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Ascended Master Gautama Buddha through Kim Michaels, May 22, 2021. This dictation was given during the 2021 Webinar for Europe – Ending the Era of Ideology.

I AM the Ascended Master Gautama Buddha. I have said that the rational mind has limitations for what can be explained, what can be grasped. This means that an ideology always seeks to explain why people are dissatisfied but it can never give a full and complete explanation. Now, you will of course be able to look at history and see any number of incidents where people have become what we might say “pulled” into a certain ideology. They have been pulled into the forcefield, the energetic matrix, of a certain ideology and they have been absolutely convinced that this ideology did give a full, complete, accurate and ultimate explanation for life as they saw it. They might even have felt it gave the full explanation of why people are dissatisfied and how to get over their dissatisfaction.

What I want to consider here is how it is possible that human beings have an explanation that is not absolute, that is not even fully true, that might not be completely true at all (might not have any truth to it), but they are fully convinced that it is the truth. In order to understand this, we need to incorporate the knowledge that we have given you as ascended master students, that there are certain beings who are doing everything possible to deceive human beings for the purpose of controlling them.

History proves the existence of a power elite

We have called them fallen beings (you can call them a power elite to use a more neutral term) but it is not difficult to see, when you look at history, that there has always been a certain elite in any society. There is a tendency for an elite to form. They seek to gain a certain position where they have an ultimate position, a position that they think cannot be challenged, that cannot be overthrown. They are the ruling elite and no one can challenge their power, no one can speak out against them—or so they think. You can also see in history how there have been many times where a ruling elite has sat (an established power elite has sat) on this position for a long time, sometimes even centuries, but eventually there came a point where that elite was overturned. In many cases this happened because there was an aspiring power elite that managed to overthrow the ruling elite and they then took the position that the ruling elite had. In many cases the aspiring power elite claimed that they were aiming to free the people from the tyranny of the established elite, but their real goal was to set themselves up in the position of the established elite. Only, they wanted to make their position even more secure so that they could think that even though they overthrew the previous elite, they themselves cannot be overthrown. You see many examples of this dynamic, as we have explained before.

What is it that happens in this process? You can see that in many cases the established elite took power because they had a certain ideology that supported their power. They maintained that power because they managed to keep that ideology active, and that kept the people believing in the ideology. Then, when an aspiring power elite overthrew the established elite, they used a different ideology that challenged the previous one. The previous one claimed to have the ultimate truth but then a new ideology came up that claimed the old ideology was an error, but now they had the final one, the ultimate one that was the truth.

The inescapable tension of duality

Why is it that people can become convinced that an ideology really does explain life in a way they feel is complete, believable, satisfactory, logical, rational, appealing—whatever you want to call this? Well, in order to fully understand this, you need to step back, we need to step back and again realize that the moment you step into the duality consciousness, you are stepping into a very specific state of mind. Once you are in that state of mind, you have no idea what you have stepped into because once you are trapped in duality, blinded by duality, you think there is nothing else except duality, there is nothing outside of duality, there is no alternative. There simply is not a different state of consciousness, duality is the only state of consciousness that is possible for a human being on earth. This is what people think when they become trapped in duality. Therefore, of course they do not realize that duality has a built-in, an inherent, an inescapable tension. There is this tension that causes the dissatisfaction.

Now, why then is it that hardly anyone realizes they are trapped in a certain state of mind, that it is the state of mind that causes the dissatisfaction and that the only way out is to transcend the duality consciousness? Well, they do not realize this because, as we have explained before in greater detail, going into duality is part of what is allowed by the Law of Free Will on a planet like earth. For that matter, it is theoretically allowed on all planets in an unascended sphere. This duality is simply an experience one can have in the full spectrum of free will. There are many different experiences you can have through free will. Duality is one of them.

Now, duality is of course a very specific experience that you can have. We have described it in many different ways and there are many different ways to describe it. What you can say is that in duality, you have a state where everything is relative. There is in a sense nothing absolute in duality. This will make little sense to most people on earth because they do not remember the alternative to duality. When you can begin to glimpse non-duality, as compared to duality, you realize that when you are not in duality, there is always an absolute guiding rod, there is always an absolute frame of reference. It is again, various words can be put on it. We can say that you know that all life is one, therefore there is no separation and you know that there is no need to compare yourself to other people because you are following an individual path that leads you towards higher and higher states of consciousness. You are not setting yourself up as being better or more important than others. That is not part of the experience you are having when you are not in duality.

However, when you do step into duality, part of the experience that you want to have is that everything is relative, meaning you can now see yourself relative to other people. You can see your state of mind as relative to an opposite state of mind, which is what gives rise to the many dualistic polarities, such as happiness and unhappiness. We have explained before that when you are not in duality, it is not that you are dissatisfied or unhappy but neither would you say that you are happy, as happiness is defined on earth. The happiness, which is what I called “bliss” 2,500 years ago (for want of a better word), is not defined in relation to an opposite. You are in a state of mind that is what you might call positive and uplifting, but it has no opposite. You see, even the words as they are used on earth cannot describe what is beyond duality because they have been so affected by duality. You are in a state of mind that has no opposite, you are at peace, you are content, you are not dissatisfied in that state of mind.

When you step into duality, you step into a state of mind where there must be an opposite to any state of mind. It is possible to have an experience of happiness in duality but it is in contrast to unhappiness. This means that your happiness can never be absolute, it is a relative happiness, it is defined in relation to an opposite. This means there is always the tension because you might be in a position where you feel happy but you know in the back of your mind there is always the possibility that you could lose your happiness and go into unhappiness. It is always there. Just as an example, you know that your physical body will eventually die. You always have that tension and this means that you can never be fully and completely satisfied. It is not possible because you cannot relate to anything absolute. You can only relate to something relative. You always have the contrasts.

How the quest for happiness creates unhappiness

Now there is a, we might call it an “advantage,” to going into duality. You can have experiences that you cannot have when you are not in duality. The experience you can have in duality is that you can have tremendous contrast. In duality, you can, in a certain sense, feel much more happy than you ever feel when you are not in duality because you have the contrast between what you call happiness and what you call unhappiness. What you see here is that you are defining two states of consciousness in duality. You are defining happiness and unhappiness.

Naturally, most people will experience (once they are in duality) that unhappiness is unpleasant and happiness is pleasant. What does that mean? It means they want to always have happiness and avoid unhappiness. This is the mindset you go into in duality. You want to avoid the unpleasant, you want to always have the pleasant. This is an inevitable reaction but it is also an impossible reaction. You cannot have happiness without unhappiness because if you did, there would be no contrast and then there would be no duality. What is it that people do? Well, they go into a mindset of striving for something different than what they have now.

Now, you may say, but are not we saying that even before you have ever gone into duality, you start out with a point-like sense of identity and you are meant to continue to expand your sense of identity until you reach the full God consciousness. Are you not in a sense always wanting something more than what you have because there is always a higher state of consciousness? This is true but it is not dualistic, it is not relative. There is not the contrast between unhappiness and happiness because when you start out as a new spiritual being with a point-like sense of identity, you are not unhappy. You are not feeling lack. You are feeling fulfilled in what you are and then you are feeling more fulfilled when you become more. You continue to feel more and more fulfilled without having the opposite. The opposite is only possible in duality. You can go into duality, you forget who you really are as a spiritual being, but as we have said before there is still that striving for something more. You want to have more than what you have in duality.

What does this mean? It means that when you are now trapped in the contrast of seeing unhappiness contrasted with happiness, you inevitably determine in your mind (not necessarily consciously, you simply go into this reaction) that you want more happiness, you want to be more happy. You want to have an experience of being more happy than you have ever been before.

What did I just say? In duality, happiness can only exist relative to unhappiness. Now you have a planet where all people have gone into duality. They are all striving for a greater and greater experience of happiness but how can they have this greater experience of happiness? Only when happiness is contrasted with unhappiness. What does this mean? How can you have a greater experience of happiness? Well, only if there is also a greater experience of unhappiness. You see, when the earth first went into duality, there was a certain spectrum, a certain difference between the deepest unhappiness that was possible on earth and the highest happiness that was possible on earth. There was that distance, that spectrum. What has happened since is that people have expanded that spectrum. How have you done this? By making it possible to become more and more unhappy. This gives you the sense that you are more and more happy in contrast to the unhappiness. Or rather, you are more happy than those people who are in unhappiness.

Do you see what this means, my beloved? It means that when an entire planet has gone into duality, it is inevitable that large groups of people must be unhappy so that other people can feel happy compared to them. It cannot be any other way in duality. What does this mean? It means that in reality the majority of the population are condemned to be unhappy. You look at any period in history, there has been what we might call an elite, or people who felt they had some happiness, and then there has been a majority of the population who felt they did not have happiness compared to the elite. Now, what has been the measure for determining whether you are happy or unhappy? Has it been your state of mind? Not really, because what also happens in duality is that you have no absolute frame of reference so you cannot see that the ultimate way to be fulfilled, whole, at peace is through oneness with your Higher Self, with your I AM Presence.

How outer conditions determine happiness

Only by being complete within yourself can you be ultimately at peace and fulfilled. In duality you have lost the connection to your I AM Presence, you cannot even conceive that you have such a connection or that this could satisfy you. You are in duality focused on outer conditions, outer conditions on earth. That is what your focus is. What determines your happiness when you are in duality? It is the outer conditions that you have. What determines your unhappiness? It is the outer conditions that you do not have. So you see here that what has happened, going back into history, is that in every society, whatever the situation was in that society, there was a certain outer definition of what it meant to be well to do, well off, to be one of the elite. The assumption based on this was that if you had the outer conditions of the elite, you should be happy.

You will see in many time periods where the majority of the people felt unhappy because they did not have the physical conditions that they saw the elite having. The majority of the people assumed that the elite must be happy because they have these wonderful conditions. They do not need to work, they have plenty of food, they have luxurious living conditions, they have servants to do all the work and whatever criteria was there in the actual society. When you look at the reality of the situation, you see that the elite, most of them, were not happy after all even though they had these conditions. They felt they should be happy but they were not. Why were they not? Because of their psychology, their psychological conditions. Many among the elite were fallen beings who had set themselves up as an elite, and fallen beings can never be happy, at least not until they undo the decision that caused them to fall. You also saw some among the elite who felt they were happy, who forced themselves to feel they were happy (at least for a time), felt happy and acted as if they were happy.

You see the same thing today where there are people who feel that: We have such good conditions today, compared to what was there a generation or two ago—we should be happy. There are, even in some of the richer nations in the world, large parts of the population who look back at their parents and grandparents and the conditions they had back in the 1930’s, 20’s whatever you have. They realize they are so much better off materially and therefore they decide with their outer minds: “I should be happy, I must be happy, I think I am happy.” There is a certain feeling of happiness based on these outer conditions but it is not an inner feeling of happiness, it is relative.

You of course have many people around the world also who live in poor conditions, in appalling conditions and violent conditions, chaotic conditions and who feel very unhappy because of their outer conditions. This leads to this belief (that has been perpetrated by the fallen beings for a very long time but has really been solidified with materialism) that your state of mind depends on physical, material conditions, either conditions outside yourself or conditions in your own brain and body. (For many people the brain and body still seems to be outside themselves because even though they have been brought up in a materialistic society, they have some knowledge that they are not the body, they are more than the body.)

Anyway, they see that their state of mind depends on outer conditions. This is what they have been brainwashed to believe for many lifetimes. This is of course exactly the engineering of the fallen beings who want people to believe this. They want you to believe that your state of mind depends on external conditions, which means you have no control over your state of mind. The only way to change your state of mind is to change the external conditions. Why do the fallen beings want people to believe this? Well, partly because they can control people. Other fallen beings want it because it allows them to get people into conflicts with other groups of people so they can steal their energy. Some simply want to create chaos.

The rest of this dictation, along with an invocation based on the dictation, is found in the book: Ending the Era of Ideology.