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Ascended Master Master Paul the Venetian through Kim Michaels, June 5, 2023. This dictation was given at a conference in Seoul, Korea.

I AM the Ascended Master Paul the Venetian. You may think that connecting to your spiritual teachers is a difficult task, and for many people indeed it is a difficult task. Which is why we of the Chohans have decided that for many people it will be easier to connect to the spiritual teacher through one of the seven rays and the God qualities of the rays.

Naturally Jesus is well aware that his discourse was aimed at people at a certain level of consciousness, for most people cannot make that switch and accept the Christ within themselves. So it will be easier for many people to focus on one of the seven rays and the qualities of that ray. And therefore, by pondering, tuning into the quality, giving the decrees and invocations for that ray, perhaps working with that book in the course of Self-Mastery they will be more able to tune in first to the qualities and then realize that those qualities are embodied and represented by a specific teacher, a specific master, one of the Chohans.

To this end we have therefore decided to give some discourses that, of course, are not meant to replace the discourses in the course of Self-Mastery or other teachings we have given on specific rays. But they are designed specifically to help you tune in and tune into the quality of a certain ray. And of course, I am the master who represents the quality of the third ray, which is often called or seen as the quality of love.

Divine Love vs. human love

Now, as Jesus said, in a sense, he is the easiest master to tune into, but in another sense he is the most difficult master to tune into because of the images projected by the Christian religion. And in the same way you could say that love is the easiest God quality to tune into because is there any human being on earth who do not at least have the concept of love? But, of course, you can also say that love is the most difficult quality to tune into because most people may have a concept of love, but not Divine Love. They have a concept of human love that has been projected upon Divine Love.

And, of course, if you are enveloped in an image of love that is based on the human love, how will you tune into and connect to Divine Love? It cannot be done. Once again, if you really desire to tune into love, you must first consider what images of human love, or we might even say anti-love, you have been affected by as you grew up in this lifetime, possibly even in past lifetimes.

So many people have an image of love that actually should be called ownership or possession instead of love. They think that loving somebody is an obligation that if you say that you love somebody, other people are obligated towards you. And if you are in a love relationship with someone, be it a spouse, be it a parent or child you are obligated towards that person.

So you see that so many so-called love relationships really are trapped in a kind of power game where both partners in the relationship are seeking to make the other partner feel obligated. They themselves feel obligated, so they are seeking to make each other feel obligated to give something or to do something that fulfills the demands from the other person. And this, of course, is not Divine Love, for Divine Love does not seek to own, it does not seek to possess.

Why do you need to own something unless you feel lack? All desire for ownership springs from the illusion of lack, and of course Divine Love is not trapped in the illusion of lack, and therefore Divine Love could never have lack. It is the ever-flowing stream that flows from the Creator towards the creation and into the creation. Representing Divine Love as I do, how could I ever feel lack? I feel this constant flow of love through me expressed to all people, and I experience that it is inexhaustible. It could never run out.

No matter how much I give of love to people on earth, I could never run out. For the more I give, the more I receive. That is love. But, of course, when I give love, I give it freely. I give it from that neutral state of mind that we have talked about, where I have no intent about what result should be achieved from my giving love. How people should respond, what they should do or not do with that love. I have no such intent. So I have freely received love from above, I freely give to all below, not creating in my mind the structure that seeks to own, to possess, to control what people do with the gift. That is not really a gift that I am giving, I am just letting it flow through me.

Are you open to receiving love?

And this you can contemplate. You can contemplate whether you want human love or Divine Love. And if you want Divine Love, then the first task is to realize that Divine Love is given freely to all who would receive it. For you individually, it is not a matter of, is Divine Love given to you? The only question is, are you receiving it or are you not receiving it? It is given. That is a given. But the receiving of it is by no means a given for most people, even most spiritual people, reject it for various reasons.

So the first task is as always to look at the subconscious selves that cause you to reject love or to ignore it. One of the most common ones is a self that says you are not worthy of love, you are not worthy to receive Divine Love. For there are other selves who project that—“Oh Divine Love is so special”, and because it is so special, you have to be special to receive it. But Divine Love is not special, it is beyond labels. It is neither special nor not special. It cannot be labeled.

Love beyond conditions

One word that we have applied to it is unconditional. But this is just another word that the mind can twist and turn and analyze and say what does that mean? And the fallen beings will always object: “There is no such thing as unconditional love, even God’s love is conditional, for have we not spent so much effort on this planet and in previous spheres to create this false God, the conditional angry God in the sky? Have we not spent so much effort projecting that this is the only God there is, the only true God?” This is what they will always claim and therefore they will claim that this angry conditional God, his love can only be conditional and only those who live up to certain conditions incidentally defined by the fallen beings are worthy to receive God’s love.

But love is beyond conditions, especially conditions that could be defined on an unnatural planet like earth or could be defined by the fallen beings in the dualistic mindset. For anything, any condition that can be defined from the dualistic mindset is a relative condition and a divine quality is not relative. For if it was relative it would not be divine. This is the enigma, the challenge for you to contemplate the difference between human love which is conditional and Divine Love which is beyond conditions.

You are so used to from human beings that in order to receive love from other people you need to live up to certain conditions. Most of you have received this image from your parents, not necessarily that they consciously projected this image upon you. They just had this image of conditional love projected by their parents and what could they do but give it unto you? They did not know there was an alternative.

The conditional God of organized religion

Where in the world do you find an alternative to conditional love?
Certainly not in the Abrahamic religions or most other religions. But what is a religion? Any large organized, formalized, institutionalized religion is a tool for the fallen beings to control the population. How could such a religion teach about unconditional love or give it to the people?

You can only have a large institution that has power over the people if the people think that the leaders of the institution are special at a higher level than themselves. And therefore the people in order to be accepted by the leaders must live up to conditions. This image is projected all the way up to the angry God in the sky so that many people today believe that God’s love is conditional. But this, of course, is the arrogance, the spiritual pride of the fallen beings who believe that they can define a God and project that image and then in their arrogance they can even believe that God lives up to the image, the graven image, the conditional image.

So few people have been willing to think about this image of the conditional God and contemplate whether it is actually logical.
If God is beyond the world, if God has created the world, why would God live up to any image that could be created in the world?

God beyond human images

An image has form. You live in the world of form. Human beings look at the forms found on earth, they look at the forms of their own psychology, the dualistic psychology, the separate mind and they use this to formulate images and then project these images out. And they project images upon God. But if God is beyond form, how could God live up to or be confined to any image created in the world of form?

If God is the source of form, does it not stand to reason that God is beyond form? We may not say accurately that God is formless because the Creator has individuality, but it is certainly an individuality that is beyond any of the forms found in the world of form. So how is it logical that human beings on this planet that clearly is so primitive can create an image of God and God will live up to it?

Naturally the fallen beings will say that it is not an image of God because this is how God is. But again, look at most of the gods portrayed by the religions of the world and see that it is a God who has form, it is a God that is conditional, whose love is conditional.

You know from science that everything is created from energy. Energy that has taken on the form of these things that you see in the matter world, that you see with your senses, even with your minds. And they all have a distinct form that sets them apart from others. But where does the energy come from out of which these forms are fashioned? Well, it comes from beyond the material universe. So is it logical that the energy out of which form is created has the same forms?

Is it not more logical that the energy is beyond form? It is more than any form that you could see in this world. Therefore, one of the energies that are used to create the world of form is love, Divine Love. But that love is beyond the forms in this world. The white light in the movie projector is beyond the colors on the movie screen. It takes on colors when it is passing through the film strip, but the white light is beyond the images on the film strip.

You cannot receive love through reactionary self

If you want to connect to Divine Love you must begin by contemplating that it does not live up to the conditions defined by human beings. And you must be willing to realize that you have inevitably both in this and past lifetimes created selves in a reaction to these images of conditional love, of human love, of controlling love. And these selves cannot connect to Divine Love, cannot even fathom Divine Love.

For a self the concept of unconditional love is unfathomable. It cannot deal with it. You cannot experience Divine Love through such a self, which is why you must expose it, see the illusion, let it go. This, of course, is what our teachings are about, especially the book given by me as part of the self-mastery course. But you can make progress towards this by doing a meditation that might seem simple, might even seem simplistic, for there is no sophisticated intellectual reasoning.

The meditation on Love

The meditation that I propose to you is simply this, you sit in a comfortable position in a quiet room, you close your eyes and then you gently in your mind repeat this mantra: Love is, Love is.

And you will notice that you might have a reaction to this. There is a mind, there is a self that wants to say: “Love is what? Love must be something. It cannot just be, it must be something. It must have a form. Give me something I can grasp and hold on to. Give me something I can possess, that I can describe, that I can analyse. I am the mind, my task is to explain and understand everything. But if something does not have qualities, what is there to explain and understand? Give me something I can work with. You have created me to understand everything for you, to explain everything. You cannot just sit there and say Love is, it must be something.”

And if you will study this reaction, it might help you expose some of these subconscious selves. Because you can then say, well, what does your mind say that love should be? Allow the mind to finish the sentence, Love is, and then allow your mind to put qualities on love. And now you have put your mind in a dilemma, because if the mind says love is so and so, you have exposed one of these subconscious selves that holds a man-made image of God, of love.

And you can now work on that self until you see it and can let it go. If the mind does what it is programmed to do, finish the sentence, it exposes the self. The wisest thing the mind could do was to remain quiet, but can the mind remain quiet? It is not very likely. You see a very, very simple practice, a very, very simple meditation, but it can be tremendously effective. And you can use this, if you are willing, to go through a phase where you work on these selves that are holding these images of conditional love, some kind of condition. And you can come to that point where you can sit there and you can repeat that mantra, Love is and you are at peace with just Love is.

You do not have to finish the sentence. You do not have to put qualities on love. You can allow love to be whatever it will be, the I Will Be Who I Will Be. And that is when you then can connect to and experience Divine Love that is beyond conditions. It is an energy. It is a Presence. It is a state of consciousness. You cannot understand it. You cannot grasp it with the mind. And when you begin to experience it, you realize that precisely because the mind cannot grasp it, the mind cannot really shut it out either.

It can distract your attention from focusing on Divine Love, but it cannot shut it out for only that which has qualities that the mind can grasp can be shut out by the separate selves, the subconscious selves. Your perception filter, as we have called it, can only filter out something that has a quality, can only block something that has a quality. But that which has no quality that the dualistic mind can grasp will pass through the barriers of the perception filter. You can then again, use this simple meditation to neutralize that linear mind that wants to put love on some kind of linear progression, linear scale with dualistic polarities, such as true love.

Only Divine Love can satisfy you

Consider this concept of how it is permeating the collective consciousness. True love as opposed to false love. How could love be true or false? Well, conditional love can be true or false, but Divine Love, how could it ever be true or false? How can you apply these concepts, true and false, to a divine quality? But this is what the mind wants to do, because then the mind feels it has control. And then the mind feels that now that I have control over love, I can use love to control others and get what I want and overcome that sense of lack that is built into the separate mind.

But once you go into separation, you will feel lack, for you cannot receive the divine qualities which is the only thing that can truly satisfy you and fill you. For the separate self cannot understand and grasp this, but the Conscious You, of course, can. You can come to that point where you are aware, you become aware, you fully accept that the only way to be satisfied is to receive a divine quality.

So if you want love, no amount of human love will truly fill your need for love. Only Divine Love can fill the need for love. Of course, the Divine Love cannot fill the need for love of a separate self. Nothing can fill the need for love of a separate self. But the Conscious You can step outside of that self and realize that the self is on a futile quest that can never be filled.

No matter how much human love you might receive, it could never fill you. It can distract you for a short period of time when you are in love with someone, but sooner or later the honeymoon is over. So the Conscious You can come to this realization that: “I can never be satisfied through this. I can only be satisfied, filled, fulfilled when I experience Divine Love.”

The meditation on accepting Love

Once you have gone through this meditation of the Love is, I will propose the next step. And that is again, you go into a quiet room, close your eyes and in your mind you repeat the mantra: I accept love.

Again you might find a reaction. The mind might still have various reactions. Well, why you cannot just accept love. Again there might be conditions that you supposedly need to fulfill and then you can go after these selves as well. And you can come to a point where you can repeat this mantra, I accept love and continue to repeat it until you experience it. Now, the mind will still attempt to interfere with this. For the mind will say: “Well this master is talking a good game, he is talking about love, he is talking about unconditional love, but what is unconditional love like? What will it feel like to experience unconditional love? Tell me this, for how will you know that you have received unconditional love if you cannot describe it and he is saying it is beyond characteristics, beyond form. How will you ever know if you have experienced it?”

Divine Love cannot be experienced through the mind

This is what the mind will do. The tricks that the mind will play on you. But you see the solution to this seeming enigma is very simple. You do not have to have an image in your mind of what it will feel like to experience Divine Love. For I can assure you that when you experience it, you will know that this is Divine Love. There will be no doubt in your mind that you have experienced Divine Love.

The rest of this dictation, along with an invocation based on the dictation, is found in the book: Connecting with Your Spiritual Teachers.