Listen to a recording of this dictation (subscribers only).

Ascended Master Guru Ma through Kim Michaels.

I AM the Ascended Master Guru Ma. It still gives me great joy to say this through a human messenger in the physical octave on earth. I am an ascended master; I am not an embodied human being. Neither am I an unascended master—or not master. I am an ascended master.

The decisiveness of the step that brings you into the ascended octave cannot be fathomed until you experience it. There is no experience that you could ever have on earth that is quite as decisive as actually taking that last step into the ascended realm. The only thing that somewhat compares is the death of the physical body where your lifestream, your soul, experiences the decisiveness that the physical body it has been wearing for decades is gone—completely gone. You also experience that the life you have had for decades – the family, the friends, the outer situations, the possessions, the creature comforts – is all gone. It will never come back in that exact form. You know you will have other lifetimes, but the lifetime you have just left will never come back.

You have lost any control over what you had, any control over what you had in that lifetime. While you were still alive and conscious, you had a position in the eyes of other people. Through that position you could command a certain respect, a certain obedience. You had, through that position, control over your circumstances. Once the heart stops beating and the body draws its last breath, you lose all control over that lifetime. What is left then? When we speak of control, there is only one form of control that you can take with you after the body dies. It is self-control.

Most lifestreams on earth have not begun to understand that the only form of control they really have on earth is self-control. They have not begun to understand what this truly means. Instead, even when the body dies, the soul in many cases is still so identified with the ego and with the self it has created that it thinks the ego can exert control.

The lifestream, the Conscious You, is identified with the soul vehicle, the boat that it has created in order to cross the Sea of Samsara, or at least navigate the Sea of Samsara. It believes that even though one physical body has died, the self will still carry over. In its next lifetime, it will be able to get greater control by building on to that self. This is the central challenge on earth; this is the central challenge for those who truly want to make their ascension. This is something we need to talk about.

For whom am I teaching?

It has been said by the ascended masters that: “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” This means that there is no teacher on earth who is attempting to teach all people on earth. You can have a broad teaching that reaches out to a large number of people, like Jesus taught the multitudes in parables. You can have a more inner, a more advanced, teaching for those who are ready for it, as Jesus expounded all things to his disciples. Nevertheless, no matter who you are as a teacher, you can only teach a certain range of the people on earth.

Let us therefore clarify for whom I am giving the teachings in this book. They are primarily given for those who have the potential to qualify for their ascension in this lifetime or the next. They will also be of value to those who are at the more mature stages of the spiritual path where they are very sincere about making spiritual progress, even it is not in their divine plan that they ascend in this lifetime.

Overcoming the “us versus them” mentality

While I was in embodiment as a spiritual teacher, the organization that I was heading had a certain organizational culture. This culture was in large part dominated by Mark and myself, but it was not exclusively created by us. It was indeed a product of all of the people who were part of the organization. Depending on their role in the organization, they would have a greater or smaller impact on the organizational culture, perhaps even what we might call the collective consciousness of the organization.

This organizational culture did contain certain elements of value judgment. Our organization was directly and openly geared towards teaching the path to the ascension. We taught a very strict path of discipline with certain outer rules for behavior. We taught that it was an arduous path of surrendering to the will of God and the will of the ascended masters. We had a very low tolerance for those who would not submit to this path. Underneath was a certain value judgment that many people on earth simply were not ready for the path that we were following, those of us who were on the inside.

There was a certain “us versus them” mentality where we clearly saw that “us” – we who were on the inside – were the most advanced students. That is why we were able to recognize and follow “the most advanced spiritual teaching on the planet,” as we believed we had been given. It was implicitly said – and in some cases by some people openly said – that those who would not accept our teachings or our disciplines simply were not ready for it. They were not advanced enough, they were not mature enough.

Regardless of the fact that I had a certain element of this attitude while I was in embodiment, I wish to state from the ascended realm – with absolutely no doubt – that this attitude and any aspect of value judgment can come only from ego. It has no reality whatsoever in God. It has no reality whatsoever in the ascended realm.

This is not to say that it is not understandable that people build this attitude. Those who are serious about making their ascension, or making decisive progress on the spiritual path, will have to navigate their own personal Sea of Samsara. They will have to create a vessel, a boat, that can withstand the raging waves and the torrents that are sent at them by the dark forces (who oppose the spiritual progress of all people on earth), by the mass consciousness (that does not want anyone to rise above the norm) and by their own subconscious momentums.

When you look at spiritual and religious movements, and for that matter any kind of organized movement on earth, you see in virtually all of them a tendency to have this “us versus them” mentality. “We are the ones who are on the inside, and we are in a certain sense superior to those who are on the outside.” Many Christian fundamentalist churches in the United States have members who believe this every Sunday when they come together. They sit there in their little church, which may only have a few hundred members, and they believe that because they have the only literal interpretation of the Bible, they are the only ones who will be saved when Jesus comes back to roll up the world as a scroll.

We in the Summit had an aspect of that mentality, and if you look honestly at most spiritual and religious movements, you will see exactly the same. What I wish to convey here is that we of the ascended masters have completely and utterly transcended this mentality. The reason I am telling you this is twofold. One is to let you know that in order for you to become an ascended master, you need to transcend it as well. The other reason is because I want you to know that we of the ascended masters do not look at the spiritual people on earth and judge them based on a value judgment.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available as Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 in the book Don’t Drink Your Own Kool-Aid.