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Ascended Master Divine Director through Kim Michaels, June 4, 2023. This dictation was given at a conference in Seoul, Korea.

I AM the Ascended Master the Divine Director, and it is my joy to speak about the identity body. What is it in the identity body that blocks your attunement with the ascended masters and with your higher self? Well, we might ask a different question. What is it in your identity body that does not block your attunement with the ascended masters? For truly, what does it mean to be connected with the spiritual realm? It means to be one with the spiritual realm. And how can you be one with the spiritual realm if you identify yourself as a material being? And this is, of course, what is the case on earth today, that the lower nine levels of the identity realm are so filled with these man-made images of what it means to be a human being. And when I say man-made, I of course, mean also influenced by the fallen beings, some of which reside in those lower levels of the identity realm, including the Dark Master that we have talked about previously.

The Alpha and the Omega of your identity

The situation on earth is truly very difficult and we fully understand how difficult it is. We are not expecting you as ascended master students to instantly switch your sense of identity. We simply want to make you aware that when it comes to you personally, stepping back, looking at yourself, looking at what blocks your connection to the ascended masters, certainly you need to consider how you identify yourself. This has two aspects, of course, the Alpha and the Omega. The Omega is your particular culture, the culture in which you grew up. Most likely your nationality, but also religion, ethnicity, other factors that are local to the area and the culture in which you grew up. This is one thing to consider.

The other thing to consider is the Alpha aspect of the general identification that is found in the collective consciousness of humankind as a whole. Of course, this general identity is what sets the pattern for the more localized identities that you find. And even though you may find some differences in these localized identities, they still fit within the overall parameters of this general sense of identity that has been put upon humankind and that has been co-created by humankind for a very, very long time.

The self-reinforcing effect of the densification of matter

Let us begin by looking at this general sense of identity. What most people, even most spiritual people on earth, do not grasp is just how much the earth has changed from the original state in which it was created by the Elohim. It is very, very difficult for people, even spiritual people, to grasp the immensity of the changes that have happened. We have given you some glimpses through our teachings and one of the things we have explained is that matter itself has become more dense. And what we mean with a greater density of matter is that it has become impossible for your physical senses to see that matter is truly energy. In its original state, matter on earth vibrated at a higher level, which, if you use vision as an example, means that the eyes, the physical eyes of human beings at the time, could actually see matter as slightly transparent.

You may go out in the forest, especially at springtime when the leaves are new and fresh. You may stand under a tree and look up towards the sun so that the sun is shining through the leaves and the leaves may appear almost transparent. They are lighter because the light from the sun can somewhat shine through the leaves. Well, imagine that all matter was like that and that not even the physical sun, but that a higher energy could be seen shining through all matter, could be seen with the physical eyes. At that time, then, it was very difficult for people to see themselves as being separated from a higher realm because they could physically detect with their senses that there was something beyond matter. There was a light that was shining through all matter.

But with the greater densification of the collective consciousness came the greater densification of matter itself, where all matter on the planet was lowered in vibration. This meant it became more difficult for the physical eyes, for example, to see the light shining through matter. There is still light shining through matter, but it is more difficult to see it with the physical senses. Once this happened, there was a self-reinforcing effect that started because now people became susceptible to the idea that the physical realm is separated from the spiritual realm by a distance, by a barrier.

And this meant that they began projecting with their minds that matter is a separate substance from spirit and this created this effect that now their physical senses became more dull, became more attuned to matter, instead of being attuned to the light shining through matter. As the senses became more dull, people became believing even more firmly in the separation of spirit and matter, and that caused the senses to become even more dull. There was a self-reinforcing effect that went on for a very long time and has really only started being reversed with the embodiment of the Buddha 2,500 years ago and Jesus 2,000 years ago, where more and more people have begun to tune in to the spiritual realm. And therefore, there has been a movement in the collective consciousness where people are able to question this most basic illusion on earth, we might say, of the separation of matter and spirit.

The basic illusion on earth: the separation of matter and spirit

Truly, this illusion is the foundation for the sense of identity that most people have, that you are human beings, that you are either in a physical body or that you are a product of the physical body, you live on a physical planet, and that you and the planet are separated from spirit. You, of course, see some people who deny that there is a spiritual world, and who somehow have managed to build a sense of identity that they are only evolved animals, that they are only physical beings, and that their minds are separated from anything beyond their brains—their minds are a product of their brains. Now, how they can reason that an unconscious brain produces consciousness is, of course, not based on true logic. It is based on the mind’s ability, as we have also explained, to validate and invalidate any viewpoint. There is plausible deniability, plausible plausibility. Anything you want to believe, you can exclude contrary evidence so it seems like your belief is justified. And this is, of course, what these materialists have done, but they overlook the one simple logic that only because they are conscious can they deny that they are conscious, and that consciousness cannot be produced by unconscious matter.

Nevertheless, many people on earth, of course, believe that there is some kind of spiritual realm, some kind of heaven world, some kind of beings in that realm that are at a higher level than human beings. But they still identify themselves as human beings, perhaps as sinners, perhaps as in other ways imperfect, perhaps they identify themselves as beings who are confined to a physical body that is the enemy of their spiritual growth.

You see so many of these identities out there, but when you go behind them, when you step back, you see that the basic identity is: “We are not spiritual beings, we are human beings, perhaps even evolved animals.” But there is that sense of identity, and then you have some that say: “Yes, we are spiritual beings, but we are confined to the physical realm and these physical bodies, and therefore we are separated from spirit.” And this then leads to this belief that there is a huge distance, even in many cases a physical distance, between earth and heaven.

Beings in the emotional, mental, and identity realms

You see, not so long ago, many people in the Western nations believed that the earth was a flat disc with a dome above it, and outside of that dome covering the earth was heaven, but there was a physical distance between the flat earth and the heaven world. And you see many variations of this belief that there is this distance. And of course, this is again one of these enigmas because there is a distance in vibration between the physical realm and the spiritual realm, and in between is the emotional, mental, and identity realms. As we have explained, there are beings in those three realms, some of which present themselves to human beings as spiritual beings, spiritual teachers, even as gods and goddesses, even pretending to be ascended masters using our names. There are people who think that you need to reach out with the mind, reach outside the mind in order to contact some being in a higher realm, and some have made contact with such beings and believe that these are genuine spiritual beings. Now, there are beings, especially in the mental realm and lower identity realm, who are not what you would call evil beings. They do not have necessarily an evil intent of destroying humankind or enslaving humankind, but they do want energy from people. They are not at the level of the ascended masters who do not want or need anything from people.

The Conscious You vs. the separate selves

What you see is that this entire idea, this entire sense of identity that “We human beings here on earth are separated from spirit by a distance”—this is what blocks you from connecting to the ascended masters and your higher self. In a sense, we can say that the idea that you have to connect, can also block you if by connecting you mean connecting over a great distance. If you see a separation, if you see a deep chasm, a deep gorge between yourself and the spiritual realm, then that can also block you. Even the concept that you are on one shore of the Sea of Samsara and you have to cross to the other shore can block you. What I am saying here is that any image that we can give you from the ascended realm can be used by the mind to block your connection. And thus, it might be better, more constructive at least for those of you who are our direct students, to consider that it is not so much about connecting but about realizing that there is no distance, there is no separation.

You live today in the modern world in what many people call a connected world. The internet has connected people everywhere. But when you are connecting over the internet with a person in a different country, you know there is a physical separation. You often transfer this to us and think: “Well the ascended masters are up there in the spiritual realm in a higher vibration, I need to raise my consciousness, I need to create a connection to those far off masters that are up there beyond my normal reach.” But what have we given you? Consider the teachings we have given you. Consider the teaching that your outer personality, your emotions, your thoughts, even your sense of identity, is made up of all of these individual subconscious, many of them, separate selves. And these separate selves are created in reaction to, in response to the conditions in the physical realm. These selves are outgoing selves. They are relating to the world that you clearly experience as being outside your physical body, even outside your mind. These selves are created to look out. They are created based on a sense that you are a separate being living in the physical world. Your body is a separate unit living in a physical world. I am not here saying that these selves are evil or bad or negative. Certainly not when you have raised yourself above the 48th level of consciousness. The selves are not evil or negative. It is just that the selves are not self-aware. They can only do what they are designed to do, which is look out.

So, here you are, you realize there must be something more than the material world. You find the spiritual teaching that talks about ascended masters in a higher realm. What can you do other than approach the spiritual path based on all of these selves that you have? But do you see the inevitable result of this? You are approaching the spiritual path through the selves that were created in reaction to the material world. You inevitably project the images from these selves upon the spiritual path, upon the spiritual realm, and upon your spiritual teachers. Again, we are in no way blaming you. What else can you do in the beginning when you find the path? We have seen millions upon millions of people over these last four or five or six decades where there has been a growth in spiritual interest around the world. We have seen millions and millions of people find the spiritual path in some form, and they have projected upon it the images from the selves that they have in their four lower bodies. It is perfectly unavoidable.

But what we have attempted to give you, our direct students, especially through this dispensation, is a higher awareness. A higher awareness that allows you to realize that you are not your physical body, you are not your emotional mind, you are not your mental mind, you are not even your identity mind. You are more than all of these minds. You are more than all of these selves because when you go to the core of your being, there is what we have called the Conscious You, which we have described with the word ‘pure awareness’. This is to signify that the self, the conscious self, the Conscious You is not the outer selves. It is more than the outer selves. It is the core of the identity that took embodiment. The Conscious You has created the outer selves, but you have not become the outer selves. You see that you cannot connect to the ascended masters through the outer selves, even the selves you have in your identity body, even if you build a new self where you see yourself as a spiritual being, you cannot connect to the ascended masters through that self. This is what has been the observation we can make from past dispensations of ascended master teachings.

The spiritual self between 48th and 96th level

In this dispensation, we have given the higher teaching that between the 48th level of consciousness where you really lock into the spiritual path and the 96th level of consciousness, you are raising yourself above the collective consciousness by building a new self in the identity body. Also of course, selves in your mental and emotional bodies, but you are building a new sense of self, a new sense of identity in the identity body as a spiritual being. This is again perfectly unavoidable. You can do nothing else on a dense planet like earth. You need to pull yourself above the collective consciousness and you do this by building a self that says: “I am not this, I am not identified with this, I will not participate in this activity, I will not participate in that activity because it is not spiritual. I will focus on this and this and this because this is spiritual.” So you are building a vehicle, you are building that rocket that lifts you off the ground and takes you up through the atmosphere until you can go to a higher orbit at the 96th level. But this self that you are building, is still a self that is in some reaction to the world you live in. You may base this self on a spiritual teaching, but it is still in reaction to the collective consciousness: “I am not part of the collective consciousness because I am spiritual. Therefore, I am different from the collective consciousness in this way and in that way, and I do not do this and I do not do that and I do not believe what other people believe, I believe this instead.” But it is still in reaction to conditions on earth that you are building this spiritual self. Again, this is perfectly natural, what else can you do? Yet this self is also an outgoing self. This may be tricky to understand because many people would say: “But I have been meditating for 30 years focusing my attention within.” But if you have built a self as a person who is meditating, that is still a self that is in reaction to conditions on earth. Many people, for example, who have withdrawn into a monastery and meditated for hours and hours a day, they have built this subtle sense of identity: “I am a spiritual person, more spiritual than those people out there in the world because I live up to these conditions that my spiritual teaching defines.”

The Conscious You: a constantly changing self

You see you are still projecting an image out to the world, projecting an image upon yourself of what it means to be a spiritual person. And as we have said this serves you well while you are on that journey from the 48th to the 96th level. But above the 96th level you need to start contemplating that this no longer serves you. That is when you really need to start pondering these teachings about the Conscious You because they are deliberately given by us to help you avoid the trap that most spiritual people have gotten themselves in throughout the millennia. Namely building this spiritual sense of identity, refusing to give it up, continuing to seek to refine it and make it more sophisticated thinking that: “When I finally create this spiritual self that is sophisticated enough according to my teachings, then that self will get me into heaven.” But what did the Buddha teach 2500 years ago? He went against the Brahmins of the Hindu tradition who for millennia had claimed that every human being has an immortal self, the Atman, an immortal unchanging self. The Buddha said that based on all his introspection he had never discovered an unchanging self inside himself, so he denied the concept of an unchanging self. Instead, he talked about a constantly changing self, a constantly changing self.

Then you can go forward to Jesus, who said, only the person, or rather, the self that descended from heaven can ascend back to heaven. How do you then reconcile the two? Well, the self that descended from heaven, so to speak, is the Conscious You. But the Conscious You is not an unchanging self, because the Conscious You is constantly shifting based on where it places its attention. How does the Conscious You see itself? Well, for most people the Conscious You sees itself through all of the selves, in the identity body, the mental body, the emotional body, even the physical.

So, the Conscious You is experiencing itself and experiencing the world through all of these selves, and it is constantly shifting from one to another. A certain situation arises, how do people respond to it? Well, the Conscious You shifts into certain of these subconscious selves, and now it responds to the situation through that. The situation changes again, the Conscious You shifts into some other selves, now reacts based on those shelves, and so forth. So, as you engage in the spiritual paths from the 48th to the 96th level, you are not just, as most people, responding by shifting horizontally into different selves, but you are beginning a vertical ascent, rising up the spiral staircase, by building selves at higher and higher levels, so you can shift upwards. But you are still shifting.

You may say the Conscious You is always pure awareness. But how often is the Conscious You aware of itself as pure awareness? And the Conscious You is not created to be an eternal self, an unchanging self. The Conscious You is created to be a constantly changing self.

And so, as you go above the 96th level of consciousness, the Conscious You starts realizing: “I am NOT these outer selves, I am more than these outer selves.” This is what the Christ consciousness shows you. And that is when you begin to grasp that it is not a matter of perfecting this spiritual self that I have built, it is a matter of dismantling it, disidentifying myself from it, letting these individual selves die one by one, until I can again stand there as the pure awareness that descended from the I AM Presence.

There is no separation between you and your I AM Presence

So, what does all this long discourse lead to, what does it have to do with connecting? Well, it actually has to do with the fact that the Conscious You cannot connect to the ascended masters or the I AM Presence. Because the Conscious You is not separated from the ascended masters and the I AM Presence. This may be difficult to grasp at first. So, as an interim stage, let us say that the Conscious You, when it is focused in the physical realm, or at least in the unascended sphere, you can say that you are still at a certain level of vibration, and the ascended masters are at a higher vibration, so you will see a need to connect to us. But when it comes to your I AM Presence, you need to recognize here that yes, your I AM Presence is in the spiritual realm, you are focused in the unascended sphere. But still, you are an extension of your I AM Presence, as a wave is an extension of the ocean. You cannot really be separated—you can never be separated from your I AM Presence.

And so, this is where the Conscious You needs to begin to shift, so instead of seeing a distance, and seeing a need to connect over that distance, you overcome the illusion of a distance. And you might say: “But what about the difference in vibration?” But does a difference in vibration imply distance? Yes, to the separate selves it does. For they cannot experience oneness, they were not created based on oneness. But the Conscious You is just an extension of the I AM Presence, and it is just a matter of realizing: “I am not separated from the ocean, I am part of the ocean.” Now imagine that you have a wave. You have this vast ocean, many waves, many tall waves. And here is a wave that is aware of itself. And it looks out from the top of itself. And it sees all of these other waves, the tops of all these other waves, and it is only focused on the wave tops. And it is constantly seeking to hold its focus up there on the top of the wave, so that it always sees the top of itself and the top of the other waves, therefore seeing: “I am different from all these other waves.”

The shift above 96th level

But what is it that the Conscious You goes through as you rise above the 96th level? It is that you actually start recognizing: “I am a wave, but I am a wave on the ocean and the ocean is moving. And as a wave, instead of being focused only at that surface level of the tops of the waves, I can feel that deeper movement, I can be part of that deeper movement.” And then, suddenly, the wave becomes aware of the ocean, and the movement of the ocean. And instead of trying to resist the movement of the ocean, it starts flowing with it. And this is what your Conscious You can come to, where it does not resist the movement of the spirit, it realizes that the I AM Presence is the ocean: “I am a wave on that ocean, but I can move with the ocean, move with the I AM Presence.” And then beyond that, you can even realize that the ascended masters are also the ocean, and you can move with us as you move with the I AM Presence. And that is ultimately how you connect.

You do not actually connect, you overcome the sense of distance. And of course, in the beginning, you might overcome it only for a brief moment. But you can all have that experience, as we have described, where the Conscious You steps outside of the separate selves and experiences itself as pure awareness, experiences itself as a part of the ocean, moving with the ocean of the I AM Presence, moving with the ocean of the ascended masters. Moving, moving with the ocean instead of resisting, instead of trying to, we might say: “surf the wave”— another image, imagine a person on a surfboard, surfing a wave. But now, imagine that that person says: “I have had enough of surfing the wave. I allow myself to sink into the wave and to feel the movement of the ocean, and to flow with that movement of the ocean.”

The schizophrenic phase of the spiritual path

Of course, your ego is going to cry out: “But who will you be then, if you move with the ocean? You will not be me, you will not be a separate me. What will I do if you become one with the ocean, where does that leave me?” And that is admittedly the most difficult phase of the spiritual path. Where you still are so used to being in the separate selves, seeing yourself as a separate being in this world. But now you are beginning to feel some movement of the ocean of self. And how do you bridge that gap between being in a physical body, perhaps having a family, having a job, having a career, having responsibilities in the world? And yet beneath it all, you are beginning to feel that movement of the ocean.

We are fully aware, as ascended masters, how difficult it is, on a dense planet like earth, to go through this phase. It is almost schizophrenic, because your identity is pulled in different directions. But that, my beloved—pay attention now—that is why we talk about a path, a gradual path, where you gradually shed the separate selves, so that you do not go through the shock, that you can see some people have gone through, where they are suddenly feeling what they call “ego death”, or a state of “no self”, where they suddenly feel like they have no sense of identity anymore, and they do not know who they are, and they go through an identity crisis. This is not what we teach as ascended masters, we teach a gradual path. There are those who would project that when you reach the 96th level, you are awakened. You have gone through a spiritual awakening, you are spiritually enlightened, now you have reached some ultimate level. But that is what often projects them into this identity crisis, because how do you then bridge the gap? And of course, they still have separate selves left, so they might stop at that 96th level. Which means they will start going down again, after some time.

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