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Ascended Master Lanto through Kim Michaels, January 3, 2026. This dictation was given at the 2026 New Year’s webinar: Becoming Wise to the Serpents.

I AM the Ascended Master Lanto. The Second Ray of Wisdom, what is the significance of it? Well, let us begin by looking at what we have told you about you being co-creators with God.

A point-like sense of self

Here you are. You originate in a certain sphere. Just for the sake of example, let us take this sphere. You originate in this sphere. You start out with a very localized, we have called it a point-like sense of self. And what are you meant to do? Well, you can say: “What is the you we are talking about?” Your I AM Presence is, as we have explained, a very complex structure with a complex, multi-layered individuality, but it cannot take embodiment in an unascended sphere. Therefore, it sends an extension of itself, the Conscious You.

Does the I AM Presence have a point-like localized sense of self? No, it does not. But it still has a localized sense of self in the sense that it has no experience with the sphere in which it is created. What has a point-like sense of self is the Conscious You. The Conscious You now descends, as we have explained. You take on, in order to embody on earth, you take on the illusion at the 144th level, then at the 143rd and so forth, until the 48th level. You are now a new lifestream here, whether you are one of the original inhabitants or an avatar who descended for the first time. Even as an avatar, you start out with a point-like sense of the Conscious You here on this planet.

Here you are. You have a limited view of the environment you are in. You are not, so to speak, completely thrust into the environment because you are born as a baby and you grow up in a certain environment. And as you grow up, you sort of get your bearings. You learn what kind of environment you are in from your family to your physical environment, your society, and you get a certain experience, a certain knowledge, a certain understanding of what you can and cannot do in that environment.

But still, there comes a point where you, as an individual self-aware being, have to start experimenting with your co-creative abilities. Now, this may just be that you do something in your particular environment. It could be at school. It could be on the playground. It could be for some people when they get older, when you start approaching adulthood. But at some point, you have to dare to do something. But you can only do something based on the limited awareness you have. This is all you can do as a new co-creator.

A journey to Creator consciousness

Is there anything wrong with this? No, absolutely not. That is the whole point! As we have explained many times, the universe with the seven spheres is basically an educational institution designed to educate other Creators. To take self-aware extensions of the Creator, have them start out in a certain environment. Have them transcend the sense of self they start out with until they can ascend to the spiritual realm. Continue their journey until they reach the Creator consciousness. This is the entire purpose.

Why do you go through this process of starting with this localized sense of self and gradually expanding? Because how can you be a Creator? Do you think that our Creator, who created this world of form that we are in, could predict everything that was going to happen in this world of form? Do you think that the Creator knew from the beginning everything that was going to happen? Nay. How could it when it created self-aware extensions of itself and gave them free will? Look what the Buddha has told you. The interdependent originations. The Creator knows that everything it creates is created out of its own being, out of the One mind, the Christ mind. And therefore, everything is interdependent.

Interdependent originations

What does that mean? It means that everything will be affected by the choices made by all self-aware beings. And given that free will is as free as people’s consciousness, how can free will be predicted? Now, this may seem like a contradiction when I tell you why you need to start out with a localized sense of self and work your way up. It is because by working your way up in this world of form, you gain direct experience from the lowest level to the highest level of how to deal with the unfoldment of a world of form. But you see, if your Creator started in another world of form, worked its way up to the Creator consciousness, and therefore, has all this experience from another world of form, should not your Creator be able to predict everything that is going to happen? As I said: “No, because of free will.”

But what the Creator can do is it has the experience of how to respond as its world of form unfolds. How to respond to new conditions so that the world of form not only does not self-destruct but follows the vision that your Creator had when it set out to create this world of form. We can say that the Creator has an overall vision of where its world of form is going. But as the world unfolds, due to the free-will choices of all the self-aware extensions of the Creator, the Creator is constantly reacting and responding to this in order to have local conditions, especially in the unascended spheres, conform to, adapt to, the overall vision of the Creator. And of course, also to prevent an entire sphere from self-destructing, for example.

You see what I have just told you here would be considered blasphemy by most of the religions on earth. Why? Because they have this view that God, however they define it and name it, must be perfect, must be all-knowing, all-powerful. But as we have said before If the Creator was all-powerful, why would it give us, who are extensions of the Creator, free will? If it was all-knowing, why would it give us free will? How can it predict what choices we are going to make? For you to understand what the Second Ray really is about, you need to understand this, you need to grasp this, that the Creator has not created a perfect creation where everything is predefined. The Creator has created an experimental environment. What drives the unfoldment of an unascended sphere—and even the ascended spheres, but in a different way—is experimentation.

Experimentation in exercising your co-creative abilities

As I said: “You start out as a new being here on earth with a localized sense of awareness, with whatever you received as you were growing up, and you are meant to experiment.” But what does that really mean? Well, it means that you cannot do anything wrong. Your choices are limited based on your sense of awareness—if it is your first embodiment, for example—and the impressions you received as you were growing up in your particular environment. There may be many choices you could make, but based on your level of consciousness— whether you are at the 48th level, for example—and your environment, there are only certain choices you can see. But within the choices you can see, there are no wrong choices. Why? Because the purpose of life on earth is not, N-O-T, not to produce a specific physical result. The purpose of life is your growth in consciousness.

Making a choice

How can you grow in awareness? By exercising your co-creative abilities. And how do you exercise your co-creative abilities? Well, when you are a new lifestream, you start with the First Ray. At some point, you have to dare to exercise whatever power you can see yourself as having in your particular environment. You make a choice. You do something. And since this might be the first time on earth you are exercising power, well, is it necessarily going to be the perfect choice or the highest possible choice? Of course not. But that is not the point. The point is you are making a choice and you are getting a feedback on your choice. It may very well be physical feedback. It may be the reactions of other people. It may be an inner reaction in yourself, where you find yourself having an emotional reaction to the outcome or the lack of outcome of your effort. But you are sending something out. And the material universe, the reality simulator of earth, is sending something back to you.

Evaluating feedback

What are you meant to do? You are meant to evaluate what comes back by using the Second Ray. It has been called the Ray of Wisdom, but it could be described in many other ways. It is really just a way of evaluating the feedback you get from the material world and deciding: “Was this what I wanted? Was this what I envisioned? Do I want to repeat what I did? Do I want to get more of this feedback?” If yes, you keep doing the same thing. You might do it more powerfully. You might do it in a slightly different way. But you are essentially continuing to use power the same way you did in your first choice.

But if you come to a point where you feel like: “This is not really what I wanted, I do not really want more of this. I want more than this” then, you use the Second Ray to evaluate: “How might I get a different response back from my co-creative efforts?”

You see, it is a constant two-way process that you are meant to engage in. Naturally, you will also, as you grow, use the other five rays. But that is not my topic here. My topic is to show you that the first stage of your co-creative experimentation is to simply use power, as you can see it. But then, the second phase is to use the Second Ray of Wisdom to evaluate what you are getting back from the cosmic mirror as a result of you exercising power. And the only consideration here really is: “Do I want more of this? Do I want more than this?”

Now, how are you using the Second Ray of Wisdom? Well, as we have explained many times, you start your experimentation here on earth at the 48th level. And at the 48th level, you have an intuitive connection to something outside your own mind. You may not clearly see what that is. In fact, you will not at the 48th level, but you have some sense. And if you use that intuitive connection, that is how you tune in to the Second Ray and get, not the ultimate feedback on your co-creative efforts, but you get some feedback. If you say, for example, you want more than what came back, you get some intuitive sense of how you can change what you direct out and get something else back. Again, this will not be the perfect intuitive insight you get. It will simply give you a different feedback so you get another experience. And by gradually experimenting, having more and more experiences, you eventually build some sense of how you exercise power in a way that gives you more of the results you want than the results you do not want.

2025: a year of experimentation with power

Now, you can say—when you take the teaching we have given about the 144 levels—you can say that as you experiment at the 48th level of consciousness and use the Second Ray, you will go to the 49th level. And then, as you keep experimenting, you can eventually grow to higher levels of consciousness, start using the other rays. But my point for this long explanation is that this gives you an understanding of the 12-year cycle that we have initiated. 2025 was dominated by the First Ray. It was, in a sense, a year of experimentation with the exercise of power.

You can look at what happened during this past year, the most obvious example being Donald Trump in the United States, who was sworn in as president on the 20th of January. And he has, if you look at it neutrally, experimented with the power of the presidency. And he has done it in a way that no other president has done before. He has tested the limits of his constitutionally appointed power, what he could do, what he could get away with, what he could not get away with. He has continued throughout this year to experiment. There has been some evaluation in his mind, some adaptation, like first imposing tariffs, then drawing back, not imposing tariffs, delaying them, going back and forth like this. But if you see, look at his psychology personally, there has been very little evaluation.

It has been more testing the limits of what he can get away with. And if you look at the reaction to him, both internationally, but especially in the United States, including the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, the press and media, you can see that most people have been sort of stunned, taken aback. Because he has done things that no other president has done and the American nation has not really known how to deal with it. Nor has, for that matter, internationally nations known how to deal with this. In a sense, you could say that what Trump has had during this year has been a free rein to experiment with power. And as I said: “You are meant to experiment and there is nothing wrong with it.” However, this goes when you are a new lifestream.

As you become a more experienced lifestream—which, of course, most people are on earth and including Donald Trump—then, the question now becomes, not whether it is wrong or not wrong, but: what are the consequences? And obviously, when you are an individual person exercising power that affects mostly your own life, the consequences are somewhat limited. When you are president of the United States, which is a big, powerful nation in the world, the consequences are, of course, more widespread. But still, you can say: “There is not anything wrong with what Trump has done. He has just experimented with the power of the presidency: What can you do? What can you not do?”

And because last year was the year dominated by the First Ray, very few people have gone beyond responding to his use of power with the First Ray. There was an exercise of power based on the First Ray. There was a response to the exercise of power based on the First Ray. And when you respond to the exercise of power based on the First Ray of Power, it is a different evaluation of the use of power, which is why many people have not really known how to react to this.

You can see in the United States that many people would have preferred that Trump had not done certain things. There are many people who have said: “Well, we heard him say he would deport the immigrants, but we thought he would only deport criminals, not people who are integrated in our community and not our neighbors.” And many other examples like this. There was a certain expectation that even though he had the power of the presidency, he would exercise it in a way that people were familiar with. And Trump has gone beyond this. People have not known how to react to this. Because when you are reacting to the use of the First Ray of Power based on the First Ray, how can you say that the exercise of power is wrong? It is just an exercise of power. It is really just an experiment. Therefore, you could look at Trump’s presidency during 2025 and say it has just been one big, big experiment.

The shift in 2026

I know, of course, that his experiments have had consequences. But I am trying to show you here why the reaction to Trump has been the way it was in 2025, because this leads up to you being able to understand what will shift in 2026. And what will shift is that now everybody will begin to evaluate Trump’s use of power—not everybody, but most people—through the Second Ray of Wisdom. And that is a fundamental shift. And you will see this starting already now with his latest exercise of power in Venezuela. And you will see that the reaction this year will be different not only to Trump but to the abuse of power in general, including Putin and Ukraine and including China and Taiwan and other issues.

What you will see is that in 2025, many people were sort of stunned by the use of power, not only from Trump but other leaders. But that this will shift in 2026. People will suddenly wake up, so to speak, from this daze, this almost hypnotic state that some have been in. And it will be very difficult for them to ignore the consequences of the abuse of power. What will happen in 2026 is that people in general and certainly the more aware people in society will begin to look at Trump’s exercise of power, Putin’s exercise of power, Xi Jinping’s exercise of power through the Second Ray of Wisdom. And suddenly they will not be able to ignore the consequences. And they will not be able to ignore the question which they have been able to dodge last year: “Do we want more of this or do we want something better than this?”

And the real question that will begin to emerge is: “What is the trend?” When you look at, for example, Trump’s use of power and you see he repeats a certain pattern, you can project there is a trend. And where is it going to end up? Where is it going to go? What are the consequences if you keep doing more of the same thing? If you keep exercising power in a more and more unbalanced manner. If you keep pushing harder and harder. If you, for example, keep pushing harder and harder with tariffs, because you believe this will solve all of America’s economic issues, what will then be the consequences?

The evaluation and adaptation phase

You can say that Donald Trump got a kind of a free rein for this last year where he was allowed to experiment. The question now becomes for him personally: Will he be willing to use the Second Ray of Wisdom to evaluate the outcomes of his experiments so far and to look at the trends? Will it actually solve a problem that you keep pushing harder and harder in the same direction? The question for him personally is: Will he be willing to evaluate the results of his exercise of power and look at those results and adapt his exercise of power in 2026 based on this evaluation? Not only his personal one but also from his advisors, from the media, from the people and so forth.

Will he be willing to evaluate and adjust his exercise of power based on the evaluation? As I said there has been some level of evaluation during this past year, but there will need to be much more next year. Because if he does not make this evaluation, there is only one outcome. He will become more and more extreme in his exercise of power and the consequences will become more and more obvious. And since most people will shift into the Second Ray of Wisdom, he will not be able to hide them.

The same thing will happen with Putin. He has also had, in a sense, a certain free reign since 2022, when the invasion of Ukraine started, because the Russian people have not been willing to really evaluate. What you saw in 2025 is that the Russian armed forces kept pushing harder and harder and harder. More attacks on civilians, more attacks on infrastructure, more attacks at the front. Never mind how many soldiers were killed. Never mind that you sent crippled, wounded soldiers to the front to be mowed down by machine guns. Never mind the effect on the economy, because you had to keep going in that direction so you could win on the battlefield.

And during 2025, again, the Russian people were sort of stunned by the exercise of power. But this will shift even for the Russian people in 2026. How much this will be seen publicly is, of course, a difficult question because we know how difficult it is for the Russian people to express themselves. But still, even internationally, there will be a different evaluation where it will become much more clear that the consequences of the war for the Russian people and for the Russian economy are much more severe than even Putin realizes. The question is, will he be willing to evaluate how he has exercised power so far and adapt? And if not, well, he can only continue to push harder and harder until something breaks.

Breaking an established equilibrium

You see, there is, in every situation, there is a certain equilibrium. It shifts all the time, but there is a certain equilibrium. You take the United States. So far, every president seen in modern times has exercised his power largely within the confines defined in the Constitution. Trump was really the first president to, in a very obvious way, go beyond that and push the boundaries for how much power the president has. You can say that when Trump was sworn in, there was a certain equilibrium in the United States based on previous presidents, what was expected of a president. And Trump broke that equilibrium, but it has not caught up with him yet because, as I said, many people were stunned by him going beyond the equilibrium.

Likewise, in Russia, there was a certain equilibrium in the Russian people which Putin broke when he invaded Ukraine. And he has continued to push it harder and harder. But in 2026, this will shift so that it will be more clearly seen how this is an abuse of power: “This has gone beyond the equilibrium of what we actually can accept for our nations”. And if the leaders do not adapt to this, the support from the people will go down. But not only that, you see, when I am talking about equilibrium, you need to understand something about this.

Take the United States again. There are still members of the Republican Party, Republican voters, who voted for Trump because they have voted Republican their entire lives. If Mickey Mouse had been nominated as the presidential candidate for the Republican Party, they would have voted for him because they always vote Republican. They have a certain equilibrium of what it means to be a Republican. And Trump has gone beyond that for most Republicans, but many have not acknowledged it yet because the equilibrium has a certain ability to stretch.

It is like you take a glass of water, you fill it up to the brim, and then you keep pouring very slowly water into it. And the water starts bulging beyond the rim of the glass. There is actually more water in the glass than it can hold, but because of the surface tension, it does not run over. But there comes a point where that last drop causes the water to run over. And it is the same thing with a leader exercising power. He can exercise power for a while. Like, for example, you have seen Putin exercise the power of the Ukraine war without a breakdown in the Russian economy. You have seen Trump with his trade war without causing an obvious breakdown, such as a crash in the stock market.

But if leaders keep pushing because they will not evaluate the results of their use of power and they will not adapt to reality, the feedback they are getting, then something will break. As Mother Mary said whatever breaks in 2026 is not really that important. But a prediction that can be made with a very high degree of probability is that things will begin to break down. Any unbalanced use of power will cause things to break down. And this we are saying, not to give some dire prophecy, but we are saying it so that you who are the spiritual people can realize this is simply what needs to happen so that people can receive these shocks, these hard knocks from the School of Hard Knocks that causes them to wake up and say: “This is enough!”

Making inequality and elitism obvious

In the United States, one of the main lessons that people need to learn right now is that United States is not a country that lives up to its own constitution. It is not a government of the people, by the people, for the people. It is a government of the elite, by the elite, for the elite. And Trump out-pictures that more clearly than any other president, even though all presidents for a long time have been affected by this, because you cannot get elected unless you have the backing of the super-rich. But this is what the American people need to learn over these next few years. And Trump has already taken major steps to make this so obvious.

Is there anyone in his administration who is not a millionaire or billionaire? Has there ever been an administration that has such an influence from billionaires? Whatever hard knocks come with the U.S. economy—the stock market crash, the selling off of government bonds, the value of the dollar, American industries and companies closing down, farmers going bankrupt, whatever may come there, it is a matter of how hard do the knocks have to become before people wake up, use the wisdom of the Second Ray to evaluate the exercise of power from Trump and say: “Stop! Stop! This is not what we want for the future of our country. We do not want an elitist country.”

You see what I am saying? It is not a matter of whether you have a Republican or Democratic president. It is a matter of do you have a president who does what the president is meant to do according to the Constitution, being the president for all people, not for a small elite? The same essentially is the question in Russia and in China and in many other countries. What is really behind Putin’s government? It is the oligarchy, that there is a small elite that has all the power and all the privileges. And the Russian people are just the slaves of this elite, essentially. It is a recreation of the situation with the Tsars, where the Tsars and the noble class had all power over the people. They were serfs. Well, the Russian people are serfs today. Some of them have more money, but they are still serfs. Is this what you want to continue or do you want a government that recognizes the rights of the people?

What Putin did by invading Ukraine, was that he set in motion a process that will expose this inequality in Russian society more than it has ever been done before. The question is, how many people will see this, will use the wisdom of the Second Ray in 2026 to speak out about this? Or will it have to be so severe that something breaks? The stock market could crash. The banking system could fail. The ruble is already almost worthless. The military could break down. The state finances could fall apart, like they did in 1999. All of these things.

The same in China. The government has again created an unequal system with a small elite that has control of both the government and the financial system. And they claim to still be a communist system that is the worker’s paradise. And again, most Chinese are the slaves of an elite. What will have to break in China this coming year? Will they start some military incursion against Taiwan? Or will it be another real estate crisis, a banking crisis, companies going bankrupt right and left? What will it be? Something will break in 2026.

Avoiding panic in 2026

Now, I may sound serious here because it is a serious topic that unfortunately will affect all people on earth, basically. But I am trying to forewarn you so that you who are the spiritual people can make the transition in your minds where you do not evaluate these events where power, the exercise of power, breaks something through the First Ray of Power, but through the Second Ray of Wisdom. You can see that this is simply what is necessary for us to more quickly move towards the Golden Age. Whatever has happened in 2025 will ultimately bring the planet closer to Saint Germain’s Golden Age. Whatever will happen in 2026 will ultimately bring the planet closer to Saint Germain’s Golden Age. If you can make the shift, tune in to the Second Ray and see this, you can avoid being disturbed, being depressed. You can avoid panicking in 2026. And that is, of course, what we would like to see for all of you who are students, for all spiritual people, all of the more aware people on the planet.

Because, as we said last year the most important point during these 12 years is to not give in to the projections from the dark forces that earth is in a negative spiral, everything is going bad, nothing can stop it.

The fall of the power elite

Earth is in an upward spiral. But you see, you may have a river that is frozen in winter and the ice is totally smooth. And then, what happens in the spring? The snow melts, the ice starts melting, becoming soft, and sooner or later, something breaks in the ice. And now, there are big flakes of ice being forced up and it all looks chaotic. The smooth ice is no longer smooth. It is all chaotic. And it breaks up and there is a big rumbling. And suddenly, it starts moving downstream. That is what you are seeing.

The hold that the power elite, worldwide, has had on earth is beginning to soften. And it will, in the coming years, begin to break up. And as it does, people whose equilibrium was based on that power structure will be disturbed. The smooth ice that gave them a sense of security will buckle. But if you see that this is a sign of spring, why would you be disturbed by something you know is temporary and leads to the point where the River of Life can again begin to flow? The River of Life that has been frozen in many societies, because the power elite has had this hold on the power and the economic system, taken it away from the people.

You have the neoliberal dream or slogan that the rising tide lifts all boats. But in the coming years, the rising tide will capsize all of the big yachts, whereas the small boats will survive. Why? Because they are more flexible. They can flow with the current, move with the waves. Whereas the big yachts have become so unwieldy, they cannot steer. They cannot turn, they cannot adapt, so they must crash against the rocks. I am not here making specific predictions. I am not saying that the stock markets worldwide will crash.

I am only saying it is a likely occurrence, because it is not likely that those in the power elite will be willing to use the Second Ray to evaluate where is our society going? Is it going the same way as the feudal societies of the Middle Ages, as the Tsars of Russia, as the big industrialists in the 1800s, as the Roman Empire, the Catholic church? Is it all going the same way because we have created this colossus that will topple under its own weight? And therefore, it is likely, as I said, that those who seek to maintain their equilibrium by exercising power will become so unbalanced in their exercise of power that something will break that shatters the equilibrium.

If you look at it historically, the most dramatic events in history were brought about in empires that thought they would last forever. And if you again look at history, you will see that even though this had some consequences for the people, in the long run, it brought about an upward movement.

Was the fall of the Roman Empire really a tragedy for the people of the world? Was the fall of Communism a tragedy on a worldwide scale? Was it even a tragedy for the Russian people? Or was it an opportunity? You may say: ”Have people taken advantage of these opportunities?” Well, but according to the law of free will, the opportunities were still given. And even when people do not take advantage of an opportunity, they still have to deal with that in their minds. And this, when they become open to the Second Ray of Wisdom, will bring both the people, societies and the planet forward.

Shifting your equilibrium

If there is one overall theme for this coming year, it will be equilibriums will be disturbed. Look at yourself. What is your equilibrium based on? Is it based on the things of this world? Is it based on the power structure of the financial elite? Is your retirement depending on the stock market? Or is your equilibrium based on something beyond this world? Your I AM Presence, your connection to the ascended masters. If you want to make it easier for yourself to navigate 2026, then shift your sense of equilibrium away from the things of this world towards the things of the spirit. Many of you have done so. Some of you have not. Many of you have not done it as much as you could do. But basically, you want to make yourself independent of the power elites of this world, so that when their equilibrium is disturbed, yours will not be disturbed.

We have, of course, more to say about the Second Ray and how you can use the Second Ray. Perhaps what I have given you here seems like a very somber message. But is it? Is it really a negative downward message that the ice is about to break up and the river will start flowing again? Or is it really a positive message that shows you that winter will not last forever? The winter that the fallen beings and the power elites have created for the people.

In this coming year, be willing to tune in to the Second Ray and ask yourself: ”What is my equilibrium, my personal equilibrium based on?” I am not talking about outer things so much as I am talking about your state of mind. What is your inner peace based on? How dependent is it upon outer things? How dependent is it upon other people? How dependent is it upon something beyond the material world? Or rather, how independent is it of the world? Because you can only become independent of the world by tuning in to the spirit. Really, what is happening in these 12 years is that people are, so to speak, being forced to face the choice. Will they shift their equilibrium from the material to the spiritual? Or will they become severely disturbed by what happens in the material? That is the essential question. To be spiritual or not to be spiritual?

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