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Ascended Master Paul the Venetian (3), January 3, 2015 through Kim Michaels

Paul the Venetian I AM. We have now reached the third level of initiation at my retreat, that of love and love. When you get a double dose of love, what are you facing? First of all, you are facing the initiation of overcoming the subtle power game that is embedded in all forms of competition. What does competition have to do with love, you might say? It is a perversion of love. What is the core of love? It is the desire to be more, but the question is: “More than what?”

The essence of becoming more

We have for years given teachings on the concept of becoming more, of being more. We know well that when your outer analytical mind hears this, it can react in only one way. More means more than something. How do you know you have become more unless you can compare it to a previous state where you were less?

How do you measure more? Do you think Master MORE can be measured by any standard on earth? Many of you do because you have not yet tuned in to his Presence that is beyond compare, as is mine, as is your own I AM Presence.

There is a difference, a subtle but fundamental difference, between becoming more by flowing with the River of Life and becoming more according to some comparison in the material universe that is yet an unascended sphere. When you are becoming more by flowing with the River of Life, you are transcending your sense of self. What is the standard that you compare to? It is what you were before, what you were yesterday, a minute ago or a lifetime ago. You look back and you see: “I am now more than I was before.” This is not competition. This is doing what comes naturally in the world of form: Measuring your progress, measuring the expansion of your sense of self. This is legitimate; it is necessary; it is constructive. The moment you begin comparing yourself, either to a standard defined on earth or to other people, then this is not constructive. It is a perversion of the drive to become more, which is the core of love.

How the fallen beings compete with God

Where does this perversion come from? It comes in its original form from the fallen beings who, when they decided that they knew better than God how the universe should function and how lifestreams should be saved, also decided (although without fully realizing this) that they were in a state of competition with God. Do you not see, with what we have told you about the fallen beings, that they are competing with God in the ultimate power game? [For more information, see Cosmology of Evil.]

Who has control of the universe? Who has ultimate power to say who is saved and who is not? Surely, the Creator has ultimate power. Those who are in oneness with the Creator and serve on the Karmic Board have power to say who is saved and who is not. The representatives of the Creator determine this only by looking at how you have transcended self. Have you transcended self to the point where you have transcended all selfishness and you are now working to raise the all? Then you are ready to ascend to the spiritual realm and become an ascended master. Until you have transcended that selfishness, you are not ready. This is not a punishment. It is not a judgment. It is as impossible for you to ascend as it is for a hot air balloon to rise into the air until it has enough upward momentum to overcome the downward pull of gravity on its mass.

The fallen beings have done something entirely different. They have created a standard that says: “You are not worthy to be saved unless you live up to this standard.” They have created a false polarity where there is the standard as one extreme and then the opposite of the standard as the other extreme. It now becomes possible to compare people based on this standard and say: “Some people are right; some people are wrong. Some people are good; some people are evil. Some people are worthy of God’s salvation. Some people are worthy to be condemned to hell for all eternity.” This is what is behind competition on earth. There are many people on earth who are entirely caught up in this vain competition for some kind of glory on earth.

The will to improve yourself

There is a discernment to be made. It is entirely possible for all lifestreams on a given planet to go into a state of consciousness where they are not striving to improve themselves. You have been told that there are planets that have self-destructed because of war among the inhabitants of the planet. There are also planets that have self-destructed because the inhabitants of the planet entered such a homogeneous state of consciousness that none of them were trying to transcend their sense of self. They all validated each other in this state of complete mediocrity. The earth was, at some point in the past, in danger of entering such a spiral. That is why a diversity of lifestreams were allowed to embody here, including some fallen beings.

In order for you to rise from a lower state of consciousness to a higher state of consciousness, there must be a will, a will to do better than you have done before. While you are below the 48th level of consciousness, this will must have a motivation. What kind of motivation can you grasp when you are below the 48th level? You can grasp the desire for some kind of glory on earth, to be better than others, to win some kind of prize, to become famous, to become a hero, to be looked up to by others.

When you look at the world of sports, for example, I am not saying that all competition is completely wrong in an absolute sense. There are athletes who, through their competitiveness, have become so willing to transcend themselves that it has prepared them for discovering the spiritual path. This does not mean I am saying there is competition in heaven, or that competition is of God, or that we of the ascended masters condone or encourage competition. It means that on a planet with the state of consciousness of earth, it is a necessary device for helping people gain a motivation for improving themselves.

This can help people rise to the 48th level of consciousness where they discover something higher. I am not thereby saying that all athletes, or all who are engaging in some form of competition, are below the 48th level, but I am saying that the vast majority of them are below the 48th level. There are a few who have risen above it and who participate in the competition for other reasons, but the majority are certainly below and are motivated by competition as a comparative process. They are constantly comparing themselves to other people or to some standard, such as breaking the world record, winning the most tennis games, making the most money on your sport, or whatever you have that drives people.

Competition in personal relationships

The real problem with a competitive spirit is seen no more clearly than in your personal relationships. What is the highest outcome of any personal relationship, be it a love relationship or parents, siblings or children? What is the highest outcome of any human relationship? It is that both parties in the relationship come to the point where they are working to raise up each other, at the same time as they are walking the spiritual path of transcending themselves. This is the highest outcome. How will you ever rise to that level if you see yourself as being in competition with your brothers or sisters, even with your parents, with your spouse or with your co-workers or friends? If you are always trying to be better, to keep up with the Joneses, or even go beyond the Joneses, how will you get out of this competitive spirit and get into the Creative Spirit?

I have spoken about love relationships in my previous discourses, and let us look at them again. If you go back to the old role between men and women, there was not so much competition between the man and the wife. The woman had been brought up to accept her place and saw that there was no point in competing with the man.

This did lead to some relationships that were constructive. They were not constructive in the highest possible way, but they were still constructive in the sense that the woman had accepted that it was the husband who had a career or who had a job or position in society, and she was doing everything possible to help him fulfill that mission. At the same time, he was grateful for her support and was also doing everything possible to help her with her interests and her growth. There are quite a few relationships that were positive this way because there was no competition. Of course, this was, as I have already said, based on an unbalanced suppression of women that was not ultimately healthy or healthy in the long run. I am not condoning this. I am just giving it as an example of what can happen when there is no competition among the spouses.

What do you have in the modern age? You have had a process that has made some progress towards liberating women and giving them equality. We can discuss whether this process has given women full liberty and full equality, and I will be the first to say it has not, but that is not my issue here. My issue is that with the liberation of women, with women entering the workplace and getting careers, there has been an opening for competition among spouses, and it has ruined many love relationships.

You still have many cultures where the boys are brought up to be competitive in sports, in terms of making money and this and that. At the same time, the girls are also being brought up to pursue an education, a job, a career. The boy is not aware of what it means that he now marries a woman who is not like his mother who accepted her place. He expects that his wife is going to do everything that his mother did in the home while still working. This, of course, can only lead to conflict.

At the same time, many women feel that they have a double pressure. They are supposed to go out and get a career and do whatever it takes to be successful in the workplace, but they are also supposed to be the perfect wife, mother and housekeeper at home. How can anyone do this? It is impossible; the men certainly could not do that.

Many women have tried, tried hard, and have found that they could not. Many have lost their confidence. Many have become frustrated, traumatized by this process. Many marriages have broken up because of this frustration from both sides. What you have seen over the last several decades in the modern, industrialized world is that, as the old roles of the two sexes have been broken up, people have struggled mightily to find a new way to relate to each other in a relationship.

The rest of this dictation is available in the book: The Mystical Initiations of Love.