Ascended Master Gautama Buddha through Kim Michaels, March 8, 2026. This dictation was given at the conference in Vilnius, Lithuania: Making a Difference in a Turbulent World.
I am the Ascended Master Gautama Buddha. Let me begin by congratulating you for having achieved a greater result than we had envisioned and planned for this conference. You have, once again, exceeded our expectations and created a greater momentum, a greater spreading of the light, consuming the darkness here on earth, but also reinforcing that trail leading to the ascension. For this you have our gratitude and we acknowledge your willingness to come together physically, but first of all your willingness to interact with each other so openly and share so freely.
The taste of the Christ consciousness
Can you feel that you have been in a safe environment where you have felt free to talk about things that are of a concern for you, but not feeling you would be condemned for it? Not all of you feel this, but many of you certainly do.
Well, contrary to what many spiritual and religious people believe, contrary to what many previous ascended master students believed, that is actually a taste of what the Christ consciousness is like, what the ascended masters are like, for we do not condemn anyone.
This does not mean that we are always soft and gentle and nice, because in some cases it is necessary to be direct and confront students with some aspect of their ego, some inconsistency, some contradiction, so that they can come to see it. But we never condemn anyone. That is why we have said that whatever you may have done in this lifetime, we do not condemn you, so why do you need to condemn yourself, or why do you need to accept the condemnation from others or from dark forces?
Fallen beings can never accept you
You understand that the dark forces can never acknowledge you. Here you have a fallen being who fell perhaps in the fourth sphere, has stayed in the fallen consciousness through the entire enormously long process of the fifth sphere, through the equally long process of the sixth sphere, and now for part of the seventh sphere, and it is still in the fallen consciousness. And what is the fallen consciousness? Seeking to raise itself up as being special, as knowing better than Christ, than the ascended masters.
How do you think such a being could acknowledge you or accept you? It will have to put you down in order to maintain its own illusion of superiority, but now think of something else. What is it that the fallen being does not have?—A connection to the Christ mind. But as you approach that 96th level, you gain a greater connection to the Christ mind, and so here you have a fallen being spending all of this time creating this very elaborate, very intricate self, separate self, all of this knowledge, all of these abilities. It feels it is so superior, it is so good at manipulating the darkness. It is as if you have this being in a dark cave who can do all kinds of things with the darkness, and then here comes a person approaching personal Christhood, and you have a candle, a flame that lights up the darkness. Well, who is going to look at the fallen being when there is a light in the cave? How is the fallen being going to impress people when they see the light? Many people, of course, do not see the light, but the fallen beings do, even though they have no connection to the Christ mind.
They can see the Christ light when it shines into this world, and they immediately see it as a threat, and they will do anything they can to cause you to let it go out again. But what you can do is realize this dynamic and decide: “You are not going to get me”, but how can you avoid them getting you? By letting go of that focus on self, that epic self. As Padmasambhava said, the fallen beings are on the epic quest to establish their superiority. And as long as you have such an epic self, well, the prince of this world has something in you. The demons of Mara have something whereby they can tempt you into reacting. For you might look at one of these false gurus that are parading their abilities, and you might decide: “Oh, I want that too. I want to experience what that is like.” But you can, of course, only experience what it is like to be a false guru by walking the same left-handed path that the guru has walked. And again, that is free will.
Giving up the concept of walking a path
Now, you might, based on what we have said, reason that you can only give up the epic self at the 96th or 95th level, but that is not actually the case. You can give it up beforehand. Many of you have done that. You can come to see, lock into the importance of surrender. You’ll come to see that the path to Christhood is not about attaining superiority among men. It is not about having your reward on earth, but wanting your reward in heaven. And you can realize that this means giving up what you see as a reward on earth. It is again this, everything is an experience. You have the experience of climbing up towards the 96th level, whatever motivates you, however you see the path. But then at that level, you have to be willing to give up what brought you this far. And in a sense, at that point, you give up the concept of a path.
You have Eastern traditions, old books, the Gitas, the Upanishads. You have modern non-dual teachings, Neo-Advaita and others. They talk about the need to give up the concept of a path. The pathless path, the direct path, whatever they call it. You just shift your mind and realize you are no self and then you are enlightened.
Reaching down to help others
Well, there is some validity to it, but the thing is, most of the students who are attracted to this are not at the 96th level. And at the lower levels, you cannot give up a path. You cannot give up a path at the 94th level, the concept of a path, because you need it to climb higher. Only at that 96th level can you give up, as we have explained, focusing on rising higher, focusing on going up and instead embrace reaching down. You are not going down. You are reaching down. You are allowing the Christ to flow through you to reach someone at lower levels and help them rise.
That means, in a sense, that you give up this focus on your own growth on the path. It does not mean you are not on the path, because you are still on the path until you reach the 144th level and can ascend. And even in the ascended level, you are on a path towards the Creator consciousness. There is always a path, but you are not focused on walking it, focused on yourself. You are instead focused on helping others walk the path.
And that is a shift in consciousness that requires you to give up this dream of an epic reward, of being greater than others. What did Jesus say to his disciples when they were quarreling about who would be the greatest among them after he left? — “He who would be greatest among you, let him be the servant of all.” That is the Christ, the servant of all, instead of the servant of self.
No state of nothing
You see, we are not giving these teachings to persuade anyone, to make anyone believe what we are saying, because you cannot grasp these teachings until you are close to that 96th level. And you do not need to. How do you know if you are ready for these teachings? You will know when it is not a matter of believing or not believing, when there is no part of your mind that is arguing against it, but when you are just experiencing the teaching and it seems obvious. It is just obvious. If it is not, then you focus on other teachings that help you walk further on the path. But when you reach that level, it is just obvious.
It is self-evident that the self has to go, the separate self, even the spiritual self. But you are not ending up as these, quite frankly, false teachers are saying, with no self. There is no state of no self. Why? Because if there is no self, how can there be an experience? And if there is no experience, there is nothing. You cannot experience nothing. For in nothing there is no one to experience and nothing to experience. But, as we have mentioned before, there is no state of nothing. Nothing is a myth. The concept of nothing is a mental image created in the dualistic mind because the mind says, in this world there is suffering. How do I escape suffering? By going beyond differentiation. And what is the opposite of differentiation? Must be nothing. But there is no nothing because beyond the material world is the ascended realm with myriads of self-aware beings. And at the top of that hierarchy is the Creator, which is not nothing. Even the void is not nothing. The void is an absence of the Allness, but it is filled with the Creator’s being. For the Creator cannot create something apart from itself. And in the Allness there is not nothing—there is a state of awareness that is so beyond what you can imagine when you are on earth. I cannot imagine it either for that matter, but I can experience it.
The difference between Christhood and Buddhahood
Jesus said: “How do you make a difference in a turbulent world?—Be the Living Christ.” The Buddha says: “How do you make a difference in a turbulent world?—Be the Buddha.” The only thing is that so far our teachings have been directed at taking as many students as possible beyond that 96th level. But you cannot be the Buddha at the 96th level. You have to go some ways beyond the 96th level before Christhood subtly turns into Buddhahood. Some will say: “Ah-ha, give me the keys to Buddhahood. Tell me what it is. What is the difference between the Christ mind and the Buddhic mind, Christhood and Buddhahood? I want to know everything. I want to know the neighborhood, Christhood and Buddhahood.”
But you see, there is a certain mindset that has been around in the East for a long time. Even before I appeared as the Buddha, it was there. It comes from the Vedic rishis, and it is this idea that there are certain questions that cannot be answered until you are enlightened. And it is not that the questions are answered, but that in enlightenment the questions disappear. For example, Vedic teachings talk about these huge cycles. You come out of the undifferentiated Brahman as an individual lifestream. You have myriads of incarnations. In many of them you suffer. Then gradually you discover a spiritual path. You make great strides to walk that spiritual path. Then you reach back up to the highest level, and then you go back into the undifferentiated. And there are scholars who have realized that this leaves a gaping question. If you came from nothing and go back into nothing, what is the purpose of the entire circus of these myriads of incarnations? And there are those who will say, as this messenger recently realized, this question cannot be answered. But when you are enlightened, the question fades away.
This is what the rishis could conceive of so many thousands of years ago. But this is not an answer. See, as a spiritual student who begins to have Christhood, you have a direct experience of the Christ mind. You realize the Christ mind is all and in all. Therefore, there is no question that cannot be answered by the Christ mind. Now, we have said before that the linear mind can ask questions that cannot be answered in a way that the linear mind can understand. But when you experience the Christ mind, you realize that with any question you can formulate, the Christ mind can give you a perspective that can help you raise your awareness beyond the level where you ask the question.
The Christ mind can realize that there is a certain level where you can begin to grasp the difference between Christhood and Buddhahood. But you have to go some ways up in the levels of Christhood before you really begin to grasp it.
The rest of this dictation, along with an invocation based on the dictation, is found in the book: Making a Difference in a Turbulent World.
Copyright © 2026 Kim Michaels