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Ascended Master Saint Germain through Kim Michaels, August 3, 2024. This dictation was given at a Healing Retreat in Chicago: Heal your heart and the heart of America.

I AM the Ascended Master Saint Germain. If you look at America, what is the one quality that characterizes this nation? It is of course, freedom.

Freedom within

You may think that freedom is a physical condition, but that is a fallacy. There are no physical conditions that can secure your freedom, and this has never been proven more clearly than here in America where you have a greater degree of physical freedom than in most other countries. And yet, look at the American people and look how many of them are not free. Why? Because of their psychology. For where can you find freedom? Only within. And naturally, there are many psychological conditions that can take away your freedom, but no inner condition takes away your freedom more than a closed heart chakra.

If you do not have heart, you cannot be free. For what does it mean to be free? It means to be in the flow from above to below. When you are in the nexus of that flow, when the Conscious You is in that nexus point between the flow of energy from the I AM Presence, from the spiritual realm, into this world, that is when you are in the world but not of the world, and that is the only way to be truly free.

If you do not have heart, you cannot be free. This is simply a fact that most people, of course, are blissfully, or rather not so blissfully, unaware of. But still, people’s lack of awareness has never changed reality and this is precisely what is missing in America today—what is creating and upholding and reinforcing the division and polarization— that too many people have slipped into this mindset that they can define how the universe should work and that the universe will conform to their definition.

The founding principle of America

Why do you think I sponsored this nation instead of sponsoring the nations of Europe? Because Europe was trapped in this ideological mindset where so many thought that they could define a theory, an ideology, a religion, and then the universe had better live up to their definition. And the people of Europe were in such a grip of the Catholic church and of the secular power elites that it was not possible at the time to take European civilization to a higher level and therefore, there was no other option, realistic option, practical option, than to sponsor a new nation with all of the complexity that that entailed, and with all of the time delay that that entailed, because you first had to build the physical nation before you could really start giving people more freedom.

This nation was built by people who wanted to get away from the closed mindset of Europe. They may, in their outer minds, have thought they were getting away from the outer conditions that limited them and condemned them to a lifetime of toil if they were born in the bottom ninety-eight percent of the population. But in reality, they longed to get away from the closed minds, the closed mindset that ruled Europe at the time. And why did you see America blossom and grow so quickly and become so innovative and bring forth so much new technology? Because there was not the closed mindset. There was openness to new ideas and a willingness to experiment, and that is what built this nation, because people were more free in their minds than the people who stayed back in Europe.

The very founding principle of this nation is this openness to new ideas, openness to try something new, to experiment: “Let us see how it works. Let us get some sticks and canvas and put it together with wings and put a motor and a propeller on it and see if this thing can fly.“ And suddenly it flew and a whole new era was ushered in. But if you had had the mindset that things heavier than air cannot fly, how would you have dared to experiment?

New ideas

What is it that is the driving force behind freedom, inner freedom? It is the openness to new ideas, the willingness to experiment with something, something new, something not tried before. But what does it take to be open to new ideas? It takes heart, it takes an open heart chakra. For where do new ideas come from? Well, they come of course, from two sources, but primarily they come from above, from the ascended realm. If people are closed off to an influx of new ideas from the ascended realm, they can by trial and error, by experimentation, come up with new ideas in a, we might say, horizontal way. And they can work and they can bring improvement, but only within certain boundaries. You can, as the old saying goes, invent a better mousetrap within this mindset, but you can come up with something that is beyond the concept of a mousetrap. You can conceive of the possibility that the consciousness could be raised to the point where mice could not even live on the planet.

There will always be limits to what new ideas can be brought forth in a horizontal way and that is why any society that becomes cut off from the ascended realm will stagnate and become subject to the second law of thermodynamics, which, as you know, causes disorder to increase. It lowers the energy, things run out of steam, and they begin to deteriorate and fall apart. You can transfer this from the physical to the psychological and you can say that if the American people become too closed to new ideas, to thinking outside the box, then America can only stagnate, as it has already started doing in some areas of society.

It has not fully stagnated because there are so many people in America who are working on their own consciousness, healing their psychology, raising their awareness through various spiritual philosophies and movements, not limited to ascended master teachings, of course. But there are many Americans who have closed their minds to new ideas and who have become trapped in this mindset that they should look towards the past as if it was a better time in the past.

Looking backward

Has there ever been a better time in the past? Well, if you ask the people who lived in the past, no matter what point in the past they lived, they would say no, for they would look to your time and wish that if they could only have had this or that or the next thing that you take for granted, that would have been so much better than their own time. There are very few people, both in America and in other nations, who would wish to go back to the way it was 50 or 100 years ago. There are very few people from those times that would choose to stay in their own time instead of going to your time if they could. And why is this? Well, it is partly because people always long for something better than what they have. This is the human psychology when people have closed their hearts, because when you close your heart, it becomes very unpleasant to reside in your energetic field. You are longing for something from elsewhere, either to the future or the past, for you cannot stand the present. You do not see the present as a present, but as a burden.

And look at the American people today. Look at those, as I have said before, who are clinging to this concept of traditional values, Christian values. They think America should be a Christian nation. Have they not read the constitution? They think that things would be better if the laws in the United States were based on the Bible. Have they never heard about Sharia law in Muslim countries? Have they never realized that some people in these countries lived like people in America or Europe lived 500 years ago? Have they not realized how many people in those countries long to be free from this burden? And you think it would be better if American laws were based on this kind of a religious, antiquated, backward-looking view?

How can you think this—because your mind is not free. You are not open to looking forward. You are not open to realizing that there has been progress on earth over these last hundreds and thousands of years. And why should this progress not continue? Why should not the future be better than today and at any point in the past? You are not open to this if your heart is closed because then you will fall into what Paul the Venetian said, the fear-based love, the human love. And what does this perverted love make you do? Cling to what you have. You become so afraid of losing what you have, no matter how little that is, that you are afraid of the future. You are afraid of change because you think change could only be for the worse. Have they not looked at history and seen that things were worse in the past? Do you really want to go back to a time where people died of malnutrition, they lost their teeth before the age of thirty and had to have wooden teeth like George Washington? Do you really want to go back to this, where pneumonia would be a fatal disease, where a substantial part of women died in childbirth, where most children did not live beyond the age of 4? Do you really want to go back to this?

But you see, when your heart is closed you cannot think this way. You may say in a way, that these people are not thinking. Why? Because when your heart is closed and there is not a flow of energy from the I AM Presence, then your third eye and crown chakras cannot be activated fully and therefore, people cannot think clearly. Instead, their attention goes down to the lower chakras, often the solar plexus chakra, and now they are just angry. And when you are angry you cannot think clearly. Everyone knows this from experience.

The angry followers in America

What is it that has happened in America? Why have so many people gone into this mindset instead of being in the optimistic mindset? Well, we can mention many causes. But one of them certainly is what only spiritual students will be open to seeing, that the fallen beings have done everything they could to sabotage America, to cast doubt upon the validity of America, the ability of America to transcend itself and solve its problems. And too many people have come to believe in this. They have become pessimists instead of optimists. But it was not pessimists who built this country. The pessimists stayed in Europe and submitted to the kings and the noble class. The optimists were the ones who left and who built America. What has happened? Well, what has happened is in fact, that many of those pessimists who stayed in Europe back then have reincarnated in America and many of the optimists who built America have incarnated in Europe. Which is why you see that in many ways Europe has gone ahead of the United States.

But there is, of course, more to it. And part of this is that there is this tendency among the original inhabitants of the earth that when they attain something they start taking it for granted. They do not appreciate it. They no longer acknowledge how important it was and they become just indifferent, and then what happens is that many people grew up with material affluence and in the last several decades that has been gradually eroded by the concentration of wealth in the hands of the financial elite. But because so many people did not strive for this wealth but grew up with it, they are not willing to make an effort to change conditions, so they become discouraged, they become angry and now they are looking for someone who can change the conditions for them. They are looking for someone to follow. But you see, America was not built by followers, for those who experiment are not following anyone.

A follower cannot experiment. Who were the Wright brothers following? There was no one to follow. There was no one ahead of them. There had been no one who dared to risk their life flying this fragile machine. Have you seen this original airplane of the Wright brothers? Could you imagine putting yourself and your life in the hands of this contraption? But they did it. And they did not do it by following anybody.

So many people today have become followers. They have become angry followers. What are they looking for? They are looking for someone who can tell them that their problems are not their fault—it is those other people’s fault. But if they will vote for him, he will fix all their problems for them, and how many times in world history have you seen this? The blind following the blind, both ending up in the ditch of history.

People with the least heart

Yet again, what is the problem? The lack of heart. So many people in America do not have open hearts anymore. If you have an open heart, you are not following anyone on earth. You are following your I AM Presence and the ascended masters that you have contact with through the open heart. You are not holding on to anything on earth. You are not looking back towards the past. You are not clinging to outdated ideas because you realize that the key to the future is experimentation, renewal, transcendence. What does the second law of thermodynamics say? It says that a closed system will self-destruct. Well, a closed mind will also self-destruct because, as I said, when you close the heart, it becomes unbearable to be in your own energy field. And that is why so many people look for an escape —alcohol, drugs, other addictions, other activities that are meaningless activities, such as staring at the television screen hours a day watching programs with no content whatsoever. Mindless entertainment.

But all of this is not the real problem in America. It is the lack of heart. And where is that problem most pronounced? In the top ten percent of the population. I say top ten percent because they see themselves as the top. I see them as the bottom, as the lowest people who have the least amount of freedom because their hearts are closed. They do not have any humanity. They do not have any compassion for other people. They only want to hoard to themselves power, money, wealth, privileges. Those who set themselves up as an elite, as the noble class of Europe, have no heart.

How could you treat other people as slaves if you have heart? It cannot be done. For if you have heart, if your heart chakra is open, you will look at that person who just came over on a slave ship from Africa, and you will see that that person, despite the black skin and the different looks, has a heart chakra just like yours, has the same potential for self-transcendence that you have. You will see a human being, or rather a spiritual being, because you see yourself as a spiritual being and therefore, when you have heart, you spontaneously do unto others. If you do not have heart, you can force yourself to do unto others, but you are not doing this from the heart, from the sense of connection to others, or connection to your higher self. You are doing it out of fear because you think that you have to be a good Christian in order to make it to heaven.

Have you not read the New Testament where Jesus was asked about the coming of the kingdom, and he said: “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation, for the kingdom of God is within you.” What is within you? The heart, the heart chakra, that is the open door to the kingdom of God. But what is the kingdom of God? An inner state, a state of consciousness, a state of oneness. What does it mean that it does not come with observation? It means that no matter what you do on the outer, it will not bring you to the kingdom.

If you think you are a good Christian who is doing good works, but you are doing it to avoid going to hell, you are no closer to the kingdom no matter what you have done your entire lifetime. You can have been engaged in charitable works for a lifetime. You are no closer to the kingdom because it is not coming from the heart, but from the fear-based mentality. There are those who consider themselves good Christians that I would count among the top ten percent. Even though they are not rich and in the financial elite, they are still in the top/bottom ten percent because they have the least heart.

You find few people that have more closed hearts than some of these holier-than-thou Christians and especially the Christian ministers who are preaching to their congregation hellfire and brimstone, seeking to scare their congregation. Do you really see Jesus trying to scare people into entering the kingdom? What was it Jesus said? Let me just think for a moment. Oh yes: “Fear not little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

What did that mean? It meant there are no conditions on earth, no observations that will guarantee your entry into the kingdom. For you do not need to live up to any conditions on earth, any standard on earth in order to receive the kingdom. What do you need—to open your heart to receive the kingdom that it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you? How can Christianity as a religion for over seventeen centuries have preached a message that is in direct opposition to this, saying that only those who live up to the requirements defined by the Christian church will go to heaven and all others will go to hell. Have they not read the Bible or have they read it with the mind but not with the heart?

Freedom through an open heart

I have said it before but I will say it again into the collective consciousness. The golden age will not be manifest by holding on to traditional values. The future will not be created by those who look to the past. It cannot be done. I have all of the ideas that can transform America into a golden age society. It is my good pleasure to give them to those who will receive them, but how do you receive them? Through the heart. And if the heart is not open, well, how shall there be a vessel that the ideas can be poured into?

You will notice that I am not talking party politics here. There are those, even ascended master students, who think that surely the ascended masters support this party or that party. I am not concerned about political parties and party politics. I am concerned about people, those who are open to new ideas, those who are willing to experiment. I am not even really concerned about the United States as a nation, for a nation is just an idea in the minds of people. But people are more than ideas when they have heart. For when their hearts are closed, they reduce themselves to being just ideas, concepts, beliefs in those separate selves, that are disconnected, that have been cast out of paradise, to make a living at the sweat of the brow. I am concerned about raising up people, setting them free.

Surely, I would like to see people be free from the power elite and the financial manipulation that funnels wealth upwards and upwards and upwards by stealing it from those who are doing the work. Surely, I would like to see many physical changes. But first of all, I would like to see people be free, but you will not actually be free in the mind no matter how much you know, no matter how much you understand, no matter how much you have figured out. Surely, it helps to have knowledge. Surely, there is more knowledge available than ever before and it sets the foundation for people being free.

But knowledge will never make you free. Only the heart will make you free when you realize you are more than your outer knowledge, you are more than your outer mind. You are something that cannot be defined by anything in this world. Only when you experience that, that you are more than anything in this world, can you be free. Only then can you really tune in to the ideas I am seeking to bring forth.

The lost willingness to experiment

I have a timetable for my golden age. Surely, there is some flexibility, but there are ideas that I would like to release at certain times. If there are no people in America who are free enough to receive certain ideas, I will look elsewhere to see if there are people there who are free to receive the ideas and this could very quickly lead to a point where America is no longer the forerunner of innovation and it all shifts to other nations or regions in the world. And listen very carefully—Americans like to think of America as the greatest nation on earth—but if innovation stops, you will not remain the greatest nation on earth for very long. For what made America the nation it is today, whether it is the greatest or not, is immaterial—what made America what it is today? As I said, innovation, experimentation, coming from that openness where you look at conditions on earth today and you acknowledge they could be better, they could be improved upon.

You are not looking to the past thinking you have to turn time back. You are looking to the future and you realize that the future must be built on ideas. But those ideas will actually not be released in the future. They can only be released in the present and therefore, you then open your mind and say: “No matter what conditions are today, I will look for new ideas.” It may seem impossible to take a bunch of sticks and some canvas and put them together and make it fly through the air. But how will we know if we do not experiment? How will we know? And America has been willing to experiment, but primarily with technology, not so much in other areas of society and human life.

Why does America not have health care for all citizens? Because they are behind in terms of experimentation on the social area. They are behind in reaching that basic humanity where they say: “It is not acceptable to us that people go bankrupt because of medical bills, or that they are dying in the streets because they cannot afford to go to the doctor early enough to avoid a disease becoming fatal, it is not acceptable to us that there are homeless people who are sleeping in a cardboard box under a bridge. How can we be the greatest nation if we treat our own citizens this way?”

You look at other nations that are far ahead of the United States in this area. You look at even nations that are far ahead in terms of avoiding at least the worst of the unequal income distribution by having distributed the wealth more evenly through giving workers better wages, better conditions, through taxation of those who have more than anyone needs. And you see that there are so many ideas that are already brought into the physical and that have already been implemented by other countries.

it does not come from Christ!

Why has not America embraced these ideas? Because too many people do not have heart. What says it is not acceptable to us that people die on the streets? Well, not the mind. Certainly not the fear-based chakras. It is only the heart that says this and you will hear, if you could hear how the elite talks about the people, but you will even hear some people who say similar things publicly: “Why should I be responsible for others? Why should I pay taxes so that others do not have to take responsibility for themselves? Why should I care about other people, that they are dying? How is that my problem? Am I my brother’s keeper?” Well, not according to the Old Testament and an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. You are not your brother’s keeper. But did Jesus preach an eye for an eye? Or was there something about turning the other cheek, loving your enemy, loving your brothers?

Which time are you living in? The Old Testament or the New Testament? Who is your God? The angry, judgmental God of the Old Testament or the loving Father of Jesus? Or have you not read the Bible and seen that there is no comparison between the Old Testament God and the God that Jesus preached? Have you really not acknowledged this? Do you really think it is the same God? Do you not see that Jesus brought forth a teaching that is revolutionary compared to the Old Testament teaching? Do you really not see that those in the elite are in the Old Testament mindset? They do not care whatsoever about others, but that is not what Jesus preached and demonstrated.

Again, as far as I am concerned, you can be in whatever mindset you want to be in. But I do want to point out that if you are in a different mindset than what Jesus preached, yet you call yourself a Christian or even a representative of Christ, then there is only one word that applies to you. Hypocrites. Hypocrites, all of you. Be selfish if you want, but do not claim to be Christians. Call a spade a spade, to use a common American expression. Jesus did, and he is doing it today. But of course, that cannot be. Oh no, certainly Christ has had nothing to say to humanity in the last 2,000 years. Why not? Because the Christian religion that claims to represent Christ is not open to what Jesus, as an ascended master, has to say today, or at any point in the past. What does that mean? It means that the religion that claims to represent Christ has been the primary tool for shutting out Christ from this world. They do not want any progressive revelation from Christ. Why not? Because they have no heart. Their hearts are far from me, even though they claim to be Christians.

I could of course, go on almost indefinitely with this, but I wanted to send certain impulses into the collective consciousness. I trust you see that they are not aimed at you, but there are those out there who can be awakened by this. They will never know where it comes from, they do not need to know, but suddenly they will lift their heads and something shifts, and they see: “What have we been doing? What have we been thinking? What have we been believing?” And they sense something stirring in their hearts, and they experience that their hearts have been far from Christ, but they also realize that they love Christ more than they love the outer religion and its doctrines and therefore, they are willing to open their hearts to Christ. And this can awaken enough people that the equation begins to shift, and people start seeing that this polarization, this scapegoating, this making your brothers and sisters the enemy, this cannot come from Christ.

If it does not come from Christ, where does it come from? Well, those who are separated from Christ—where else would it come from? And of course none are really separated, but they are separated in their minds, because their hearts are far from Christ. We look, I look to enough people waking up and realize they have had enough of this polarized political discourse, that it cannot go on any longer, that is long overdue with a change that shifts the equation, so that instead of blaming each other, we do what Christ said, see the Christ in each other, instead of making each other into being the anti-christ.

A debate based on heart

Truly, that is actually possible. Many of you will doubt this because you will look at your own family members and how polarized they are, and how impossible it is to talk to them. But I am talking about opening the hearts of a critical mass of people, that it is enough to shift the equation, to turn the rudder of this big ship a few critical degrees, so that it starts going in a different direction—that brings it to a different destination, that brings it away from those rocks that are currently lying ahead that could wreck the ship.

It is really possible to change the political discourse. There are those who are very close to seeing that continuing the current discourse is not the way to win an election. But as I said, talk about what you are going to do for the American people, instead of demonizing others. And this I ask you, who are our direct students, to hold the vision for, and if you feel that this is important for you, make the calls between now and the election. Make the calls that the right people step forward, who have heart, and can therefore, shatter the current gridlock in the debate, the mud-slinging, this favorite American political pastime, and instead make their contribution to the debate based on heart.

There are people who are very close to making that shift. There are people who will come shortly for their convention in this city. Some will even stay in this hotel. When you leave your rooms tomorrow, you can sprinkle a little pixie dust so they will pick it up and take it with them to the convention, and maybe they will be inspired to say: “We can fly. We can fly above this political quagmire. We can rise to new heights. We can dare to experiment instead of thinking that the only way to get elected is to outdo the other side in being nasty and negative. Instead, we can be positive. We can look forward. We can have heart and we can speak from the heart instead of from those lower chakras based on fear”, where you think that if you are not nastier than the other guy, he is going to win and therefore, you are locked in playing his game, the only game he has.

Is it really the only game you have? Or could you not transcend those games and speak from the heart and speak to the heart? There are many American people among the American people who are fed up with the political discourse. But they do not see an alternative because they have not heard a different voice, but if they were to hear it, they would respond to it, as some have, of course, already done. But it can be accelerated greatly and if some of you will make the calls for this, it can break through and change the entire equation.

Loving freedom more than the conditions in your own mind

Turning to you personally, what can I give you? What gift can I give you that helps you heal the heart, clear the heart? Well, I can only tie into what other masters have said. That is, it is a matter of letting go. As Paul said, you need to love something more and I suggest that for some of you, that something more could very well be freedom. Why are you on the spiritual path? Because you want to be free. What do you want to be free from? The conditions, the selves in your own mind. And if you love freedom more than the bondage of these selves, how hard is it to let the selves die? To let them go, to surrender them, to walk away from them, to stop playing the game?

What is it that takes away your freedom? Your attention—where you place your attention. When you place your attention on the world, on these outer selves that react to the world, you are putting yourself in jail. You are putting yourself in a jail cell, locking it with at least seven locks. Then once you are inside the cell, you chain yourself with handcuffs and chains and this and that, until you can hardly move. You think you have to find the key to unlock the locks, but there is, as Paul so profoundly stated, nothing to figure out. You just have to walk out of the cell. And you can, once you realize that you can, once you accept that you can, but in order to do it, you have to look at the selves and stop playing the game that the selves want you to play indefinitely so they can stay alive by capturing your attention and thereby getting your energy. The world says, other people say, the fallen beings say, you cannot walk away from us. And as long as you think you cannot, because of this or that or the next, you are right. You cannot walk away. But when you realize that you can, you have the right to do so, then you can walk away. It does not mean you need to walk away physically, but in your mind, you can walk away from the bondage that is in the mind.

I am not concerned with what you do on the outer. I am concerned about you gaining that inner freedom that I have had since my ascension and even somewhat before. And once you have that freedom, all you really want to see for others is for them to have that same freedom. For as love is unconditional, well, freedom must surely be unconditional as well. How can you be free if there are conditions? It is the conditions that form the prison.

If you think you have to live up to conditions on earth in order to be free, when will you ever be free? Never. You will only be free when you acknowledge and accept that there are no conditions on earth that can give you freedom and there are no conditions on earth that can take away your freedom. But if you think there are conditions that can take away your freedom, then yes, it will take away your freedom. But is it the conditions or the thinking that takes away your freedom? You will all be able to see that it is the thinking. Then what is left is to look at your thinking. Look at the selves, look at the thinking they are based on and see that it is conditional thinking and it does not come from the heart.

You can think from the heart and that thinking sets you free. Even if you are in a certain situation on earth where you have outer conditions and obligations you need to fulfill, we are not talking about you walking away from your jobs and your families and your obligations and going to a cave in the Himalayas. We are talking about you staying in an active life but being free within. That is actually possible. Your separate selves, other people, the mass consciousness, the fallen beings will scream at you: “He is lying to you, it is not possible.” Who are you going to believe? Well, you do not have to believe anyone. You do not have to believe the outside forces, you do not have to believe the ascended masters.

What do you have to do? Be willing to experiment. For if you are willing to examine your thinking and let go of some of these selves, well, suddenly you will begin to fly spontaneously. The Conscious You cannot stay in the prison and you will fly out of there as if someone had sprinkled pixie dust on you and that someone is I. I have an unlimited supply of pixie dust and it is my good pleasure to sprinkle it here and there and everywhere. So, with a sprinkle of dust and a twinkle of mirth, I seal you in the joy of my heart, the heart that is free, free to be me. Saint Germain, I AM.