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Ascended Master Serapis Bey through Kim Michaels, January 12, 2016.

I am the Ascended Master Serapis Bey. We have now reached the seventh level where you encounter the combination of the Fourth Ray with the Seventh Ray of Freedom. The Seventh Ray of Freedom is in a sense both easy and the most difficult. It is easy in the sense that it puts no demands on you. It is difficult in the sense that it demands that you stop putting demands on yourself.

When students first come in contact with the ascended masters, they often have the idea that we are limiting their freedom in the sense that we are putting demands on you. Later, they may develop the idea that the fallen beings or the dark forces are limiting their freedom. In reality, there is only one thing limiting your freedom and that is what you do to yourself in your own mind. It is in the mind that you are imprisoned and it is in the mind that you need to manifest your freedom.

However, freedom is both something you manifest and something you cannot manifest, in the sense that I have attempted to help you see that the problem on planet earth is that the fallen beings have induced people to use force. Therefore, you cannot overcome force by more force.

Certainly, the Seventh Ray is a ray that has a specific energy. You can and, of course, you should, invoke the energy of the Seventh Ray. You should not put yourself into a state of mind where you think that you have to use the energy of the Seventh Ray to beat down the opposition to your freedom. You will, of course, need to invoke the energies of the Seventh Ray to transform the perversions of the Seventh Ray. What limits your freedom is to some degree the energies from each of the seven rays that have been perverted through fear. You need to consume these by invoking the energies of each ray.

However, what truly limits your freedom is, of course, the energy, the beliefs and the ideas in your mind. These you cannot beat down by the Seventh Ray of Freedom. You can only come to see them for the unrealities they are and then simply walk away from them.

The dramas that consume people’s lives

When you look at planet earth, you will see that the vast majority of the people are wrapped up in – completely enveloped in, completely consumed by – some kind of drama. You see so many groups of people who have been fighting each other for generations, perhaps even for thousands of years. They are completely convinced that there is some reality to this drama and that they are working for God’s cause and that those other people, whom they have been fighting, are working against Gods cause. You can see this in the Middle East between Jews, Christians and Muslims. You can see it in many other places in the world. It is clear that when you are caught up in such a drama, you are taking yourself very seriously, you are taking your cause very seriously. If you are taking every aspect of life, every little detail of life, so seriously, you cannot be free. You are, so to speak, wrapped up in yourself. Think about this popular saying of how so many people are wrapped up in themselves. There is so much internal conflict and struggle that all of their energy and attention is simply consumed by this. Well, what I want to point out to you is that it is very common that when people find ascended master teachings, they use the teachings to overcome some of the struggles you see in the world.

In many cases, the egos of the students succeed in having the students create another drama, which is where you use the spiritual path – and often the dark forces or even other people that you meet on the spiritual path – to create another drama. You, of course, do not see it as a drama. Then again, all of the people in the world who are consumed by dramas do not see it as a drama either; they see it as reality. You also come to see it as reality that you are battling the dark forces or that you are in some kind of disagreement with other students you meet on the spiritual path, perhaps in a spiritual organization.

The trick of the ego, the trick of the fallen beings, is to make you think that there is a real problem that you need to solve. Therefore, you cannot be free until the problem is solved. Of course, the problem requires that some changes must happen in the world. In most cases, this means that other people need to change so that you can solve the problem and be free.

As I have said before, you will never be free if you think your freedom depends on the free-will choices of other people. You can, however, be free by recognizing that your freedom depends only on your own free-will choices and that you have the power, right now, to free yourself from all of the internal beliefs and mechanisms that make you think you have to react to other people, you have to do something in the world. You can never be free if you take the spiritual path so seriously and if you are completely wrapped up in walking your own path and battling whatever you are battling. Even battling the ego can become a drama, and, of course, you cannot overcome the ego by using the ego. You will not overcome the ego through a drama created by the ego, and that is the danger of giving any kind of spiritual teaching.

The dream of an ultimate state

As I inspired this messenger to realize recently, there are people in the world who claim to be enlightened. If you claim that you are enlightened, then you are in a sense saying, at least in the minds of most people, that you have reached some ultimate state. You may gather followers who are not willing to take responsibility for themselves and are therefore looking for a guru with some absolute state of consciousness. The guru and the students may create a self-reinforcing spiral.

The problem is that if you think you have reached an ultimate state on earth, you will not go any further. That means you will be denying the aspect of the ego that you still have. I know some people will say that if you are enlightened, you have no ego left and that is true. But then you are no longer in embodiment on earth because you cannot remain in embodiment unless you have some aspect of ego left. It may be very slight and you may have reached a high level of consciousness. If you think there is nothing beyond your state of consciousness, you can only think so by denying the element of ego you have left. Then, you cannot let go of that ego and be free to ascend.

Creativity is the antidote to control

The ascension is a process that requires you to be completely free. The process of self-mastery is also a process that requires you to attain a very high degree of freedom. Not in the same way as you have when you ascend, but in the way that you are free to express your creative abilities. What does it mean to be free, to be creative? It means to understand what the fallen beings have done in order to shut down creativity and make you limit your creativity.

Do you understand, my beloved, that the fallen beings are attempting to control everything on earth? How do you control? You must shut down creativity because what is the nature of creativity? It is unpredictable, it is spontaneous. It comes up with something new, perhaps even something so new that nobody could even imagine it.

The fallen beings are mortally afraid of your creativity. They also know that nothing in this world can limit creativity. The entire nature of creativity is that it transcends boundaries. There are no boundaries that can truly limit your creativity, except the boundaries created in your own mind so you do not dare to even express it.

The primary means used by the fallen beings to shut down people’s creativity is to create the idea that there is a standard against which everything must be measured. The standard has only two polarities. Either something is good enough, perfect, acceptable, or it is a mistake, bad, unacceptable. This evaluation, this judgment, has nothing to do with creativity. It is, we might say, the antithesis of creativity.

When you first came to this planet, you came to express your light, your creativity, your individuality. The fallen beings did everything they could to make you feel rejected, to make you feel that there was something wrong with your light. Your creativity was not good enough, you were not good enough.

This caused so many people to go into this race that I have talked about of trying to be perfect, trying to live up to the standard, thinking that if only you are good enough, then you will be accepted. You understand, my beloved, that if you have a mechanism in your mind that seeks to compare your expression to an outer standard before you dare to express yourself, then, right there, you have shut down your creativity.

Creativity is spontaneous! You have become so used to evaluating everything with the linear, analytical mind. The fallen beings have induced in most people this very subtle idea that everything should be analyzed. Everything should be evaluated by the analytical mind, which compares everything to a standard. Most people are not aware of the standard they are using. Sometimes they are aware of a standard put upon them by society. Certainly, the educational systems of the world are all geared towards making you accept that there is a standard and your creativity needs to be compared to it. Even the educational institutions that teach some form of creative expression, be it art or whatever, are still reinforcing this idea that creativity must be compared to a standard.

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