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Ascended Master Serapis Bey through Kim Michaels, January 5, 2016.

I AM the Ascended Master Serapis Bey. My purpose for this discourse is to give you some conscious hints that will help you pass the initiations on the fourth level of my retreat. This is, of course, the level where you get a double dose of purity.

What I would like to start with is to have you realize that you have now reached the point on your spiritual path – on the path of self-mastery – where you need to manifest your own built-in, inherent, self-sufficient motivation for walking the path. We of the Chohans know that we have to start people out gently. On the first three levels we give you certain teachings, certain techniques that you can respond to. It is, as I said in my last discourse, in recognition of the fact that for most people life has for so long been a tennis match where they are used to somebody sending the ball back at them, and, therefore, there is always something to react to. We need you to come to a point where your motivation for walking the spiritual path is not a reaction to or against anything in the material world.

We understand very well that this can be a difficult initiation because many of you have – whether you have been aware consciously or intuitively – been aware for a long time that there is a force that opposes your spiritual progress. You may call it the force of darkness, the force of evil, the fallen beings or whatever you may call it. It is natural that after having been aware of this for some time, you develop an idea that part of your motivation for walking the spiritual path is to get away from, to free yourself from, to cheat or to rise above the dark forces. You do understand what I am saying, do you not? It is very easy to get into the mode where your motivation for walking the spiritual path is related to – and therefore to some degree defined by – the fallen beings. I have talked about the false hierarchy, and they have been very clever in inserting many ideas that can actually distort people’s view of the spiritual path to such a degree that it delays their progress or even takes them into a blind alley that it may take them lifetimes to get out of.

Self-sufficient intentions

What I need you to do at this level of my retreat is to take an honest look at your intentions. We have said before that even fearing the false hierarchy opens you up to the false hierarchy. This may not be in the sense that the false hierarchy can directly reach into your mind and influence you that way. They can influence you indirectly by causing you to run away from what you fear or not be willing to look at something you fear. This causes many spiritual students to have certain elements in their own consciousness that they are not willing to look at. If you are very concerned about not following the false hierarchy, for example, you may not be willing to look at some of the ideas that they have inserted into your subconscious mind in this or past lifetimes.

You would feel so ashamed, so mortified, so terrified if you had to admit that you had certain elements of the fallen consciousness in your subconscious mind. You may even fear that I, Serapis Bey, would reject you if it was exposed that you had such elements. This, of course, will not help you take advantage of the help I offer you.

As I have already said, you cannot hide anything from me. There is hardly any person that comes to my retreat on the path of self-mastery who does not have elements of the fallen consciousness or beliefs created by the fallen beings, the false hierarchy, in their subconscious minds. How can you be alive on this planet for several lifetimes without being affected by the many illusions and lies that are out there? For me there is nothing unusual, there is nothing negative, there is nothing I need to judge about you having these elements. I am not here to judge you, shame you or find fault. I am here to help you transcend everything that limits you on the spiritual path. One of the things that will limit you is if you have certain elements inserted by the fallen beings or the dark forces. Even if you have not had anything directly inserted, you may have that fear – which in a way is also an insertion – and just seeking to avoid looking at something will, of course, hold you back on the path. It can be no other way.

I need you to come to the point where you realize that your real motivation for walking the spiritual path should not be in any way related to the dark forces or the false hierarchy. Your real motivation should come from within and should be related to your own Divine plan for this lifetime, in the short run, and in the long run to your original purpose for coming to earth. I propose that you ponder this very carefully with your conscious mind. Again, you may find it helpful to make a list of the intentions and the motives that you have that you can see are based on some kind of reaction towards the dark forces. Is there anything you are seeking to avoid, to run away from, to raise yourself above?

I need you to consciously contemplate what it is that you truly love about spirituality and about life. Many times we see students come to my retreat and they have so many limitations programmed into their minds that they dare not even really consider what they truly want. I ask you to perform an exercise where you take a piece of paper, you give the invocation based on this discourse and then afterwards you write down whatever comes to you about the topic of what you really want to do in life. I need you to be conscious of the fact that you need to set aside the limitations you have. I am asking you, in the beginning, to approach this as a theoretical exercise. You are saying that if – theoretically – you did not have any of the limitations you are facing in your current situation or in your psychology, what is it you would really like to do?

I am not asking you to speculate on what I want you to do, what other ascended masters want you to do or what God wants you to do. I am not asking you to speculate on what the fallen beings do not want you to do. I am not asking you to think about what other people do or don’t want you to do. I am asking you to consider – if you had no limitations whatsoever – what would you really like to do in life?

Different types of intentions

You will notice that the answers to this question may fall into two categories. There may be some that relate to unfulfilled desires and dreams that you have. Something you have never been able to do but that you have always wanted to do. There is nothing wrong with this. It may be experiences you have desired to have.

What I ask you to do is look beyond this, and then consider that there is also another category and these are things that you want to do, not so much for a personal purpose but more for an impersonal purpose. You may see this as a service to life; you may see this as a desire to change something on this planet, to bring some kind of positive change. As we have said many times, most of you who are spiritual people volunteered to come to this planet in order to bring positive change by bringing your light, your insights, your momentums and your experiences. There will be a certain percentage of the things you want to do in life that relate to this, a desire to change something on earth.

I now need you to look more closely at these. Perhaps you may give the invocation again or give my decree some times. Perhaps you may sit calmly and quietly, close your eyes and meditate upon this. What I desire you to do is to begin to see beyond all of the things that you want to do, that you feel obligated to do or that you feel you should do in order to make a change on earth. I need you to see that beyond these activities, there will be some motives, some intentions, that do not relate to you wanting to do anything outside yourself. Instead, they relate to what gives you the most joy in your own being.

You may not be able to see this very clearly in the beginning. You may find it difficult to put words on it. What I am seeking to help you discover here is that your original motivation for coming to earth had an Alpha and an Omega aspect. The Omega aspect was that you wanted to bring certain changes because you saw that there were conditions on this earth that needed to be left behind. The Alpha aspect was that you wanted to share your light, your I AM Presence, your God flame, your unique individual matrix. You wanted to express your individuality in a creative way. I have talked about the fact that walking the spiritual path is not a straitjacket. It still gives you room for individual creativity. This individual creativity is, in its pure form, not directed at producing certain changes that are a reaction to the way conditions currently are on earth. Creativity in its pure form is related to expressing who you are, your Divine individuality. The pure expression of creativity is not a matter of producing outer results, outer changes, especially not changes that are dependent on the choices of other beings with free will, be they in physical embodiment or the fallen beings in other realms.

Creativity in its essence is related to expressing who you are for the pure joy that it gives you to feel the light that God gave you flowing through the prism of the individuality that God gave you. I understand that you may not be able to tune in to this consciously at the moment. By pondering it and making calls about it, you will gradually begin to get some sense of this. It is very important that you get a sense of what gives you this pure sense of joy that is not related to anything outside yourself because this is the purest intention you have for being on earth. It is also an intention that you can express regardless of the outer conditions or limitations you are facing.

Your highest motivation

I had you do the exercise of saying: “What if I didn’t have any limitations? What would I express?” I now ask you to take this to a higher level where you realize that, regardless of what limitations you are facing in your outer situation, there is nothing in those limitations that can prevent you from being the open door for the light and the individuality of your I AM Presence to flow through you. This can be done in any situation and this is what I need you to ponder. This is the only way that you are going to develop a motivation that comes completely from inside yourself and therefore cannot be affected by, destroyed by or held back by anything outside yourself.

On the path of self-mastery there must come a point where your motivation for walking the path is only related to your conscious desire, your conscious vision, of wanting to express who you really are in the material world. This is the highest motivation for walking the path, and it is what you need in order to pass the initiations under the Chohans on the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Ray. That is why I am the one who prepares you for those rays because you are now in the eye of the needle, the nexus.

When you begin to get a feel for your inner being and what gives you joy, you can also begin to take a look at your outer situation. I have so many students who come to me and when we sit at my retreat and take a look at their outer situation, they so often say: “But Serapis, can’t you see I’m facing these limitations in my outer situation? How can I be truly spiritual, how can I express my creativity when I face these situations every day of my life? How can I quit my job, abandon my children and family and do something that is entirely creative or spiritual?”

That is not what we of the Chohans are asking you to do. There is a false motivation that has been created by the fallen beings, the false hierarchy, over many centuries. In previous centuries, it was often expressed, for example, in the Christian culture by the entire monastic culture. There was a belief that if you were a truly religious person, you would devote your life to God by going into a monastery.

You would withdraw from ordinary human life because it was considered to be in opposition to true spiritual devotion and worship of God. It was considered that God actually valued these people who withdrew from ordinary life, isolated themselves in a very comfortable environment where they were not confronted by many aspects of their own ego and therefore did not make spiritual progress or did not make significant spiritual progress.

This is not what we of the ascended masters look at as the ideal. There was a time where it was valuable for some people to be able to withdraw in order to gather momentum on the spiritual path. This does not mean that all people who lived in monasteries made progress. In today’s world, in the Aquarian Age, it is, as we have said many times, not necessary or even constructive that too many people withdraw from society. It is far more important that you are spiritual and find a way to express your spirituality in everyday life. It is important that you do not isolate yourselves but demonstrate how to be spiritual even in an anti-spiritual society.

It is important for your own growth that you do not isolate yourself in spiritual communities where the members can all validate each other. They can live very comfortably without having their egos disturbed so that they are forced to see them. So many spiritual communities function this way. If people are convinced that they are spiritual, but they are all validating each others egos, they are not helping each other see the ego and thus they are not overcoming them.

The rest of this dictation, along with an invocation based on the dictation, is found in the book: The Mystical Initiations of Intention.