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Ascended Master Paul the Venetian (5), January 3, 2015 through Kim Michaels

I AM Paul the Venetian. What happens when you reach the fifth level at my retreat? This is where you face the combination of love with the Fifth Ray, which has often been called the ray of truth. “What is truth?” as Pontius Pilate asked Jesus. This is worth contemplating.

Reality and your perception of reality

Pontius Pilate represented a person who was below the 48th level of consciousness. Jesus represented a person who was very close to the 144th level of consciousness. As you get close to that 144th level, you can know truth. While you are below the 48th level, you will never know truth. When you come to my retreat, you are not below the 48th but neither are you close to the 144th.

Can you know truth at the level you are at when you come to my retreat? You can know a higher expression of truth than while you are below the 48th level. You cannot know the fullness of truth that you can know when you get close to the 144th. This is very important to keep in mind. What is it you can know? How can you see truth when you are somewhere between the 48th and the 96th level on the path of self-mastery?

You can see truth only through the soul vehicle that you are using as an expression in the material world. This does not mean you cannot experience truth in its pure sense. The Conscious You has the ability to step outside of its identification with the soul vehicle. As you can experience unconditional love, you can experience unconditional truth, but unconditional truth is unconditional. It has no conditions.

We need to make a subtle distinction that the vast majority of the people on this planet do not even understand. They see no need to make this distinction because they see no difference between reality and their perception of reality. They think that what they see through the soul vehicle is reality, is truth, but it is not, is it? You have begun to rise above the 48th level and you have started to disassociate yourself, disidentify yourself, from that soul vehicle.

Your soul vehicle is not your enemy

Here is the distinction you need to make: The soul vehicle is not an enemy of your spiritual growth. It can be, and it certainly is below the 48th level. When you are below the 48th level, the soul vehicle, which includes the ego, will pull you into self-centered patterns, fear-based patterns. You are seeking to defend the ego and the lower self instead of being willing to rise above the ego and the more selfish aspects of the human consciousness.

The human consciousness and the ego give a colored overlay to the soul vehicle. When you rise above the 48th level, you have begun to escape this self-centeredness. As you rise higher on the path of self-mastery towards the 96th level, you shed more and more of it. This does not mean that at this point you shed the soul vehicle.

The purpose of the path of self-mastery between the 48th and the 96th level is to help you develop your creative abilities so that you can express them better in the physical realm. When you express your creative abilities, you have to express them through some vehicle. You have to have four lower bodies. That is why the Conscious You, in its state of pure awareness, cannot express any creativity. That is why the Conscious You needs to create the soul vehicle, including the four lower bodies. It does not need to create the ego, but it has done so on a dense planet like earth. The main task on the path of self-mastery is to rise above the influence of the ego so that you have mastery over the soul vehicle instead of having the ego being the master of the soul vehicle and pulling you into repeating these fear-based patterns that end up defending the ego.

How the soul vehicle has been developed

I have earlier talked about the need to stop purifying the internal spirits and give them up, but the internal spirits are not your soul vehicle in its pure form. The internal spirits are created based on the ego’s fear and distorted perception. They are created based on an illusion, a dualistic illusion, but it is possible to have a soul vehicle that is purified of these. This still does not mean that the soul vehicle can ascend, but it does mean that you have a more pure vehicle through which you can express yourself in the material world.

How did you develop your particular soul vehicle? You did so based on the individuality built into, defined in, your I AM Presence. Your I AM Presence has a unique individual matrix that is different from that of any other self-aware being in the entire world of form. Even though you may not be conscious of your I AM Presence, you are still expressing the individuality of your I AM Presence to some degree when you are creating your soul vehicle.

Your soul vehicle is also created based on the experiences you have in the material world. If you have embodied on planet earth for a long time, which you have if you are ready to engage in this course, then your individuality, the individuality of your soul vehicle, has been influenced by what you have experienced on earth. This is just the way life is. It is the same for all of us when we are in embodiment.

The task between the 48th and the 96th level is to purify your soul vehicle of the ego, but not to get rid of the soul vehicle or to take all individuality away from the soul vehicle. This is something you do after the 96th level where you begin to free the Conscious You from even the non-fear-based aspects of your soul vehicle.

We might say that you first build a soul vehicle that is pure so that you have a vehicle through which you can express yourself, but then you start disidentifying yourself from the soul vehicle so that you realize that you are – you are – the Presence, an extension of the Presence. The vehicle is just that: A vehicle that your creativity flows through in the material realm. You could say that above the 96th level, you are dismantling the individuality or the soul vehicle that you had built up until the 96th level, but this is not entirely what happens. You are not ending up having no personality at the 144th level.

You will see that Jesus had a distinct personality. It is not described very accurately in the Scriptures, but he did have a certain personality. There was nothing wrong with this because he was not identified with it. Other people might look at this and say that the Christ in embodiment could not possibly have such a personality and use that as an excuse for rejecting him. Some people who met him back then did exactly that, but that was their choice and not Jesus’ responsibility. You might have aspects of a certain human personality with you until you ascend, but it is not consequential for your ascension. It is just a vehicle.

Why am I telling you this? Because it relates to the initiations you face at the fifth level of my retreat. One of the perversions of love that you have to deal with at my retreat is precisely this tendency to think that truth can be only one way. If you really love somebody and want to help them and set them free, you must make them see the truth.

My beloved, if you are standing, looking at the sun setting in the West and you are facing the sun, then you are having a certain perspective. If you now turn around and look the other way, you are not seeing the sun, are you? When you, as the Conscious You, go within and withdraw from the soul vehicle, you can look up and see your I AM Presence. You may experience the unconditionality of truth, but you will also experience that unconditional truth is not expressed in words, not even in images, theories or philosophies.

What happens when you turn around and now you are looking out through your soul vehicle at the material world? You are now looking at the world through your soul vehicle and the individuality that is built into that vehicle. You can look at the concept of truth through that vehicle, but what I desire you to contemplate here is that you can never actually see absolute or unconditional truth through your soul vehicle.

This is precisely the perversion of love where the desire for something more gets perverted by the fallen consciousness into the desire for something ultimate. You have a natural desire for truth, but it gets perverted into the desire for an absolute truth that can be grasped by the soul vehicle.

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