TOPICS: Taking life too seriously – The universality of Christ – The sword of Christ – Stop suppressing your individuality – Spiritual movements and individual expression – The start of the Christian movement – Flowing with the Spirit in 2012 –

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Ascended Master Jesus, December 31, 2011 through Kim Michaels. This dictation was given in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Joy to the world, the Lord has come, is the title of a song, sung by many Christians around the world, especially at Christmas time. Although we have not given extensive teachings on this, it is a fact that every person has a musical piece, that is called their keynote, which is played when they ascend. And thus, the keynote that I, Jesus, have selected is indeed very close to the earthly song “Joy to the world.” Although, of course, the lyrics of the earthly song is not the lyrics that I have in my higher being.

Thus, I come to let you know that a key ingredient, a key to passing the initiation of the year 2012, is indeed joy. There is no way to truly go through the coming year without reaching for a joy, that is beyond what human beings call joy. For it is the same as the peace that passes understanding; it is the joy that passes understanding. It is the joy that knows no opposite and that does not require specific conditions to be fulfilled on earth in order to be expressed.

That is why the closest word that we can use to describe this is indeed something that is UN-conditional, because it is beyond conditions. It does not require a certain condition on earth to be fulfilled, before it will flow. It will flow through anyone who has an open heart. And indeed, the heart is the key.

Taking life too seriously

As you can see from your discussion before you gave the rosary, there are so many things in the world that can divide people. And once they become adamant about a certain viewpoint, then you can notice what happens. When people become convinced that they are right, or that there is only one right viewpoint, they become very serious. And thus, their joy is gone. Yet it is a key to understand, that if your joy is gone, then you have lost touch with the Lord Jesus Christ. You cannot be a true disciple of Jesus Christ and not have joy. For I AM joy, and I came to bring joy to the world.

Certainly, I understand that when you are in physical embodiment, it is difficult to maintain joy. You will see when you look at my life, described in the Scriptures, that I was not a particularly joyful person in that embodiment. And this is, indeed, because in my last embodiment before my ascension, I was having to work through the entire planetary momentum of anti-joy.

And certainly, there are many of you who are likewise working through the anti-thesis to the God flame that you came to bring to earth. And that is why you sometimes feel yourself dealing with certain burdens, or find it difficult to express joy, love, purity or whatever your God flame is. So I am not telling you this, that you need to feel burdened by it, or need to start another guilt trip, among the many other guilt trips that a floating around in the mass consciousness, simply looking for someone upon which they can land.

You do not need to let any of these guilt trips land upon you. But I do want you to know, that if you consider yourself to be a true disciple of Christ, it is important to recognize that what I came to bring to the world was the flame of unconditional joy. And thus, if you find yourself thinking that you are doing the work of Christ, or that you are taking a stand for Christ, or that you are expressing Christ truth, but at the same time you feel no joy in doing so, then it would be wise for you to step back and say: “Can I really be a true disciple of Christ, a true representative of Christ, if I am not able to be the open door for the very flame that Christ came to bring to the world?”

You see, my beloved, to truly step up to a higher level of representing Christ, of expressing Christ, it is indeed necessary for you to open your heart to the flame that I am. This is not to say that Jesus and Jesus Christ is the only representative of Christ on earth. You may have another flame, that it is your task and your joy to express to the world. But if you know that you are a disciple of JESUS Christ, then my flame is indeed joy. And so, is it not perfectly natural for you to tune in to that flame and begin to express it?

And so, how can you truly allow yourself to think that you are representing me, if you cannot feel and express to others the flame that I am? Again, this is not said to cause you to feel any kind of guilt, but simply to inspire you to step up higher, to a higher level of service, to a higher level of attunement. Even going beyond attunement to at-onement with who I am. For I desire to be one with all those who are my personal disciples, as any other ascended master desires to be one with his or her disciples.

Do you not see, my beloved, I do not desire to have those on earth who claim to represent Jesus Christ – whether they stand on the pulpit of a Christian church or in a New Age or spiritual movement – yet at the same time what they are promoting is an image of Christ created in their minds. I desire to have those who can truly represent me, not by promoting an image, but by being the open door, by coming into such oneness with me and my flame, that I can stream through them. And thus, these people who are my true disciples can be a torch of joy, that lights up the world and lights up the hearts of all whom they meet.

My beloved, joy is indeed a flame that can resolve all conflict. Joy is a flame that does not solve a problem, but it gives you a different perspective, a different frame of reference. And suddenly, the problem no longer seems so serious. And thus, you no of longer look at the problem with such a serious mindset. And suddenly, you see that maybe the problem does not actually need to be solved at the same level of consciousness through which you have looked at it so far. Maybe there is a way to step up, to expand your view, to tune in to a higher flame. And thus, you see that the problem, although it has no linear solution, there is still a way to transcend the problem and the mindset through which the problem seemed to be so serious—or even the mindset through which the problem seemed to be a problem.

The universality of Christ

What is truly the goal of Christ? Well, you must again distinguish. I, Jesus, came to earth to represent Christ, both the universal aspect of the universal Christ consciousness, but also a specific flame among the many God flames. That is why I say that I came to personally represent the flame of joy. Yet beyond this, I also came to represent the universal Christ consciousness, which of course has many other expressions, such as love, beauty, purity, freedom, wholeness and all of the other God qualities. Yet even beyond all of these qualities, the universal Christ consciousness has one quality, and that is oneness.

As the Gospel of John said: in the beginning was the Christ consciousness. And the Christ consciousness was with God, and the Christ consciousness was God, and without the Christ consciousness was not any thing made that was made. For indeed, God saw that by giving self-aware extensions of itself free will, it was possible that some would go away from the basic oneness of all life. Would lose their sense of oneness with their source, would lose their sense of oneness with each other, and therefore get into various conflicts.

And thus, God saw, the Creator saw, the necessity to create everything out of this basic, universal state of consciousness that is oneness, oneness between Creator and creation, oneness between the differentiated expressions of the Creator. So that, no matter how far into duality and separation a self-aware being might descend, that being could never go to a place where Christ is not found. For without Christ, no thing can be made. And so, there is always a way out. There is always a way up. There is always a way to move from separation towards oneness. And that is the universal – not even flame – but the universal awareness of Christ.

Oneness between Creator and creation. Oneness between the differentiated expressions of the one undifferentiated Creator. This is truly the flame, the consciousness, the awareness, the beingness of Christ. And thus, even beyond joy, that is my personal expression of Christ, any expression of Christ must have as its foundation oneness, the desire for oneness. The desire to seek oneness, first with something above yourself, with an ascended being, with your higher being, your I AM Presence. So that, when you attain oneness with the I AM aspect of the Presence, you become the I Will Be aspect of the Presence in action. Just as I was when I said, first: “I and my father are one” and then: “My father worketh hitherto and I work.”

So you see, oneness is the underlying reality of Christ. And thus, you can see, even from the discussion you had before giving the rosary, that there are so many things in the world that seek to pull you into the state of consciousness, where there seems to be two polarities. And there must be tension, there must be conflict, there must be confrontation, there must be a struggle between them, until one of the two polarities is established as the superior one.

Yet, it is perfectly true that we desire the spiritual people to be engaged in all areas of society, even the area of politics, which tends to be more polarized than any other. But of course, we desire the spiritual people to be representatives of Christ, the element of oneness, that does not seek to create oneness by having one polarity beat the other polarity into submission, and by having one group of people beat another group of people into submission. But that instead seeks to promote true oneness, where people transcend the very consciousness that causes them to be polarized towards this or that extreme.

The sword of Christ

Yet my beloved, when you look at this teaching – that is truly a higher teaching than I was able to give 2000 years ago – then you might look at the teaching I gave so long ago and say: “But Jesus, why did you then say ‘I come not to bring peace to the world but a sword?'” Well, the reality is, my beloved, that I came to bring the sword of Christ. And one of the functions of the sword of Christ is that it magnifies the conflicts that people have in themselves, it even magnifies the conflicts between people and groups of people. So that they cannot cover them over, so they cannot hide them, so they cannot sweep them under the rug, as the saying goes.

For you see how often in society, there has been a tendency for people to want to ignore the conflict, to want to cover them over, or to want to suppress them. Do you not see that what the Soviet Union sought to establish through communism, and what China is still grasping to establish – and for that matter, still Russia is seeking to establish – is an artificial form of oneness by programming everyone to be the same. But you see, oneness is not the same as sameness. Oneness is where everyone is allowed to express his or her unique individuality. But it is the unique individuality anchored in the I AM Presence. And thus, there can be no conflict between one individuality and another.

And so, you cannot create oneness through force, as you cannot be harmless in a forceful manner. And thus, you see even the Christian church, for the past 2,000 years, has attempted to create this artificial oneness, where everyone is supposed to be converted to the same beliefs, based on an image of Christ. And so, the thinking is that if everyone accepts the same image of Christ, then everyone must be in unison. But you can see, when you look at the history of Christianity, that it has not been so. For even though the Catholic Church for a thousand years managed to suppress all dissent – by using much the same brutality and force as the Soviet Union used to suppress dissent – there eventually came a point, where some people would no longer accept it. And since the birth of the Protestant movement, you have seen how Christianity has continued to fragment into many different churches and sects. And this is, again, an expression of the fact, that if people will not find true oneness, then it is actually better that the differences become more and more pronounced, so that people cannot ignore them, cannot suppress them, cannot pretend that we are good followers of Christ because we are in oneness, when in reality there is no true oneness.

And so, again, oneness is not the same as sameness. For sameness is an artificial condition, that is truly the dream of the fallen beings, where they can program everyone to be the same. And then they think there will be harmony and oneness here below, that can rival and even replace the oneness in the spiritual realm. They are attempting to establish oneness through the consciousness of separation, and of course it cannot be done. For the more force they apply to create sameness, the more counterforce they create, that will fragment the sameness.

So it is possible for some force in this world to create an artificial state of sameness, by suppressing individuality. But it is only possible to maintain it for a time, before the Sword of Christ will fragment that artificial sameness, and again begin to express itself through the individuality of the different lifestreams. And so, you will see, even if we look at yourselves as spiritual people, that you might have grown up in a society that suppressed your individuality, that programmed you to suppress your individuality. This might have been the outer force, such as you saw in the Soviet Union, or it might have been the social pressure that you have seen in many so-called free western nations, as our two messengers described yesterday in the talk about the ego.

Stop suppressing your individuality

And so, it is natural that you have grown up creating various aspects of the ego, that have been geared towards suppressing your individuality, preventing you from expressing your individuality. And so, when you begin to realize this and when you begin to break free of it, it is natural that you go through a phase, where you need to express yourself in all ways. You need to express yourself in more extreme ways than you have done before. For you need to throw away all of these artificial restraints, that you have felt.

That is indeed why you see that most teenagers need to go through a phase, where they are seemingly rebelling against their parents or doing things that their parents told them not to do, as a necessary phase in finding who they really are. But you will also see that, ideally, teenagers should only go through this for certain time, and then they should discover who they are, so that they no longer need to rebel. Because now they know who they are; not in opposition to something here on earth, but through their unique individuality anchored in their I AM Presences.

And thus, you see that this should also be your goal as spiritual people. You should allow yourself to go through a phase of expressed your individuality, no longer suppressing it. But instead, what you see in many spiritual movements is indeed that they impose a new ideal, a new set of rules, that gives you another reason, another excuse, for suppressing your individuality. But this cannot lead to growth; it can only lead to tension. And thus you, again, see how many spiritual movements, after a time, will begin to fragment. There will be conflicts between people, or in many cases people will individually leave, because they can no longer fit themselves into the outer framework.

But you see, this can be transcended by creating movements where people are allowed to express themselves, just as you did before giving this rosary today. You allowed people to express themselves freely. There was no overall goal, there was no overall design, there was no police force seeking to tell people how they should be spiritual and what they should say or not say. There was no attempt to solve any problem here; it was just a free expression that was allowed.

And then, when you had expressed these viewpoints, you still were able to come together in giving the ritual of the rosary, that then helped you raise your consciousness and transcend the expressions that were not the real you, that were not your real individuality. But it was just a necessary phase for you, to break free of the restrictions to the expression of your individuality.

Spiritual movements and individual expression

And thus you see, my beloved, a spiritual movement must give people the room to grow in different ways, in their different tempos. For not everyone is the same, and so it is a goal to have in mind, that you create a movement that has a high degree of tolerance. Where you allow different people to be who they are, and allow them to express themselves freely, without putting any restraints upon them.

But of course, you must also balance this by realizing that there is a distinction to be made. And the distinction to be made is very simply this: consider my statement that unless you become as little children, you cannot enter the kingdom. What is the characteristic of children? It is that they desire to express themselves. And sometimes you can look at a child and you realize, that their expression is not mature. But you do not go in and chastise the child, you allow them to express this, because to know that as the child grows, it will grow out of this.

Of course, you also look at the little children and you see, that sometimes they will express themselves in a way that creates conflict between one child and another. Or you see one child that seeks to dominate other children, even to deliberately hurt other children. And in that case, of course, you step in as the parent and bring an end to this. Because you realize that the child cannot stop itself, so you as the parent must then set the limits and say: “You cannot go beyond this!” Simply because you realize, that this is not the child’s highest potential.

So you see, I am not here saying that you need to have a spiritual movement where anyone can come and express negative, or hateful, or destructive viewpoint towards other people. For of course, if you allow any free expression, you will see that there will be those people who come in who are so trapped in the duality consciousness, that they will attempt to turn your spiritual movement into just another extension of the dualistic power struggle.

They will come in with an agenda to dominate, to control, or even to put other people down. And this, of course, cannot be, in a spiritual movement that has the goal of working towards the oneness of the members. You see my beloved, you cannot take an extreme position, whereas on the one side you see the traditional Christian churches that disallow any free expression. But you cannot jump into the other extreme and say you should allow any free expression. Because either way you will not create true oneness.

You can create true oneness only when you are dealing with people, who understand the need to find the consciousness of the child. Where you are willing to freely express what you feel, but you are also willing to listen for those who can take the role of a parent, because they have more experience or more understanding. And can therefore guide you and set a limit and say: “Now, I think you are expressing something that is not truly an expression of a desire for oneness, and I think you could do better than this.”

And so you see, it is a delicate balance. And what so many people desire, and what the ego desires more than anything, is that we of the ascended masters come in and say: here we have a clearly defined movement. This has clearly defined doctrines, clearly defined rules. And if you do this, and if you don’t do that, then you are guaranteed to be saved.

The start of the Christian movement

But you see my beloved, this is not the movement I started 2,000 years ago. Do you not realize, that the Christian religion has painted a man-made image of Christ. If you truly listen to what the Catholic Church is saying about my life, when I walked the earth 2,000 years ago, you would think, my beloved, that I gave my sermon on the Mount in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, would you not? And you realize, of course, that this was not the case, for this monumental edifice to the human ego had not been built by the time I walked the dusty roads of Galilee.

So where did I give my sermons, where did I meet people in the beginning of my mission? I met them like you are meeting today: in private homes, where people came together as the little children, who wanted to hear a new message. And they sensed the message that I gave, they sensed the joy behind it, the joy of having found oneness with something higher than the divisions on earth. And that is the Spirit in which they came together, these early Followers of the Way, who had no agenda, who had no sophisticated arguments, who did not come to be proven right, who did not come to prove me wrong. Even though, of course, you see that some had the consciousness that was illustrated in Peter, of wanting even the living Christ walking with them, to live up to a certain man-made image.

Yet many came, and they were willing to first express their image, but then grow out of it, then transcend it by coming into greater oneness with me as the teacher, by coming into greater oneness with each other as the Followers of the Way. And thus, we of the ascended masters today do not desire to give you a clearly defined doctrine, a clearly defined set of rules. We do not even desire to see you start organizations, that set themselves apart from others or say they are better than others. We desire you to maintain that awareness of the inner child, where you do not think that you know better than the teacher.

For do you not see, that if you really look at a child, you see this great desire to learn. And it is this openness to learning that opens your heart to a teacher, whether it be a teacher in embodiment or the ascended masters. We of the ascended masters look down upon earth, and we are always seeking to help anyone rise higher on their individual path, we are always seeking to give them a teaching.

But we see that there are some that we cannot help, because they do not have the innocence, the childlike mind, the beginner’s mind, the openness of the heart to seeing something that they cannot see today. To letting the teacher take them by the hand and leading them up higher, until they can look back at their former state of consciousness and see: “Ahh, how limited it was, and how glad I am that I now have a higher perspective.”

Flowing with the Spirit in 2012

Truly, this is what will open you to the teacher. But more importantly, it is also what will open you to flowing with the Holy Spirit. And thus, part of the purpose for this talk is to prepare you for the initiations of 2012. For as has already been said, if you cannot flow with the Spirit in 2012, then you will find it very difficult to go through this coming year. And what is it that allows you to flow with the Spirit? It is the childlike mind, where you are open to seeing something that you had not seen before, where you are open to seeing how your present viewpoints have limited you and have limited the flow of the Spirit through you.

And thus, you are willing to flow beyond those limitations, flow beyond those images, flow beyond those preconceived opinions, that you thought were so important and that you took so seriously before. My beloved, those who will successfully pass the initiations of the year 2012, will come – at the end of that year – will come to look back at their state of consciousness right now and say: “Oh, how seriously I took myself a year ago. How serious I was about certain aspects of my personality, of my personal beliefs, of the world. How serious I was. How much more free and joyful I am now, one year later. And how glad I am that I was able to let go of taking these things so seriously.”

“How much more free I am, how much more joy there is in my life, because I was able to let go; to just let it go. I realized that I did not need to solve all of these problems; I did not need to solve the world’s problems, I did not need to save other people. I could just let it go and tune in to the Spirit and the Spirit of Joy. And I could flow with that Spirit, and the more I was willing to flow over this last year, the more I could simply pass through the challenges without being touched by them.”

“The more I could look at the challenges and the challenging events in the world and just say: What is that to me; I will innocently flow with the joy of my Lord Jesus Christ, who always calls me to find the joy, to go beyond the seriousness and flow with that stream of joy, that flows from the heart of the ascended master Jesus Christ. The joy that will help me let go, as Gautama said, and flow with the torrent, flow with the current, until I see the Living Christ within all of the turmoil, and even see the Living Buddha within all of the turmoil. The living Buddha who walks around with his eyes open, looking back at me wherever I look. Whatever condition I may face, whatever crisis may manifest itself in the world, I look for the joy of Christ, I look for the smile of the Buddha.”

“And then I know that the world will not end in 2012. The world will still be here, but it will be a new world, it will be a world that is reborn, as I am reborn and gain new eyes, and therefore can look at the world through different eyes. And then I know, that whatever eyes I use to look at the world, that it is the eyes of the Buddha that will look back at me. And thus, whether 2012 will be a serious or a sad year, or whether it will be a year of increasing joy is a matter of my willingness to just let go go of any condition that prevents me from being in the childlike mind, flowing with the current of the living joy of Christ.”

Flow, my beloved, flow. I am the living flow of Christ, and my flow I give unto you, not only on this day, but I offer it to you every day of the coming year of 2012. Remember me. Remember my flow of joy, for I am with you always. For I am the always. Ponder this! Christ is the ongoingness of life. Christ is the always, the all ways to Oneness.