Experiencing the joy of the River of Life


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Ascended Master MORE through Kim Michaels, September  22, 2023. This dictation was given at a conference in Almaty, Kazakhstan—Being the River of Life in action.

I AM the Ascended Master MORE, and I am already more than before I started giving this dictation. Why am I more? Because I started giving this dictation. You see, this is how the River of Life works. When you dare to be the open door for the River of Life to express itself in the physical octave, you become more. When you are ascended, you know that anything you do, you become more. You do not have the fear, the concern that you might make a mistake, that you might do something that was not right or that was not good enough. You just allow yourself to be in the flow, and then you experience that whatever the flow is, you become more.

The standard of perfection on earth

I wish to speak to you about a topic that relates to another factor on earth that prevents you from surrendering into the flow of the River of Life. Now, if you know anything about the history of ascended master movements, you might think that it is odd that I would speak about this topic, because I have, in some previous ascended master organization, been looked at as a very serious master who is a very strict disciplinarian who demands a lot from my chelas. And this has actually caused many of those chelas, embodied chelas, to go into this state that hinders them, prevents them from flowing with the River of Life. And what is that state? It is that you take yourself too seriously, that you take life too seriously, that you take the spiritual path too seriously. Where does this psychology come from? For it is, of course, all psychology, as you will know, those of you who are open to this dispensation. Well, it actually ultimately comes from the fallen beings. And what have they done? Well, as we have said before, they have created this thought matrix, that there is a standard against which everything must be measured. Everything must be compared to the standard and you must evaluate where it fits on the standard. Is it good or bad? Is it higher or lower? Is it good enough according to the standard? And, of course, the ultimate polarity, one polarity of the standard, is perfection. And compared to perfection, nothing is ever good enough.

Now, this may surprise some people who will say that: “Well surely the ascension is a process of becoming a perfected being, so when you are ascended, you must be perfect and everything you do must be perfect.” But see this is a complete misunderstanding. This is again, you are looking at the ascended realm from the unascended sphere from a very dense planet. You look at conditions on earth and you project what it should be in the spiritual realm based on what you see in the unascended realm. You take this standard of perfection and you project it upon the ascended masters, but see, we are not affected by this standard of perfection. Why? Because in order to ascend you have to transcend the standard, where there is perfection on one end and failure on the other end of the scale. What did Jesus say 2000 years ago was the requirement for entering the kingdom? Unless ye become as a little child, ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom.

Becoming as a little child

What does the child do? It plays with life. It flows with life. It flows with the River of Life, at least as long as the child has some innocence. Of course, a child can be burdened by traumas from past lives and therefore not be able to flow with the River of Life. But a healthy child will flow with the River of Life, will have that period of childhood where it is innocent. It is bubbling. It is happily flowing with situations in life. And then as the child grows older, especially when it enters school where everything is suddenly so serious, then the child gradually loses that innocence.

You see that in many societies, in fact all societies, the adults look at the little children and they are uplifted by the children’s innocence and joyfulness. But those same adults, when the children reach a certain age, they have this mechanism in their minds that says: “Well, now you are not a child anymore. Now you need to start behaving a certain way as we expect you to behave, as society expects you to behave. Now you need to no longer be that bubbling child, but you need to start taking life seriously.” Is it not cognitive dissonance? And then not only do the adults project upon the children that they should live up to this standard, they, of course, also project upon themselves. When these same adults hear about the spiritual path and you can raise your consciousness and qualify for your ascension, they project that image onto the spiritual path that you need to be serious, that you need to live up to a certain standard.

Living up to the standard of perfection

What has happened as a result of this? It is that all people who are in embodiment on earth have built this very strong personal self, which of course is tied to a very strong collective self, that whatever you do, whatever happens, you need to compare it to this standard. Whatever the standard is in your particular culture, it is often based on a certain religion. Look how during medieval times Catholics could barely move. Everything had to follow the doctrines and live up to the demands of the church, or it could be hauled before the Inquisition and tortured. Look at some Muslim countries today. Can it really be natural that a woman wearing her headscarf in a little bit looser fashion is arrested by the police, beaten so she dies? Is this really natural? Do you really think this is what God wants? For I can assure you from personal experience that it is not what God wants. This is not the will of God, which I have some personal experience with, being the Chohan of the First Ray of the Will of God.

When you first find the spiritual path, it is unavoidable that you have this self that you were brought up with in your culture, and even have created over many lifetimes, reinforced over many lifetimes. Here you find an ascended master teaching. And what do most people do? They take whatever image they have of God and they project it upon the ascended masters, and now they think we are like the angry and judgmental being in the sky. And many of the chelas in previous dispensations looked upon El Morya, as I was named at the time, that way: El Morya is a strict disciplinarian who demands obedience to the will of God. And if you are obedient to the will of God, it is like wearing a straitjacket. You have to be very serious about always living up to this standard, otherwise El Morya is going to stand there with a raised finger, and that is what you do not want to see.

So many students projected this image of the angry God upon me, that I eventually came to a point where I decided that I needed to do something to shatter that image, because it was holding people back. Which is why I changed my name to Master MORE, thereby preventing many of the chelas with that attitude from moving into this dispensation, which those of you who are in this dispensation might be grateful for, because I can assure you that it is very difficult to deal with people in this mindset, especially when you have the new teachings you have in this dispensation. I am not the angry god in the sky. How could an ascended master be angry? How could an ascended master be judgmental? Why would an ascended master compare you to the standard created by the fallen beings? Why would an ascended master want you to live up to that standard?

The joy of ascension and the ascended realm

What is it that happens when you ascend? You transcend the mindset of earth, and therefore you are not burdened by this standard, and therefore you do not take yourself too seriously, you do not take life so seriously, and therefore what do you feel?

Consider yourself, imagine yourself: You have been walking the path for a long time. It may be nearing the end of your body’s natural lifespan. You have reached the 144th level of consciousness. You are standing there before the doorway that leads to the ascended realm, and before you can walk through the door, you have to take that last long look back to earth, and see if there is anything that pulls you back here. We now assume there is nothing that pulls you back, but now I am just asking you to consider that as you walk this long spiritual path from the 48th to the 144th level of consciousness, you had a certain attitude, a certain approach, a certain view of the spiritual path and of yourself as a student or chela walking that path. Now again, I am not trying to find fault or blame anymore, I am just asking you to look, based on how you see yourself today, how you see the path, how you see yourself walking that path.

I am just asking you to realize that you can actually have the kind of attitude that you have to the path right now and you can carry it with you to the 144th level, but then when you stand there and you see there is nothing pulling you back to earth, you suddenly turn around and now you walk through that door, and as you walk through the door it is as if an entire world opens up to you. It is as if you were walking through this narrow tunnel before and now you come out into the bright sunshine. The image you had of yourself and the path melts away in that bright sunshine, and what do you feel? You feel joy, a bubbling joy. You cannot help it. You may think, and many students from previous dispensations certainly think that it is such a momentous, somber, serious occasion, that you walk through that door and you might think that there are angels playing trumpets and there is an array of ascended masters welcoming you. And you might think this is some epically important ceremony that takes place, but what really takes place is that when a being walks through that door, yes there is an array of ascended masters that have been working with that being to welcome that being into the ascended realm, but when the being walks through the door and experiences the ascended realm for the first time, you cannot stop yourself from laughing.

First you see the person being surprised. There is this look of surprise, then the eyes go wide, and then there is this big smile, and then there is this bubbling laughter, and you might think that we who are ascended masters would just stand there and wait for the person to stop laughing, but why would we do that? We share in a person’s joy, so we laugh as well, and we laugh and we laugh until the person has accepted the joy of the ascended realm, because many people had never even considered it before they ascended, because they carried with them this serious mindset. Now again, I am not blaming you in any way, shape or form. You are on a very difficult planet. Walking the spiritual path is not easy, and so whatever attitude, whatever approach you need that carries you up that steep path is perfectly acceptable. I am only saying that if you take yourself and life too seriously, you make it more difficult for yourself to flow with the River of Life, because what does it take to flow with the River of Life? Unless you become as a little child, how can you flow?

You could actually, if you desire to, take a look at your approach to the spiritual path, take a look at how seriously you take the path, and you can at least contemplate that it is actually possible to switch your approach, to have that click, that switch in the mind where you tune into the joy. Not necessarily the joy of the ascended realm, but the joy of the River of Life, for the River of Life also has joy. You might say that joy is the motor of the River of Life.

The joy of self-transcendence

You see, what have the fallen beings done by imposing this standard? They have created this very strange view that salvation is something that is forced upon you. The angry god in the sky has created this very strict law, and if you do not live up to this law, you will go to hell, or at least purgatory, whatever that might be. In order to avoid this very unpleasant condition, you have to strive to get into heaven. What does that do? Do you want to go to heaven? Have they given you any sense that it is desirable to go to heaven? What do some of the mainstream religions say that you do in heaven? Do you sit around on a pink cloud playing the harp for all eternity? Does that sound attractive? Certainly not to me when I was in embodiment. It is almost as if you are forced to go to heaven in order to avoid this very bad condition in hell. But you are forced. What joy can there be when you are forced? How can joy and force coexist? Look at a child. It may be playing innocently, but you try and force the child to do something and the joy goes away.

The reality is that what drives the River of Life, what drives self-transcendence is that when you transcend from one state of self to another, you feel greater joy, at least once you get beyond a certain level. You might say that when you are in a duality consciousness below the 48th level, you may not be feeling it as joy when you transcend a certain self, but you at least feel it as some kind of freedom, some kind of improvement. But there comes that point where you have reached a certain level, certainly when you go beyond the 96th level, where you can make that switch and realize that every time you let go of a separate self and rise to the next level of the path, you feel a certain joy. And then you can make the switch and realize that you are not forced to walk the spiritual path. You are pulled upwards by this River of Life because you experience greater joy as you move upwards.

Discipline: determination, not force

If you look back at many of these students that looked at me as the strict disciplinarian, you would see that in their minds, they actually felt that I was forcing them to walk the path. I was forcing them to be so disciplined. I was forcing them to give three and a half hours of decrees a day and go to four decree services a week where they decreed for four hours. They felt forced to do this, and they never really acknowledged that they felt forced or stopped and asked themselves: “Why am I feeling forced? Where does the force come from? Does it actually come from El Morya, or does it come from somewhere else?” And of course, when you do not ask the question, you cannot discover where the force comes from. And as I said, ultimately it comes from the fallen beings, but that is not really so relevant for you, because what is relevant for you is to come to see that there is an element of force in your own being, because you have a personal separate self that forces you to walk the path.

Now, some of these students that had this view of El Morya as the disciplinarian would say: “But what about discipline? Doesn’t it require discipline to walk the path? Don’t you have to be disciplined so that you can give those decrees every day and make that progress?” Well, as other masters have already said, as you are walking from the 48th to the 96th level, you are pulling yourself above the collective consciousness. This requires a certain effort, a certain diligence, a certain discipline, because if you allow yourself to be, first raise yourself up, and then being pulled down by the mass consciousness, raising yourself up and then being pulled down, you are going to have this back and forth instead of the steady upward progress. Yes, there is a certain discipline required, but is discipline necessarily in opposition to joy?

Many people would say yes, but I would say: “Who says so? Where does this come from?” Force is the opposite of joy, but is discipline the same as force? Or is it just determination, where you make a decision not based on force, but based on the recognition that by freeing yourself from the lower states of consciousness, you experience more joy? True, many of these past students made a decision to be disciplined and they felt forced to do it. They did it from the force-based mindset, but was that the only way to be disciplined? Was that the only way to make that decision? Of course not. This is what you can come to see, and when you have the teaching about the separate selves, you can then look for this element of force in your being, individual for each one of you, and then you can come to realize this is a separate self. And you can trace that back to a collective separate self that was created by the fallen beings. And why did they create it? To derail your progress on the path.

Beyond the 96th level and the force-based mindset

Now we might say that from the 48th to the 96th level, it requires diligence, discipline to walk that path in the fastest way possible. But when you go above the 96th level, it does not actually require discipline and diligence, because now you do not have to discipline your mind. You have to go into a different phase where you actually realize that you need to overcome all of these selves that are based on this force-based mindset.

Think about it again with the standard imposed by the fallen beings. What does the standard do? Let’s just, as the extreme example, say that in order to get to heaven, you have to live up to all of the rules of the Muslim religion. The strictest possible interpretation of the Koran, you have to live up to all of these rules. And if you do not, you will suffer in hell for a very long time. Do you not then feel forced to follow these rules? Does it not drive out the joy from many people’s lives that you truly see in many Muslim countries? You see it in many other religions, where those who are supposedly the most devoted followers of their religion, they are the least joyful. They take themselves and life so seriously.

When you go beyond that 96th level, you realize that there are so many of these selves that are based on force. You are trying to force your way into heaven. Basically, the mindset behind this is that: “I can force God to accept me into heaven. Because if I live up to all of God’s rules that he has defined in this outer religion, then when I follow them all to the letter, God is forced to let me in.” Millions, actually billions, of people on earth have gone into this mindset of accepting a certain religion, trying to diligently follow it, only to experience that when they left embodiment, they found that the door to heaven was closed. They could not get in. Some people have experienced this over several lifetimes and then they come into their next embodiment disbelieving all religion, rejecting all religion, becoming atheists or agnostics. Others come in and now they become even more diligent, even more serious about following the rules.

They can keep building this until again, as we have said, when you use force, there comes a point where you have created so much opposition to yourself that you cannot stand it anymore. But what unfortunately happens to many lifestreams when they come to that point is that the next time they come back into embodiment, they are very, very confused. They do not know what to do anymore. They cannot really lock into one of these traditional religions, but they do not know what else there is. They go into this no-God’s-land of not outwardly rejecting religion, but not accepting the spiritual path either and they can live that way for several embodiments.

How this applies to you is that you who are spiritual people, you need to recognize that there is this very strong momentum on earth of taking life and especially religion and spirituality very seriously. Therefore, it is almost inevitable that you have some selves in your four lower bodies that are based on this force-based mindset. But when you go above the 96th level, you need to come to that recognition that you cannot force your way into heaven. You cannot force yourself into the ascended realm. What meaning does it have that you are still trying to force yourself to follow this strict disciplinary path that you might have outlined and it might have been valid for you below the 96th level? But now you have turned that corner, you have risen above the collective consciousness, and now this is no longer the constructive approach to take to force yourself to follow this path.

Some of you have experienced that you could not continue this very strict regime of giving so many invocations or decrees a day. Quite frankly, many students have then felt that if they could not live up to it, then I, whether they call me El Morya or Master MORE, would probably condemn them and they had better hide from me because I would not think that they were good enough chelas anymore.

Use your intuition to see what is right for you

But what am I? Am I a strict disciplinarian that wants to reform people’s outer behavior? Or am I an ascended master who wants to raise people’s consciousness? My goal for each chela is to raise the person’s consciousness. There is a phase where being disciplined helps the student raise the consciousness. I am all for it. But there comes a point where this is no longer a constructive approach. Do I then want you to continue doing this that does not help you grow? No, why would I? I am an ascended master. I am not trying to do what the religions are trying to do, to reform your outer behavior, trying to make you live up to this standard because I know this is not going to get you into heaven. What will get you into heaven? That you attain the Christ consciousness. That you attain oneness with your I AM Presence.

What happens when you begin to have more intuitive experiences of your I AM Presence, of ascended masters, of the spiritual realm? You feel greater joy and the joy pulls you upwards. But if you hold on to this force-based mindset thinking you have to continue to give all these decrees and invocations the way you did before, you cannot lock into the joy, you cannot allow yourself to feel the joy, because you might even have a separate self that says that if you feel joyful it is probably because you are not diligent enough as a chela. You are not strict enough and therefore El Moya is going to stand there with his finger raised if you feel joyful. “Be careful now, take yourself seriously,” they think I am saying, but I am doing nothing of the kind. I just want everyone to grow at the fastest possible pace that they can grow at. I do not judge that everybody should grow at the same rate. I look at each person and say: “How can I help you grow?” I do not want every chela to do the same thing. This is not my approach and it is not the approach of an ascended master. Obviously when you have an organization that has thousands of members, at least in the Piscean dispensation, you had to give some guidelines. But still I never wanted everyone to blindly follow the guidelines. I wanted them to tune in individually, use their intuition to see what was right for them.

If you really want to make that switch and begin to flow with the River of Life, you need to contemplate these things, all of these things that we give to you. I am not saying that you need to take every dictation we will give at this conference and contemplate everything that every master has said. What you do is, you listen, you read, and then you sense: “Oh, that master said something that is important for me.” Then you take that, you contemplate that, you try to see what you can do to switch, you try to see if there is some separate self that you can identify and let die, and then you can move on to the next thing that appeals to you, that speaks to you. Do not become frantic that you have to follow everything that is said all at once. The path is a process, it takes time. You cannot switch your sense of self instantly. None of us have ever been able to do so.

The natural flow of joy

It always takes time to walk the path and to shift your sense of self gradually one step at a time. Different levels of the path might require a different motivation. But contemplate this very carefully, that the higher you go on the path, the less force and the more joy. Contemplate this, be willing to look for the elements of force and be willing to accept and embrace the flow of joy. For when you overcome the force, you will feel the joy because it is that natural flow of the River of Life. You cannot force the joy, or rather you can force it out of your mind by using force, by taking the force-based approach to the path. You could theoretically hear these teachings and say: “I want to be in the River of Life. What do I need to do to set up this strict regime that will bring me into the River of Life?” But this cannot be done. You can stop forcing yourself out of the River of Life and then you will naturally be in the River of Life. The River of Life will flow through you when you give it an opening instead of closing the opening by force. You cannot force joy. You do not need to force joy. It flows naturally. You just need to open your mind to it. What closes your mind is the force, the force-based mindset, going all the way back to the fallen beings and this standard, and then they project that not only is this a standard, no,  this is God’s standard, this is the absolute standard, and only by living up to this standard do you get into God’s kingdom. Well, do you really want to get into the same kingdom as the fallen beings are getting into? I think not. Do not approach the path with the mindset of the fallen beings.

Seeing through appearances

Of course, the mindset of the fallen beings is found in every religion on earth, even many spiritual teachings. Even previous ascended master dispensations where the organization was deeply affected by this force-based mindset that they all would have said came directly from El Morya. But did it? Did it really? Did it really come from me or from the image that they were projecting upon me? Yes, you could say, truly, I freely admit this, you could go back and study some of these old dictations that I gave and you would say: “He does sound pretty strict, doesn’t he?” I would agree that I did, but there are reasons for this. First of all, that this was given in the last organization we could sponsor in the Piscean Age, and therefore it was necessary to play out certain things that people should ideally have overcome in the Piscean Age. It was our hope that we could help those who were open to ascended master teachings pass those initiations that humankind at large had not passed during Pisces, because this would then make it easier for others to pass those initiations. Some did indeed pass the initiations, but many did not. This is what is inevitable. It goes back to an old saying of mine that I gave back then, that the chips fall where they may, for you can only give a teaching, you cannot guarantee what people will do with the teaching.

You need to recognize that one of the basic dynamics that is happening on earth is, as we have said, that on earth there is plausible deniability, plausible plausibility. This means that you can, in the mind, create an appearance, a matrix, a facade, an image and you can project with the mind a sense of reality upon the image. This is what the fallen beings have done throughout the ages since they came here. This is what humankind at large has been doing for a long time after being pulled into duality by the fallen beings. What did Jesus do when he came 2000 years ago? He came to challenge that very mindset, that you can put on an outer appearance and that this is going to get you into the kingdom. He said many things that were veiled that could help people see that only the transformation of consciousness would get you into the kingdom.

This is the real initiation that needed to be passed in Pisces, that you recognize that so much of what is out there in the religions, the political philosophies, science, materialism, all of this is an appearance, it is an image created in the mind. Then people project the sense of reality upon it but no matter how much they project the sense of reality it does not affect how the ascended masters look at it because we see that this image is not reality, it is just an image. Even in this previous dispensation we reinforce certain images in order to help people come to the point where they could see that this was just an image, and some people did and some people did not.

Beyond the veil of mystery

But in this dispensation, we have taken a different approach. We are not seeking to reinforce an image. We are seeking to very directly expose all of the images, but we cannot do this all at once. That is why we have a gradual building of the teachings. If you look back to 2002, how in the beginning we attempted to create a bridge to the older dispensations and seemingly therefore validating some of the mindset that was there, but we have gradually, systematically, step by step, questioned it, become more and more open, more and more direct in challenging not only the false images created by the fallen beings but also the images in people’s minds that are coming from these separate selves.

What you have today is, you might say, that in the Piscean Age we were still kind of hiding behind a veil. It was as if we had stepped forward, given an open teaching that we exist as ascended masters, we can speak through a messenger, there is a path, there are initiations. But everything was still veiled in a certain mystery, and this is also in accordance with the Piscean initiations because even Jesus could not give a direct teaching 2000 years ago as the Buddha could not give a completely direct teaching 2500 years ago. It is only with the raising of the collective consciousness partly brought about by scientific mindsets sponsored by Saint Germain whereby enough people on earth have transcended this, we might call it a mythological mindset and therefore become open to a form of spirituality that is not veiled in this mystery, this mythology where we could almost say that we had exposed that they are ascended masters but there is this fog that is hiding them from your sight.

Now we are stepping forward and saying it is time to get rid of the veil, it is time to be very direct and again let the chips fall where they may. Those who cannot handle the directness, well they have the older teachings, they have other spiritual teachings. There is always something for you. But in this dispensation, we are not playing games, we are not playing hide and seek. We are saying: “Here we are, this is who we are, this is how we are, this is what the path is all about.” This will be a disappointment to some because of the veil. What did the veil do?

Look upon this, go back and look throughout history. Look at many different religions. There is this mystery surrounding God or the spiritual realm. It is as if people can see there is something up there but they only see glimpses of what is behind the veil. And what does this allow people to do? It allows them to project upon the heaven world, to project upon ascended masters. As I started out saying, you look at conditions as they are in the world and you project that this is how it is in the ascended realm. There are people who need this approach and might need it for another 10 or 15 lifetimes. But there are also many people that we know who are ready for a more direct approach and a more, we might say, no-nonsense approach. If you take the teachings we have given in this dispensation, if you really look at them, there is not much hidden, there is not much mystery left about who we are, what kind of beings we are, what the path is all about. It is not about some glorious, mysterious initiation that you pass and now you are greeted by the ascended masters in heaven in this epically important ceremony.

If you take the teachings we have given in this dispensation, what is the spiritual path all about? Three things, psychology, psychology and what was the third one? [Audience says: “Psychology.”] Exactly. Those of you who are ready for that, you can make faster progress because the less of a veil there is, the more clearly you can see the path and the faster you can walk that path.

Experiencing the Presence of Master MORE

It is a tremendous joy for me to be able to not simply speak to you through a human messenger, but to interact with you in this way. Try to switch your mind a little bit. Try to switch away from the outer situation. It really is not important that there is a person sitting on a stage who has some far flung, high flung title of messenger of the ascended masters who is taking a dictation from Master MORE. That is not important, the messenger is not important, the message is not important, the words being said are not important. What is important is that there has been an opening through the veil, so that I can manifest my Presence here in a more direct way than I normally could do when you are living your daily lives being in a hustle and bustle of life. Switch the mind, look beyond the outer situation, the messenger and the words. Open yourself to experiencing my Presence.

What do I really want to achieve by giving a dictation? Is it to give you worded teachings? What I really want is for you to touch the hem of the master’s garment as it says, or rather, experience my Presence. Where are you going to experience it? Are you going to experience it by looking at the messenger, by listening to the words? Nay, you are going to experience it within yourself, within your heart. Not in the mind, not in the thinking mind, but in the heart.

As you play some music after this dictation, allow yourself to just tune into your heart, if you are willing, and if you are willing to experience the Presence of Master MORE, just be neutral, be open and allow yourself to feel how a certain aspect of the River of Life that you know by the name Master MORE flows through you. This is what I really desire for you to experience and this is not something that you can only experience right now. You can experience that anytime you care to listen to this dictation, read it, give my decrees, tune in or just silence the mind, go into neutral and tune in to my Presence.

With this, I will seal you in the joy of the First Ray and allow you to tune in, as you allow yourself to flow with the music and open yourself to the Presence of Master MORE.

 

Copyright © 2023 Kim Michaels