TOPICS: The true message of Easter – Why is there a gap between hope and reality? – The Consciousness of Peter – The division of Christianity into two tendencies – Gnostic and Unified Doctrine – Closing the Gap with Christ Reality – The trap of some ultimate status – We All Have the Grace to Recognize the Christ – A Universal, Timeless Way – Transcend the Consciousness that Creates the Gap – Shift your perspective to accept that you are the Christ –

Listen to the recording of this dictation (Subscribers only)

Ascended Master Jesus, April 8, 2012 through Kim Michaels.

If you could see what I see from the ascended master perspective, you would see the effect of millions of Christians around the world coming together on this day to celebrate Easter Sunday. You would truly see that as these many people come together, there is a certain release of light. As people come together, the release of light will be according to the sincerity and the purity of their hearts and intentions.

And thus, you will indeed see, that there are many congregations around the world, where there is a sufficient number of very dedicated souls who are truly seeking to live up to the image of Christ that they have been given, to the image of what they think it means to be a good Christian. And as they come together with sincere hearts, their songs, their prayers, the focus of their attention does indeed release a certain portion of light, that can be felt in their communities and even felt on a planetary scale.

What is then the primary vibration of the light that is released by these many sincere and pure-hearted Christians? It is the vibration of hope, the light of hope. For many have indeed locked into one of the central vibrations in the Easter message, namely the hope of something better than the life you see and experience here on earth, the hope that at some point in the future, there will be something better. Yet my beloved, you who are open to the spiritual reality beyond what most Christians are willing to consider; you will know that the future never arrives. And that is why there has remained, now for 2,000 years, a gap between the hope evoked by my resurrection and the reality experienced by most people on earth, even by humanity as a whole.

The true message of Easter

For you see, it is not the true message of Easter that one man who was different from all other men to begin with, was resurrected and therefore conquered death. And that this man will then, at some future time, come and save you—who are so different that you could not aspire to go through the same process. Nay, the true message of Easter is the eternal motto of the ascended masters: What one has done; all can do.

And thus, the message that Christians should have received as part of the Easter ritual is, indeed, that they too can transcend the human limitations, the human consciousness, and be resurrected into the Christ consciousness, even while walking the earth in a physical body. This is the true hope, and if that message had been preached from the pulpits of mainstream Christian churches, then the planet and humanity would have been transformed centuries ago into a golden age.

Why is there a gap between hope and reality?

Thus, I would address the topic of why there is, why there remains, a gap between hope and reality. For truly, hope is the substance of things to come—when hope is imbued with the reality of inner knowledge. And you see, my beloved, this is indeed the problem. For most Christians do not dare to hope, that their dreams could be fulfilled here on earth, having been so programmed to look for that fulfillment only in the life after the one life they believe they have on this planet.

You may have heard the saying, “Tomorrow never comes.” And the background for this saying is very simple. All you have in which to make choices is today, the present moment. For you see, my beloved, when tomorrow becomes today; then you are still living in the present moment. And if you look to tomorrow for the fulfillment of your hopes and dreams, then even what is tomorrow today will have another tomorrow that you can look to. And so there will still be a gap between tomorrow and the present moment.

For you can only live today. You can only make choices today. You can only let the ego die today. You can only be resurrected today. And thus, either Easter Sunday is every day or it is no day. For you can indeed be reborn on any day of the year, not just on the one day when it supposedly happened to me 2,000 years ago.

So why then is it, that the light released by the many Christians who come to church on Easter Sunday, can be genuine spiritual light, can have a positive effect; but it has not transformed the earth even after 2,000 years? Well, it is because the light never forms an upward spiral, for the light only sparks temporarily and then dies out. Because as people leave their churches on Easter Sunday and go back to their daily lives, they can not bridge the gap between what they see and experience in church or in the scriptures and what they experience in their daily lives.

They cannot truly live the message of Easter in their daily lives. They cannot truly accept that they could be transformed by the light of Christ, that they could be transformed in the resurrection spiral, enter the ascension spiral, and eventually ascend to the spiritual realm. But even before then, ascend to a higher level of consciousness, that is distinctly beyond the human consciousness that they have experienced from birth.

Why then is there this gap? Well, if you look at Christianity as a whole; you will see that truly the largest single church in the Christian firmament is the Catholic Church. And, of course, each year at Easter, the leader of the Catholic Church gives various statements. And yesterday the pope made the statement that humanity is groping in darkness because they cannot tell the difference between good and evil.

This is, of course, a perfectly true statement. I have no issue with this statement. But I do have an issue with the fact that the statement is made by the head of a church, which bears the primary responsibility for the fact that humanity is groping in darkness and cannot tell the difference—not between good and evil, but between the one reality of Christ and the many “realities” of anti-Christ, of the duality consciousness.

The Consciousness of Peter

Of course, the Catholic Church claims to be based on Peter, who supposedly was the first pope. Now, my beloved, I am not personally aware of having anointed Peter as the pope of a church that bears any resemblance to the Catholic Church you see today. I do not remember having done this, nor do I read it in the scriptures.

Yet, Catholics, of course, do read it in scriptures and do believe that I actually anointed Peter as the pope of my church. And this proves exactly what is the problem on basing an entire church, that over a thousand years dominated Christianity, on the consciousness of Peter. For it is true that I said, “Thou art Peter and upon this rock will I build my church.” But I also shortly thereafter said, “Get thee behind me Satan, for thou savourest not the things that be of God but the things that be of men.”

The rock upon which I will build my church is the intuitive ability, that all people have, to recognize that there is something, some reality, beyond the human consciousness, beyond their personal perception filter. Yet, the consciousness of Peter is, then, the desire to make this something beyond come into your mental box and conform to your perception filter. Rather than continuing to use Christ as the guiding rod, that can bring you step-by-step beyond your current state of consciousness, your current perception filter. This is the central dynamic that has been “overlooked.” And I say overlooked in quotation marks, for of course it has not simply been overlooked; it has been actually and forcefully suppressed by the forces that dominated the Roman Catholic Church from its very inception.

The division of Christianity into two tendencies – Gnostic and Unified Doctrine

For you see, if you are honest, that early Christianity, even before it was recognized by the Roman state, was divided between two tendencies. There was the tendency seen in some of the Gnostics – although not all of the Gnostics – of relying only on continued revelation from the Spirit. And there was the tendency that wanted to solidify in a unified doctrine, a unified set of rituals, in order to create a more homogenous church. Now then, in their pure forms, these tendencies are neither right nor wrong. Each of them has certain good qualities. But when one of them becomes espoused as the only one, and therefore becomes unbalanced; then it is inevitable that people will leave off from the middle way of Christ and go into one of the extremes of duality.

You see this in the Gnostic movement. If knowledge of the Gnostics had not been so forcefully erased, you would have seen it even more clearly. But you can see it today in what is the modern Gnostic movement, as the movement that believes in some form of revelation or channeling from entities beyond the material realm. Again, there are many people in today’s world who are taking the approach to revelation exactly as the Gnostics were so many centuries ago. They do not want a formalized doctrine. They realize that the Spirit will move on as conditions change in the world and as humankind’s consciousness is raised. So they look for new revelation.

But if they become unbalanced, then they will believe in more and more unbelievable revelations. And therefore, they might easily fall prey to those forces who know how to prey upon the tendencies of the human ego, and thereby give people a message that makes them feel oh-so-special because they can recognize this advanced teaching. But yet, the people do not recognize, that once they have crossed this threshold of believing that they are special – because they believe something that most people do not believe – then there really is no limit to what they will believe.

There is no limit to how far they will go, believing in more and more extreme revelations, until you have a cult-like environment, where they isolate themselves from the rest of humanity. And perhaps even end up taking some extreme action or other that either wakes themselves up, or at least wakes up the world to the fact, that we have another example of people who have crossed the threshold into insanity and fanaticism.

Of course, then you have the other tendency, where people dare not listen to anything new, because they want the security of something that is not changing and that is supposedly imbued with some final absolute authority. This is what you see in the Catholic Church after it became the formal church of the Roman Empire. Take a brief look at history and see how there were conflicts in the church, most notably the conflict between the Eastern Church and the Roman Church, which really all centered around whether I was divine or not, whether I was divine from the beginning or was a man like all others.

Yet, none of the two positions were in alignment with the reality of Christ. And thus, one cannot truly say that one was right and the other was wrong. For they were simply both two expressions of the ego’s desire to set up some final authority, and say that this is the position of the entire Christian Church and all Christians should believe in this, or they are outcasts.

And so, as inevitably happens, once people go into this consciousness of wanting to define a certain expression, a certain doctrine as the absolutely infallible one. Well then, they will inevitably be opposed by those who do not agree with their doctrine but want another doctrine to be the absolute one. And thus, when two sides each take absolute positions; well then, there can be no meeting ground, there can be no compromise, there can be no transcendence to a higher level. And thus, they must split apart as you saw with the eastern and the western churches, as you saw with capitalism and communism, and so many other examples. As you see with science and religion, or at least materialistic science and formalized religion.

Closing the Gap with Christ Reality

Do you not see, my beloved, that when I said, “Think not that I come to bring peace but a sword” what is the sword of Christ? It is that when ever you leave off from constantly seeking to transcend your current perception filter, you will be challenged by the opposition to your perception. For your perception cannot be complete; it can only be a limited perception that springs from duality.

And when you take a limited dualistic perception and want to make it absolute, you will be opposed by an opposite perception. There is no perception in the world that cannot have an opposite. And so, either you enter the struggle between the opposites, or you look for the sword of Christ that can cleave asunder the real from the unreal. Not in establishing one dualistic opposite as the final one, but in helping you see through the consciousness of duality, the consciousness of wanting to raise up one polarity as the absolute truth, the Peter consciousness.

And once you see a glimpse of the Christ reality beyond that consciousness, then you have a new frame of reference. And if you are willing to use it continually to gradually raise your consciousness; then you can rise from being blinded by the human consciousness, the Peter consciousness, to the point where you can see with the Christ consciousness the clarity of the Christ mind. And that is when you can begin to close the gap between hope and reality.

Because you realize that the vision you have of your own mastery over your own mind, even the mastery of your mind purified in Christ mastering matter, is not a distant hope belonging to some other world. It is a real, we might say: scientific, possibility that can become a living reality here in this world, here in this now, whenever you experience the now where you can finally accept that this is the now. Not a future now, but this present now is it. It is the final stage, where you accept that you have a measure of Christhood and you are ready to begin to express it; without, my beloved, falling into the trap of thinking that because you have a measure of Christhood, you have now reached some absolute stage.

The trap of some ultimate status

For do you not see that as long as you are in embodiment, the Peter consciousness will always be there, seeking to draw the Christ light that you have, the Christ attainment you have, into conforming to the view that now this must be the ultimate? If it is of Christ, then it must have some ultimate status. This then is the final revelation, this then is the final doctrine, this then is the only true church. And thus, as you become a teacher, as you become an expression of truth; what you express must be some final, some ultimate revelation.

Take a look, if you will be honest, at some of the people who claim to have received revelation, whether from this or that realm, or even from the ascended masters. Take a look at them and see how many of them have precisely fallen into this trap of thinking, that they had reached some ultimate status as a messenger, some ultimate status as a guru, that they were the founders of the ultimate church that would be the new church for the Aquarian Age. Or whatever beliefs you find out there, where they believe in some superior status, that they have reached that sets them apart from others, that sets them above others. And thus, they have, without realizing it, taken on the Peter consciousness, the consciousness that was used to build the belief that the Catholic Church was the only true church of Christ and the only road to salvation, that the Catholic Church had the only true doctrine and that the pope even spoke the infallible words of Christ.

There never has been, my beloved, and there never will be any revelation that is final, that is absolute. No revelation could ever be given that is beyond both the consciousness of the person receiving or transmitting the revelation and the consciousness of the people for which the revelation is intended. For no revelation is given in a vacuum. The purpose of giving revelation is to raise up a certain group of people, that they might transcend a certain level of consciousness. Thus, the revelation must be adapted to the consciousness that these people have or they will not be able to grasp, let alone accept, the revelation.

And do you see, that in adapting the revelation to a certain state of consciousness, it is very possible that people in that state of consciousness can use the revelation as a justification for validating their state of consciousness, or some of the beliefs in that state of consciousness, and saying that this now proves that our beliefs are absolute and infallible, or the revelation would not have addressed them in this way?

And so do you see, that this has happened to the teachings of the Buddha, to the teachings that I brought forth, to the teachings of Mohammed, of PadmaSambhava, of all other teachers throughout history, even many modern teachers, even those who have been genuinely sponsored messengers of the ascended masters? It happens because the Peter consciousness is still present on earth. And if you are not very alert, if you are not constantly seeking to transcend your current state of consciousness; you will be tempted by the subtlety of this consciousness.

We All Have the Grace to Recognize the Christ

My beloved, I do not wish to give you the impression that Peter was an unworthy or low disciple of Christ. He was chosen because he had the potential to transcend that level of consciousness. Thus, you should all see yourselves as being in the position of Peter until you truly begin to see the consciousness of Peter and more clearly see the consciousness of Christ. All who are spiritual people have been given the grace; as Peter was given the grace, of being able to recognize the Christ, seeing that I offered something special, something beyond all of the other preachers that roamed in Galilee at the time. And thus, Peter had seen enough to be willing to follow me.

Yet, he was not able to continue to transcend. He was constantly being tempted by the consciousness that wanted him to believe, that now he had reached some ultimate status. And that because I was the Son of the Living God and he was a disciple of the Son of the Living God, he did not need to look for the subtleties of his ego, he did not need to look for the subtleties of the serpentine consciousness, that had entered his own mind or that were constantly being projected into his mind from the mass consciousness and the forces of anti-Christ.

And thus, he started to become comfortable, and that is why, when I told him of how my mission would end, he became very uncomfortable with my statement. For it did not live up to his image of what should happen, not only to the Son of God, but to those who were following the Son of God. And that is why he denied me three times, because he was not willing to be crucified with me and then let it be up to God what would happen to him. Again he wanted at least his own life to conform to his expectations, even if it had become clear to him that my life would not conform to his expectations.

And so you see, I place no blame upon Peter or upon anyone else. What is the point of blaming anyone? I did not come to condemn the world, but that through me the world might be raised beyond the state of consciousness of condemnation and judgment as even a possibility. For in the clarity of the Christ mind, you condemn no one.

You simply see what is real and you become always the open door for what is real to be expressed in whatever way it can be expressed in a given situation for a given people. For you seek never to give them the absolute truth that they cannot handle. You seek to give them a cup of cold water in Christ’s name, that will raise them out of their current state of consciousness and therefore hopefully set them on an upward course, that will take them higher and higher. This is the true hope of Easter.

A Universal, Timeless Way

Do you see the gap between people’s daily reality and what they are told in church about the glory of my resurrection, how special I was, how different I was from them? And thus, they can believe that one day I will come and save them, but it will happen in some distant future and not in this world. Do you see that this is the gap? And it is the Peter consciousness that creates the gap, that upholds the gap.

Because you think that this revelation, this doctrine, is absolute and as long as you believe in it, you are guaranteed to be saved. And thus, you will not take the responsibility, that you are never guaranteed to be saved as long as you are on earth. And thus, you must constantly be open to reaching for the Christ consciousness, that helps you see beyond the subtleties of the serpentine consciousness that constantly seeks to ensnare you and make you feel that: “Ah, now I have reached some ultimate state, now I am saved, now I can sit back and wait for the Lord to come and do the rest for me.”

Do you see that there will always be a gap, when you think that there will be some future glory of such magnitude that it cannot compare to your daily life? Do you see that the only way to overcome the gap is to realize, that salvation is a path, a gradual path that leads like a staircase from wherever you are in consciousness to your personal Christhood? And that staircase can be traversed as any other staircase, by taking one small doable believable step at a time.

Yet, the Peter consciousness will not accept the image of a path. It wants instant salvation, or at least guaranteed salvation, which has found its most extreme form in the fundamentalist Christian belief, that if you sit down right now and declare that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior, you are guaranteed to be saved and you need to do nothing more, except maybe avoid some of the more obvious sins.

This is the complete antithesis to my true teachings, for I taught a path and my followers saw themselves as “Followers of the Way,” not as followers of Jesus, not even as followers of Jesus Christ, for they saw it had been taught by me that the Way transcends any person. It is a universal timeless way, that has been expressed in many different contexts in many different societies. It is a way that will continue to evolve as humankind raises its consciousness and therefore can receive a still higher revelation.

Yes, my beloved, those of you who accept that I am the real Jesus speaking through a human messenger; you have been blessed, for flesh and blood has not revealed it to you. But do not fall into the trap of thinking, that this human messenger is the ultimate messenger and what I and other ascended masters give through him is some ultimate teaching. This messenger has so far never allowed himself to fall into that trap, which is why he is still being used. Otherwise, he would have become a closed door, rather than an open door.

And thus, one of the challenges of being an open door is that you must be willing to flow with the Spirit, even if the Spirit wants to go beyond what has been said through you before. Because now it wants to address a different level of consciousness than what it has addressed before.

Transcend the Consciousness that Creates the Gap

You see an ongoing challenge of never allowing the Peter consciousness to make you believe, that this is some ultimate teaching, some ultimate revelation. And that as long as you keep believing this or practicing that, then you are guaranteed to ascend at the end of this lifetime. There is no bargaining with God. You cannot buy your way into heaven. You can either be in heaven or not be in heaven. For if you are not in heaven, you are in the consciousness of duality and there is nothing you can do in the consciousness of duality to buy your way into heaven.

The consciousness of duality is the consciousness, where you see a gap between yourself and Christ. There is nothing you can do from the consciousness of the gap to close the gap. Can you not see how impossible this is? Can you not then look at the world – at the Christian Churches, at other Churches, at New Age and spiritual movements – and see how many people sit there and still believe, that there is some way to cross the gap without changing their state of consciousness, so they transcend the consciousness that creates the gap?

Can you not, on this Easter Sunday, 2012, make this breakthrough, where you not only hear me intellectually, but you see it? You see it in your heart. You see it in your being. You experience: “Yes, this is reality, this is the eternal timeless message preached by the true teachers of the ages. It is only by changing my consciousness that I can cross the gap.”

And changing my consciousness means transcending the consciousness of separation and duality, the consciousness of anti-Christ, the human consciousness, the consciousness of Peter—whatever you want to call it. But you must transcend the consciousness that creates a gap and makes that gap seem believable, so that you believe you are outside the kingdom. You will be in the kingdom only when you accept, that you are already in the kingdom and that you were always in the kingdom—you simply did not see it. As long as you think there is a gap, there will remain a gap.

Shift your perspective to accept that you are the Christ

Can you not, my beloved, begin to feel the reality of what I speak? I am not asking you to instantly shift and leave behind all Peter consciousness, for I know this is not realistic. You must again take one step at a time. But there is a fundamental shift that can happen, when you begin to truly feel the reality of which I speak, the reality of the need to go beyond that subtle consciousness, that makes you think it can define reality based on words or images in this world.

I am not of this world. Christ is not of this world. Yet, the subtlety is that everything in this world is made out of the Christ consciousness. For without him was not anything made that was made. So the Christ is in all and within all. And therefore, Christ can be found anywhere. You can never be in a place where Christ is not found.

And thus, you can never be in a place, where you cannot start the upward path and begin to transcend your level of consciousness. I am not saying thereby, that all conditions on earth are expressions of the Christ mind. All limitations and diseases and man’s inhumanity to man are expressions of the mind of anti-Christ. But I am saying that even within the very atoms themselves you find the Christ light.

And thus, if you can see beyond the outer form that these atoms have temporarily taken on, then you can see that the Christ light is within everything. And when you begin to see that the Christ light is in the atoms of your own body, in the atoms of your emotions, thoughts and your sense of identity; that is when you can begin to see Christ in yourself. For as long as you see Christ as being outside yourself, as being different from yourself, as being separated from yourself; how can you then accept that you can become the Christ? And how can you go on to accept that you are the Christ?

You see, again, the consciousness of Peter makes it seem as if there is a gap between you and Christ, and it takes some miraculous event from outside yourself, some miraculous intervention, for you to become the Christ. But it is not so. What it takes for you to become the Christ is a shift in perspective, where you accept the reality that Christ is within you, right now, right here. And thus, you are never separated from the reality of Christ that I AM and that you are also. If you will but do what I did: Recognize that I AM Christ, for Christ I AM, for there is nothing but Christ. And this is the true message of Easter.

Wish that it would be preached by at least some of the Christian churches that claim to represent me on earth. Wish that at least some would dare to acknowledge the reality of Christ, that I have now spoken for almost ten years on my website. Wish that some would take it as a stepping stone for developing their own inner communion with the real Jesus, that I may also speak through them.

For I have no desire to have one messenger be the only one. And neither does this messenger have this desire to be the only one who is representing Christ. For he knows, as well, that Christ is within all and that the second coming of Christ will only happen when thousands and millions of people begin to recognize the Christ within themselves, the Christ that I AM.

For truly, the Christ that I AM desires to be the Living Christ by being expressed through the many. For it is when the one becomes the many – who are still in the one – that the victory of Christ will finally be won. Thus, I bid you a happy Easter, where you may rise to a new vision of Christ and a new vision of yourself as Christ in action. Be it so. For I have spoken. I AM Jesus Christ.