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Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels, May 19, 2018. This dictation was given at a conference in Holland.

I am the Ascended Master Mother Mary, and I wish to build upon the teachings I gave you in my previous discourse. I had you go through the exercise of envisioning that you were raised up to our level, looking at the earth, looking at all the different groups of people and how they were all in a certain state of consciousness. They had certain blocks in their four lower bodies that could make it difficult for us to reach their conscious minds with a message. I also had you look at yourself and how you made your Divine plan from a higher state of consciousness than you had when you came into embodiment. What I wish to move on to here is the realization that there is a fundamental difficulty in what we are doing here, in the sense that we are giving a teaching about how to discover and implement your Divine plan. We are, of course, having to give it in general terms so that it applies to many different people.

You have to recognize that when you make your Divine plan, this is a completely individual process. You are meeting with your ascended teachers and guides and we together are looking at your lifestream. We are looking at other lifestreams that you have ties to, whether karmic or other ties and we are making an individual plan for you. Now, naturally, we cannot in a discourse like this, give each of you your individual Divine plan. What you need to do is use the general teaching to discover your individual Divine plan—and how can you do this?

You can do it only from within, my beloved. Now, I know that there are many, many spiritual people in the world who have a genuine desire to know what is the purpose for their life, whether they call it a Divine plan or something else. Probably, you may have done it yourself, or you may know people who have gone to various kinds of psychics, oracles, astrologers, tarot card readers, whatever you have, in order to get somebody to give you some kind of directions that are, what we might say, unmistakable to your outer mind in the sense that you can hear them. My beloved, based on this, you could say: “Well, when we have a sponsored messenger, why don’t we simply have the messenger give a reading from the ascended masters to each person for ten or fifteen minutes, telling them about their Divine plan?”

Now, aside from the time issue, this could theoretically be done. As we allow you to ask questions that we answer, we could as well give these kinds of readings for people individually. You understand, my beloved, that if we did this, it would actually defeat part of the purpose of your Divine plan. That is why we do not encourage you, when you come to this level of the spiritual path, to go to anybody and ask them to tell you what you should do, who you are, how you should behave, what is your Divine plan and your purpose, your past lives or this or that. This belongs at a certain level of spirituality.

I do not condemn anyone for going into this, but I want to point out to you that the teaching we are giving here is not for that level of spirituality. We may call it the level where people are sort of seeking some kind of excitement, some kind of interest beyond their daily lives, some kind of almost entertainment. We could call it “entertainment spirituality” but we do not want to sound negative or in any way critical because people must take what road they need to take. Hopefully, gradually, they raise their consciousness. What I am pointing out to you is that those of you who are open to this teaching, you have raised your consciousness beyond the level where you need this. Therefore, you need to recognize something very simple. As I said last night, in your current lifetime you came in at a certain level of consciousness. Now, I warned you against being too attached to the linear mind but, of course, we have given you a linear teaching that there are 144 levels of consciousness possible on earth.

What it means to shift your consciousness

Let us, just for the sake of example, say that someone came in at the 67th level and they have the potential to reach the 120th level in this lifetime. This may seem like a big leap in consciousness but for many of you who are at this level of the path, it is not actually a big leap. There are some of you that might come in close to the 96th level and actually have the potential to go to the 144th level in this lifetime, not all of you but some of you. You do not need to worry about where you are at, as such. I am giving an example here that you come in at a certain level and you have the potential to rise to a higher level. The entire purpose of your Divine plan is to take you through a series of inner insights, resolution of psychology and outer experiences that facilitate this growth in consciousness, from the lowest level to the highest potential.

What does it take to actually shift your consciousness? Well, my beloved, if you had some outside personal authority reveal to you that this is your Divine plan, this is what you are supposed to do, would that shift your consciousness? It would not! Being told by some authority figure what you are supposed to do and then trying to do it, is not going to shift your consciousness. The other thing is, even if you were told that in your Divine plan you are supposed to become a nuclear scientist and make a new discovery that will change the energy production on earth, you might with the outer mind decide to study nuclear physics and have this goal in mind, but I can guarantee you that you would not be able to make the discovery.

In order to make a certain discovery, or in order to even realize what are the higher levels of your personal Divine plan, you need to shift your consciousness upwards. That is why, discovering your Divine plan is not something you can do in one step. It is a gradual process that will be ongoing for your entire lifetime. You see, my beloved, you are at the 67th level when you come in, well you may have a potential to reach the 120th level but that is not your concern when you are at the early stages of your path.

Let us say you discover the spiritual path when you are 18 and in the meantime you may have grown a little bit beyond the 67th level so you are now at the 70th level. Your main concern is not to reach the 120th level, your main concern is to reach the 71st level. Then, when you go there, to reach the 72nd level and so on. What I am saying here is something that many of you may not have thought about but which you actually all know, when you really think about it. Knowing and understanding a spiritual teaching is not the same as shifting your consciousness.

It is possible to intellectually, with the linear, analytical mind, know and understand a spiritual teaching but you have not actually shifted from the 70th to the 71st level. Only when you do shift your mind, will you be able to see and implement the next level of your Divine plan. You see what I am saying here. It is a matter of you realizing that discovering and implementing your Divine plan is an interactive process that is ongoing for your entire lifetime.

No need to panic

That is why some of you may look back at your lives and you are all wondering: “Have I followed my Divine plan, did I do something wrong, what about that relationship where I was in love with that person but the relationship never came about. Does that mean that an important aspect of my Divine plan has now been aborted because this didn’t happen? Or what because I made this mistake when I was young or I didn’t get this education or I didn’t get that job?” You can go into almost a state of panic. You understand that it is not our purpose to give you the concept of your Divine plan in order to get you to go into a state of stress and panic about it.

You need to recognize here that you can look back at your life and you can say: “Have I followed my Divine plan?” I would say: “Have you shifted your consciousness from when you came into embodiment to your present level?” All of you have, so I would say: “Well then you have certainly followed your Divine plan.” You may not have shifted your consciousness as much as you could do. Our whole purpose for giving you this teaching is, of course, to get you to shift your consciousness to the point where you can catch up to where you ideally would have been if you had made the maximum progress. Some of you may be lagging a little bit behind where you could have been, but you can quickly catch up by applying the teachings we are giving you. Also, do not get yourself into the expectation that if you use the teaching we are giving you (in this workbook), then one day in six months or a year, you will have the full vision of your Divine plan appear to you while angels are playing trumpets in the background.

As I said, you will not see the fullness of your Divine plan at any point in your life until you are ready to go out of embodiment. Then, you will see the last phase of it. You always see it in stages. Why is this? Because, as I said, the purpose of your Divine plan is to shift your consciousness higher. How do you shift your consciousness, my beloved?

No instant salvation

Here is something that many, many, many spiritual people have misunderstood. Many people think that in order to come up to a higher level of the spiritual path (however they explain it, however they express it in words), it is a matter of getting this understanding. Then, when you have the full understanding, when you have this absolute truth, this magnificent spiritual teaching, then “poof” you will be enlightened.

My beloved, if you look at the entire spiritual or New Age movement, the majority of the people out there are still waiting for that “poof” and it never comes. Shifting your consciousness from the 70th to the 71st level is not a matter of receiving some ultimate insight. Even if you knew and intellectually understood everything, how would you shift your consciousness? You actually shift your consciousness by using the level of consciousness you have but using it in a higher way so you transcend that level of consciousness.

Do you understand what I am saying? You cannot shift from the 70th to the 71st level by seeking some ultimate insight. You need an insight that you can grasp with the 70th level but it will take you to the next level up. It is not an ultimate insight or understanding. So many people are chasing that ultimate insight. They keep chasing it and chasing it, and they go from teacher to guru and guru to teacher and they are hoping that this person now has that ultimate insight, the 10th insight, the 11th insight, the 99th insight or whatever they go for. My beloved, that is not how you grow on the path.

If you knew every aspect of your Divine plan, if it was told to you, it would most likely prevent you from implementing your Divine plan because, as I said, the main aspect of your Divine plan is actually the shift in consciousness. You shift by using the knowledge and insight you have at a given level but being willing to look beyond it and then getting that intuitive insight that takes you to the higher level. It is not a matter of understanding because, as we have said before, when you understand something, you are looking at it from a distance. You only shift your consciousness when you actually have that intuitive, mystical, holistic, all-encompassing experience. What actually happens is, my beloved, that at the 70th level, you are experiencing yourself a certain way. Then, something happens that challenges the way you look at things at the 70th level. It challenges what you feel comfortable with at the 70th level. Then, when you are still willing to look at this, even though there is a certain part of your ego that is uncomfortable with the teaching, that is when you have the inner, intuitive experience where you experience the reality of it. As you do this, you are shifting the way you experience yourself a little bit and now you are at the 71st level. It is not an intellectual process, it is an intuitive process. It is a process of shifting your identity, not increasing your mental understanding.

The rest of this dictation, along with an invocation based on the dictation, is found in the book: Fulfilling Your Divine Plan.