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Ascended Master Paul the Venetian through Kim Michaels, June 7, 2025. This dictation was given the conference in Seoul, South Korea: Being the Living Christ in everyday life.

I AM the Ascended Master Paul the Venetian. What did Jesus say 2,000 years ago about love? He said: “Greater love has no man but to lay down his life for a friend.” Well, that was of course said 2,000 years ago in a very different society where it was easier to lose your physical life than it is in many countries today, even though of course not all.

Given that we are all about progressive revelation, what might we say today? Well, we might say: “Greater love has no person but to lay down his or her ego for a friend.” There comes a point on the spiritual path where you need to make a decision and you may say: “Is it not somewhat of a contradiction to say you have to make a decision about love? For is love a decision? When you fall in love, is it a decision or does it just happen?” You see, at the lower levels of consciousness, it seems as if things just happen. As you grow higher in consciousness, you become more aware that in the interdependent originations, nothing just happens. As you become more aware of the spiritual path, you become aware that you have certain choices to make.

Making a decision about love

For example, as Lanto just explained and as we have of course explained before, between the 48th and the 96th level of consciousness, you are rising above the gravitational pull of the collective consciousness. This does not just happen. What happens if you do not make an effort to rise above, is that you are pulled along with the currents of the collective consciousness. That happens, but when you walk the spiritual path, you have to make decisions and there comes a point on the path where you have to make a conscious decision about love. What do you love more?

Do you love the ego and its control games more than the Christ, or do you love the Christ more than the ego? You cannot love both. In fact, as you contemplate this, you become aware that you do not love the ego. You cannot love the ego and the ego cannot love. This will sound contradictory because most human beings will say that they do love someone, or they do love a cause, or they do love an idea or they do love a spiritual guru. What the ego calls love is just a camouflage for a control game.

The ego seeks to get something through love. The ego, by saying “I love you” to another person, feels it has now staked a claim on that person. It has claimed ownership of that person and the person is supposed to live up to the ego’s expectations of how that person should behave because the ego has said “I love you” so you are mine. This is what the ego wants to do with everything. It wants to own. It wants to control.

Does love, Christ love, want to own and control? Why would it? What is the Christ? It is the unifying element. Without the Christ was not anything made that was made. The Christ is in everything. How could it want anything when it is everything? It is only the ego that has this existential sense of lack that it can never overcome. It will seek to use any God quality to compensate for that lack, including, as I said, using love as a way to declare your ownership of another person.

Giving up seeking ownership through love

Look at human love and consider how many people are free of this sense that they have some ownership over the people they claim to love. Then, you will see the challenge that you face as you climb the spiritual path, climb the path to Christhood. You gradually come to uncover these separate selves that are based on this love as ownership, this false love, this fear-based love, this love based on lack. As you become aware of them and let them go, what happens? What happens is that Christ love begins to shine through the fog in your four lower bodies and then you realize the ego never actually loved anything or anyone. You realize that when you claim ownership of anything in the material world, that thing that you think you own now claims ownership of you.

This is one way to interpret the old idea of selling your soul to the devil, where you are essentially saying: “I want to own something in this world. I want to experience what it is like that I, as a separate self, can own something in this world.” Now it sounds very dramatic that you are selling your soul to the devil, where you are saying: “Oh devil, if you give me this thing in this world that I want, you can have my soul forever.”

This is of course not the way it is. First of all, is there really a devil like it is portrayed in a lot of myths? There are of course the fallen beings, but they do not have the power to grant you ownership or to take your soul. What is it that happens when you make this deal with the devil? It is all in your own psychology, because think about what you are saying. You want to experience what it is like to own something in the material world. Now, can you own anything in the material world—actually? Well, you can in societies that have some law and order, where they will say: “Yes, you buy this piece of property and you own it. Yes, you marry somebody and you have certain rights defined by society or religion.”

Can you really own anything in this world, where things can happen at any minute? You may have a huge palace, but what if an earthquake wipes it out in seconds? Why is it that you cannot actually own any separate thing as a separate self? Well, because of the interdependent originations. If there really are no separate things, how can you fully own something?

What I am saying is: You do not actually own anything, but you have the experience that you own something. Where does the experience take place? Inside your mind. Why is it that the thing that you think you own has ownership over you? Because as long as you want the experience, as long as you want to experience that you own something, then that thing occupies your mind. That thing defines how you experience life. Do you see? It is all about your experience.

What do you love more: Christ or the world?

What is the decision you have to make—certainly when you approach or reach that 96th level, but you can make it before? It is: “What do I love more? Do I love more the experience of owning something on Earth, or do I love more the experience of flowing with the Christ mind, flowing with the River of Life? What do I love more? Do I love more the ego and its need for control and ownership, or do I love more the Christ and its spontaneous flowing from situation to situation without any control, without any predictability?”

Lanto talked about walking across the river, trying to work against the current, trying to hold on to your position in the river, because you think that the goal is to cross the river. He talked about surrendering into the flow, but how do you really surrender into the flow? You have to give up the ego’s desire for ownership, but how can you give up that desire? Only if there is something you love more than the experience of ownership.

You see, the outer mind of the vast majority of people on Earth projects this image that there are actual physical conditions that you face here on Earth and that those physical conditions are what determine your state of mind, your experience of life. Yes, at the lower levels of consciousness, as I said, you are flowing with the currents of the mass consciousness. The outer conditions, the physical conditions, but also the emotional, mental and identity level conditions of the mass consciousness, they do determine your life experience when you are at a lower level of consciousness. The spiritual path is about raising your level of consciousness, raising your life experience above the common life experience. There comes a point where you realize that it is not about changing the outer conditions, it is about changing your experience of the outer conditions.

Having an unascended or an ascended experience

Again, as we have said now several times, the Christ mind is not looking to manifest specific physical conditions on Earth, it is only looking to raise your life experience. What determines whether you are still in embodiment on an unnatural planet like Earth, or whether you ascend? What is it to be in embodiment? It is to have a particular life experience. What is it to be ascended? It is to have a different life experience. You may think that as an ascended master I am somehow fundamentally different from you. In reality, I am just having a different life experience from you. I am a self-aware being. I am having a life experience in the ascended realm. I used to be in embodiment on Earth. I used to have a life experience like you are having. How did I switch? By raising my life experience, not by changing any outer conditions—by raising my life experience.

Now if you look back at previous ascended master dispensations, you will see that even we at the time had to give some different imagery than I am giving you now. You can go back to the I AM movement where they had a concept that in Saint Germain’s retreat there was a specific chair, called the Atomic Accelerator, and you could sit in this chair and it would vibrate and accelerate the atoms of your four lower bodies. This was a concept that was given back then because this is what we determined that people could relate to, given the level of the collective consciousness. There was some almost physical means to accelerate your four lower bodies so that they would vibrate at the level of the ascended realm.

What have we given you in this dispensation? A progressively higher understanding. Is it about accelerating the atoms of your physical body so they suddenly vibrate at the level of the ascended realm? Nay, for this could never be done. Your physical bodies would be blown apart if the atoms were accelerated beyond a certain level. This is like some Christians who believe that they will have physical bodies in heaven much like the physical bodies they have now.

Is it about raising your emotional body, your mental and identity body to a higher level? Nay, as we have explained, those four lower bodies are vehicles for interacting with the material world. In the ascended realm you do not need that. We have given you the teachings about the Conscious You. Is the ascension a process of accelerating the vibration of the Conscious You? It is pure awareness. It is an extension of the I AM Presence. Why does it need to be accelerated? It has not been affected by anything that has happened on Earth. That effect is happening in the four lower bodies.

The rest of this dictation, along with an invocation based on the dictation, is found in the book: Being the Living Christ in everyday life.