Listen to a recording of this dictation (subscribers only)

Ascended Master Gautama Buddha through Kim Michaels, October 10, 2022. This dictation was given during the 2022 Webinar for America – The Resurrection of Democracy.

I AM the Ascended Master Gautama Buddha. “Unruly thoughts do hereby cease.” When I was in embodiment as the Buddha those many centuries ago, a big part of my ministry, you might call it in the Sangha of the Buddha, was to help the students still the mind so that the unruly thoughts would cease. This was necessary 2,500 years ago. You can scarcely imagine, in the modern world, how people lived back then. Can you even imagine? Can you remember, those of you who are old enough to remember, what it was like when there was no internet? Can you imagine what it was like when there was no television? No radio? Can you imagine when there were no books, when most people could not read?

Unruly thoughts

Surely, most people were busy with physical tasks to secure a living. But there was nothing to entertain or stimulate them, compared to what there is today. Consider in a modern world, how many things are pulling on your attention? Is it any wonder that you have unruly thoughts? There are so many things that demand that you focus on them, that you react, that you do something about it. But even back then, this was the case. Even back then the biggest challenge I encountered as a spiritual teacher was people’s unruly thoughts.

Imagine, with all the stimulation there is today, how much more difficult it is for you to lock into the Flame of Peace so that your unruly thoughts will cease. Stilling the mind has always been a challenge. But in recorded history, this has never been a greater challenge than it is today. We are well aware, as ascended masters that, by giving you teachings, by giving you as many teachings as we have given you, we are not necessarily making it easier for you to still the unruly thoughts.

Most people, and this messenger can certainly recognize that in himself, go through a period where they first find the spiritual path and it is intensely stimulating to them. Many of you have grown up without having any spiritual content in your lives. But you knew there was something to find, there was something you were missing, there was some understanding you were longing for. You will find the spiritual teaching and now your mind goes into overdrive. You want to study the teaching, you want to understand it, you want to internalize it, you want to practice whatever the teaching prescribes as a spiritual practice. And you become so focused on this.

And it is not that it is wrong in any way. It is something you need to go through. But can you see that this actually creates a new level of unruly thoughts? Many people are focused on the outer teaching, the outer practices, the outer culture in an organization they are in. And they are so absorbed in this that there is hardly ever a moment where their mind is still, where their mind is neutral, where they are listening. Where they have that listening ear.

The constant projection into your mind

Then there comes a point where you lock into the inner path. And now you recognize that it is not really about following the outer practices or studying the outer teachings. It is about resolving psychology. You focus on resolving your psychology as many of you, including this messenger, have done for years. But this is another level of unruly thoughts. Suddenly a thought comes: “Oh, maybe I have this tendency in my psychology. Why did I react that way to that situation? Is there something I have not seen? Is there something I have not resolved? Oh, I better take a look, I better find out what that is, because I certainly do not want this non-resolution in my mind.” For every level of the path, there is a set of unruly thoughts. They are projected into your minds from dark forces, fallen beings, from the collective consciousness and from your separate selves that you have left. There is this constant projection.

Naturally, you can do something about this. We have taught you that you can make calls to Archangel Michael to seal your mind and your chakras. You can make calls to Astrea to cut you free from the many ties to dark forces. But there is this constant projection of unruly thoughts. Some Buddhist teachers call it the “monkey mind” that is always thinking. You have this constant projection. What can you do about it? Can you turn it off? You cannot really turn it off. The falling beings will keep doing what they are doing. The collective consciousness will keep doing what it is doing. You can resolve the selves and that will diminish these thoughts. But still, you have a brain, a physical brain. And the physical brain is designed to think, or at least to carry thoughts. But the physical brain is also able to create thoughts, not higher thoughts, but it is capable of creating thoughts as it can create various experiences and sensations. When you go on the spiritual path, your brain will start creating spiritual thoughts. And you might feel you are obligated to think them. This messenger was on the path for many years before it dawned on him that he was not really obligated to think every thought that came into his head.

The compulsive chain of thoughts

Consider this, a thought comes out of the blue and into your head. It may be projected from somewhere that you have nothing to do with. But still, your mind feels obligated to think it. You think, most people think it is their thought. And you feel obligated to think the thought. There is a process where the thought is unfolding inside your mind. But then, that thought leads to an association. And suddenly another thought, and before you know it several minutes have passed by and from the original thought you have gone into all these tangents and gone far away from the original thought. It took this messenger a long time to actually be willing to admit that he had had this phenomenon all of his life. And that these thought chains, thought processes led nowhere, they produced nothing. They did not resolve anything, even though sometimes they took the form of problems. But it never stopped. It never actually resolved anything, produced anything.

I am not saying that you cannot have constructive thoughts that lead you to take action and produce a result. But many times, you just have thoughts that go around in circles or lead from one topic to another and do not produce anything. This is what I call unruly thoughts. Many people, the vast majority of people feel: “Oh, it must be my thought, why would it pop up in my head if it is not my thought, and if it is my thought, I have to think it, I have to go with it, I have to put my attention on it.” Many people spend their entire lives in this state of mind, constantly having these unruly thoughts that they feel they have to think. They lead to an association, this goes on for some seconds, then it leads to another, and they jump from this to that and that to next, like a monkey jumping in a tree. And they get nowhere, like the monkey gets nowhere. It gets from branch to branch, but it is still in the tree.

The mind wants to be busy

There comes a point on the path where it becomes necessary to become aware of this phenomenon and ask yourself: “Do I really want to have these unruly thoughts occupy my mind? Do I want to feel obligated to think them and go into these thought processes, these associations, this going back and forth?” As a spiritual student, you often counteract it, because when you are studying a spiritual teaching, you are focused on the teaching and suddenly you shut out, often without even realizing it, many of these thoughts because you are focused on the teaching. The thoughts come into your mind because your mind and your brain are designed to think, so they think they have to think all the time. There is a part of your mind, even your brain, that feels that if it is not thinking something is wrong, it is not doing its job. It would be akin to your heart not beating. Certainly, that would be a problem. It really is not a problem if your mind is not thinking, but your mind thinks it is. It thinks you will die if it is not thinking.

You can also counteract it by giving decrees and invocations because it occupies your mind. You see, the mind must be occupied by something. It can be studying a spiritual teaching, it can be giving decrees and invocations, it can be doing something practical, but the mind has to have some content in the mind. There has to be something going on in the mind. Otherwise, the mind feels that something is wrong. You will see that there is this tendency that the mind wants to be busy. The mind wants to do something. Quite a number of years ago, this messenger realized that there was a part of his mind that was the problem solver. And it was created to solve problems. And it had to have problems to solve. And if it did not have any problems to solve from the outside, it would create them from the inside. And he realized he could spend the rest of his life solving the problems in his mind that were created in his mind. But would it get him anywhere on the spiritual path, or in life?

How can you escape thoughts?

If you observe yourself as you are listening to this or reading it, what is happening in your mind right now? You are recognizing that I am a spiritual teacher and ascended master. I am giving you a teaching and I am doing this for a purpose. I want to help you go on the spiritual path, so you feel obligated to put your attention on the teaching. And what happens when you do this? You have thoughts popping up in your mind. It can be many different kinds of thoughts for many different people. But you have some thoughts: “What does the teaching mean? How can I implement it? What can I do? How can I possibly avoid these unruly thoughts? Because that is what Gautama seems to imply that I should.” Some of you may feel hopeless, some of you may think about ways to stop thinking. Think about that, you are thinking about ways to stop thinking. How is it even possible? The question becomes, what do you do about this?

Many spiritual teachers and many spiritual students throughout the ages have attempted to deal with this issue in various ways. Many people, especially in the Buddhist tradition, have been aware of the monkey mind. Many people have adopted it as a goal to still the mind. They have used various tools, meditation, contemplation, to still the mind. Many, many people today, both in America and elsewhere, are studying Buddhism, trying to apply Buddhist teachings. They live in the western world, but they feel they should be able to still their minds, as you can supposedly do in some kind of sangha or ashram, in the mountains in the east.

But if you are living in the busy western world, how realistic is it? With all the things that are pulling on your attention, all the things that are projected at you, how realistic is it that you can still the mind? For that matter, if you traveled to the Himalayas and live in a monastery, is that realistic to still the mind even there? Given the modern world and the mass consciousness. You can be isolated geographically, but what is the limit for thought? Does thought even have to obey the cosmic speed limit or the speed of light. Nay, a thought does not need to travel to a particular location to be there physically. It is instantly there. How can you escape thoughts? How can you escape the mass consciousness? Surely there are degrees of intensity, but you can never really escape it. And how can you escape your own mind that wants to think all the time, so it feels it is doing its job?

Well, throughout the ages, people have found various ways to deal with it. Some Buddhist teachers have acknowledged that it is impossible. And they have questioned whether it is even necessary to still the mind.

You cannot still the mind by thinking about how to still the mind

What I would suggest, as just one way to deal with this issue, is that you acknowledge that you are an ascended master student and we have given you certain tools. You will, of course, use the tools. You will call for protection, you will call to be cut free, you will call for your mind to be protected and sealed from dark forces and the mass consciousness. This is important to do. It is valid to do. But I also suggest that in between all your decrees and invocations, all your studies and all your everyday activities, you set aside some time to just sit. You are not trying to still the mind because when you try to still the mind, what are you doing? You are using the mind to still the mind. And how can the mind still the mind except by thinking about how to still the mind. When you are thinking about how to still the mind, you are still thinking. The mind is doing what it thinks it is supposed to be doing, even if you are supposedly wanting to still the mind.

Surrendering the thoughts

I suggest that you take a different approach. First of all, you decide you are going to set aside some time, you go in a quiet room, you may do decrees and invocations first, but you go in a quiet room. You do not sit there in a meditative posture, with crossed legs, as they always do. You lie down on a soft bed or couch, where you can relax your body, so that there are no sensations, no discomfort of holding a certain position. You just lie there, preferably in a dark room, certainly in a quiet room. And then your goal is to still the mind, to be in a neutral state of mind. It is more important to be neutral than to still the mind so you have no thoughts. Instead, you are trying, you are striving, you are having your goal that: “I am going to be neutral.”

This means you are not trying to shut out thoughts, but you are not engaging them. You are deciding: “I am not here to think about anything, I am not here to understand anything, I am not here to see anything. I am not here to resolve any problems or have some epiphany. I am just here to not engage in the thoughts that come.” And therefore, you are lying there with your eyes closed. You are just observing the mind. When a thought comes, you say quietly in your mind: “I surrender. I let go.” You are surrendering the thought. Instead of thinking about it, putting your attention on it, allowing the thought to associate its way into all kinds of directions, you are surrendering, you are not thinking about it, you are just letting it go. This may be difficult in the beginning. But the more you have resolved the separate selves in your mind, the easier it becomes. And you can come to a point where at least for a time, you can keep doing this: “I surrender. I let it go. I surrender. I surrender.” Every thought that comes, you just surrender it. You do not engage it. You may very well notice that your mind can become agitated by this. It can become frantic, in a panic: “Why are you not thinking the thoughts I am sending at you? Why are you ignoring me? Do you not like me anymore?” And all of these things might come to you. Or you might just feel a certain agitation or confusion because the mind does not know what to do when you are not thinking the thoughts. But you can keep doing it.

Now, once in a while there will be a thought that engages your attention. You follow it. And you go here and there and then all of a sudden you realize: “Oh, I am thinking again.” But then you just go back: “I surrender. I surrender. I surrender.” Now be careful here. Do not become frantic about this. Do not make it a strain. Do not stress about it. Do not feel that you have to be able to do this exercise and you have to be able to surrender the thoughts. Just practice it in a relaxed way, as relaxed as possible. And it may indeed help you to have these moments, as we have talked about, where the Conscious You is outside the outer mind experiencing pure awareness. What is pure awareness? Well, it is being conscious without having thoughts. It is like, you are conscious, but there are no contents of consciousness.

Using the mantra

Some meditation techniques have this as their goal. Some meditation techniques use a mantra that does not give any meaning, but you repeat the mantra. And then, if you realize you are thinking, you just return to the mantra. In a sense, this is what you are doing here. But the mantra is: “I surrender.” If it does not work for you, you can use a mantra. I suggest you use the OM, OM silently in your mind. When you have a thought, you just return to the OM You focus on the OM you repeat the OM. But for many of you, it will be more effective to say: “I surrender, I surrender the thought.”

I am not in any way saying that this is a miracle cure, that it will necessarily cease the unruly thoughts. But it can be helpful for you to practice it. You do not have to do it for a long time. You do not even have to do it every day. You can, for that matter, do it when you are lying at night, going to sleep. But it may open up your mind to some sense of peace. The peace that stills Samsara’s Sea.

Stilling the mind by being neutral

What is the Sea of Samsara? Many think it is the world and the physical activities in the world, but it really is the mind. Where does suffering take place? In the mind. Where do you overcome suffering? In the mind. But people who do not grasp the teachings of the Buddha are focused on the outer things. They think it is outer circumstances that cause their mind to experience suffering. And therefore, they think the only solution is to change the outer circumstances. But in many cases, they cannot change the outer circumstances, partly because other people will not cooperate, so they live in this constant frustration that is the Sea of Samsara.

Now you can, as an ascended master student, create your own version of the Sea of Samsara, where you are, as PadmaSambhava said, constantly focused on resolving something in your psychology, or changing the world, or giving invocations, or understanding the teachings, or doing something to change the world or spread the teachings or whatever you have. You may look at this messenger and say: “Well, he has been on the spiritual path for many years, he has been a messenger for almost 20 years, he has had a meaningful life because he has been working with the ascended masters and bringing forth all of these teachings and books and websites and so on.” But perhaps you do not realize how challenging this has been. He could have worked himself to death. He could have put himself into a state of stress where his mind would have broken down. He would have been overwhelmed by the sense of responsibility of having to do this and that. And certainly, he has had periods where he experienced a considerable degree of frustration that nothing he did was ever enough or good enough, always wanting to do more. But he has after all survived and we want all of you to survive. And he has survived by considering these things that I have talked to you about. Finding a balance, finding the Middle Way, and not being frustrated, not being frantic, not being obsessive-compulsive. But once in a while stilling the mind.

What has helped the messenger is that he at an early stage realized that in order to receive a message from the ascended masters, he had to be in a neutral frame of mind. It may not be in your divine plan to be a messenger, but certainly it is in your divine plan to receive directions directly from us, instead of from an outer teaching. In order to hear your I AM Presence or an ascended master, you need to be in that neutral frame of mind. You need to set aside some time where you strive to be in that neutral state of mind by not striving, but by tricking your mind, confusing the mind, so the unruly thoughts do not capture your attention.

A balanced approach to the teachings

So many things pull on the mind. So many things. We recognize that our teachings can easily be turned into another pull on your mind. We are taking a calculated risk. When you observe what has happened in the almost 20 years that this dispensation has been functioning, you will see, as we have said before, that there have been various levels of teachings given. Teachings beyond what was given in the beginning. You will see that there are some people who have found the teaching, who have engaged in it for a while, and then they have gone away to something else. Some have accused the messenger of having become a false messenger. Others have just found another teaching they focused on.

We have determined that this messenger has been willing to transcend his level of consciousness to such a degree that we could give these different levels of teachings, and therefore we have and are continuing to give teachings because we want to get as many teachings in the physical as possible. But this does not mean that you have to feel obligated to always follow the latest teaching. It is perfectly in order that you might find a certain teaching, even one that was given years ago, that appeals to you, that seems important to you. It is perfectly in order that you focus on that teaching, study it, practice it, internalize it, and then ignore what is coming forth.

You do not have to be at every conference or webinar. You do not have to read every book or every dictation or every answer that is posted. You do not have to stress about being in these teachings. This is quite a change from what it has been in some previous organizations where there was much more of a focus on people doing something all the time, even giving decrees for hours upon hours to change the world. But we want to set you free to go within, focus on the teachings you feel you need to focus on, and then ignore the rest. It is perfectly in order if you take several months or several years to focus on a certain teaching, and then you feel you have gone as far as you need to go with that, and now you come back and say: “So what are those masters up to now?”

There is no one way to walk the spiritual path. Coming in to a spiritual teaching should not become a straitjacket as it has been for many, both ascended master students and other spiritual students and as, of course, it is for most religious people. But in order to avoid this, you need to be willing to look at your own psychology and realize that this reaction comes from some self in your mind. Master More said: “Look at life. Everything that happens in life is an opportunity to work on your psychology.” Well, look at a spiritual teaching and a spiritual path and a spiritual movement the same way. Everything is an opportunity to see something in your own mind, in your own psychology that is not resolved. Why do you react the way you react?

The cause of your inner experience is in your mind

You see the people who have left the spiritual teaching, and now they blame the guru or the teacher or the messenger, or the teaching itself. What are they doing? They are projecting out that the cause of their experience is outside their minds. The experience is inside their minds but the cause is outside. Well, then you are not really a spiritual student because the essence of the spiritual path is that you master your own mind. And how can you master your own mind if you think that the cause of your inner experience is outside the mind? If you think that some guru or some messenger has power over your inner experience, you are powerless to change your inner experience. But if you are powerless to change your inner experience, how can you make progress on the spiritual path, which is all about mastering your inner experience? Cognitive dissonance, to claim you are a spiritual student, if you are projecting out that the cause of your inner experience is external to your mind.

Expecting the teachings to validate your perception filter

We see, not specifically in this movement, but certainly in many spiritual movements, that there is a certain percentage of the people who find a spiritual teaching, a valid and genuine spiritual teaching, but they go into this reaction. Or they stay in the reaction because they were in it before they found the teaching, where they project out. What has Jesus explained about the Peter consciousness? Peter recognized that there was something special about Jesus. But he did not grasp that what was special about Jesus is that he was outside Peter’s mind and therefore could give Peter a frame of reference from outside his mind. Instead, Peter wanted to pull Jesus into his own mind and make him conform to the images and expectations he had in his mind.

Thousands, tens of thousands of people, both in the West and the East, but especially in the West, have found a genuine spiritual teaching, but they have projected out. They recognize that there was something about that teaching, but then they have started projecting to get the teacher to conform to their expectations. They did not grasp that the entire purpose of the spiritual path is to escape, to transcend, by resolving the limitations inside your own mind.

The outer condition is the trigger, not the cause

When you grasp this, you see that there cannot possibly be an external cause that produces the internal phenomena in your mind. It cannot be. The internal phenomena of your mind are produced by the mind. They may be triggered, they may be a reaction to an external situation, but the external situation does not cause the internal condition. The mind causes the internal condition by the way it reacts to the external condition. This is the essence of the teaching I gave 2,500 years ago. It is not found in any written teachings. It was not expressed in those words, it was not expressed as clearly as we can do today, because the collective consciousness has been raised. But it was what I attempted to give to my students. Some grasped it, many did not. It was also what Jesus attempted to give to his disciples. Some grasped it, many did not, Peter was just one of them.

We hope that those of you who are open to these teachings can make that switch in your mind. That you can accept that nothing outside your mind is cause for what goes on inside the mind. Everything that happens inside your mind is the result of conditions inside your mind. You may think I am contradicting what I said earlier about the many thoughts that are projected into your mind. But you see, the thoughts can only trigger a pattern, a separate self, that is already in the mind. I talked about this 2,500 years ago, the samskaras in the mind, the patterns in the mind. We call it separate selves now. They are lying there latent, dormant. Some outer situation happens, some thought is projected into your mind that triggers one of these selves into action. But if you focus on the outer cause, or the outer condition, and think it is cause, how can you change the inner reaction in your mind? You cannot shut off the thoughts coming, projected at you. You cannot as an individual change the collective consciousness. But you can change your own consciousness so you do not react to the collective.

What it means to still the mind

And this is what can happen gradually when you resolve the selves, when you are working on this exercise of surrendering thoughts. You can come to a point where it is not that you do not have thoughts projected into your mind from the outside. It is not that you do not have your brain and outer mind produce thoughts from the inside. But the Conscious You, your conscious awareness, does not engage them. They are passing through. Think about that image of PadmaSambhava, of the man standing, or the person standing in this vast landscape but not seeing the landscape, only focused on the black cloud. Well, you may think you have many thoughts coming into your head. But there are still many, many conditions in the world that you do not notice, that you do not pay attention to. You may have walked down the street and you may pass many different people, but you do not notice any of them. Or maybe you notice one or two but the rest just pass by. You can come to a point where there are all kinds of thoughts coming into your mind, but they just pass by because you are not focusing on them. And that is when you have stilled the mind. “Unruly thoughts do hereby cease” does not mean that the thoughts stop, but that they cease impacting your conscious mind, pulling on your conscious attention. That is how the unruly thoughts cease.

Experiencing the Flame of Cosmic Peace

Now what does it say in this refrain that you just gave? Gautama, Flame of Cosmic Peace, unruly thoughts do hereby cease. You can ponder and tune in to the Flame of Cosmic Peace that I hold for earth. And you can use that also to avoid focusing on the thoughts. But this is something that most people cannot start out doing, which is why I have given you the other exercises first. But there are certainly, when you have reached a certain level of detachment from the thoughts, you can then, after you have gone through a certain period of saying, “I surrender, I surrender, I surrender,” you can decide to focus on my Flame of Cosmic Peace, tune in to it, open your mind to it and just be enveloped in it.

However, be careful here. What happens in your mind when I say the Flame of Cosmic Peace? What happens in the messenger’s mind is he thinks he has to see it as a flame. There has to be some kind of flame that has some kind of shape, and he has to be able to tune into it. But that already engages the thinking mind. You are not tuning into the flame, you are thinking about tuning into the flame. And as long as you are thinking about it, you are thinking, you are seeing the flame as separate from yourself, somewhere else out there: “the flame is there, I am here, I have to tune into what is there.” Cannot be done. Cannot be done. You can be in the flame or not in the flame. You can be in the flame or you can think about being in the flame. But it is not the same to be thinking about it as being in it. That is why it takes a certain practice to come to the point where you are not really tuning in to the flame, you are experiencing the flame, you are being in it, being enveloped in it.

You have just given, in this vigil for the resolution of your psychology, you have given this exercise by the Presence of Love, this invocation, where the visualization is given that there is an observation tower, and you realize there is a staircase that leads up to a platform and there is a master standing on the platform. And this messenger when he started doing this exercise, he visualized in his mind that there is a master standing as a human figure on this platform and he is walking up and now he is hugging that master like he would hug a human being. But after some days, he realized this was actually disturbing him because he felt that he had to visualize this process and it was actually taking his attention away from experiencing the master. And then he realized that instead of visualizing a human-like figure and himself as a human-like figure who was hugging that master, he could instead switch and actually feel that he was not a human being ascending the staircase, he was just a point of attention and he was enveloped in the sphere that was the master, the sphere of consciousness, the Presence of the master. He could even feel himself as a point inside the sphere of the master, looking through the Presence of the master and this gave him a more intimate experience.

And it is the same thing with the Flame of Peace. You are not sitting there as a human figure tuning in to this flame that is over there, that is burning and has flames, like you see in a fire. The flame is a sphere, you are a point. You are inside the sphere. You are experiencing the flame, even experiencing through the flame. You can even look at the world through the flame, when you build a momentum on this. This is how you can use the Flame of Peace. And when you just experience the Flame of Peace and yourself as being in the flame, being one with the flame, then unruly thoughts will cease. But as I said, few people can do this as the starting point, you need to go through some steps.

Now again, for some people, this will be difficult. Do not stress about this. Do not feel you have to do this. It is offered for those who are ready for it. If you are not, there is no problem. There is no shame. You are not doing anything wrong. Find a teaching that appeals to you, focus on that. Sometimes, as PadmaSambhava said, you can become addicted to resolving something in your psychology, almost addicted to walking the path, feeling that you should be able to do everything that we throw at you. You should be able to take advantage of it. You should be able to use it. You should be able to visualize this and that.

Using intuition to follow the path

Step back. You do not have to do everything. You do not have to take advantage of everything we give here. You need to find that aspect of the teachings that appeals to you at your present level of the 144 levels of consciousness. You do not necessarily need to know what level you are on, but you just sense intuitively, this teaching appeals to you. Then you focus on that for as long as you feel you need to. Now, many of you have not done this. You have taken a more active approach, found the teachings, been excited about it and said: “Oh, I want to do everything. I want to study all, read everything. I want to practice all, give all the invocations and this and that.“ That is perfectly in order to do, but it is a phase. There hopefully comes a phase, where now you begin to have more intuition. Instead of trying to walk the path with your outer mind, you begin to listen to your intuition. And instead of trying to do everything at once, you focus on that one thing you need right now and you have no regrets, no sense of obligation, no sense that you should be doing more. You focus on that one thing, then you take advantage of that for as long as you need it and then you find the next thing that will take you to the next level.

We have given you many things because we know that when people first find the path, they often do not have that strong inner direction. They are saying: “What can I do? Give me something I can do”. That is how this messenger felt when he first found ascended master teachings. He was very eager, you might say obsessive-compulsive, about giving decrees and studying the teachings and going to America and taking these courses and so forth. Again, he needed to go through that phase, but there came a point where he realized it was time to take a different approach. It was time to stop focusing on saving the world for Saint Germain and instead focus on resolving his own psychology. There came a point, where instead of allowing his outer mind to frantically want to do this and want to do that, he started listening to his intuition and therefore started getting more and more directions from us, until he could get that direction that Jesus wanted to do something through him and this has led to the service he has given.

Taking one step at a time is enough

You can follow that pattern. You are not all going to give the same kind of service, of course, but you can still follow that process of listening, taking one step at a time, focusing on one step at a time. You cannot walk a staircase by taking every step at once. You might attempt to take two or three steps at once, but this will wear you out before you reach the top. Be content to take one step at a time. There is nothing wrong with being at the 48th level of consciousness, focusing on how to get to the 49th. You will always be at a certain level until you ascend, and the challenge is always to take that next step. This is what the path is about.

The outer mind wants to do all kinds of tricks. Your separate selves want to say: “Oh, I should be more advanced than I am. I should be at a higher level than I am. I should not be at the level I am at, I should be ten or 50 steps higher. I should be able to do everything the masters tell us. I should know all the teachings.” All of this is just the outer mind, the unruly thoughts produced by the separate selves or these projections from dark forces that are trying to wear you out, so you burn out on the path.

Step back. Listen from within. When the outer mind projects at you: “You should be doing this or you should be doing that”, what is your reaction: “I surrender. I surrender. I surrender doing this, I surrender doing that, I surrender.“ And you keep surrendering, until you reach that state, where you are able to listen from within. And then a thought will come: “Oh, I will do that, because this was not coming from without and it was not coming with this charge that I should do this.” It just came as a thought of what you could do. There is no pressure and so, you go with that. But it is a challenge, a tremendous challenge to do that in the modern world that is so busy, where so many things are pulling on your attention, pulling you hither and yon, where there is such pressure on people to perform, to do better, to study, to get an education or career, to make money, to have a big house, all of these things, especially in America where everybody has to keep up with the Joneses and nobody takes the time to ask: “Well, who are the Joneses keeping up with? And do they even exist? Has anybody seen John Doe?”

You realize here that when you first find a spiritual path, as I said about the messenger, he attacked it as a challenge. It is like climbing a mountain. It was a task that had to be done. It was a career for him to be on the spiritual path. It was a striving. He felt he had to perform. He had to live up to his own expectations and the expectations of other people and the expectations of the messenger and the expectations of the masters. So many things he had to live up to and he was eager to do it. But fortunately, instead of burning himself out, he came to a point where he stepped back and realized the need to focus on his psychology. And you can all do the same.

It is not a career, it is not a pressure, it is not something you have to achieve and attain. What have we talked about, about these people who are willing to use force? Well, force will get you nowhere on the spiritual path. You cannot take heaven by force. You can take an imitation of heaven by force, but that is not heaven. Do not force yourself to walk the spiritual path. Force comes from the separate self. Identify it, let it go. And then, how do you then walk the spiritual path when you are not forcing yourself? By flowing with the River of Life. I know very well this is a difficult concept, especially for people who grew up in the western world. Flowing with the River of Life. But still, it is something for you to ponder along with the other teachings we have given, and will give.

Allowing yourself to flow

What is the saying? “Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful over a few things. I will make thee ruler over many things.” Again, the multiplication of the talents. You have multiplied the talents we have given. You have made progress. Acknowledge it. Step back. Look at how you approach to spiritual path so far and then decide to surrender it and see what comes to you from within. You may think that this messenger has some special ability or attainment and that is why he is a messenger. Certainly, that is what was projected in previous ascended master organizations, where the messenger was seen as being so special. But why is this messenger, a messenger? Why did he become a messenger? Why is he still a messenger 20 years later? Because he has been willing to surrender time and time again. He has been willing to surrender whatever he was attached to about the teachings, about being a messenger. There comes a point where the only way forward on the spiritual path is not through force or making an effort, not through the outer mind. The only way forward is to surrender, to give up, to allow yourself to flow with the flow.

With this, I have given you what I wanted to give you and I can only express the gratitude of all of us for your participation in this conference and you are making use of the teachings. With this, I seal this conference in the joyful flame of the cosmic peace of the Buddha that I AM. Be at peace. Peace, be still.

 

Copyright © 2022 Kim Michaels