear.

***

If you look at mainstream, especially fundamentalist, Christians, you will see that most of these people would be afraid to contemplate the central idea behind this course, namely that all people have the potential to follow in my footsteps and attain the Christ consciousness. So this is a fear that would prevent them from even acknowledging the path to Christhood. They would deny that other people could follow me – thus denying my own words that those who believe on me shall do the works that I did – and they would say that I did not demonstrate a path to Christhood, for I was born in the fullness of that Christhood.

Obviously, you have overcome this level of fear. Now, I am not saying this to cause any pride or sense that you are better than others, for it is – as we will discuss in a future key – unnecessary to compare yourself to others based on a value judgment that makes you better or worse than others. However, the concept of a path does imply that you go from step to step, so it is valid to realize that you have risen above some of the lower aspects of the consciousness of death. This gives you a sense of momentum that makes it easier for you to overcome the next challenge.

So what is the next challenge? Well, when you have started to overcome the paralyzing aspects of fear and attained some will to experiment with the path to Christhood, you will face the challenge to overcome a set of obstacles that is designed to prevent you from exercising your will. In other words, the most paralyzing fear is meant to prevent you from even attaining the will power to change your life, and the next challenge is meant to prevent you from acting on your determination.

This challenge is the very subtle sense that although you now recognize the path to Christhood as a potential for all people, it doesn’t really apply to you. You simply don’t have what it takes to follow the path. You are not smart enough, spiritual enough or worthy. The path is too overwhelming or complicated for you. You have made this or that mistake in the past, and thus you are not worthy to walk the path. Or what if trying to remove the beam in your own eye exposes some incredibly bad flaw in your personality that makes you feel really guilty? You are simply too inferior—who do you think you are to even contemplate that you could follow in Jesus’ footsteps?

One can characterize all of these feelings as guilt, but as you can see, there are many nuances. The overall theme being that although you now see the path, you are not able or worthy to follow it. In other words, this is an attempt to prevent you from stepping onto the path and accepting yourself as a worthy disciple of the Living Christ.

Where does this attempt come from? It comes from the ego and the consciousness of anti-christ. At this point, you might think of the ego as an active force in your container of self, a force that is always seeking to prevent you from taking the next step on the path of Christhood—because if you do, it will have lost some degree of control over the Conscious You.

In a sense one can say that each step on the path represents a particular illusion or aspect of the ego that the Conscious You needs to overcome. You do so by coming to see it for the illusion that it is, and thus separating yourself from it by realizing that you are MORE than this.

We have now seen that the first step on the path is to overcome the anti-will, and this anti-will is a perversion of the masculine principle. It is God the Father who has the will to create. Yet as I have explained, there are always two polarities, so the masculine perversion of anti-will must have an opposite, or feminine, polarity. And whereas the masculine is the active principle, the feminine is the receiving principle. So the perversion of anti-will is designed to prevent you from receiving that which you are entitled to receive when you have mustered the will to change—namely the help from above that empowers you to change.

As I explained in the last key, you can overcome fear only through the unconditional love of God. This love is beyond any form of love that can be produced in the material realm, so you simply cannot manufacture it on your own. You can only receive it from the spiritual realm, and the perversion of guilt/inferiority is designed to prevent you from accepting that you are capable of or worthy to receive God’s love.

The first line of defense for the ego is to seek to prevent you from gathering the will power to confront your fears. The next line is to seek to prevent you from receiving the perfect love that will fully cast out your fears. In other words, the process of overcoming fear involves both the masculine and feminine aspects. You must gather the will power to confront your fears as a foundation for opening up the flow of love that will truly consume the fears.

Here is where I need you to contemplate something very seriously. If you have grown up in the Western world or in any religion that denies the feminine aspect of God, you have been programmed to approach religion as a passive measure. As I have said, I have been portrayed as the savior who is going to do all the work for you because you are not worthy in yourself. This has programmed you to – subconsciously – deny that you are worthy to receive God’s love. As long as you have this programming in your subconscious mind, you will not be able to receive that love and you cannot fully escape your fears. Thus, we need to dispose of that programming, and how can this be done?

The essential key is to realize the full importance of the statement that everything is created from the interplay of the masculine and feminine forces but that a sustainable creation comes about only when the two forces are balanced by the Christ mind. The consequence of this is that any perversion of the two forces is attained through a perversion of the Christ mind, namely the consciousness of anti-christ. Thus, the key to overcoming any perversion of the two forces is to seek for the reality of Christ, which can expose the illusions of anti-christ and thus empower the Conscious You to separate itself from them. It is the truth – of Christ – that will make you free. With all thy getting, get the understanding of Christ.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book: Master Keys to Personal Christhoood.

Copyright © 2008 Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

Why do I talk about confronting fear rather than overcoming fear? Because you cannot conquer fear through a passive measure! It is not a matter of performing some magical ritual that will automatically make your fear disappear. Fear is the most devastating of all feelings because it paralyzes you, it makes you afraid to move, afraid to change. Thus, there is no measure you can take that will automatically remove your fear. In the end, you will conquer fear only through an act of will, and you are the only person who can release that act of will. In order to do so, you must make a decision. In fact, we might say that your fears all spring from an unwillingness to make decisions.

Take note of the deeper reality here. I have said that the consciousness of anti-christ embodies a duality, a built-in, inescapable contradiction. The consciousness of anti-christ is based on separation from reality, yet what is reality? Reality is that everything is created from God’s Being and energy. As the Gospel of John states, “Without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3). Thus, the underlying reality is that all life is one through its common origin from the Being of God and the Christ mind, the WORD.

The consciousness of anti-christ is separated from reality, and since reality is one, the consciousness of anti-christ cannot be one (or it would be part of reality instead of being apart from it). Obviously, this separation exists only in the minds of self-aware beings who are blinded by the consciousness of anti-christ, and thus it is ultimately an illusion. Yet anything created by such beings will – by its very nature – be based on two opposing and mutually exclusive polarities, which means that it cannot have eternal life. Its internal contradictions will break it down, which is what turns life into a struggle, a constant struggle to maintain that which is in an inescapable process of self-destruction. In a sense one can say that anti-christ is in contradiction to Christ, but it would be more accurate to say that anti-christ is in contradiction to itself. It is in contradiction to the state of Christ in which there is no divisions and thus no contradictions. Much more on this later.

My point here is that for each quality you find in the mind of God – the mind of Christ – there is a perversion in the mind of anti-christ, a perversion with two opposing polarities. When the Creator created the world of form, it had to start with an act of will. In order to change any aspect of your life for the better, you have to start with an act of will. For each step you take on the path of Christhood, you have to start with an act of will. What is the perversion of will power? It is a duality in which one polarity is the tendency to make decisions without considering the whole (selfish decisions, prideful decisions) and the other polarity is fear, the fear of making a decision, the fear of setting in motion a cause. Thus, fear is dangerous precisely because it paralyzes you and prevents you from taking the very first step toward change—making a decision to change! Fear causes you to do nothing, to postpone making a decision, to avoid any decisive actions.

Why are you afraid to make a decision? You are afraid because at some point in the past you accepted an illusion. One example of such an illusion is the belief that if you do not follow the dictates of an external religious authority, you will burn forever in hell. Yet on top of that original illusion, your ego has built another illusion, namely that you must never look at the original illusion, you must accept it as absolutely and unconditionally true. You now have a cumulative effect, for the second fear prevents you from ever looking at the cause of the first fear. Yet what is the key to overcoming the original fear? It is to recognize that it springs from an illusion. And how can you recognize this as long as you are unwilling to make the decision to look at the belief?

This is the central mechanism that makes fear a catch-22 that traps most religious people, and even many spiritual people, in a blind alley where they can stay for a long time. Take note of the reality of the situation. All fear is based on an illusion, namely one of the illusions that spring from the consciousness of death, the mind of anti-christ. An illusion is something unreal, meaning that everything that you fear is ultimately unreal. Once you see that the cause of your fear is unreal, your fear will fade away, for you simply cannot fear something that you know is unreal. The fear springs from the belief that what you fear is real and thus has some kind of power over you. Yet how can something unreal have any power over you, and thus why fear it once you see it as unreal?

The problem is that in order to see the unreality behind fear, you must examine the illusion that started your fear. And you cannot do that unless you overcome the second fear, namely the fear of looking at the illusion. And you can overcome the second fear only by breaking the spell and making the decision – through an act of will – to look at your fear, no matter what reasons you have for not doing so.

This is the catch-22. Fear is anti-will, so it paralyzes you by making you unable – or rather unwilling – to use your will power. Yet any quality from the mind of anti-christ can be overcome only by bringing the corresponding reality from the mind of Christ. So fear can be overcome only through will. Yet how can you release the will power that will consume your fear, when your fear makes you afraid to use your will? You can do so in only one way, namely by understanding how fear works and seeing that it is unreal. Thus, it is the truth that will make you free.

The medieval Christian church literally had the minds of most Europeans in a straightjacket for almost a thousand years. How could this be done? Because the church had created layers of fear that effectively prevented people from taking a rational look at the church’s doctrines. Thus, people were afraid to use their inner discernment to realize that some of the church’s doctrines were out of alignment with the reality of Christ—even though the church claimed to be the only representative of Christ on Earth. Do you think it strange that I – the Living Jesus Christ – should have to challenge the very institution that claims to represent me on Earth? I do not, for I know that the role of the Living Christ is to always challenge the established powers of the time.

Do you truly understand what I am saying here? I have been spending a lot of time explaining that the essence of the path to Christhood is that you come to see what you cannot see right now—so that you can overcome your dualistic illusions. I have now explained that fear prevents you from taking a look at your beliefs and assumptions, so is it not obvious that as long as you have fear in your being, you cannot freely walk the path to Christhood?

As long as you are afraid to take a look at your illusions, how can you come to see them as illusions? Thus, one of the first steps on the path to Christhood is to become aware of fear and its paralyzing effects, so that you can build the understanding that empowers you to make the decision to confront – and then dismiss – all of your fears. Your ego hides behind your fears, so the only way to fully unmask the ego is to remove the fears so there is nothing left behind which the ego can hide. And doing this must start with an act of will.

***

The American president, Franklin Roosevelt, once said in a speech, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself!” That remark was inspired by the Ascended Host, and it is very important that you understand the reality behind this statement.

I have said that the two main players in the drama of your life are your conscious self and your ego. I have also said that all fear springs from an illusion, meaning that it is unreal. When you put these statements together, you get the following teaching.

Your conscious self is that part of you which is real in an ultimate sense, which means that it came out of God’s Being and it was designed according to God’s perfect vision. Only that which is created from God’s Being has ultimate reality. In contrast, your ego was created by your conscious self after you started becoming blinded by duality. Thus, your ego is created based on the consciousness of duality and its illusions, meaning that your ego is ultimately unreal. It has only a temporary existence, it has no life in it. In fact, the ego can stay alive only as long as your conscious self feeds it life energy by believing it is real and identifying with it.

As I have explained, human beings on Earth have forgotten their true identity and have become blinded by the consciousness of death. The consciousness of death is based on the illusion of separation from your source, and because everything is created from God’s Being and substance – what Mother Mary in her book calls the Ma-ter Light – separation is truly unreal. Yet because of free will, it is possible that self-aware beings can co-create from this state of illusion.

When you co-create based on the consciousness of death, the consciousness of duality, you will inevitably create something that has two opposites. You might recall that when the Serpent tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden, it said:

4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. (Genesis, Chapter 3)

The true meaning is that the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” is a symbol for the duality consciousness, which is – as Maitreya explains in great detail in his book – an inevitable companion of free will. It is God’s intent that you – and all other co-creators – should use your co-creative abilities within the overall vision and laws of God, whereby you will magnify all life, causing all of creation to become more. Yet because God gave you free will, God had to give you the option to go against God’s law. And here comes a subtle mechanism that I need you to ponder.

God’s vision is that all life should grow and become more. God’s laws are set up to ensure that no self-aware co-creator ever needs to experience lack and suffering. Thus, when you co-create within God’s law, you will never experience the conditions that many human beings consider a normal and inevitable part of life, namely limitations, loss and suffering. Why did I say that I am come that all might have life and that they might have it more abundantly? This does not mean that I will give all people the abundant life. The true meaning is that I am come to help people realign themselves with the vision and law of God – which he has written in their inward parts, meaning their higher selves – so they can co-create the kingdom of God instead of continuing to co-create the kingdom of lack.

When you use your co-creative abilities within God’s law, you can only magnify all life, which means that you will not only enrich your own life but also the lives of all other people on Earth. The whole becomes more than the sum of its parts, which means that there is abundance for everyone. When you use your creative abilities outside of God’s vision and laws, you will inevitably create lack, which means that the whole now is less than the sum of its parts. The logical consequence is that there is no longer abundance for everyone, which leads to competition for limited resources. This inevitably leads to a state where some people have – through deceit or violence – taken from others to the point where most people live a life of lack and suffering and a small elite live a privileged life of affluence.

I will later explain this point in greater detail, but I want to plant a seed in your mind. When you create within God’s law, you affirm the oneness of all life, meaning that there is no conflict between you and other people. By raising yourself and becoming more, you are enriching the whole. You are creating from a state of oneness with all life and with your source, which is what I confirmed when I said, “I and my Father are one.” When you step outside of God’s law, you step into a realm that is based on separation from the source and separation from other parts of life. In this realm of separation, there cannot be oneness, meaning that instead of oneness, there is a state of division, separation and duality.

The logical consequence is that this realm of duality is characterized by opposites, which is what is truly meant by the expression “the knowledge of good and evil.” When you are in oneness – innocence – you have no knowledge of duality, for you think only in terms of oneness. When you lose that innocence, you inevitably become blinded by the consciousness of death, in which everything is seen as being dominated by two opposite polarities, such as life and death, good and evil. And when everything must have an opposite, abundance must have an opposite, which means that lack and suffering suddenly become possible. This opens the possibility of a downward spiral that causes people to create more and more lack and suffering.

The inevitable conclusion is that humankind has collectively co-created all of the imperfect conditions you currently find on Earth, including all lack and suffering. These conditions were not – as many religions claim – created by God, thus they are neither God’s will nor God’s punishment. Although these conditions were created by using God’s substance, they were not created in alignment with God’s vision and God’s laws. Thus, they have only a temporary existence, meaning that they are ultimately unreal.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book: Master Keys to Personal Christhoood.

Copyright © 2008 Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

Let me summarize the essence of the path to personal Christhood. Right now, you have a self-image, a sense of identity, that is less than your actual potential. The Conscious You was created in the image and likeness of God and it has the potential to be – literally and with no qualifications – anything it can conceive of being. In the here and now of space and time, you are who you think you are. Thus, the essence of spiritual growth is to raise your vision, to increase your ability to think – to envision, to imagine, to know, to accept, to be – beyond the human identity that is defined based on the material universe.

Right now, your sense of identity is to a smaller or larger degree based on the conditions in the material universe and upon ideas that are unreal because they spring from a state of consciousness that is out of sync, out of oneness, with God’s reality. I have called that state of consciousness “death,” but we might also call it the consciousness of anti-christ or the consciousness of duality.

Why do I use the term anti-christ, which has – as virtually any other part of my teachings – been misused by overzealous Christians? I do so because the consciousness of Christ is – as explained earlier – designed to maintain oneness between the Creator and the created. Anti-christ is therefore that which is in opposition to oneness, namely separateness and division. The consciousness of anti-christ sees a difference, a distance, a chasm, a division between the Creator and its creation, between God and humans, between itself and the remote God. That is why this consciousness elevated me to being God on Earth and degraded all other people to being lesser creatures. The purpose was, of course, to prevent anyone else from following in my footsteps, declaring their oneness with God and doing the works that I did.

So the essential problem of human existence is that right now you have a sense of identity that is partly based on the consciousness of anti-christ. This causes you to identify yourself as a being who is different from – separated from – your source, your Creator. What has given rise to this mortal sense of identity is that the Conscious You has come to accept certain illusions that have sprung from the mind of anti-christ. Thus, the essence of the path to Christhood is that you systematically uncover, challenge and let go of these illusions, replacing them with the corresponding truth of Christ.

Precisely because the concepts of anti-christ and the devil have been so misused by orthodox Christians – mainly as a scare tactic – most people have a very superficial understanding of what I am talking about. You have been conditioned to think that the devil always appears as an evil-looking creature, perhaps with hoofed feet, a tail and horns. This, of course, is a deliberately engineered lie, partly created to scare you and partly created to prevent you from realizing the profound truth that Paul encapsulated in this quote:

13 For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.

14 And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.

15 Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works. (2Corintians 11:14)

The stark reality is that it is not a straightforward matter to identify the representatives of anti-christ. They are good at camouflaging themselves as representatives of Christ, which you see in many Christian churches today. Yet my real point here is that it is likewise no straightforward matter to identify the illusions of anti-christ. For they are always presented in such a way as to appear to be the truth.

In other words, walking the path of Christhood is not a simple matter of identifying elements in your psyche that are clearly evil or dark. It is a much more complex matter of identifying the – sometimes very fine line – between the subtle lies of anti-christ – that might appear as perfectly benign and true – and the reality of Christ—which might at first appear to be so different from the norm that it seems to not be true.

Take note of what I am saying here. I realize that if you are open to this course, you have some willingness to change. Thus, if you came to the realization that you believed in an idea that came from the mind of anti-christ, you would be willing to let go of that idea. So the reason why you have not already let go of all ideas that spring from the mind of anti-christ is that you have not yet seen them for what they are. And the reason you have not seen them is not that you are stupid or deficient, but that these ideas are indeed very subtle and difficult to identify as what they truly are. They appear benign, beneficial and truthful. They are often confirmed by the traditions of your society and culture, and in some cases they can even seem to be confirmed by your experiences in life. Yet despite all appearances to the contrary, they are illusions, they are lies and they will – indefinitely – keep you from entering the kingdom within you.

***

The essence of the path to Christhood is that you become able to see – to identify – illusions that you do not currently see because they appear to be anything but illusions. The essence of my job as a spiritual teacher is to help you see what the Conscious You cannot currently see and what your ego will never be able to see—and thus does not want the conscious self to see either. Thus, we might say that my job is to get you – in whatever way necessary – to see what you cannot currently see by challenging your existing belief system, your mental box.

At this point you may think I am repeating myself, for surely I have said this before. But did you truly understand and internalize what I have been saying? You see, there is no question that you still hold on to illusions that spring from the mind of anti-christ. How can I say this? Because if you had let go of all such illusions, you probably would no longer be on Earth. You would either have ascended to the spiritual realm, or you would be able to communicate with me directly without needing this course!

This planet is currently a very dense environment in which all aspects of human endeavor are colored by the mind of anti-christ. Even matter itself is more dense than the way it was originally designed, and thus even matter seems to confirm the basic illusion that you are separated from God—even to the point that the density of matter makes some people believe there is nothing beyond matter.

My point is that it is wise to adopt the attitude that as long as you are on Earth, you need to be in a constant state of alertness, where you never allow yourself to think that you have nothing more to learn, that you have somehow reached some ultimate state of consciousness from which no further growth is needed or even possible. As the saying goes, “Constant vigilance – constant willingness to examine and transcend yourself – is the price of discipleship.”

You are who you think you are, so if you think no more growth is needed, how could you be open to further growth? Yet Christhood is not a state of perfection that never changes. Christhood is being one with the process of life itself, the river that is always flowing.

When the Buddha was asked what kind of being he was, his extremely profound and powerful answer was, “I AM awake!” Being completely and totally awake is the ultimate goal of spiritual students, and it is a very difficult goal to attain in the density of the material universe. Thus, it is the role of a spiritual teacher to first take the student to a high state of “awakeness” and then make sure the student does not imperceptibly – as has happened to many people who thought they were advanced students, perhaps even masters – slip back into being less awake or even less than awake.

Do you see what I am saying? My job is to always challenge you to reach for a higher state of consciousness, to reach beyond your current beliefs and your current sense of identity. My job is to always challenge your sense of comfortability, your sense of equilibrium, your sense of status quo.

It is the ego that does not want to change, that does not want to be challenged—which is why it seeks to silence the Living Christ, even by killing him. The reason being that the ego needs security, which it – because it has no built-in divinity – seeks to attain through control. The ego is constantly seeking to maintain some sense of equilibrium, and thus the serious student must be willing to let the teacher challenge all sense of comfortability, even outer security. Again, look at this quote:

25 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.

26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? (Matthew, Chapter 16)

Being willing to lose your life means being willing to give up any sense of comfortability and security based on the things of this world in order to follow the Living Christ. Giving up security can be very difficult for new students, and, ironically, it can be even more difficult – but in a more subtle way – for older students who think they should be above being challenged. Yet – as I have attempted to explain – no one on Earth is beyond being challenged—that is, if they want to remain in the Master-disciple relationship with a true teacher. The mind has a tendency to form habits, and this makes a familiar illusion seem more attractive than an unfamiliar truth, causing people to cling to the lie simply because it is familiar and offers comfort or security.

It is extremely important for you to understand that although the ego will always resist being challenged, even the conscious self can build a resistance to growth, a resistance to learning. This resistance can be very subtle, and few students recognize it for what it is. Thus, let me explain it to you in clearer terms than has been done before.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book: Master Keys to Personal Christhoood.

Copyright © 2008 Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

What I have given you in these first few chapters is a new view of the mission and teachings of Christ, and I am aware that for most people this will be a revolutionary view. I am also aware that most Christian preachers will say – if they ever read it – that it is a blasphemous view, and they will use their literal interpretations of the official scriptures to denounce my words. They will say that I could not possibly be the real Jesus Christ, for he would never say anything that is contrary to the scriptures or their interpretations of them. Thereby, they demonstrate that they have entered into the same mindset as the scribes and Pharisees, who denied the Living Christ because I did and said things that were contrary to their interpretations of the Jewish scriptures.

Yet I know those who have open minds and hearts can now see that there is a very logical and practical reason why I will indeed say things today that go far beyond what I said 2,000 years ago. The reason is that humankind has risen in consciousness, both in a spiritual sense and in terms of people’s knowledge of the material world. Therefore, I can tell you things today that people could not “bear” – could not accept, could not comprehend – 2,000 years ago. As one obvious example of this, people today have a far greater knowledge of human psychology, and thus I can indeed give you a better understanding of the central factor that prevents you from attaining salvation. Because of the lower consciousness people had 2,000 years ago, I could only describe that factor in parables and hint at its true nature. For example, I described it this way:

1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.

2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye. (Matthew, Chapter 7)

Few Christians seriously consider the deeper meaning behind that statement, because they think it doesn’t apply to them. They think that because they are “good Christians,” they don’t need to look for the beam in their own eyes—they just need to follow the outer rules of their religion and then I will do all the work for them. Yet God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34), and my statement does indeed apply to all people. Or one might put it this way: not all people need to look for the beam in their own eyes—only those who want to enter the kingdom of God.

Thus, those who want to consider themselves disciples of Christ should be the first to seek a deeper understanding of exactly what hides behind the expression “the beam that is in thine own eye.” What exactly is that beam and how does it prevent you from attaining salvation? So far I have said the following:

• The first step toward becoming a true follower of the Living Christ is to realize that you are trapped in a limited state of consciousness, namely what I call spiritual death.
• By acknowledging that the Living Christ can appear in the flesh, you realize that it is possible for you to overcome that state of consciousness, even while you are still here on Earth.
• Yet this is no automatic process because spiritual death forms a closed mental box that prevents you from seeing beyond the graven images that make up the box.
• Therefore, the beam that is in your own eye will prevent you from seeing what you need to overcome. As I said, “first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly…” In other words, until you remove that beam, you cannot clearly understand the teachings of the Living Christ.
• The beam in your eye is made up of a number of illusions – mental images – that obscure the truth. Many people – even many religions – see these images as absolute and infallible, and this unwillingness to look beyond the mental images is what makes them graven images, meaning unchanging images that stand between you and the Living God.
• After you recognize the Living Christ, you enter an interim stage, in which you must systematically purify your consciousness from these graven images.
• The major challenge during this interim stage is to overcome the very subtle temptation to impose your mental images upon the Living Christ and his teachings—thereby preventing Christ from leading you outside your mental box. You can even use the outer teachings of Christ to reinforce your mental box, as Christians have demonstrated for 2,000 years and continue to demonstrate today.
• If you fall prey to this temptation, you will no longer be following the straight and narrow Way of Christ. You will instead be following the broad way of anti-christ, whereby you use your mental images to create the belief that you are guaranteed to be saved.
• The real challenge is whether you will allow the Living Christ to expose all of your graven images or whether you will seek to hold on to some of those images and the sense of identity based upon them.

Will you be willing to leave behind any and all graven images and the attachments to anything on Earth? Will you seek to save your mortal sense of identity or will you be willing to lose that “life” in order to follow Christ?

Will you follow the true path of Christ, or will you fall prey to the subtle temptation of anti-christ, namely to think you can enter the kingdom of God while – for any number of subtle, intellectual reasons – maintaining certain dualistic images? Will you believe the lie that you can be saved by doing outer things without removing the beam in your own eye?

The conclusion is that the essential element for any true follower of Christ is the willingness to see something that you cannot see, to allow the Living Christ to expose to you what you cannot see on your own. We now need to add to this that there are things people do not want to see, and this is most clearly demonstrated by the scribes and Pharisees who refused to see the shortcomings of their religious world view and their personal psyches. They would not give up their mortal lives in order to follow Christ.

Yet all people have an element in their psyches that will try to prevent them from following Christ. Take note that this is a subtle force—it is hiding behind the beam that you do not see. Thus, it is perfectly possible to be a member of a Christian church – or any spiritual organization for that matter – and follow all of its rules and doctrines while denying the Living Christ. It is possible to be a Christian scribe and Pharisee—dancing around the golden calf of a graven image of Christ instead of looking for the Living Christ beyond all graven images.

During my physical mission on Earth I had limited options for describing the force that resists your freedom. Thus, I had to describe it in veiled, symbolic language in my parables, where I referred to it as the beam in your own eye, the tares among the wheat, the house built on sand, mammon and other such indirect expressions. However, in today’s world, most people are aware of a modern name for this force, namely what is commonly known as the ego.

Obviously, there are various definitions of the ego, but in this course I will use the term to refer to a force in your psychology that resists your efforts to rise above the consciousness of spiritual death and follow the Living Christ into the consciousness of eternal life. You may think that definition is too general, but at this point I do not want to give a more specific definition. The reason being that I first want to talk more about the major effect of the ego, namely that is causes spiritual blindness that prevents you from seeing the reality of Christ.

***

A perceptive person will notice that what I have given in these first chapters is a description of salvation that is in stark contrast to the description given by most Christian churches. Christianity generally portrays salvation as something that I give to people, and it is an instant, or guaranteed, salvation. It is also a passive salvation, where I do the work for you, and if you live up to certain outer requirements, I simply have to save you.

Yet what I am describing here is a form of salvation that is neither instant, nor guaranteed, nor passive. It is a process that requires you to consciously and actively purify your consciousness of all graven images. And, of course, I trust you can begin to see that when I walked the Earth, I did indeed describe this inner way to salvation. The official churches later created the outer, instant, automatic salvation as a way for them to control people—just as the Jewish priesthood had placed the outer religion between people and salvation.

The stark reality is that I always preached the real salvation, which is indeed a gradual process, whereby you must actively and consciously seek to uncover the beam in your own eye and remove it. This is not to say that you can save yourself entirely by your own power, for as I have described, salvation is an interactive process between you here below and I – or another ascended being – above. What I offer as my part of the bargain is a morsel of my Christ consciousness, which is what I often referred to as the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven. Take note of how I repeatedly attempted to make people understand that this is a gradual, interactive process:

31 Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field:

32 Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.

33 Another parable spake he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened. (Matthew, Chapter 13)

Can you see how I made it clear that entering the kingdom of heaven – as a symbol for attaining the Christ consciousness – is a gradual process? The mustard seed takes time to grow, and the leaven takes time to raise the whole loaf. When you have descended into the consciousness of death, you cannot pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. The absolutely only way for you to escape spiritual death is to receive a morsel of spiritual life, which can only come from the Christ consciousness. Therefore, you do need an external savior in the form of a representative of the Christ consciousness who descends into this world and becomes the Living Christ—the Word incarnate.

The Living Christ offers you a morsel of spiritual life, a morsel of truth, but this will not automatically save you. You must accept that truth, you must take it into your consciousness, and you must multiply the talents you have been given. Only by watering the mustard seed, only by allowing the leaven of truth to raise your consciousness – by challenging your graven images – will you go through the interim phase and overcome the consciousness of death.

Yet this morsel of truth is offered to all people on Earth. Those who met me physically received it directly from me, but because I won a physical victory of being the Living Christ on Earth, it is not necessary to meet a physical person who is the Living Christ. You can now receive a morsel of Christ consciousness through the Comforter, but in order to do so, you must search for that Comforter in the only place it can be found, namely in the kingdom of God that is within you.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book: Master Keys to Personal Christhoood.

Copyright © 2008 Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

Have you ever considered how often you force yourself to do, say, feel or think things in order to fit into society, in order to accommodate some kind of standard put upon you from outside yourself? Have you ever considered that as you grow up, you are conditioned – programmed, brainwashed – to accept many things that are norms in your society without ever questioning them? Have you ever considered that you do many things simply because they are a tradition in your society, and perhaps no one has ever considered whether they are actually necessary? Everyone keeps doing them because everyone has always been doing them. Have you ever considered that some people live their entire lives by following the norms of their society – in anything from religion to fashion – and they never actually have an original thought or make their own decisions?

Well, the fact that you are studying this course indicates that you have considered such things and that you are willing to look for a better way of doing things. You have – at some level of your being – realized, at least sensed, that there must be more to life than what you experience right now. You sense that there must be an alternative, a more abundant form of life, and you are reading this book with the hope that it can help you manifest that more abundant life—however you conceive of it right now. This longing for something more, this inability to be satisfied by doing things the way they have always been done, demonstrates something very important. It demonstrates the very mechanism, the saving grace, that makes it possible for people to escape the condition of spiritual death. It also holds the key to understanding how to overcome the second challenge of Christ.

Let us first look at a question that follows my description of the state of spiritual death. I have explained that this condition forms a closed loop, a mental box from which there seems to be no escape, because the box itself prevents people from seeing that there is something outside the box. I have said that the Living Christ comes into this world in order to demonstrate that there is indeed a higher, more spiritual, form of life. Yet I have also said that people who are completely blind cannot recognize the Christ. So if there was no saving grace, if there was no mechanism that provided a way out of the closed box, how could anyone ever escape?

The mechanism that is the saving grace is precisely the inner, intuitive sense that there must be something more to life than what you experience inside the box—be it the box of your society or the box of your own mind. This sense is built into your innermost being, and the reason for this is that your true being is an extension of God’s own Being. This is even confirmed by the Bible:

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the Earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the Earth.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the Earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the Earth. (Genesis, Chapter 1)

The fact that your inner being is created after the image and likeness of your Creator – who is beyond this material world – means that you can never totally lose your longing for something beyond this world. You can forget this longing for a time, either by focusing on the endless pursuit of the things of this world, or because you think you belong to an outer religion and your salvation is guaranteed. Yet at some point you will inevitably feel an inner sense of emptiness, a longing for something more:

2 Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

3 What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? (Ecclesiastes, Chapter 1)

For a long time, people can fall under the temptation that the devil presented to me after my fasting in the wilderness:

8 Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;

9 And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.

10 Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. (Matthew, Chapter 4)

The devil can be seen as a symbol for the appearances of this world and the temptation to seek to gain some kind of ultimate state in this world, be it power, possessions, pleasure, fame, security or whatever this world has to offer. For a very long time, people can be completely absorbed by such pursuits, and thus they will reject the Living Christ who comes to show them that there is a more abundant form of life than what this world has to offer. Yet at some point in time, a lifestream will begin to sense that there is something more than what this world has to offer and that this world cannot give you what you long for in your innermost being. You will begin to sense the truth in my words:

36 For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

37 Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? (Mark, Chapter 8)

When a person begins to become aware of this inner longing for something beyond this world, the person now becomes open to passing the first challenge of Christ, namely to consciously recognize that there is a higher form of life. Thus, such a person can now recognize the Living Christ. The recognition that it is possible for the Living Christ to enter this world can give rise to the awareness that:

• I am lacking, there is something I do not have. I do not have the fullness of spiritual life that I see in the Christ, and I want it.
• I need to overcome the state of spiritual death, and I cannot do that on my own. I need something from the Living Christ in order to rise beyond death.

This can then give rise to the desire to follow the Living Christ, to become a disciple of Christ, in order to receive from Christ what you recognize you need. However, here is where we run into an absolutely essential consideration, and unfortunately most people – be they Christians or not – have not understood this problem, which is why it prevents them from truly making spiritual progress, from truly following Christ.

***

As I said in the beginning of this chapter, there are two forces that pull on your conscious mind. One is the force that pulls you into conforming to the conditions in this world and the other is the force that pulls you beyond this world. We might call them the material force and the spiritual force, or, in a traditional Christian vernacular, anti-christ and Christ.

If you are completely blinded by the force of anti-christ, you cannot even recognize the force of Christ. So the fact that you are a religious person or a spiritual seeker shows that you have started escaping the control of the worldly force. Yet this does not mean that you are completely free from its control. It should be a cause of humility for Christians that God allowed me to be tempted by the devil. The lesson is that all people are being tempted by the devil, or rather by the force that seeks to pull you into conforming to this world rather than rising above this world. Thus, you should realize that by facing the temptations of the devil, I demonstrated the temptations all people must face in order to follow Christ and escape the pull of this world. And this temptation will remain – in some form and with varying intensity and subtlety – as long as you are in a physical body.

Do you see what I am saying here? I have said that the condition of spiritual death forms a self-reinforcing condition because it pulls you into conforming to a set of illusions that blind you to the spiritual reality. So the forces of this world – the devil, the consciousness of death, the mass consciousness, your ego – pull you into conforming to a false image, a graven image, of who you are and what you can and cannot be. The very essence of the consciousness of spiritual death is that it has set up a graven image that obscures the one true God, and this image prevents people from seeing beyond the image. As the Bible says, you are created in the image of God and you are here to have dominion over the Earth. Yet the force of anti-christ creates a graven image, which says you are not the offspring of God and that you cannot take dominion over this planet—for the devil wants that dominion for himself.

How can you escape the catch-22? By coming to the point of realizing the truth I stated earlier, namely that the things of this world are vanity and that it does you no good to gain the whole world but lose your soul. What will it take for you to come to that point? It can happen through an inner realization – an intuitive or “Aha experience” – or by attending the school of hard knocks. In this school it is simply a question of how hard the knocks have to become before you begin to consciously acknowledge that there must be a better way to live, that there must be something beyond this world.

When you begin to escape the blinding force of the graven image, you begin to realize that there is something beyond the graven image—and this is what allows you to recognize the Living Christ. Yet this does not mean that you are completely free from the graven image. In fact, the interim period I talked about earlier is precisely a period where you still have graven images in your mind, and you are not completely free of them. The absolutely essential question now becomes whether you will be willing to let the Living Christ pull you – perhaps kicking and screaming if necessary – beyond all of your graven images or whether you will seek to impose some of those images upon the Living Christ and the path Christ offers?

In other words, will you follow the true path that is offered by the Living Christ, or will you follow the false path that is offered by the prince of this world and the blind leaders of this world? Take another look at my words:

13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:

14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. (Matthew, Chapter 7)

The straight and narrow path offered by the Living Christ is the path of overcoming all of the graven images – the beams – in your mind. In contrast, the broad way that leads to destruction is the path of recognizing that you have a need for salvation, recognizing the Living Christ, but then imposing a graven image upon the Living Christ and the path he offers. Thus, instead of seeing and following the true path, you enter the false path while actually being convinced that you are following the true path! The true path is about overcoming graven images, the false path is based on graven images and elevates some of them to the status of infallibility, meaning you never question them.

So instead of allowing the Living Christ to take you beyond the consciousness of death, you have used the Living Christ – or rather your dualistic image of the Christ – to create a false path. This false path offers you salvation, but it offers you an external salvation that makes it seem like you do not have to remove the beam in your own eye. In reality, this false path offers you the promise that you can attain eternal life without overcoming the consciousness of death and removing all of the graven images that spring from the consciousness of death. Look at the words that follow the above quote:

15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?

23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. (Matthew, Chapter 7)

Why do you think I found it necessary to be so detailed and direct in warning people about the false path? Could it be because I was well aware that many of the people, who come to the realization that they need to be saved, are misled into following a false path that cannot lead them to salvation? Why do you think I was opposed by the scribes and Pharisees? Why do you think they could not recognize me as the Living Christ? It was because they were following the false path while being completely convinced that they would be saved. In other words, they had passed the first hurdle of recognizing that they needed to be saved, yet they had become trapped by the false path that makes people think they can be saved without truly following the Living Christ all the way, without letting go of their graven images.

Many modern Christians are trapped in the very consciousness I spoke about when I said, “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” They claim to be following Christ, but they are following the false path, the outer path, that is based on a graven image of Christ. Although they constantly proclaim my name before men, they are actually denying the Living Christ before men – by professing a dead Christ – and thus I have no other option but to deny them before the Father.

I know that the point I am making here can be quite subtle and difficult to understand for many people. The best proof of this is that I have to make this point and that it has not been preached clearly by a single Christian church over the past 2,000 years. So in order to help people understand this crucial point, I will explain it from several different perspectives. You might think you have understood my point, but I caution you against this idea. Be willing to follow me as I expose the topic from different vantage points.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book: Master Keys to Personal Christhoood.

Copyright © 2008 Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

Where shall we begin our journey out of the jungle of graven images and into the clear light of Christ Truth? We shall begin by discussing a topic that few modern people give serious consideration, namely why the Living Christ comes to Earth. The reason why few consider this question with an open mind is that most Christians believe they already know the answer and most non-christians think the answer is not relevant for them. Yet let us consider the real answer—an answer that has implications for all people on Earth.

Christians from most denominations have been brought up to believe that I came to Earth in order to save people. They have also been brought up to see this as a passive measure on their part. I am the Savior, so I am the one who saves, and they only need to live up to certain requirements, such as being baptized, verbally confessing me as their Lord and Savior, believing in me, believing in the blood of Christ or other such measures. Despite some individual nuances, the basic image of salvation is the same for most churches:

• Jesus is the only one who can save you. You cannot save yourself.
• Jesus is the external savior; I am portrayed as being somewhere up in heaven, meaning far away from you.
• Although I am the savior, you still need an outer church in order to receive my salvation. The church is the mediator between you and me.

In this course I will explain fully how and why the Living Christ is the key to salvation. Yet this requires me to give you some profound and subtle teachings, and I will do this after we set a better foundation. For now, I want to contrast the popular Christian image of a passive, external salvation with some of my direct words. First of all, we have one of my most pivotal sayings, a saying I have quoted before and will return to again and again—for it is indeed the missing link in Christianity:

20 And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:

21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. (Luke, Chapter 17)

What I point to here is not an external salvation, but an internal process. This is precisely why the leaders of the religious establishment of the time decided to kill me. If I had been successful in awakening the people to the reality of the internal salvation, the religious leaders would have lost their power. Thus, any perceptive person should be able to see the irony in the fact that most modern Christian churches preach an external salvation and portray me as the external savior. I gave my life to bring forth the truth that salvation is an internal process, yet the very church that claims to represent me on Earth has done everything in its power to nullify my sacrifice.

Salvation clearly means that you enter the kingdom of God. You will not be saved until you are in the kingdom of God—this is something all Christians should be able to agree upon, although I am well aware that many will question my statement. As I clearly express in the above quote, entering the kingdom of God is not an outer, or external, process. It will not happen because you observe the rules and rituals of an outer religion. You will enter the kingdom of God only by finding the kingdom inside yourself. You simply will not find the kingdom as long as you are looking for it outside yourself—and this includes looking for an external savior or a religion on Earth to save you.

I am not hereby saying that you can save yourself without Christ. What I am saying is that you will not find Christ outside yourself, not even in a Christian church. You will find me only inside yourself. In fact, you will never find Christ as long as you look for him outside yourself. You will find me only when you start looking for me inside yourself!

Yet what does it truly mean that the kingdom of God is within you? Some people believe the kingdom of God is a physical kingdom that will descend to Earth and transform the planet, while others believe the Earth will be raised up into the kingdom of God. I am not denying that a planetary transformation can take place, but I am obviously not talking about a world-wide, physical kingdom when I say that the kingdom of God is within you—for how can the material world fit inside of you? So what exactly did I mean?

Once again, let me remind you that when I walked the Earth, I was limited by people’s understanding, their world view. That is why I spoke in parables and why I made many statements that contain a veiled truth. The purpose was to separate those who took everything literally – looking only at the letter of the word and not the Spirit of the word – from those who were willing to go beyond appearances. Modern people take so much knowledge for granted, knowledge that simply wasn’t available 2,000 years ago. Thus, many modern people find it difficult to understand – or have simply never considered – how difficult it was for me to give deeper explanations of my teachings. For example, most modern people find it natural to think about the psyche, yet this concept was virtually unknown to the people in ancient Israel. They had no understanding of the fact that you have a mind that can be independent of the physical body.

Yet when you have the concept of the psyche, it becomes easy to see that when I said that the kingdom of God is within you, I was not talking about a physical kingdom. What is inside of you is obviously the psyche, and thus I used the “kingdom of God” as a symbol for a psychological condition, a state of mind, a state of consciousness. Being in the kingdom of God means attaining a state of consciousness that is above and beyond the state of consciousness that most people have and that is considered “normal.”

***

Let me ask you to consider a few logical questions:

• Do you think that I am come to save you by doing all the work for you, or do you think you have to do your part?
• Do you think the salvation I offer is automatic, or do you think you have to live up to certain conditions in order to be saved?
• Do you think those conditions are purely outer conditions – such as being baptized or verbally declaring me to be your Lord and Savior – or do you think they are inner conditions?
• Do you think salvation is an outer process – you fulfill outer requirements and are allowed into an external kingdom – or do you think it is an inner process, whereby you go through a transformation of consciousness?

If you have been brought up in a mainstream Christian church, you have been conditioned to believe in the external, passive salvation. Yet let me contrast that image with the reality of my own words. There is the story of the woman who anointed my feet and washed them with her tears. When a Pharisee – always a Pharisee – questioned me, I said:

Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little. (Luke 7:47)

What I am truly saying here is that the forgiveness of her sins was not a matter of an outer act on her part. It was linked to an inner state, the state of her heart because she loved much. Consider this statement:

1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.

2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. (Matthew, Chapter 7)

Is it not clear that there is a direct link between what you do to other people and how you will be judged? And is not the tendency to judge others a psychological condition, an inner condition? Now consider the teaching I gave as part of the Our Father:

14 For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:

15 But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. (Matthew, Chapter 6)

Again, there is a clear link between your willingness to forgive others and God’s willingness to forgive your sins. Yet forgiveness is not an outer act; it is an inner condition, for to truly forgive, one must have a pure heart. Thus, one must be willing to overcome hardness of heart, the desire for revenge and the anger that feeds it. And once again, these feelings are inner conditions. Hate is not something you can take off, as you shed an old coat. It is a psychological condition, and you can overcome it only by changing something inside your psyche. Going to church and saying the “Our Father” will not automatically change your heart, as millions of so-called “good” Christians prove every Sunday. Use your Bible software to search my words and see how often I talked about the importance of the heart. Here are just a few quotes:

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. (Matthew 5:8)

34 O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.

35 A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things. (Matthew, Chapter 12)

This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. (Matthew 15:8)

18 But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man.

19 For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies:

20 These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man. (Matthew, Chapter 15)

Is it not clear from this last quote that I am not primarily concerned with people’s outer actions but more concerned with their state of consciousness? Then why are most Christians focused on reforming outer actions, rather than looking for the beam in their own eyes and changing their state of consciousness? Now consider how the Pharisees challenged me to say what was the greatest commandment of the law. I answered:

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. (Matthew 22:37)

Do you think this is something that can be faked—do you think you can fool God by taking on an outer appearance and hiding from him the inner condition of your heart? Do you think one can pretend to love God with ALL one’s heart? For if you do, you are spiritually blind. Thus, those who have eyes to see will realize that salvation is not an external but an internal process. The essential requirement for salvation is not some outer measure or observance. The essential requirement for salvation is an inner condition, a purification of the heart, a transformation of one’s entire inner condition, one’s state of consciousness.

Contrary to what is believed by most people – Christian or not – this is no trivial or simple transformation. It cannot be accomplished simply by declaring me to be your Lord and Savior—potentially honoring me with your mouth while your heart is still far from me. You must be willing to take a look at your own psyche and remove the beam from your own eye. This is a fundamental shift in one’s consciousness, and here is how I described it to Nicodemus:

1 There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews:

2 The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.

3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus, being a Pharisee, tended to take things literally, so he did not understand:

4 Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?

Therefore, I attempted to clear things up:

5 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. (John, Chapter 3)

Obviously, this left Nicodemus none the wiser, and I am aware that these words have confused many sincere Christians. Yet can you begin to see that what I was talking about here was – obviously – not a physical but a spiritual, a psychological, rebirth? It was a change so fundamental that it could only be described as a rebirth, as a fresh new start in life. There are deeper layers of meaning, which we will return to later, yet can you begin to see that my words were deliberately meant to confound Nicodemus’ literal mind? Can you see that I was actually saying that in order to be reborn, one has to be willing to go beyond the state of consciousness that is normal for human beings? One has to be willing to flow with the Spirit, and the Spirit does not follow human customs, prejudices and traditions:

7 Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.

8 The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. (John, Chapter 3)

My point is that in order to receive the kind of salvation that the Living Christ offers, you have to be willing to change your state of consciousness, which means that you must be willing to let go of the old state of mind. In fact, you have to be willing to let your old sense of self, your old sense of identity, die.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book: Master Keys to Personal Christhoood.

Copyright © 2008 Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

There is a multitude of graven images of Christ, so many that I could not possibly comment on all of them. Neither do I intend to comment on all of them, for it is indeed your responsibility to free your mind from false images. My task in this chapter is to give you certain questions and thoughts that can – if you are willing – help you get started on this process. The rest can be accomplished as you apply the remainder of the course.

***

I feel great compassion for the many people who have been brought up with a graven image of Christ. I wish all children had been brought up with a clear understanding of my true teachings, for as the Bible says:

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22:6)

This statement naturally works in reverse also, meaning that when children have been brought up with a graven image of Christ, it is often very difficult for them to question it. I am aware that many people are indeed afraid to question their childhood beliefs about me, and they have either accepted orthodox doctrines or have numbed themselves so they rarely think about deeper questions. I am aware that many of these people feel they have to remain loyal to me, but I ask you to consider whether you are loyal to an outer church and its doctrines or whether you are loyal to me, the Living Christ?

Are you loyal to a graven image, often created for political reasons in a past age, or are you loyal to the Living Christ, the reality of what I am? If you find that your loyalty lies with men rather than with me, then I strongly encourage you to redirect it, for you cannot serve two masters (Matthew 6:24). And as I will explain shortly, the outer churches and their doctrines will not get you where you want to go.

I am aware that, in a modern, rational and scientific age, many people can make no sense out of orthodox Christian doctrines because the doctrines insist on upholding a world view that became obsolete centuries ago. Thus, some have rejected Christianity and have rejected me as a spiritual teacher, perhaps looking to other religions or rejecting all religion. I am aware that many people look at the violent and oppressive history of mainstream Christian churches and can see no connection between the fruits of the churches and the teachings of Christ. Some have rejected all organized religion, seeking an inner, universal spirituality or perhaps feeling like no form of spirituality could fulfill their needs.

Yet while I feel compassion for all of these people, the compassion of Christ is not human sympathy. For indeed, I know the basic fact of life, namely that you are responsible for what you allow to enter your mind. You are responsible for the words you accept, the words and teachings that make up your belief system and world view. As I said:

33 Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit.

34 O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.

35 A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things.

36 But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.

37 For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned. (Matthew, Chapter 12)

Your fruits – including, but not limited to, words and actions – are the products of your belief system, and your world view is made up of the worded teachings and beliefs you have accepted. Certainly, you could not help being programmed during childhood, but you are now an adult, and as such you have the responsibility to examine all of your beliefs and look for a higher understanding. You can follow the Bible’s admonition to get understanding before getting anything in this world (Proverbs 4:7). You will be justified or condemned based on the words you believe, for your fruits will be determined by the words that fill your heart.

I know that for people from a traditional Christian background this might sound ominous, perhaps even judgmental and non-loving, and it might remind them of the images of an angry God with which they were brought up. Yet let me give you a different picture. As I have hinted, the real key to salvation is not membership of an outer church but that you attain the Christ consciousness, which is the only thing that can give you entry to the spiritual realm. That is why I said:

I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (John 14:6)

Contrary to popular interpretations, I did not speak these words as a historical person. I spoke them in oneness with the Christ mind, and thus it is the universal Christ consciousness that is the only way to reach the Father and his kingdom. The main message of my mission was to set forth an example that all can follow, for, truly, all people have the potential to attain the Christ consciousness.

Attaining the Christ consciousness includes purifying your mind and heart of beliefs that are unreal because they are out of alignment with the reality of Christ. So we might say that the door to the spiritual realm is not a traditional door that opens. Instead, it is an opening that is carved like a very intricate pattern, almost like an old-fashioned iron gate with small openings, thus forming a filter. In order for you to pass through the filter, your consciousness must be able to pass through the openings without being held back by anything. And as long as you hold on to beliefs – words – that are out of alignment with the reality of Christ, those false words will not pass through the openings in the gate, and thus they will hold you back. That is why the true disciples of Christ must examine the false words in their hearts and minds and remove that beam from their own eyes.

I am aware that most people go through life without examining the words that fill their hearts, and that is why they indiscriminately allow their mouths to speak from the abundance of their hearts. Yet those who have ears to hear are those who are willing to recognize that becoming a true disciple of Christ means that you accept responsibility for your life—both in this world and beyond this world. This includes examining the words and beliefs that fill your heart – as a symbol for your mind – so you can purify your mind of false beliefs and graven images.

The spiritual law is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34). You are the one who must give account for your words. Your entry into heaven will be determined by what you have allowed into your mind. That you have been influenced by society and family is a given, but it is still up to you to be the master of your own house, meaning your heart and mind. You can begin – right now – a process of re-examining what has accumulated in your mind, deciding what you will allow to remain there. This book will help you go through that process, until – if you are willing to let go – there is nothing left but the reality of Christ.

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I am quite aware that for some this will sound very different from what they were brought up to believe, but that is because they have been affected by another graven image of Christ. In reality, I am simply telling you a basic fact. I have already given you one analogy to illustrate this, but since it is a crucial point, let me give you another one.

Imagine that you stand in front of a locked door and you have a bundle of keys. There is one key that will open the lock and many keys that will not open the lock. So until you find the right key, how can you realistically expect to open the door? And what good will it do you to blame the door, when you are the one who is not using the right key? The door to the kingdom of God can be opened by all people, but in order to open it, you must find the right key, meaning that you must have the right understanding. And that includes freeing your mind from incorrect beliefs – incorrect words – so that you do not violate God’s command to have no other gods before the one true God and to not take unto yourself any graven image (Exodus 20:3-4). As I described it in one of my parables:

10 So those servants went out into the highways, and gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and good: and the wedding was furnished with guests.

11 And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment:

12 And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless.

13 Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

14 For many are called, but few are chosen. (Matthew, Chapter 22)

Again, this can sound ominous to people from a Christian background, but the real message here is that the wedding garment is a symbol for a state of consciousness in which your mind is free from graven images, so you see the reality of God. When you attain that state of consciousness, you are inside the kingdom of God, and until you attain it, you will be outside the kingdom, where you will be “bound hand and foot” by your own erroneous beliefs. Many are called to enter the kingdom, but few are “chosen” because few choose to purify their minds from all graven images.

How can you change the inner words and teachings that fill your heart and mind? One of the indisputable accomplishments of science is the discovery of universal, natural laws – such as gravity – that work the same no matter what you believe or don’t believe. I described one such universal law when I said:

7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:

8 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. (Matthew, Chapter 7)

It is a natural law that if you truly seek a greater understanding of the deeper, spiritual mysteries of life, you will be offered such an understanding. However, for this law to be fulfilled, you must be willing to do your part. You must be willing to become a chalice into which the elixir of wisdom can be poured, for God will not cast his pearls before the swine of a closed mind, nor will he give that which is holy to the dogs of prejudice (Matthew 7:6). Thus, you must be open to receiving an understanding that goes beyond your present belief system and world view, your present mental box. Did I not say:

Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein. (Luke 18:17)

A little child receives understanding with an open and unbiased mind, a mind that is free of prejudice. This is one of the main reasons why so many people reject the Living Christ. They have allowed their minds to calcify around a dead image of Christ, and they are prejudiced against anything that is not in accord with their image. They want the Living Christ to fit into their mental box, and they are not willing to let the Living Christ disturb their sense of stability, security and control.

I feel compassion for the many people who have been brought up with a graven image of Christ. Yet I must also tell you that having been brought up with a false image does not free you from your personal responsibility to seek a higher understanding and to do so with an open mind. Too many people use their upbringing as an excuse for holding on to prejudices that either make them feel comfortable or give them a fragile sense of being in control.

The indisputable fact is that no matter what you may have been programmed to believe, you can rise above your past and clear your mind of all graven images. In fact, my entire mission could well be seen as a demonstration of the fact that it is possible to rise above all human limitations, even death itself.

So for me, the important question is not what you were conditioned to believe in the past or even what you believe now. It is of no real concern to me whether you believe in the orthodox image of Christ, reject me, reject all religion or reject anything that goes beyond orthodox doctrines. The real question is whether you are willing to look at your beliefs, examine them openly and then reach for a higher understanding that will help you rise above all graven images. I am not concerned about the box in which your mind currently resides; I am only concerned about your willingness to expand that box, eventually coming to the point where you throw away all man-made boxes and follow my command:

God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. (John 4:24)

I am – among other things – come to teach human beings, and in that respect my primary concern is whether people are teachable. Are they willing to let the Living Christ challenge their existing ideas and help them leave the mental box that makes them think they are human beings? The timeless question is whether you have eyes to see and ears to hear. For those who do not have an open mind will always reject the Living Christ, preferring a “dead” Christ who seemingly confirms what they want to believe.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book: Master Keys to Personal Christhoood.

Copyright © 2008 Kim Michaels