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Ascended Master Gautama Buddha, January 4, 2009 through Kim Michaels.

The Buddha, the Sangha, the Dharma. The Buddha is the center. The Sangha is the sphere set apart where you can come in from the world and connect to the Buddha. The Dharma is not to remain in the Sangha, but to go out in the world and free those who are trapped by the demons of Mara. These are, in many cases, not external demons, but the internal demons of their illusions, their dramas.

When I appeared on the earth 2,500 years ago – give or take a few centuries – I did not have the opportunity that we of the ascended masters have today. I had to give teachings adapted, not only to the planetary level of consciousness, but to the way that people could express and deal with spiritual teachings. Whereby I mean not only language, but their concepts, their world view, their understanding of themselves and the human psyche.

If you read my teachings, you might see that limitation out-pictured. Although you can certainly go beyond the outer words and be guided by the Spirit to see deeper meanings than were expressed in the words, nevertheless, you will see – if you are honest – that there are many things that you routinely speak of today that were not addressed in my teachings. The awareness, the concepts, were not there in the collective consciousness.

I come primarily to give you that sense of co-measurement, of the opportunity you have today, with the Alpha of the teachings of the ascended masters, and the Omega of the teachings brought forth through the worldly sciences and practices of psychology and healing. I dare say that there has not in the recent history of earth – which I count as being very long, give or take a few million years – been a group of people [meaning all spiritual people] who had a greater opportunity to tune in to the Buddha, to attain that freedom that the Buddha Saint Germain expounded upon. You can then go out and fulfill the Dharma of raising those who are trapped behind the veil of Maya by demonstrating that you have pulled back that veil. You have ripped it down and torn it asunder so that it has no reality in your being.

Forget not the Dharma

What shall it profit a man that he gains the whole world and loses the Dharma? What shall it profit a person that you gain some sense of understanding of spiritual teachings and concepts, but you lose the Dharma, the Omega aspect of going out, sharing it with others with the sole intent of setting them free? You go not to raise yourself or get attention or power or control, but to set them free. You are free, and thus you have no other desire than to see them free of whatever holds them back behind that veil of Maya, of illusion, of unreality, of the illusion that although everything is the Buddha nature, you can still somehow be separated from the Buddha. What folly is this? What folly, indeed.

Be willing to be free—to be me, for I, too, am free. Why am I free? Because I am awake! I have awakened myself from my own drama. Do not think that the Buddha was born perfect, as they have attempted to portray that picture of me having these other-worldly birth circumstances as they have done to Jesus. I had many past lifetimes on this planet, having sunk just about as far as you can sink, give or take a few degrees.

I too had created my own drama. But something enabled me to respond to the Presence of Sanat Kumara in the earth, and I realized there had to be more. [In a previous age, the collective consciousness of earth had sunk so low that cosmic counsels were contemplating letting the earth self-destruct. A cosmic being, named Sanat Kumara, volunteered to hold the spiritual balance for the earth until someone from earth would be able to do so. His first two students were Gautama Buddha and Lord Maitreya. Gautama Buddha has since risen to the office of Lord of the World and is now holding the spiritual balance for all life on earth.]

I started that journey, pulling back the veils of illusion that made up my drama. I came to the point where I could sit under the Bo tree and face the demons of Mara, which were – at least in the first initiation – not the demons of the world, but the demons of my own past dramas seeking to pull me back into them. I would not be pulled hither or yon, for I had awakened and could see through every one of the dramas and the illusions that created them. I remained free in that awakeness, that Flame of Awakeness that I am.

There is no real separation

The Buddha nature is awake and aware that it is everything, and that there is nothing outside of it—thus seeing the Buddha nature in any manifestation in the world of form, no matter how temporary and unreal it might be. Even the concept of a veil of Maya has the danger of making you think that there is some real separation between Maya and the Sangha of the Buddha. Even the concept of a path makes you think that you really are separated. You have to go though this long and arduous process of entering the Sangha or the kingdom of God, or whatever it may be that you long for.

There is no actual separation. The only thing that separates you from the kingdom of God and from the Sangha of the Buddha is your own drama. There is no objective force that separates you. I am not saying there are not other self-aware beings – or even the demons who are not actually self-aware anymore – who are external to you. But they can only influence you through your own subjective reality of giving them power. As I explained last year at New Year’s time, that evil lord sitting at the temple at the top of the mountain simply is not there and was never there. The illusion of his existence has been kept alive only by the people who have chosen to create a drama that necessitated that ultimate evil, and thus feeding it their energy. [Refers to a dictation by Gautama Buddha in which he described an imaginary temple that supposedly housed the ultimate evil being, controlling a hierarchy of evildoers. No one had ever entered the temple, and in reality it was empty, meaning that all those who work against Oneness are driven by an illusion.]

Let it all collapse like a house of cards. Let it all collapse. Just let it go, my beloved, and enter the Sangha. How do you enter the Sangha? Well, through the door, of course. Where is the door? Where is it, my beloved? [Audience answers, “Within us”] In your hearts, in your hearts.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book How to Communicate from the Heart.