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Ascended Master Gautama Buddha through Kim Michaels, December 2, 2018. This dictation was given at a conference in Tallinn, Estonia.

I AM the Ascended Master Gautama Buddha. What I desire to expound upon in this discourse is a certain variety of topics that may seem unrelated but are not. Let me begin by talking about the fact that it is absolutely necessary on the path to Christhood, on the path to Buddhahood, that you understand that the self that you had when you first found the teachings and awakened to the existence of a spiritual path, that self cannot bring you to Christhood or Buddhahood.

Now, you have been giving this latest invocation on the primal self where you have learned that the primal self must die and you are reborn into a new self [From the book Healing Your Spiritual Traumas]. This is, of course, a perfectly valid process, but do not put yourself into a state where you think that even if you feel that your primal self has died, that the new self you are born into is the self that you will carry with you until you ascend. Certainly, do not fall into the illusion of thinking that it is this self that will ascend.

Ascending with all karma balanced

We have in this dispensation given you some teachings on the process of the ascension on what we might call “the psychology of the ascension” that are far beyond what we have given in any previous dispensation. This is not to say that the teachings given previously were invalid or could not take people to the ascension. There were some people who in past lives had come so close to the ascension point that the teachings given previously could take them those last steps until they were ready to ascend, but there were not so many people in that category. You will know that in the last dispensation it was said that you could ascend with just 51% of your karma balanced. I will say that there are very, very few people who could take the teachings we have given previously and come to the point where they had balanced 100% of their karma (which also means resolving your psychology) and therefore ascend from earth, being, so to speak, “clear,” clear of all encumbrances and therefore becoming immediately an ascended master.

However, our goal with the teachings we have given now, that go so much deeper into the psychology, is to enable a larger group of people to balance their karma, resolve their psychology and then have some time in this state before they take leave of the physical body and ascend from the planet. You need to recognize that progressive revelation is progressive. This has, of course, many ramifications but one of them is that certain things that were said previously were correct enough but they were not the full story, they were a limited view, a simplified view of the topic.

So many people from previous dispensations have not asked the question: “If an ascended master is a being who has balanced all karma and if a person ascends (so to speak) with 51% of the karma balanced, does that mean that this person now becomes an ascended master after ‘ascending?’” It was not asked: “If a person has balanced more than 51 percent of their karma and therefore does not have to come back into physical embodiment, has that person truly ascended and become an ascended master?” The obvious answer to the question is “No!” How do you become an ascended master if you still have unbalanced karma and unresolved psychology from earth? It simply is not logical, my beloved, that this can happen. Therefore, it needs to be recognized, by some of you at least, that this was a simplified teaching, not the full understanding of the topic. Naturally my beloved, you need to have resolved everything you need to resolve on earth before you can actually ascend and become an ascended master. There are, of course, some people who have only the karma left they (as Mother Mary has explained) have with themselves, which basically means that what they have left is unresolved psychology and they can resolve this without being in physical embodiment.

Why was the dispensation given that you can ascend with 51% of your karma? It was precisely because there were so few people ascending. It was so difficult, given the density of the collective consciousness, to ascend with 100% of your karma balanced, your psychology resolved. In order to speed up the process of raising the collective consciousness, the dispensation was given that if you have balanced (resolved) 51%, you do not have to come back into physical embodiment. You can go into a special program in the etheric realm where you are given help to resolve whatever you have that is unresolved. This can more quickly bring you to the point where you can fully ascend than if you had to go through the process of being born in a physical body, growing to adulthood before you were able to embrace the spiritual path and follow it more consciously. This sped up the process whereby some could resolve whatever was unresolved and then ascend more quickly than taking embodiment again.

We have moved into a new cycle and we now aim to help a much larger group of people go through the process of resolving all of their psychology while you are still in embodiment. This is, first of all, directed at avatars, but it is a teaching that is perfectly valid and useful for the original inhabitants of the earth who have reached a certain level of spiritual growth. It is useful for those who are not technically avatars but may have come from other planets that ascended and they were not able to ascend with their planet or with the rest of the lifestreams on their planet.

The essence of the path is letting selves die

This, of course, is the challenge we have put before you. You need to recognize here that when you go through a certain phase, for example, you uncover your primal self as an avatar and you let that self die, then you are born into a new sense of self. There were certainly selves that you created after you created the primal self. You still have a certain view of yourself, a certain view of earth, and that means that when you create a new self after you overcome the primal self, then that new self is not necessarily the highest possible. Or rather, it is not the highest possible. As you go up to higher and higher levels of consciousness, there will come points where you need to step back, look at your current sense of self and again let it die so that you can be reborn again. You can be reborn in Christ, you can be reborn in Buddha. Perhaps you are beginning to recognize that the essence of the spiritual path is to come to see that you have a certain sense of self that is limited and you let it die. Now, we have so far talked about specific selves, we have talked about these reactionary selves that are created in reaction to a specific situation on earth. When you find the spiritual path, for example, you find an ascended master teaching (you start to study it, you start to practice it, you perhaps come into an organization that has a certain organizational culture), you are actually creating a new self and you do this all the time, not only in this lifetime but in past lifetimes. You create certain selves that are not, strictly speaking, in a reaction to a particular traumatic situation. There are actually selves created in reaction to the understanding, the awareness that you currently have. You are rising to a higher awareness, you create a new self based on that higher awareness. When you come to the higher levels of the path, you need to become conscious of this process. For a long time the process is unconscious. You are actually not realizing that you are creating a new self.

There comes a point where you need to become conscious of this and you need to see: “What have I gone through since I became consciously aware of the spiritual path? What are my experiences, what are the insights I have gained?” You can just take sort of a look at your path up until this point and you can see: “What have I gone through, what beliefs have I come to accept based on the teachings I have followed, the organizations I have been involved with? What kind of a self have I created as a result of this?” As Kuan Yin said, some people come into the teachings, they have a desire for a sense of superiority and they may never let go of the self they have built that feels superior because they are ascended master students. Now, most of you do not have this issue but you have built other selves.

Again, there is no blame here. It is a natural part of growth that you build these new selves based on your awareness and your desire, what to express, what to experience, what to do here on earth. We have all done the same thing. I am simply making you aware that many of you are at the point where you are ready to become conscious of this. Look at yourself and consider what kind of self you have built so far and whether that self is actually based on a limited view, a limited understanding. Some of you will find, when you do this, that you realize you actually have a self that is built on a certain view of the path, a certain view of yourself that you had years ago. Now, you have in some part of your mind actually attained a higher understanding, higher insights, a higher view, a higher perspective. Therefore, you need to come to see that the self that you built during a certain stage of your path is no longer helping you grow. It is actually in a way limiting your growth, it is holding you back because you have an outdated view, especially of your abilities.

Selves that limit your abilities

Now, we have talked in several ways about how you need to go through a phase where you overcome this compulsory need to do something on earth. It is, of course, perfectly necessary to go through this stage but there also comes a point where, when you have gone through that phase, then there will come that point where you realize that what you are really here for is to be yourself, to express yourself. Expressing yourself means that you are allowing your I AM Presence to express itself through you because you realize that being yourself actually means being in some state of oneness with your I AM Presence. Then, you can benefit from realizing that you have, going all the way back to your birth trauma, built certain selves that had a certain view of what you can do on earth, what you are allowed to do on earth, what you are supposed to do on earth and these selves could have been refined or reinforced by finding a spiritual path.

We have said before that when you find a spiritual path, you see yourself as a spiritual student. We have said that there is a long phase of growth where the concept of a spiritual path is helpful and constructive. If you, for the rest of your time in embodiment, continue to see yourself as a spiritual student, then there comes a point where this is no longer constructive because the concept of a path implies: “I am at a certain level, there is a higher level that is possible, but I have not yet reached it.” You may say, for example: “I am at the 88th level of consciousness, there are 144 levels, I am not at the 144th level.” This in itself is not really problematic because, obviously, it will take some time before you reach the 144th level and some of you may not reach it until shortly before you are ready to exit the planet. Nevertheless, between the 88th level and the 144th level, there are certain stages that we have named, for example, Christhood. There could come a point where you have in your mind an image that you are a spiritual student who is moving towards Christhood but you are not there yet. If you forever continue to hold on to that sense of self, then how will you ever be the Christ in embodiment?

Now my beloved, there are many examples of ascended master students who have heard about the path to Christhood and who have decided with their outer minds, with their outer ambitions: “Yes, I am already the Living Christ.” Now, they go out and they think they have to do whatever they have to do: pronounce the judgement of the fallen beings or awaken other people or blue-ray them or whatever. This is not what I am talking about. I am talking about that there comes a point where you have used these tools that we have given you. You have sincerely striven to overcome the primal self and many other selves. Therefore, you have reached a certain level but you are still holding on to a sense of self that you created at a previous level. At that previous level it was valid to see that there was a goal of Christhood but you were not there. There comes a certain point where, now you have actually reached a certain level. Say for example, you are at the 110th level. There is a level of Christhood that corresponds to that. There is a level of Christhood that corresponds to each of the levels from the 97th and onwards, (although there comes a point where we might say that the levels of Christhood gradually blend into the levels of Buddhahood). If you have reached the 110th level but you are still holding on to an image you created at the 95th level, that image is holding you back.

The rest of this dictation, along with an invocation based on the dictation, is found in the book: Making Peace with Being on Earth.