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Ascended Master Hilarion through Kim Michaels, January 15, 2017.

I AM the Ascended Master Hilarion. What do you encounter when you get to the fourth level at my retreat? You encounter the need to deal with another subtle illusion, another very difficult illusion, another very difficult initiation. I have previously talked about the fact that it is possible to have been on the spiritual path for many years, even to have studied ascended master teachings for many years, and still have certain illusions about what the path is all about.

Now, my beloved, you can look at this in two ways. You know the old story, of course, of whether the glass is half full or half empty. Likewise, you have spiritual students who have a certain attitude that if they encounter a situation where they feel that they have harbored an illusion or done something that was not the highest possible, then they tend to look at this from the negative and see that they have done something wrong. There may be certain feelings associated with this, such as fear, shame or guilt.

There may be other students who look at it more positively and see that it is good that they now see that they have so far held on to an illusion. Because this sets them free to move to a higher level of the path. This last attitude is, of course, what I wish all of you to achieve when you reach this level of my retreat.

An illusion for each of the 144 steps

If you step back and look at the spiritual path, you can see that we have told you that there are 144 levels before you are ready to ascend. We have also told you that at each of these levels, there is a certain state of consciousness that is associated with that level. Built into the state of consciousness at any given level is a certain illusion. It is not that this is necessarily a negative illusion.

When you are below the 48th level of consciousness, you hold certain illusions that affirm the idea that you are a separate being and that you can either get away with doing things to others or that you have a right to do things to other people. When you go above the 48th level, you go into a different kind of illusions that are more geared towards holding yourself at a certain level. These are not necessarily aggressive or destructive illusions, and therefore there is no particular reason to feel negative about having them.

You could say that it is completely inevitable that at your current level of consciousness you cannot see through the illusion associated with that level. If you had seen through the illusion, you would have ascended to the next level up. You could look at the spiritual path as simply a process where you step-by-step come to see, and therefore let go of and overcome, certain illusions.

This could be said to be what the path is all about, and therefore you can come to a point where you are not looking at this as a negative. You are not having any reluctance to see the illusion. You are open; you are willing to see the illusion. You are, in fact, looking for what is the next illusion: “What is the illusion at this step that I need to overcome?” Then, when you begin to see it, you rejoice in the fact that you are now seeing it and therefore it is almost like a sporting game.

You have these computer games where you are walking through underground worlds and various monsters jump out at you and you shoot them. You could look at the path the same way: You are walking and at any level there is a certain illusion and when that illusion jumps out at you, it is a chance to see it, to really look at it, to see through it and then to let it go and overcome it.

Making the path easier for yourself

If you can adopt this attitude, then the rest of this course and the rest of the path until you are ready to ascend will become much easier for you. You do not have to go into the inevitable reaction of the ego (or the dweller on the threshold), which will seek to make you attached to the illusion you have at any level.

Just imagine, my beloved, having to go through all of the illusions between your present level and the 144th level of consciousness and fighting the ego and the dweller on each step. Why would you want to do that if you can make it easier for yourself by stepping back and adopting the attitude that the path really is about seeing and overcoming one illusion at a time? Just as it is relatively innocent to play a computer game, where you work your way through different levels, then it is the same with the path on earth where everything in a sense is like a virtual environment that you see in a computer game. I am not saying thereby that there are not more serious consequences of what people do on earth than there is in a computer game. Nevertheless, you can avoid going into a negative reaction. I hope you get the point that there comes that level of the path where you need to stop taking the initiations so seriously that each step becomes a big burden and a big drama for you to go through.

What is truth?

Now, at this particular level of my retreat, what is the illusion we are dealing with? Well, there are many ascended master students (some who have studied our teachings for decades) who have adopted the belief – and it is an understandable belief – that our teachings are giving you the truth; the highest truth. You know, of course, that one aspect of the Fifth Ray is truth. As Pontius Pilate said to Jesus: “What is truth?” This is indeed a question that many students have not fully considered and that you need to consider at this level.

What is truth? Let us step back a moment and ask a different question: “Is there such a thing as truth?” Built into most people’s concept of truth is that there is also an untruth, there is a lie. You have truth contrasted with a lie and what is that? Two opposites that are linked together, well, my beloved that is duality, is it not?

Now, I know, of course, that the dualistic mind can take any state and create a new situation where there are two opposites. We can say that there is such a thing as a non-dualistic truth. It is there. In the ascended realm, we know truth. I am on the Fifth Ray and I very well know what is truth because I experience truth as a living reality, as a spiritual flame, all the time. The truth that I experience at the ascended level does not have an opposite. It is not in contrast with an opposite. It is not in contrast with untruth or a lie.

What you need to recognize at this level of my retreat is that there is a difference between a non-dualistic truth and a dualistic truth. A dualistic truth has an opposite, and so you realize that what the vast majority of human beings on earth see as truth is indeed a dualistic concept because it has an opposite. You will see, for example, that the followers of most of the world’s religions and most of the world’s New Age gurus, think that their particular organization has the truth, the highest spiritual teaching, and all the others are lower or even the opposite of truth.

The difference between truth and The Truth

Well, my beloved, at this level there is no such thing as truth. You may think that if you look at all of the world’s religions and spiritual philosophies, you can set them up on a scale and say some have a lower degree of truth and some have a higher degree of truth. I will not deny that this can be done because there are, of course, some philosophies out there that are more directly created by the fallen beings and therefore incorporate much more of their subtle illusions.

You need to recognize here that even a teaching that is entirely created by the fallen beings still has some concepts in it that most spiritual people would see as true. If there was no such thing, then people would not be fooled by the teaching. The fallen beings are not creating a teaching where everything is wrong or everything is a lie. They are creating a teaching where there is a high degree of what you might call truth, but there are some erroneous concepts mixed in. People accept the teaching because of what they recognize as being valid, and then they also accept the erroneous concepts and this takes them onto the false path.

Now, you see, my beloved, already from this (if you are paying attention) that even I, as an ascended master, find it difficult to use the word “truth” without going into a dualistic evaluation where you contrast it with something that is untruth. Let us put that aside for now. What I want to focus on here is that if you took all of these spiritual and religious philosophies and did create a scale of how much truth they contain, then ascended master students would tend to say that the teachings of the ascended masters, given through a sponsored messenger as dictations, have the highest degree of truth. Now, this is both true and untrue.

It is true, of course, that our teachings are given entirely for the purpose of setting you free. They do not contain any deliberate errors that can trip you up, as the teachings given by the fallen beings. Nevertheless, you need to recognize that even though what we are giving you is a true teaching, we are not giving you (and we are not attempting to give you) “The Truth.” Let us make a distinction here, subtle as it may be, between truth and The Truth.

Truth is a general concept. Something can be more or less true. Floating around in the collective consciousness is the concept that there is something that is “The Truth.” The idea is that there is a teaching that is the highest, that is an absolute truth. You will see, for example, that many Christians look at the Bible as the absolute infallible Word of God. To them, the Bible is “The Truth” the absolute highest revelation that could possibly be given on this planet.

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