A message from the ascended master Jesus through Kim Michaels: (November 16, 2010)

NOTE: This is a long discourse, but it gives a very concentrated description of the true spiritual path, including an in-depth understanding of sin, vicarious atonement, salvation, anti-christ, duality and non-duality, the purpose of life and many other topics. It could be considered the minimum you need to know about the spiritual path. You might want to read one concept at a time and take time to digest the information in between each reading.

My intention for this discourse is to give a concise teaching about the real spiritual path, as opposed to the false path about sin and salvation presented by mainstream Christianity and even many spiritual teachings. This will then serve as a basic teaching that can be referred to as I answer specific questions that touch upon these topics.

For at least 17 centuries, mainstream Christianity has owned the privilege of formulating the problem when it comes to the concepts of sin and salvation—at least in the Western world. The result is that certain concepts defined by the early Catholic Church have become so ingrained in the mass consciousness that few people ever stop to question them. Precisely because these concepts are often taken for granted, I have in some earlier answers on this website commented on them without questioning their origin. Yet it is time to move to a higher understanding, and thus I will proceed to challenge some concepts that many people never question.

Most Christians have been brought up with the belief that they are sinners. This is either because they are descendants of Adam and Eve, and thus subject to their original sin, or because they themselves have committed sinful actions. They have also been programmed to believe that sin is a one-way street. Once you have committed a sin, you are stuck because you cannot free yourself from the sin. You have the power to “do” a sin, but you do not have the power to “undo” a sin. Thus, you need some higher power – for most Christians seen as myself – in order to be free of your sin and qualify for salvation.

This entire concept of sin and salvation is based on a fundamental distortion of the true purpose of creation, including how the Law of Free Will works. It is based on a number of assumptions, but the main ones are these:

 

• There is a remote God in the sky who defines a standard according to which actions can be divided into those that are sinful and those that are not. Thus, God is the one who defined the concept of sin.
• God’s purpose for defining sin is to use it as a basis for judging people. Those who are found to be sinners, will be punished by God with suffering in hell.
• The remote God has either created you in a state of sin from which you cannot free yourself, or it has given you the free will to sin. Yet once you have made the choice to sin, you are somehow fundamentally changed, and thus you cannot free yourself from your past choices by making different choices.

 

The stark reality is that these assumptions did not come from God. They were invented by a group of beings who seek to control humankind. They sprang from the consciousness of anti-christ and did not come from the consciousness of Christ. In order to understand this, there are some concepts you need to know.

Concept 1: The purpose of life

You live in the material universe, but it is only one small part in a larger whole. This whole is what we have called the “world of form.” The process that has led to the creation of your particular world of form was initiated by one self-aware being, who had attained a state of consciousness much higher than you can even imagine with your present level of awareness. This is the level of a Creator, meaning a Being who has the self-awareness necessary for creating a world of form that is sustainable and will not self-destruct.

Contrary to what many religious people seem to believe, a Creator is not an ego-maniac or tyrant who creates a world and populates it with beings who are supposed to worship it. A Creator is the ultimate servant, in that it creates a world out of its own Being, meaning that it allows its own formless Being to be “trapped” in form. It also extends its Being as numerous self-aware extensions of itself, and it then gives them complete free will to do with its Being as they please.

The purpose is that each self-aware extension of a Creator eventually grows in self-awareness, until it also attains the level of consciousness of a Creator and thus becomes able to create its own world of form. A being grows by starting out with a very localized sense of self. This being can then gradually expand its self-awareness, and as it, so to speak, “works its way up in its father’s company,” it learns the principles that make it possible to define a world that will not self-destruct. Such a being then becomes able to create its own world, yet a world that is not a copy of the one in which it attained the Creator consciousness, but a world that is a unique expression of its Divine individuality.

So the important point is that the purpose of life is the growth in self-awareness. And you grow by transcending your current sense of self, continuing to transcend until you attain the awareness of a Creator—and even then continuing to transcend by creating your own world of form.

Concept 2: How the universe is created

As we have explained in more detail elsewhere, the material world resides in the latest sphere created by your Creator. As the first act of creation, a Creator draws its being into a single point in the middle of a void. If there was no void, there would be no “space” in which to create form. The Creator then projects its Being as a sphere set apart from the void and then projects self-aware extensions of itself into that sphere.

A sphere is created from energy that vibrates within a certain spectrum, and this energy is dense enough to “hide” the fact that the sphere was created by the Creator. The beings sent into a newly created sphere start out with a localized sense of self-awareness, not seeing that they or their sphere is connected to the Creator. As they grow in self-awareness, they gradually come to accept themselves as co-creators with their Creator and see that their sphere is an extension of the Creator’s Being.

As these beings grow in self-awareness, they gradually raise the vibration of the energy out of which their sphere is made. When the vibration reaches a critical point, the entire sphere ascends to a higher level, in a “jump” much like the quantum leap talked about in physics. In an ascended sphere the energy vibrates at such a high level, that it is obvious it comes from the Creator. Thus, there can be no illusion that the sphere exists independently from the Creator.

The newly ascended beings now extend their own beings in creating the next sphere in the void, and they then send self-aware extensions of themselves into this new sphere. As the new sphere goes through the ascension process, the original beings learn from seeing how the extensions of themselves rise in self-awareness. And the newly ascended beings now create the next sphere. This process has been repeated several times, and the material universe is located in what is the latest unascended sphere.

What is the difference between an unascended sphere and an ascended sphere, which has become part of the spiritual realm? It is in the density of the “matter” or energy used to create the sphere. In an unascended sphere, the matter is so dense that an unascended being in that sphere cannot directly perceive that matter is made from the Creator’s light. In other words, matter appears to be a separate substance; it is not seen as truly being made from energy.

Thus, it is possible for a being to believe that it originated inside the sphere instead of as an extension of a being from a higher realm. It is also possible to believe that the unascended sphere is separated from the spiritual realm or even that it is an independent, self-sufficient unit with nothing beyond it. It is possible to believe that matter exists by itself rather than being created from an unseen spiritual substance, eventually coming from the Creator.

Each of the spheres that have been created have been more “dense” than the previous one, making this illusion more plausible and thus more challenging to overcome. A visual, although inadequate, illustration is that matter on earth is dense and that there seems to be many different forms of matter, such as iron, rock or wood. In the spiritual realm, “matter” is transparent, and thus ascended beings directly perceive that all different types of “matter” are truly made from light. It is then possible to follow the vibration of this light until one sees the Creator as the ultimate source.

We might therefore say that the process of the ascension is one whereby a self-aware being overcomes the illusion of matter and begins to see the underlying reality that all is made from the Creator’s light. Thus, nothing is truly separated from the Creator, including oneself.

We could also say that an unascended being starts out thinking it is limited by matter and that its Spirit needs to adapt to conditions in the matter world. As you grow towards the ascension, you gradually realize your Spirit does not have to adapt to matter but can take dominion over matter. When you fully accept that Spirit is never limited by matter and has no obligation to adapt to current conditions on earth, you have qualified for your personal ascension.

Concept 3: Who you really are

The material universe is the most dense part in the latest unascended sphere. This sphere was created by the beings who ascended in the previous sphere. These beings then extended themselves as self-aware extensions, that were sent into the new sphere with the task of bringing it – and themselves – to the point of the ascension. One of these beings was what we have called your I AM Presence.

Now, in some previous ascended master teachings, many students have formed the impression that the I AM Presence is a perfect spiritual being. The problem is that for most people the word “perfect” implies something that is static, something that does not need to grow or change. However, if you truly understand the purpose of creation, you realize that everything is meant to grow. Even your Creator grows as the world of form evolves and as the extensions of itself grow towards the creator consciousness. So your I AM Presence was created to be part of the latest unascended sphere and thus grow in self-awareness by helping to bring its sphere to the point of the ascension.

As I have explained elsewhere, the material universe has four distinct levels. We generally say that beyond the highest of these levels, the etheric realm, is the spiritual realm. However, there is a part of the spiritual realm that forms the sphere in which the material universe exists. Some previous teachings have described this as the higher etheric realm, so I caution people not to become hung up on interpreting words. The point is that your I AM Presence is “perfect” in the sense that it cannot become trapped in or lost in form. This, however, means that the I AM Presence cannot descend below a certain level of vibration, meaning it cannot directly take embodiment on a planet like earth.

There are I AM Presences who grow by working only from the spiritual or higher etheric realm. However, many of the Presences have chosen to send extensions of themselves into the denser levels in which it is possible to become trapped in the illusion that matter has power over Spirit or that matter is all there is. By doing this, the Presence gains a unique opportunity to grow by experiencing the illusion of matter from the inside and then rising above it and proving that it – as a Spirit – has dominion over matter because matter is not separate from Spirit—as it seems at first. Instead, matter is Spirit.

Concept 4: Why you take embodiment

When an I AM Presence decides to send an extension of itself into embodiment on earth, this decision is not taken lightly. The Presence is aware of the potential benefits, namely that it can grow in self-awareness and that by expressing its light, it can help an entire planet grow towards the ascension point. Yet the Presence is also aware of the inherent risk, namely that the extension must have a life of its own, which means it can come to believe it is trapped in matter or even a product of matter. This is readily seen in many people on earth who believe they are sinners and cannot redeem themselves, or even believe they are nothing more than highly evolved animals.

When an I AM Presence decides to send an extension into embodiment, it seeks to minimize the risk. Your Presence has a unique individuality given to it by its spiritual parents. The Presence wants to express this individuality on earth and it also wants to experience earth through this individuality, both of which help expand the self-awareness of the Presence. Yet if the Presence invested or anchored its individuality in the extension, then the individuality could become lost or distorted. So to avoid this, the Presence sends an extension of itself with very special properties, which we have called the Conscious You.

We are fully aware that not all spiritual students will be able to grasp the fullness of this concept, and let me explain the reason. The most important characteristic of the Conscious You is that it is pure awareness. It has the ability to say “I AM” but because it has no form, it cannot truly say “I am this” or “I am that.” The important point is that the Conscious You can project itself into any place or situation in the matter world. It can experience the matter world from the inside, but nothing it experiences in this world will permanently change the Conscious You.

Now, there are some people who study spiritual teachings, but their minds have become so focused on the material world or even on studying outer teachings that they are always working and never at rest. And then there are other students who have experienced – either spontaneously or as a result of meditation or other spiritual activities – a state in which their minds fall silent and they are aware that they exist but have no specific thoughts.

Such experiences have been called mystical, cosmic, transcendental, witnessing or other names. They are what divide religious people from mystics. Religious people believe in an outer teaching, but mystics have an inner experience that they are more than the physical body and thus more than anything on earth, including a religion or a spiritual teaching. The reality of such experiences is that they are instances where the Conscious You experiences itself in its pure form, namely as pure awareness. People who have not had such experiences, or who have not consciously understood what they mean, will find it difficult to grasp the concept of the Conscious You, as it will be just another theory and not a direct experience.

If you do not fully grasp the concept, the important thing to ponder is that the Conscious You is like a clear pane of glass, such as a camera lens or magnifying glass. As an illustration, imagine that you are standing and looking at an ant hill. You have the overall view, but only from the outside. Now imagine that you take a medical device that is a long, flexible tube with a lens on the end, and you stick it deep into the anthill. When you look through it, you see the anthill from the inside, you see it from the viewpoint of an ant. This is how your Presence experiences planet earth through the Conscious You.

A lens is a clear pane of glass, meaning light can stream through it in both directions. Your Presence can send its light into the world through the Conscious You, and it can receive impressions from the other direction. Yet the individuality of the Presence is not “invested” in the Conscious You and cannot be lost. And because the Conscious You is pure awareness, it cannot be lost either. However, to understand this, it helps to know the next concept.

Concept 5: Playing a role and defining a role

The central point to understand about the Conscious You is the following. Because it is pure awareness, it has the ability to project itself anywhere it wants and experience that situation from the inside. Because it is pure awareness, it could never become permanently trapped anywhere it projects itself. It always has the option to return to the state of pure awareness, and thus free itself from any situation into which it has projected itself.

When your I AM Presence first sent the Conscious You into the material universe, it was sent into a specific situation. This is what was illustrated in the story of the Garden of Eden. In reality, as Maitreya explains in his book, [Master Keys to Spiritual Freedom] this is a kind of spiritual schoolroom in the etheric realm that is designed to prepare beings for taking physical embodiment on earth. One of the major lessons taught in the school is precisely that the Conscious You can project itself anywhere in matter, but that it can also project itself back out of any condition in matter.

To give you a crude illustration, imagine you have a desire to be an actor in a play. You are then taken into a theater behind the stage. There are a number of racks that hold various costumes. You perceive the various possibilities, and then you focus your attention on one costume, namely that of Hamlet. You then imagine what it would be like to experience the world from inside that role, and you make the decision to project yourself into it. So you put on the costume and make-up and walk onto the stage to perform your personal version of Hamlet.

This is essentially what the Conscious You did in Maitreya’s mystery school. It started out by playing various predefined roles and thereby learning to play a role without identifying itself with it. Imagine yourself playing Hamlet in a play. In order to really perform well, you have to live yourself into the role by truly imagining what it is like to be Hamlet. Yet you still know you are not Hamlet, and after a while, you will have had enough of standing with a skull in your hand and with a serious voice declaring, “To be or not to be!” So you simply leave the stage, take off the costume and then you have returned to pure awareness. You might then try another role and so on for a while.

Yet at some point, you realize that you want a higher form of experience. Instead of just playing roles that others have defined for you, you want to experience what it is like to create your own role. Doing this is perfectly within the Law of Free Will, but there is a subtle twist which very few people have understood.

Imagine again that you are standing behind the stage and perceiving the various costumes that others have created. When you step into such a costume and then walk onto the stage, it is fairly easy for you to remember that you put on a costume that others have made and you are playing a role that others have defined. So it is not likely that you will gradually begin to think that you really are Hamlet, or think that you are not in a theater but in the real world. And thus, it is not likely that you will begin to believe that something has now happened so that – although you put on the costume with your own powers – you do not have the power to take off the costume and walk away from the role.

One might think that when you come to the point of wanting to define your own role, you do what you would do in a theater. You make up a costume that is then hanging on a rack and you write the role you are going to play. You then put on this external costume and walk onto the stage, making it easy for you to remember that this is a costume you put on and can thus take off. In reality, things are more subtle.

Imagine that instead of making an external costume that you then put on, you actually create the costume around your body. In other words, you are not perceiving that there is an external costume into which you project yourself. Instead, you are gradually building the costume around yourself, meaning that you will begin to perceive the world through the costume with no experience of putting on the costume—and thus no frame of reference for what it is like to perceive the world without the costume. Instead of abruptly entering into the costume, you gradually grow into it.

This is similar to what most people experience when they are born. You do not have a conscious memory of existing in another realm and then entering your body at birth. Instead, your sense of self is seen as having begun inside the body, and thus it becomes much easier to believe that you have no existence independently of the body.

Can you see that if you go on stage and play Hamlet – and then keep playing it for so long that you begin to believe that you really are Hamlet – then you have lost your original sense of identity? You are no longer playing a role; you are trapped in the role. You are no longer owning the role, the role owns you. And this is precisely what can happen to the Conscious You if it begins to define its own role before it is ready for this initiation. Yet the Conscious You is not changed by this; only its self-awareness is changed. And it can escape this sense of identity by returning to pure awareness.

Concept 6: Understanding the forbidden fruit

The story of the Garden of Eden talks about a forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve were not allowed to eat. The serpent deceived Eve into eating the fruit by telling her that it would make them as gods, knowing good and evil. Maitreya explains this in great depth in his book, but the essence of the teaching is that the “forbidden fruit” is linked to the process of defining your own role. It was not that this was actually “forbidden,” but because it was a very subtle and difficult initiation, it was reserved for the most advanced students. If a student took this initiation too early, it was very likely to become trapped in the role it had defined. It would then become susceptible to the belief that it could not get out of it by its own power.

Do you see why this is so? When you have the experience that you projected yourself into a predefined role, then it is easy to remember that you have an existence outside the role and can thus project yourself back out of the role. Yet when you create the role around you, then you do not have the experience of projecting yourself into it and you have no frame of reference. And thus, it becomes more difficult to realize that you have the ability to project yourself out of the role and back into pure awareness. Instead, you can begin to believe that you are not pure awareness, you ARE the role, the whole role and nothing but the role.

It was the teacher’s role to prepare a student for taking the initiation of defining its own role, yet making sure the student could transcend it after it had had enough of experiencing the world through it. How did Maitreya do this? You might think that a teacher in a spiritual schoolroom would stand and lecture in front of the whole class, and Maitreya did indeed do this. You might think the teacher would give students one-on-one sessions, where he would give them personal feedback, and Maitreya did this also.

Yet here is how Maitreya really “taught” and why he is called the Great Initiator. Take a typical new student. The student decides to try on a particular role, and it then makes choices and performs actions through that role. If you take on the role of Hamlet, you might do what the character did, or you might decide to defend your life by first striking those planning to kill you. Yet how do you then learn from your actions? You learn by evaluating your actions, but here is the subtle point.

You cannot actually evaluate the actions taken through a given role while you are still seeing the world from inside that role. Because any action you performed while seeing the world from inside the role will seem justified, necessary or the only possible choice. So you learn only by evaluating your actions based on a frame of reference that is outside the role. This frame of reference is, of course, Maitreya. Instead of you looking at your actions from inside the role, Maitreya will give you the perspective of how he looks at your actions from outside the role. And he will also give you his Spirit of Kindness, so you know that even if you did something that was not the highest choice, you are still loved by the teacher and you can simply undo your past choices by making better choices.

Yet how does Maitreya give you this frame of reference? He does not do so by telling you how he views your actions. In order to get Maitreya’s view of your actions, you have to make use of the Conscious You’s ability to project itself anywhere it can imagine. Thus, you must temporarily project yourself out of your current role and into oneness with Maitreya, and then you will be able to see your actions the way Maitreya sees them. You experience both his realism and his kindness.

Can you see the incredible wisdom of this approach—it eliminates the problem of communicating through words? Right now you are reading these words, and you clearly identify them as coming from outside your mind, outside your current role. Whether you believe I am the real Jesus or some other being, in either case you see me as outside yourself and thus you perceive my words through your mind instead of my mind. As a result, you can argue against or interpret my words based on the filter of your current role. Your view of my words will not be my view but how my words appear through the filter of your role. And this means you cannot use my words to escape your role.

How can you come to grasp the fullness of my teaching? You can never get it through words; you can get it only when the Conscious You projects itself into oneness with me, so that you directly see the teaching as I see it. Then, you have overcome the barrier of words—that are always subject to interpretation. You have also gained a frame of reference from outside your current role, which then allows you to gradually dis-identify yourself from the role. The only true way to learn from a spiritual teacher is to look beyond the teacher’s outer teaching and use it as a springboard for tuning in to his Presence, until the Conscious You can project itself into oneness with the teacher.

So a new student would be trained by Maitreya until it had proven that it could project itself into any predefined role and then still be able to project itself out of that role and into oneness with Maitreya. The reason why the student projected itself into oneness with Maitreya was that due to the density of this sphere, it was difficult for new students to project themselves into oneness with their I AM Presences. Thus, they would start out by seeking oneness with a teacher that was more tangible to them. Yet the real goal was that a student eventually would be able to go into any role and then still project itself into oneness with the Presence.

At that point – when the student could always get its frame of reference from inside itself by projecting itself into oneness with the Presence – the student had become spiritually self-sufficient. And at that point, the student was ready for the initiation of defining its own role.

Concept 7: Taking embodiment and falling into embodiment

I have said that the Conscious You is like a clear pane of glass, so light can flow through it from both directions. This also means that the Conscious You can “see” in both directions. In other words, the Conscious You can look up to the I AM Presence and can say, “I am that I AM,” meaning “I am that I AM up there.” By expanding this awareness until it becomes total oneness, the Conscious You qualifies for the ascension. We might also say that before you awaken, your I AM Presence is looking at the world through the Conscious You. And after you awaken, the I AM Presence is looking at itself through the Conscious You.

The Conscious You can look down upon earth and identify a particular role on earth. It can decide that it wants to experience what it is like to perceive the world through that role and express itself through that role. It can then project itself into a physical body for the purpose of outplaying the role. If a student has attained spiritual self-sufficiency before taking embodiment, it can never be fully identified with the body or any role on earth.

You now need to understand a subtlety. If you are working with the teacher, you will not take embodiment and you will not attempt to define your own role until you have become spiritually self-sufficient and have your I AM Presence as your internal frame of reference. Thus, you will not become stuck in any role you define for yourself.

The problem comes in when a student decides to take the initiation of defining its own role before it has become spiritually self-sufficient. In that case, it will likely separate itself from the teacher and become stuck in its role. This happens because as it defines its own role, the student begins to look at the teacher through the perception filter of the role. Thus, the student begins to project certain qualities upon the teacher, such as that the teacher is seeking to force the student or will condemn it for what it has done. And once this happens, the student is no longer willing to do what I described, namely project itself into oneness with the teacher.

This is a very important point that you can benefit from contemplating carefully. As I said, when you project yourself into oneness with Maitreya, you see your actions as he sees them, which is beyond words and the interpretation of words. You really cannot hide from this. Once you are no longer willing to do that, you can still see Maitreya and hear the outer words he speaks to you, but those words will now be interpreted through the filter of the role you have taken on. So if your role sees Maitreya as an external teacher seeking to prevent you from eating this wonderful fruit – and then wanting to condemn you for disobeying him – you will interpret anything he says in ways that confirm the image you are projecting upon him.

You will then continue to separate yourself from Maitreya until your consciousness sinks to such a level that you can no longer perceive the mystery school. And then you literally fall into a physical body. This is symbolized in the story of Adam and Eve, who after they had eaten the forbidden fruit saw that they were naked—they perceived themselves and Maitreya through the filter of the role they had created. They then sought to hide from “God,” meaning they refused to project themselves into oneness with Maitreya. Instead, they hid behind the appearances that existed only in their own minds. The story then says they were forcefully cast out of the garden and had to work at the sweat of their brow, but this is simply the perception through the separate role. In reality, this all happened internally, and beings who fell simply created an image of the angry God and wrote it into the Genesis story.

So we might say that if you first attain spiritual mastery, you take embodiment, whereas if you do not, you fall into embodiment. And when you do fall, you have no awareness of having an existence outside the separate role and the physical body, which means it becomes much more difficult for you to reclaim the sense of pure awareness and the ability to project yourself outside your current sense of self or role.

Concept 8: The difference between an external and internal frame of reference

Now for another subtle distinction, and let me say the same thing in two different ways:

Point 1: The I AM Presence resides in a realm with vibrations that are much higher than those in the four levels of the material universe. The difference is so big that it forms a kind of “observation horizon.” You know, for example, that your eyes can see only certain forms of light. If the frequencies of the light rays are higher or lower than a certain level, your eyes cannot see the light—there is a horizon beyond which your eyes cannot see.

When the I AM Presence first sends an extension of itself into the material universe, the “perception” of the Conscious You must be attuned to the vibrations of the realm into which it is sent—otherwise it simply could not focus its self-awareness in that realm. It is comparable in a crude way to a radio that must be attuned to a certain frequency in order to play a certain station.

Point 2: I have said that the Conscious You is pure awareness. So the question now becomes how this pure awareness can enter into and stay in a realm with a particular vibration. What would prevent the pure awareness from simply slipping right out of the material realm; how can it stay focused in a particular location, such as a physical body on earth?

In order to make sure the pure awareness of the Conscious You stays in a particular location, the I AM presence projects the Conscious You into a predefined role in a particular environment. For example, Maitreya’s Mystery School had a number of predefined roles. This means the Conscious You did not descend into the Mystery School as pure awareness; it descended into a particular role and thus perceived the Mystery School through that role.

The result of this is that when the Conscious You first descends, it cannot directly perceive the I AM Presence and thus cannot see itself as an extension of the Presence. That is why it needs a teacher who is in the same realm of vibrations (so it can see the teacher), yet has attained the Christ consciousness and has thus learned to accept itself as an extension of the Presence. This teacher can then guide the Conscious You to raise its self-awareness, until it can now perceive – or tune in to – both the vibrations of this world and the vibrations of its own I AM Presence. We might say it is similar to training your eyes to see both visible light and ultraviolet light.

This is the process of putting on your personal Christhood, whereby the Conscious You claim’s its oneness with the “father,” with its I AM Presence. You directly see that you are an extension of the I AM Presence and that you did not originate in the material world. You are in the world, but not of the world. When you reach this point of spiritual self-sufficiency, you have graduated from Maitreya’s Mystery school, and you therefore no longer need an external teacher. You no longer need an external frame of reference because you have the internal frame of reference of your I AM Presence.

It is important that you contemplate the difference between an external teacher and the internal connection to your I AM Presence. Let me give you a crude illustration. I have said that when you take on a certain role, the Conscious You is now seeing the world through the filter of that role. This is comparable to you putting on a pair of colored glasses; everything your eyes see is tinted by the glasses. As Paul said, you see through a glass darkly.

So when you are wearing glasses, you can only see the world through the glasses. Everything you see as being outside yourself is tinted by the glasses. This is comparable to you seeing a teacher as a being who is separate from yourself. Everything the teacher tells you is “colored” by your glasses, by the role through which the Conscious You perceives the world.

Yet let us now imagine that your eyes could “turn around” and look inward. The brain, could, so to speak, turn the eyes around and look at itself. In that case, it would not be possible to put any glasses in front of your eyes, meaning your perception could not be distorted.

Do you begin to sense what I am seeking to explain here? It is an absolutely essential point if you want to go beyond a certain level on the spiritual path. We might say that there are two distinct forms of perception available to the Conscious You. You can look outward at the world in which you are focused, or you can look inward at your I AM Presence. When you look outward at the world, you can ONLY do so through the role that the Conscious You has taken on. Which means that in order to look inward, you MUST look beyond the role.

You can line up all the spiritual seekers in the world, and you will see many people who have made sincere efforts on the spiritual path. They have studied spiritual teachings and practiced all kinds of techniques, and most of them would say with absolute certainty that they have followed the true spiritual path. Yet in reality most of them have followed the spiritual path only as they see it through the filter of the role they have taken on.

Everything they do on their spiritual path will be colored by their perception, meaning that these people will actually become more identified with their current role. The more they do in a spiritual context, the more they imprison themselves in the role that keeps them from oneness with the Presence. In contrast, the real spiritual path is that you dis-identify yourself with the current role, until the Conscious You realizes it is more than the role; it is an extension of the Presence and as such could never be separated from the Presence.

So the essential question now becomes how you can go beyond seeing the world and the spiritual path through the role that you need to transcend? The ONLY answer is that the Conscious You must realize and acknowledge that it is pure awareness. And as such, it has the ability to project itself outside its current role. In the mystery school, a student accomplished this by projecting itself into oneness with Maitreya. Thus, the student would see its actions as Maitreya saw them, as opposed to seeing its actions through the filter of the role that caused it to take those actions.

Yet as the student grew, Maitreya taught it to also look inward and come to see its actions as the I AM Presence saw them. Do you see the difference? You are an individualized being, and so is Maitreya. Maitreya looks at the world from a particular viewpoint. It can be valuable for you to experience Maitreya’s viewpoint because it gives you a frame of reference from outside your own role, your mental box. Yet in the end, this is not the ultimate perspective. You are not an extension of Maitreya; you are an extension of your I AM Presence. So what you really need is to see the world and your actions from the perspective of your Presence. This is how you and your Presence will grow.

Yet this is also subtle. Your I AM Presence is NOT an external being; it is not separate from the Conscious You. In fact, many students have set back their progress by seeing their I AM Presence much like the theistic God, namely as a perfect being up there in heaven. In reality, you will never reach your I AM Presence as long as you see it as outside of or separate from yourself. Your Presence will not speak to you as a booming voice coming out of a burning bush. Your Presence will not even speak to you in words, and this is another important point.

Words are of this world, and thus they are linked to and limited by the level of vibration in this world. There are many concepts that simply cannot be communicated through words. It is, however, possible that you can have an impulse that is sent to you from your Presence, and it comes through to your conscious mind as a message given in words. This is comparable to how I am giving this discourse through this messenger. Yet it is essential to understand that ANY message given to you through words will be somewhat distorted by your role. Thus, again, what you really need is to learn to project yourself into oneness with your I AM Presence, so that you see the world as your Presence sees it. Words are needed only when there is distance, whereas the experience of oneness is beyond distance.

We might say that there is a phase or level of the spiritual path where you need to see your Presence as outside yourself and you need to seek to make contact with it as you perceive it. Yet in order to rise beyond that level, you need to go beyond even the desire to have external communication, especially about personal decisions you make. You need to be willing to make your decisions and then project yourself into oneness with the Presence to get the ultimate feed-back.

In other words, as long as you approach the spiritual path through the outward perception, you will never go beyond a certain level. Only when you learn to use the inward perception will you rise to the level of beginning the real path to personal Christhood. Yet in order to step on to the path of Christhood, you need to begin to understand anti-christ.

Concept 9: The difference between Christ and anti-christ

I have said that in order to keep itself focused in the material world, the Conscious You must have a “role” it is playing. It starts projecting itself into predefined roles, but then it begins to create a role “around itself.” There now comes a fundamental distinction. If the Conscious You follows the teacher’s directions, it will not start defining its own role until it has attained spiritual self-sufficiency, meaning the Conscious You accepts itself as an extension of the I AM Presence. It has an internal frame of reference and needs no external frame of reference.

Why is this important? Because when you project yourself into a predefined role, you have an external frame of reference. You know the role was not defined by you; it was something you entered into from without. Yet when you define your own role, you will – as the role becomes fully defined – lose any external frame of reference. You will not see the role as something you took on; you will remember no existence outside the role, much like most people on earth remember no existence before birth. So the process of defining your own role can be – and has been in mystical teachings – described as a spiritual death, as a forgetting or a sleep. The purpose is, of course, that going through this process is a greater challenge and thus leads to greater growth.

So once you have lost any external memory or frame of reference, how do you then “awaken” from this death or forgetting? You do so by referring to your internal frame of reference, namely your I AM Presence. When you see yourself as an extension of the Presence, the role you define will also be an extension of the individuality of the Presence. You will therefore have a memory that your role was defined as an extension of something greater than the Conscious You. And by seeking to know this something, the Conscious You can gradually awaken to the full awareness that it is an extension of the Presence, and that it is here only to be an open door for the Presence—to experience the world and to express its individuality in raising the world.

My point is that when you define a role based on the sense of oneness with the Presence, the role itself cannot be seen as being a separate role. Thus, from inside the role, you cannot see yourself as a separate being. You can never come to believe that you are a God who can define what is true, as I will explain later. You know there is something beyond the role, a higher purpose, a higher truth, and by seeking greater clarity, you will gradually reawaken.

Yet what happens when a student decides to start defining its own role before the teacher has agreed that it is ready? Such a student obviously cannot define the role in oneness with the teacher, and it has not yet attained sufficient oneness with the Presence. The result is that such a student cannot define its role based on the consciousness of Christ. The consciousness of Christ is the connecting or unifying principle in creation, the oneness behind all diverse forms.

So the student’s only option is to define its role based on the consciousness of anti-christ, yet here is another subtle distinction. I realize that many people from a Christian background will associate anti-christ with something obviously and deliberately evil, such as Satan or the devil. In reality, anti-christ is not actually evil; it is simply the neutral effect of the fact that in an unascended sphere “matter” is yet so dense that it obscures the underlying reality that everything is created out of the Creator’s Being.

In other words, when you experience an unascended sphere from the inside, you cannot directly perceive that the matter in the sphere is created out of spiritual light, so you see no connecting link between the many different forms. You think forms really are separate and that they are either separated from God’s kingdom or even exist independently.

So the important point here is that Christ is the consciousness which sees the underlying oneness behind all form, and anti-christ is a consciousness which cannot see this. Thus, anti-christ is neither evil nor good. Anti-christ is simply unreal, it is based on an illusion, it is an illusion. Yet precisely because it is an illusion, it also allows the Conscious You to have an experience that it could not have through the consciousness of Christ. This is the experience that you are a separate being, which means – among other things – that you can experience what it is like to raise yourself above other beings or that you can do something to others without harming yourself.

As a crude illustration, consider the many different roles you can play on earth. If you see yourself as an extension of the Presence, you know all life is one. Thus, you would choose roles that do not violate the free will of others, such as teachers, spiritual guides, healers, inventors, writers, actors, etcetera. Yet you would not chose any role that does violate the free will of others, such as a pirate, dictator or criminal. In order to “justify” choosing such a role, you must use the mind of anti-christ to hide that what you do to others you are also doing to yourself.

Concept 10: Why there is nothing good or evil in the mind of Christ

Because of the mental images promoted by official Christianity, it will be difficult for people from a Christian background to accept the reality of anti-christ. The reason is that their view of both Christ and anti-christ is actually created through the illusion of anti-christ as a deliberate deception, aimed at keeping people trapped in the consciousness of anti-christ.

The first problem many people have is to understand that in the consciousness of Christ, there is no distinction between good and evil, there is no value judgment. The reason why this is so difficult to understand is that most people have not had an experience of oneness. As I said, the Conscious You is pure awareness, and pure awareness is oneness. When you experience pure awareness, you experience awareness with no differentiation. This is what the Creator experiences.

Now consider that in the oneness that the Creator is, there is no possibility of creating extensions of the Creator who could grow in self-awareness. In order for there to be self-aware, individualized beings and in order for them to grow, there must be a world that – while perceived from the inside – is seen as being apart from oneness. Thus, the world that has distinct forms is created for one purpose only, namely to facilitate the growth in self-awareness by providing individual beings with a contrast to oneness.

We might say that the Creator projects an extension of itself outside of oneness, where the being comes to believe in the illusion that it is separate from its source. So by having experiences in the illusory world of separate forms and then awakening from the illusion of separation, such a being grows in self-awareness. It then returns to oneness with its source while retaining its individuality as a being with the creator consciousness.

So the entire purpose of the world of form is to give self-aware beings an experience that is in contrast to oneness. It is to allow such beings to go through the forgetting and then awaken from it.

So what we now see is that the consciousness of anti-christ is the illusion of separation, and this is what allows beings to go through the forgetting. The consciousness of Christ is the element that makes sure that no matter how far a being goes into the illusion of separation, it can never lose the option to come back to oneness. We might say that anti-christ is what allows you to go into the illusion of separation – it creates this illusion – and Christ is what empowers you to free yourself from the illusion. Take note of what I just said. Christ does not free you from illusion; it gives you the option to FREE YOURSELF.

So do you begin to see the point? Anything and everything created out of the mind of anti-christ is simply an illusion. Yet there is nothing inherently wrong, bad, evil or sinful about this illusion. Its purpose is to give you a contrasting experience, and anything that can happen in the illusion of anti-christ serves this purpose. Thus, the mind of Christ does not see anti-christ as bad or evil. It simply sees it as an illusion.

Now comes the essential point. The Law of Free Will allows a being to go into the illusion of anti-christ, and once there, it is impossible to predict how far down into the spiral of selfishness a being might go. Yet no matter how far a being goes, this is still within the Law of Free Will, and it still provides a contrasting experience. Thus, the mind of Christ would never look at any being as beyond redemption. It would never judge any being as having become so bad or evil that it could not return to oneness.

On the contrary, the mind of Christ is created to make sure that no matter how far a being goes into separation, it could never lose the option to come back to oneness. How is this accomplished? It is done because nothing could ever be created without the mind of Christ. Oneness is reality, and thus the mind of Christ is reality. As the Gospel of John says, “Without him was not anything made which was made.” This means that no form could ever be created without the mind of Christ.

The important point is that the reality of Christ is found within everything in the world of form. As I said, if men would not defend Christ, then the stones would cry out. So even by looking at a rock, you can – by going beyond sensory perception – see the underlying oneness, as science has done by discovering molecules, atoms and subatomic particles.

My point is that no matter how dense matter might seem, it only seems that way when perceived through a particular role, a role defined based on the illusion of separation. And this is why, no matter what kind of role you have defined for yourself out of separation, there will always be something you can perceive from within that role that will give you the option to transcend the role. No matter how closed a mental box you have defined, there will always be something inside that box that can – if you acknowledge and make use of it – empower the Conscious You to reconnect with pure awareness and thus transcend the box.

Yet on the other hand, most of what you see from inside your mental box will seem to confirm the reality that your box is real, and thus you really are a separate being. The reason for this is that a role that is defined based on the illusion of separation was defined to confirm the “reality” of the separate self. Which really means that when you define a role based on separation, you are not simply defining a role; you are actually defining your own universe in which you are the central figure. You are the “God” in your world, and only you define what is good and evil in your personal universe.

Concept 11: What it means to be “as gods, knowing good and evil”

When you define your own role based on the consciousness of Christ, who or what is the center of that world? Well, it is, of course, your I AM Presence and the important point is this: You are still perceiving the world from inside your role, and your role will not give you the full, unobstructed view of the world, yet you do have a connection to something outside your role, you have a frame of reference that there is something outside your role. Thus, you are not fully identified with the role, which truly means this: You are not fully convinced that the way you see things through the role is an absolutely reliable perception. You know you are wearing glasses that distort your vision. You might not yet be able to see that the glasses are yellow and thus the sky is not really green, but at least you know you that your perception is not the same as reality.

In contrast, when you define your own role before you have a connection to your I AM Presence, you have no frame of reference from outside the role. Thus, you will think that your perception – the way you see life through the colored glasses of the role – is not only reality; it is the ONLY way to see reality. You deny that you are wearing yellow glasses, and you are convinced that the sky really is green.

Do you begin to see the point? In the first case, you acknowledge that there is a reality that is outside your role and cannot be defined by you, whereas in the latter case, you truly do not recognize any reality or authority outside the way you perceive the world.

I know this is a bit tricky to see. For example, many Christians would immediately – if they were ever to read this – claim that they too recognize a reality outside their role, namely God. Yet the hypocrisy of this claim is immediately proven by the fact that they are firmly convinced that their religion – based on the infallibility of the Bible – has defined what that reality is like.

You see, when you are NOT blinded by your role, you recognize that your perception is limited. Thus, you realize that until you completely transcend your role, you will have to continually seek to expand your vision of reality. Thus, you can never allow yourself to feel that your current understanding and your current perception is all there is to know about reality. In contrast, when you do identify with your role, you either do not understand the need to “see” beyond your perception or you deny the need to do this. You think your perception of life is the only possible one or the only right one.

Do you see what this means? What you perceive through ANY role is NOT reality; it is a mental image of reality created inside your mind. You may believe that you are a religious person and that God is the center of your world view. Yet it is not the real God that is the center of your world; it is a graven image of “god” created from the illusion of separation.

Now, if you step back from this, you will see the deeper reality. Once you step into a particular role, you WILL “see” life through the filter of that role. There is no way around that, and indeed seeing the world from inside a role is precisely what gives you an opportunity to grow. However, the growth comes from first seeing through the role and then freeing your vision, so you see life from the perspective of your I AM presence while still in the role. And this means the growth only comes when the Conscious You begins to see beyond the role.

When you are NOT identified with your role, you will consciously acknowledge that there is a reality outside the role and that you need to connect to it. When you are identified with the role, you think your perception through the role shows you reality as it really is. So in the former case, the center of your world is a reality that is outside the perception of your role, whereas in the latter case, the center of your world is a mental image created from inside your role. Thus, in the latter case, YOU are the “god” of your world. You are the being who has accepted the belief that you are capable of defining reality based on your perception. Meaning that YOU have now taken it upon yourself to be as a “god” who can define what is good and evil.

Now, this is not to say that every human being on earth has defined his or her personal God or view of reality. Most people have taken over a view of God and reality that was defined by beings who seek to control humankind. Nevertheless, what each person has indeed done is to accept the approach to life that you can define truth based on your perception and that “reality” can be fit into your mental box. In contrast, those who are on the Way of Christ realize that they do not have the capacity to define truth—they have to find truth. Likewise, reality will never fit into or conform to their mental box—they have to transcend their mental boxes in order to experience reality without any filter.

Do you see the essential difference? In the first case, people have no frame of reference from outside the mental boxes created by their roles. They fail to see that the role defines how they see the world and thus their perception does not show them the world; it shows them their role. And as long as people fail to see this, they cannot transcend the role, because everything they “see” through the role will confirm the validity of the role. A classical catch-22.

So where does good and evil come from? Well, the Creator is one, and in oneness there is no differentiation. In order to create any distinct forms, oneness must be differentiated into more than one. The Creator begins by manifesting itself as two polarities, namely the expanding force (the masculine) and the contracting force (the feminine). To the mind of Christ, these are simply two manifestations of the one, so they are not separate or opposite. They do not oppose or cancel out each other; they compliment each other and through their interaction, new life is created.

Yet to the mind of anti-christ, these two are divisions, they are separate, they are opposites. They must cancel out each other, and this illusory view is what gives birth to the idea that one of the divisions is right and the other is wrong, one is good and the other is evil.

Do you see the essential distinction? In the mind of Christ, there are no opposites. Christ does not even see anti-christ as its own opposite. Christ always sees the reality of oneness, and thus it sees that anti-christ – and every division that springs from it – is simply an illusion; it has no reality and no permanence. Unreality is NOT the opposite of reality, because unreality can NEVER cancel out or even oppose reality. That which is real cannot be affected by that which is unreal.

The Christ mind sees that good and evil are products of the unreality of anti-christ. It sees that both what anti-christ defines as good and what it defines as evil are simply illusions. In the mind of Christ, there is no good or evil; there is only that which is real and that which is unreal. Oneness is all that is ultimately real, and thus truth is that all differentiated forms are expressions of the underlying oneness of the Creator.

Nothing is truly separated from the Creator; separation is only an illusion. Separation does not even have an independent existence. It is not correct – as the mind of anti-christ thinks – that the world can be divided into two separate spheres. There is no world that is separate from the Creator. Separation “exists” only in the mind of a being who is perceiving the world through the filter of the mind of anti-christ. It is not a real condition; it is a PERCEIVED condition, an appearance. And it can exist only in the mind of a being who is convinced that it is a “god” who has the right and the capacity to define what is real and what is unreal. What beings can possibly have such spiritual blindness?

Concept 12: The mind of anti-christ and the force of anti-christ

We have explained the fall in greater detail elsewhere, but here is a brief summary. In the first spheres that were created, no being made use of the consciousness of anti-christ to define its own role. Yet as the spheres became progressively more dense, it happened that in the fourth sphere, a number of beings did become self-deceived by the illusion of separation. These beings were allowed to define their roles based on separation, as that is what the Law of Free Will mandates.

Now, again, these beings were not what most people would call evil. They were actually very dedicated to raising their sphere and they were eager to excel in anything they did. Nevertheless, they gradually became so blinded by the illusion of separation that they started believing they had the capacity to define reality. They no longer understood God’s plan for raising their sphere but thought they were so wise that they could define what God’s plan should be. At the same time they started believing that they were superior to other beings in their sphere, and thus they sought after high positions. They were allowed to assume such positions, because it was hoped that by outplaying this desire, they would eventually have had enough of the experience and thus be able to transcend the roles they had defined for themselves.

After a long period of time, the sphere came to the point where it was ready to ascend, the reason being that the vast majority of the beings in that sphere had reached the point of their personal ascensions. They had done this by transcending their roles and reconnecting with their Presences. Unfortunately, the beings who had defined roles in which they saw themselves as superior, had not even begun to transcend those roles. Instead, they had become more identified with them and firmly believed their mental images were real and that reality was the way they saw it. It was therefore a great shock for these beings to be confronted with the reality that their sphere was ready to ascend but they were not. Suddenly, they saw that they were lacking – they saw they were “naked” – and that many of the beings they considered to be below them had surpassed them in spiritual development.

Now, at this point, these beings had the perfect opportunity to start the process of transcending their roles. There were some among them who took advantage of this, and they were helped to make quick progress, so they could ascend with their sphere. Yet there were also some who chose that they would not admit that their perception of themselves and the world was out of touch with reality. They had such spiritual pride that they were not willing to even consider that their perception was limited, and they took the option of rebelling against the entire process of the ascension. Thus, they could not ascend with their sphere, and they instead descended or fell into the sphere that was being created as the previous one ascended. In previous teachings, we have called these beings for fallen angels or fallen beings.

There is much more to understand about this topic than even Maitreya revealed in his book, but for know I want to make one important point. It is not actually correct that these beings fell as one, coherent whole. It is not correct that there was one supreme leader, such as Lucifer, who was the head of all fallen beings. To understand this, you need to see a subtle, but all-important distinction.

The Creator is oneness. In oneness there can be no divisions. Thus, in the consciousness of Christ, there are no divisions. Divisions exist only as illusions in the consciousness of anti-christ, yet that means the consciousness of anti-christ can never be a unified whole. Beings who are blinded by this mindset can never come together in true unity, based on the vision of the underlying oneness behind all distinct forms. They can seemingly come together in a forced unity, but only when they oppose someone else who is also trapped in separation. Thus, the fallen beings will always be split into at least two factions that are fighting each other.

As I said, the Creator manifested itself as two polarities, namely expanding and contracting. Seen from the consciousness of separation, these appear to be opposites. So when beings fell in the fourth sphere, some fell because they perverted the expanding force and some fell because they perverted the contracting force. So from the very beginning, you had a division of fallen beings into two factions. Each of these factions has been divided further, but the important point is that these fallen beings do form a force of anti-christ. Nevertheless, it is a force that is and always will be divided.

Although there are many divisions, we can talk about two overall categories:

• The beings who perverted the contracting force of the mother are those who are completely selfish. They simply want to do what they want to do, regardless of what consequences it has for others, for themselves or for the raising of their sphere. They are completely selfish and they are ready to force others in any way possible.
• The beings who perverted the expanding force of the father are also selfish, but they are not completely blinded by it. Thus, they are more calculating. Their ultimate goal is indeed to force other people, but they realize that overt or physical force is not the ultimate way to control people. Thus, they are seeking to deceive people into following them.

Can you now put these two together and see the overall effect? Can you see that by acting out their personal tendencies, these two groups of fallen beings have indeed become as “gods” and they have defined what is good and what is evil? The first category are beings whom most people would see as obviously evil. Yet the second category are beings whom most people would see as good.

The first group are beings who seek to force people, but they also seek to deceive people with power, as for example Satanism does. And thus, they have formed a force that most people can see as evil. The second group have taken advantage of this to set themselves up as the opposite of the force of evil. We might say that the first group is saying, “Follow us because of what you can do for yourself,” whereas the other group is saying, “Follow us because of what you can do for God” (or any other cause).

So can you see the net result? Both what people see as evil and what they see as good is defined based on the consciousness of anti-christ, which is the only mind in which the division into good and evil can seem real. Thus, people are presented with the distorted view that they only have two options. They either submit to the force of evil, or they obey the force of good. Yet the stark reality is that in either case, they are following the leadership of the fallen beings. And in no case will that lead you toward Christhood or the ascension.

No matter which side in this dualistic struggle you are on, you will not win your salvation. You will only tie yourself to the struggle that can go on for a very long time—until your sphere is ready to ascend as a whole and all beings will be faced with the ultimate choice: will you choose the reality of Christ or will you continue to choose any of the unrealities of anti-christ? This is the choice described in Deuteronomy 30:19:

I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.

Concept 13: Why the mind of anti-christ is subject to the second law of thermodynamics

What is life and what is death? Life is the process of growing in self-awareness, whereas death is the process of going deeper and deeper into the illusion of separation. The point is this: once you define your own role and become blinded by it, you will be unreachable for a spiritual teacher. As I said, once you decided to hide from Maitreya, he could do nothing to reach you.

So we now see that the consciousness of anti-christ creates a catch-22 from which there seemingly is no way out. Once you are inside a role defined through the consciousness of anti-christ, the role will distort your entire perception of life. As long as you are unaware that the Conscious You is pure awareness and has the ability to project itself outside the role (or as long as you refuse to use this ability), there is no way for you to escape the illusion—or is there?

Well, if you cannot project yourself outside the mental box created by your perception, the only chance of escape is that your mental box breaks down, that your world view is proven wrong—and thus you begin to reason that there must be something lacking in your world view. Do you see the point? The Creator was quite aware of the potential consequences of giving unascended beings free will. Yet the Creator also knew that the way you grow in self-awareness is by making choices based on your current sense of self and then experiencing the consequences of those choices.

Thus, the Creator designed the material universe as a giant feed-back machine. You can get feed-back in two ways. You can get it by projecting the Conscious You into the mind of a spiritual teacher. Or you can get it by having the cosmic mirror reflect back to you physical conditions that outpicture your state of consciousness. This is what we have called the school of hard knocks.

We can also describe this by saying that God’s law is designed in such a way that nothing can stand still. You are either moving upward towards Christ consciousness by using the power of God within you, or you are being pulled down into the mind of anti-christ by a force built into the material world. This force is what scientists call the second law of thermodynamics, and it will break down any structure in a closed system. A closed system is obviously a mind that is trapped inside its own perception and refuses to see beyond it.

So the second law can be called the force of death, but it is actually not an evil or bad force. It is truly a safety mechanism that ensures that the Conscious You – which is pure awareness and as such is not defined by any form – cannot forever remain trapped in identification with form, with a certain sense of a separate self.

The subtle distinction here is that once you see the world through the filter of anti-christ, the force behind the second law will indeed be seen as a threat to you. It will be seen as a force that is seeking to take away your sense of life, namely the sense of a separate self defined by your role. And the psychological consequence of this is that once you define your own role based on the consciousness of anti-christ, the inevitable companion is the fear of death.

As long as you are working with a spiritual teacher, you have no fear of death. Why would you, when you know that the Conscious You can never be trapped in any form and when you see yourself as an extension of an immortal spiritual being? You know you are free to experiment with any role you can create and that you can always project yourself back out of any role that could possibly be defined in matter.

It is only when you create a role before becoming spiritually self-sufficient that you become fully blinded by the role. And it is only then that the Conscious You can “forget” that is is pure awareness and can thus begin to fear that it is trapped in the role and cannot get out by its own power.

My point is that the original fallen beings in their spiritual pride believed that God was restricting their free will. They thought that it was only in rebelling against God and God’s law that they claimed their true freedom to make any choice they wanted. This illusion was caused by the fact that it now seemed to them that they had claimed the power of a god, namely the right to define what was right and wrong—meaning they could always define a standard according to which their own actions were right.

What they did not realize was that in separating themselves from the force of life, they could not escape having an undeniable fear of death. And thus, instead of winning some state of ultimate freedom, they condemned themselves to a prison in which all of their thoughts and actions are aimed at only one goal, namely to alleviate the fear of death to the point where they can live with it. This has some very important ramifications that will shed a new light on virtually any human activity.

Concept 14: The concept of sin and the false path to salvation

Once a being has fallen by deliberately rebelling against God’s law, it faces two “life-and-death” considerations. One is to alleviate the fear of death by creating some illusion that makes it seem like it can cheat death. The other is how to actually maintain a continuous existence in the realm into which it has fallen. Let us look at the latter.

I have said that the Conscious You is pure awareness. It is sent into the world of form, which is a realm in which everything is created from energy. This energy comes from the Creator’s Being, meaning that the energy out of which the world of form is made was not produced inside the world of form and thus has no independent existence. On a personal level, this means that the Conscious You needs energy in order to do anything in this world. And it gets this energy from the I AM Presence. The Conscious You cannot produce energy; it can only direct the stream of energy flowing from the Presence.

I earlier gave the illustration of a flexible tube with a lens at one end. So the energy from the Presence flows through the tube, meaning that the amount of energy that the Conscious You can receive is in direct proportion to the diameter of the tube. When the Conscious You begins to act through a separate role defined through the consciousness of anti-christ, its actions will inevitably be selfish. Thus, they will often violate the free will of other beings, and this causes a reduction in the amount of energy it receives from the Presence.

This is the principle I described in the parable about the talents. If you use the energy you receive to raise up all life, you will receive more. If you use it to raise yourself and put others down, you will receive less. The consequence is that if you continue to violate the free will of others, you will eventually come to a point where you receive only enough energy to keep your physical body alive. At that point you will feel like you have no power, and you will be so overwhelmed by the fear of death that you sink into depression. The original fallen beings quickly got themselves to that point, but they found ways to “cheat death,” so to speak. They did this by stealing energy from other beings who had a wider connection to their Presences.

How do the fallen beings steal energy? There are myriad specific ways, but two main categories. The beings that most people see as evil will steal energy through force. For example, if another person makes you angry, you will take some of the energy you received from your Presence and lower it to the vibration of anger. The other person – or disembodied dark forces – can then absorb this energy. Another example is war. When blood is spilled and when negative emotions are generated in a battle, energy is released. Both people and dark forces can absorb this energy. When they absorb enough energy, they get to feel “drunk” and this gives them the sense that they are powerful, invincible and have cheated death. This feeling will last for a time, and then they will have to steal more energy in order to get another “high.”

The other main category is represented by the beings that most people see as good, and they deceive people into voluntarily giving them energy because it is seen as serving a greater cause. In other words, when you are forced to release energy by the “evil” beings, you know you were forced. Yet when you are deceived by the “good” beings, you don’t feel forced and often feel like you are contributing to a good cause, perhaps even to God’s ultimate cause. What is that cause?

What the “good” fallen beings have done is to create an entirely false view about who God is and what is God’s plan for this universe. They have created the illusion that the universe is locked in an epic struggle between God on one side and the devil – seen as God’s opposite – on the other side. In doing this, the “good” fallen beings have skillfully used the “evil” fallen beings, and they have projected that they are the force of evil. They have then defined “God” as the remote being in the sky, who cannot work directly in this world. Thus, this remote God needs an intermediary in this world, and the “good” fallen beings have then blatantly set themselves up as that intermediary.

In other words, the most deceitful fallen beings claim that they are God’s representatives on earth and that they are the only way for people to attain salvation. The way to secure this salvation is to support the “good” fallen beings in their ongoing struggle against the “evil” fallen beings. For surely, it is God’s ultimate cause that the forces of evil are destroyed, meaning it is justified by God to use even the most evil means to destroy evil. And when these “good” fallen beings have enough followers, they also receive their light, become drunk and feel they have cheated death.

Yet how do the fallen beings get people to believe in this ruse? They do so by making skillful use of the very force that drives themselves, namely the fear of death. As I said, once you do not have a conscious connection to your I AM Presence, you WILL be subject to the fear of death. No being can live with this, so every being has to find a way to reduce the fear of death to a level it can live with—and this is how you create your own world view, your own “universe.” The “good” fallen beings have created the concept of sin, which reinforces the fear of death. Yet they also offer people what seems like an easy way out, namely to follow the “good” fallen beings and do everything they say.

In the fourth sphere, there were beings who had set themselves up in seemingly powerful positions, and in order to reinforce their sense of power, they had attracted followers to themselves. Who were these followers? They were beings who were not willing to take responsibility for their own ascension and make their own decisions. So what developed was a co-dependent relationship between the beings who wanted to be powerful and the beings who did not want to make decisions. And when the leaders fell, many of the followers blindly followed them, believing in the various “justifications” the leaders gave for not ascending.

This pattern of the blind following the blind has continued to this day, and over the millennia, many other beings have been pulled into blindly following the blind leaders in church and state. Yet can you see that the basis for why the “good” fallen beings have such power over their followers is precisely the illusion they have created? This illusion basically says the following: Something went wrong with God’s plan for the universe, and God has given us the authority and the duty to fix it!

Yet can you begin to see through this smokescreen? In reality, nothing went wrong with God’s plan. It is only in the mind of anti-christ that you find the concept that something has gone wrong and that any unascended being has the vision or the power to fix it. In the mind of Christ, it is perfectly clear that God’s plan for the universe is perfectly intact and that everything is proceeding according to the plan. The illusion of an epic struggle is entirely a creation of the mind of anti-christ. There is no epic struggle between God and the devil, for God is real and the devil is unreal—and the mind of Christ knows that that which is real cannot be affected by that which is unreal.

Thus, the struggle is not between God and the devil, but between two groups of fallen beings, one being so drunk with power they actually think they can threaten God’s plan and the other so drunk with pride that they think they know better than God how the universe works or should work.

Choose ye this day whom ye will serve. Will you serve this version of unreality or will you serve that version of unreality? Or will you finally awaken from the illusion and start projecting yourself beyond the entire mental box created by the mind of anti-christ?

If you want to transcend illusion, then let me give you a few more concepts.

Concept 15: Transcending the desire to judge after the appearance

I have said that when you create a role based on separation, you define a world view, and you are convinced it is the way the world really works. You think you have created a universe that works according to your role.

As you then interact with the material world through this filter, you will have a selective perception, meaning you will tend to look for things that confirm your world view and ignore or discredit things that contradict your world view. You do this because as long as you have the belief that your world view is intact, you can alleviate the fear of death by thinking you can be saved without transcending your current role. You will think you are in the process of perfecting your separate role, until it eventually becomes acceptable to God and is allowed into his kingdom.

So my point is that your world view forms a mental box, and the Conscious You has entered into this mental box without realizing that it is in a mental box. Thus, it does not understand that the box distorts the way it perceives everything—as long as it does not make use of its ability to project itself outside the box and get a different perspective.

Therefore, once inside the mental box, you will be absolutely convinced that your perception is accurate, meaning you will think your mental box gives you a standard for judging what is true and false, what is real and unreal, what is good and evil. You believe that you have an infallible standard for judging the world, and you believe that what you see from inside the box is the way the world really is. You may even begin to think that your real task in this world is to force all other people to accept YOUR standard, instead of realizing that your real task is to transcend your standard and reconnect to the perspective of your I AM Presence.

So can you now synthesize what I have told you earlier and begin to sense why this is a fallacy? I have said that your I AM Presence sends the Conscious You into the material world in order to experience what it is like to “see” the world from the inside. In order to descend into the material world, the Conscious You must define a role through which it can interact with this world. The Conscious You has complete free will for how it defines this role, it even has the right to define the role based on the illusion of separation. Doing this is not a sin, it is not wrong and it is not evil. However, the consequence is that it becomes more difficult for the Conscious You to awaken itself from the role.

Can you see why this is so? Imagine you define a role based on the mind of Christ. Once the role is fully defined, the Conscious You will go through the forgetting. You will now see the world from inside the mental box of the role (yes, even a role defined based on the mind of Christ will give you a limited perspective). Yet you will have at least some sense that the perception you have is not complete or accurate. You will sense that there must be more to understand or “see” about life than what you currently see. And thus, you can never be fully convinced that your perception of the world is an ultimate reality. In other words, you will not be completely convinced that you can judge after appearances, you will be striving for the higher judgment of the Christ mind. As I said:

Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment. (John 7:24)

15Ye judge after the flesh; I judge no man.
16And yet if I judge, my judgment is true: for I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me. (John, 8)

Can you see what I was attempting to teach with these passages? I was saying that people who have not started to acknowledge that there is a reality outside their mental boxes will inevitably judge after the flesh. They will judge based on how the world appears from inside their mental box, and they will not realize that what they see from inside the box is not reality; it is only an appearance, Thus, what they see is not real, it is a mental image created from within the mind of anti-christ.

Can you see the irony here? People who are blinded by the illusion of anti-christ cannot see reality, they see only a mental image, an appearance. Yet they are absolutely convinced that this mirage is real. And thus, they believe they can judge what is real and unreal based on appearances that are completely unreal.

Can you see why this mechanism has given rise to the false path to salvation? It makes people think that the path to salvation is to establish the authority of their particular illusion. The fallen beings think that if they can get all people on earth to accept their illusion, then God will have to allow it a continued existence in this world. They are trying to alleviate the fear of death by using the very appearances that gave rise to the fear of death. They are trying to make the entire world of form and God fit into their little mental boxes. They are trying to become immortal by elevating mortality to the appearance of immortality.

I realize this can be tricky to see, but can you at least begin to sense the need for a shift in perspective? There is something completely unrealistic in thinking that you can enter into a role for the deliberate purpose of gaining a limited perspective on the world, and then once inside that role, what you see can actually give you the fullness of what there is to know about the world. It is like looking through a microscope in order to study the inside of an anthill, yet believing that the microscope can also show you the reality of the most distant galaxies.

You now face the most basic of all human choices, the choice between life and death. For truly, in this article I have set before you life and death. So will you choose to defend your current perception of the world, insisting that it has to be accurate and seeking for ways to prove this? Or will you step onto the way of Christ and begin to look for ways to “see outside your mental box” and gain a wider perspective on the world? Will you continue to blindly follow the false teachers of death, or will you open your mind to the true teachers of life?

Concept 16: How you start going beyond your perception

How can you begin to escape the catch-22 represented by your role? Well, you have to come to a point where you see the need to go beyond the role. One way to get to that point is through the second law of thermodynamics – the school of hard knocks – which will break down your closed mental box. This is because any mental box based on the mind of anti-christ will generate resistance, and the more you resist the resistance, the more resistance you generate. Eventually, the resistance will become greater than your power to resist, and your sense of equilibrium, your sense of having cheated death, breaks down.

Normally, such a breakdown gives people the realization that something needs to change, but because of the many false teachings spread by the fallen beings, few people understand exactly what needs to change. Thus, people go into a pattern of seeking to get away from something, and this just creates another cycle of increasing resistance. The real way to get out of the old pattern is to realize that what needs to change is your world view, the way you perceive life. It is precisely the way you see life that generates the resistance, so until your perception changes, nothing will really change.

So how do you change your perception? There are two ways:

• 1. Self-observation. You can use the reasoning mind to look at yourself and your beliefs and then begin to question whether your perception of the world is accurate and consistent. For example, in medieval times, most people uncritically accepted the appearance that the earth was flat. Yet a few people used the reasoning mind to question this perception, and they then arrived at the conclusion that the common perception simply could not be accurate. One courageous person then set sail across the uncharted ocean to prove that his reasoning was true.
• 2. You can make use of the Conscious You’s ability to project itself anywhere it can imagine. You can begin to increase your understanding of your I AM Presence, until you are able to step outside your mental box and get at least a glimpse of how the world looks from the perspective of your Presence. This will then give you the most valuable frame of reference, because such a mystical experience is not as likely to be colored by your mental box as is your reasoning mind.

By using both of these tools in combination, you can gradually come to see the inaccuracies and inconsistencies of your current mental box. You can then expand your mental box, until you gain the perspective of the Christ mind. You then realize that the Conscious You is more than your mental box, which means the Conscious You will not cease to exist if it gives up the mental box, if it lets the separate self die.

Do you see why this is important?

Concept 17: The ultimate catch-22

The Conscious You is pure awareness, but when it creates a role based on the illusion of separation, it loses the awareness that it is pure awareness. We might say that the Conscious You ceases to be conscious, and it forgets its true nature and origin. This is why people who have not had the experience of pure awareness can deny or argue with the teachings on the Conscious You. Once you experience pure awareness, you see there is nothing to argue about. You could call the Conscious You by other names and you could describe it in other ways, but you have experienced that beyond any separate self – any self that has a specific form – there is pure awareness. Thus, you know that the real key to knowing reality is to stop arguing at the level of words and instead project yourself into oneness with your Presence.

The forgetting of pure awareness is what makes you subject to the fear of death. You think that if you are a specific self, you could die – which is true in the sense that no form can ever be permanent – and in order to deal with this fear, you reinforce the separate self and seek to perfect it according to a standard defined by the mind of anti-christ. You begin to believe that the separate self can attain permanency, that it can become immortal, and this is precisely what the fallen beings have taken advantage of in defining a false path to salvation. They promise you that if you follow them, the separate self will become immortal, it will be allowed into the kingdom of God.

The stark reality is, of course, that the separate self must die and the Conscious You must be “reborn” into the same pure awareness that it had when it first descended. That is why I said that unless you become as little children, you shall in no wise enter the kingdom. I also said that only the self that has descended from heaven can ascend back to heaven. And that is why I said that if you seek to save your – separate – life, you shall lose it, but if you are willing to lose your life for my sake – willing to lose the separate self in order to come back into oneness – you shall find eternal life. Only a formless self can attain immortality, and only the Conscious You is formless.

The problem is that when you first begin to suspect that this is so, your fear of death will prevent you from acknowledging the truth of this. The reason is that as long as the Conscious You is still identified with the separate self, it will believe that if it allows the separate self to die, it will die itself. In other words, the Conscious You that has forgotten it is pure awareness will think that if the self that has form dies, the Conscious You will also cease to exist. It thinks that if it has no awareness of a distinct self, it will have no self-awareness.

This is a catch-22 that has tripped up many sincere religious people and spiritual seekers. Is there a way out? Yes, but not through reason. The ONLY way out is that the Conscious You begins to experience itself as pure awareness and then begins to see itself as an extension of the I AM Presence. When this shift in self-awareness occurs, the Conscious You will know – will experience through gnosis – that it is beyond any form – any self in this world – and thus it cannot be affected by anything it has experienced in this world.

And this is when the Conscious You can become willing to let the separate self die, knowing that this is not a loss but a great liberation. You will not die, you will not lose self-awareness, by letting the separate self die. Instead, you will be reborn into a higher sense of self as one with the I AM Presence.

Yet even though the ultimate way out of this catch-22 is through experiencing pure awareness, you can actually make great progress by using the faculty of reason to understand the essential difference between a self that is based on separation and a self that is based on oneness. By doing this, you can free the one faculty that is the key to projecting yourself outside your current mental box, namely your imagination.

Concept 18: The difference between projecting into and projecting upon

What is the purpose for the existence of the Conscious You? It is to give the I AM Presence an open door to the material world. Through this door, the Presence can express its unique individuality, and it can also experience the material world from the inside. As the I AM Presence processes the experiences that the Conscious You has in the material world, the Presence learns and grows in self-awareness. Your processed experiences then become part of what we have called your causal body, which is the sum of your experiences in the material world.

This means that the real learning process takes place in the Presence. I realize you will think that you are also processing your experiences with the outer or lower mind and learning from that. Yet the reality is that this learning is based on the limited perception you have from inside your role, your mental box. Thus, the real, timeless learning takes place in the Presence, because the Presence is beyond duality, is beyond the illusion of separation.

The Presence learns when the Conscious You has any experience that the Presence could not have in the spiritual realm. This has two consequences:

• No matter what experience the Conscious You has in this world, the Presence can learn from it. Meaning that there is nothing you could do in this world that is a sin to the Presence. The material world is like a sandbox, and anything you can do here will be seen as a learning experience by the Presence. The Presence would never judge or condemn the extension of itself for anything the Conscious You might choose to do in this world.
• This does not mean the Presence would choose to do it, but the Presence recognizes that once you descend into this world, the Conscious You will have to make decisions based on its limited perception. And thus it might make decisions that the Presence would not make from its broader perspective. So to the Presence nothing you could possibly do would be evil. It would be done from a state of ignorance and it would be done in a realm where nothing has permanence. Thus, it is not what the Conscious You does that is consequential; it is what your Presence learns from it that matters.

The Presence knows that no matter what you might do in this world, the Conscious You can never be permanently trapped in that form, can never be bound by any choice. The Presence learns by seeing this world from the inside, from inside a certain situation. Thus, for the Presence to learn, the Conscious You must project itself into various situations in this world. The Presence is not concerned about judging the Conscious You for doing this. However, when the Presence has learned what it wants to learn from a given situation, the Presences simply wants the Conscious You to project itself out of that situation and into another one. In other words, the Presence never wants the Conscious You to become stuck in any situation.

So we might say that the task of the Conscious You is to go into this world by forgetting that it is pure awareness—and then reawakening to the reality that it is pure awareness. You go out from pure awareness in the out-breath, and you return to pure awareness in the in-breath. So what is the key to returning to pure awareness? It is to recognize the difference between projecting yourself into a situation and projecting a mental image upon a situation without going into it.

I have said that the Presence learns from all your experiences, but the Conscious You also learns. Yet the Conscious You has to learn only one lesson, namely that it can project itself into any “place” or role in the world of form without becoming stuck there. Whatever you can project yourself into, you can also project yourself out of, and the pure awareness of the Conscious You will not be changed by anything in this world. In other words, the Conscious You learns through experience that no appearance in the material world has the power to change the pure awareness of the Conscious You. It is when you learn this that the Conscious You can decide to give up its “life” in this world in order to rejoin the Presence in the immortal life of the spiritual realm.

So my point is that the Conscious You learns by projecting itself into a situation, identifying itself with it for a time and then reawakening from this identification. And when the Conscious You does what it is designed to do, it will make use of its ability to project itself into any situation, experiencing it from the inside until the Presence has had enough of that experience, whereupon the Conscious You projects itself into another situation.

Yet when the Conscious You decides to define a role based on the illusion of separation, a subtle change takes place. You see, the reason why the Conscious You can project itself into any situation is that it is pure awareness—and as such it can go into any “place” in the world of form. When the Conscious You loses the awareness that it is pure awareness, it can no longer project itself into situations and experience them from the inside. Instead, it creates the separate self, and then it creates a mental image through that separate self. Once this image is created, the Conscious You then projects the image upon the world.

I know this can seem subtle, but it is actually a fundamental difference. When the Conscious You projects itself into any situation, it can quickly experience that it is not the situation, that it is more than the situation. Yet when you create a separate self, you no longer experience the material world by projecting yourself inside situations. Instead, you create a mental image in your own mind, and then you project that image upon a given situation. So what you experience is not the interaction between the Conscious You and the situation. Instead, you experience the result of the interaction between the mental image and the situation.

As a crude illustration, the first option is similar to you going into a movie theater to watch a movie. You are the Conscious You projecting itself into the movie theater, and you are directly watching the movie. The movie gives you a limited perspective, but at least you are experiencing it directly. The second situation of experiencing through mental images is like sending a friend into the movie theater with a cell phone. You can “experience” the movie only by sending your friend questions via text messages, and he can answer them only with a yes or a no. In other words, the questions you can ask are not based on a direct experience of the movie but on your mental image of what you think the movie is about.

Do you see the point? The Conscious You is meant to have experiences in this world. It has experiences by projecting itself into a situation and perceiving the world from inside that “role” or situation. Yet when the Conscious You starts projecting images, it only experiences situations from the outside and it perceives them only through the image. The Conscious You will not learn from this, and neither will the I AM Presence. Thus, this is aborting your entire reason for being.

So what is the key to overcoming the catch-22? It is to realize that the Conscious You will never truly learn its lesson as long as it is projecting mental images upon the world. The Conscious You will become free of its mental box only when it becomes willing to again make use of its ability to project itself into and out of situations. That is the only way the Conscious You can rediscover its ability to project itself up into the Presence and gain the perspective of the Presence. And this external frame of reference is the ONLY way the Conscious You will be able to permanently separate itself from the separate self and once again accept that it is pure awareness.

Concept 19: The role of imagination

In order to fully understand how the Conscious You can project itself in and out of situations, we need to understand the role of imagination. How does the Conscious You become aware that it can project itself into, for example, a role defined in Maitreya’s Mystery School? It does so by using its power of reason to expand its knowledge that the role exists. This knowledge then becomes the basis for the Conscious You imagining what it would be like to experience the world from inside the role. And it is precisely this imagination that becomes the “bridge” over which the Conscious You can then project itself into the role.

Once inside a role, you see the world from inside that role and you lose the greater perspective. So, how do you re-awaken and begin to use the Conscious You’s ability to project itself outside your current role? The key is to realize that the Conscious You can ONLY project itself into something it can imagine.

This is why the consciousness of anti-christ forms a catch-22—it limits your vision, your imagination. It even makes you afraid to use your imagination beyond the limits defined by your accepted authority, such as a religion, a political philosophy or materialism. If you have no awareness that there is another way to look at life than the way you perceive life from inside your current mental box, how could you imagine that it was possible to see the world from a different perspective? And if you cannot imagine that such a different perspective exists, how can you project yourself into it?

You cannot project yourself into nothing. Attempting to do this would magnify your fear of death beyond what you can handle. You can only project yourself into “something,” meaning that you must have a concept of that something. You then use this concept – gained through reason – as a foundation for imagining what it is like to be inside that something.

Do you see the difference? What you form through reason is a mental image. For example, since we started releasing the teachings about the I AM Presence in the 1930s, many spiritual students have formed mental images of what their I AM Presences are like. Yet this is still “knowing” at a distance, knowing through the filter of the image. There is not necessarily anything wrong with this, because it is a necessary phase. You must first have a mental concept before you can use your imagination to take the next step.

The next step is that you decide to go beyond the concept and experience the condition directly from the inside. So before you can project yourself into the Presence, you need to do two things:

• You need to use the faculty of reason to understand the need to gain a frame of reference from outside your current mental box. This article will give you the concepts you need for doing this.
• You then need to use your imagination to envision what your I AM Presence is like. In other words, you need to start imagining yourself as being outside your role, your mental box, and instead imagining that you are actually inside the Presence. It is this imagination that forms an invisible bridge – a bridge to freedom – over which the Conscious You can then cross from the mental image to the direct experience of your Presence.

Yet in order to cross over, you need to do something that neither this article nor any spiritual teaching or guru can do for you, namely decide to NOT allow your knowledge of your I AM Presence to become a mental image that you worship before the real God of directly experiencing your Presence. So you need to use the image of your Presence as a way to tune in to your Presence, and then you need to project yourself along the track of the image but beyond the image itself. Thus, by following the trail of imagination, you can experience a sudden shift – a quantum leap of awareness – whereby you now truly see the world from inside the Presence—or any other place outside your mental box.

And it is ONLY when you directly experience yourself as having an existence, as having a self-awareness, of being outside the mental box that you can break the catch-22 of limited perception! The problem is, of course, that many people are deceived or scared into limiting their imagination or even denying the need to get a frame of reference from outside this world and the consciousness of anti-christ. And let us now look at one of the most clever schemes for getting people to limit their imagination.

Concept 20: The illusion of the vicarious atonement

When the Conscious You begins to project images upon the world, itself, God and other people, it no longer has a direct experience. It has a vicarious experience, and this is precisely what makes you vulnerable to being deceived into following one of the many false paths defined by the fallen beings.

Consider that the very central idea in mainstream Christianity is the vicarious atonement. People have sinned, but they cannot free themselves from the sins, so they need Jesus to “pay for their sins with his blood on the cross” in order to be free of the sins. There are, of course, many other versions in which some external “savior” or guru has to do something for you—instead of empowering you to take the necessary steps yourself.

The only reason people believe in this vicarious atonement is that they are having a vicarious experience in this world. Instead of perceiving the world directly, they are perceiving the world through mental images based on the illusion of separation. The ONLY way out is that you begin to question the way you perceive the world, so that you can gradually return to “pure perception,” which is what I referred to when I said that you need to become as a little child or talked about those who “have eyes to see.”

Now, here is another subtle point. There is nothing inherently wrong with self-aware beings going into separation. It is not a necessary step, but it is a possible step according to the Law of Free Will. Thus, it is not even a “sin” seen with God’s eyes. It is simply a choice, although a choice that it can be difficult to undo because once in separation, everything you see through that filter seemingly confirms the basic illusion of separation. When you wear yellow glasses, the sky really does look green.

Do you see that separation is not a sin, but the illusion of separation makes you susceptible to believing in the concept of sin? It is so easy to believe that if only you avoid doing what your religion defines as a sin, then you will be guaranteed to go to heaven.

Yet now step back and look at the forest instead of the trees. What is the subtle effect of the entire consciousness of sin? It is that it causes you to focus on your actions. Yet what was it that caused you to separate from the teacher? It was that you entered into a different state of consciousness, namely the consciousness of separation. So do you think that focusing on your actions instead of seeking to change your consciousness – by looking at the beam in your own eye, as I said 2,000 years ago – will actually save you? Nay, the ONLY road to salvation is to change your consciousness by accelerating yourself beyond the illusion of separation.

How will you overcome sin? Well, not by following the fallen beings. What they want you to believe is that in order to compensate for the outer actions in the past, you have to perform certain outer actions now. You committed a sin in the past, and to compensate for that, you do what your religion tells you, including seeking to “force” your religion upon other people. Yet how can one action be overcome by taking another action? For every action there is a reaction—this is a law of physics. So as long as you are seeking to compensate for past actions by taking actions now, you are trapping yourself in the endless spiral of action-reaction, what we call the dualistic struggle.

What is the way out? You stop acting by ceasing to project mental images upon yourself and the world. Instead, you return to pure awareness. How can you do this? There is only one way. You must again become aware that the Conscious You is a spiritual being who is not limited or defined by anything in this world. And you must re-learn how to make conscious use of your ability to project yourself outside your current sense of self, so that you can directly perceive what the world looks like when you do not see it through the filter of the separate self. There is no other way, there never has been and there never will be.

Can you sense what I am seeking to communicate here? I have said that you can indeed make progress by using reason, but there is a limit to how far reason can take you. There are many people in this world who have studied religious or spiritual teachings for decades, even lifetimes, and they have a great understanding of the concepts. Yet understanding – where you see yourself as a subject perceiving a distant object – will only take you so far towards Christhood.

There is no vicarious way to attain personal Christhood. It is a matter of the Conscious You awakening from any role it has taken on – allowing any sense of self it has built in this world to die – and then returning to the pure self-awareness with which it first descended into this world. You cannot understand this process, you can only EXPERIENCE it. And you experience it by transcending the subject-object barrier through gnosis. Gnosis is when the Conscious You projects itself into a situation and experiences it directly. Thus, Christhood is when the Conscious You projects itself into the I AM Presence and experiences the world – while still seen through the physical body – the way the Presence sees it from its higher perspective.

When you begin to consciously experience yourself as pure awareness, you realize that the entire concept of sin is a fabrication created from the mind of anti-christ. It is an attempt to keep you trapped in this world and to get you to follow the fallen beings who want to be the gods of this world. Thus, it is futile to seek to compensate for past sins. Instead, you need to transcend the very consciousness that caused you to make past choices, and when you do that, you also transcend the so-called sin.

Karma can be seen as a mental image that you project unto the Ma-ter light, an image created through the mind of anti-christ. You do not need to compensate for what you have projected in the past by projecting another image now. You need to realize that the Ma-ter light has a built-in ability to return to its pure state. Thus, all you need to do is to transcend the consciousness in which you projected images upon the world. When YOU return to pure awareness, you also set the Ma-ter light free to return to its pure state.

When you project images upon the world, you think you are the “doer,” and this makes you vulnerable to believing that because you have been the doer in the past, you now have to be the “undoer.” Yet the only true way out is to realize that you are not the doer, neither the undoer. You simply need to stop projecting images and allow God’s wonderful law to return everything to its pure state.

The fallen beings have created the concept of the epic battle, a to-the-death fight between good and evil, God and the devil. And the main idea they are seeking to project upon you is that you have done something wrong, but you can compensate for that by taking the side of the forces of light in the epic battle. They also project that there is a final victory to be won, and that the time to win this victory is right around the corner.

When you see this from the perspective of your I AM Presence or a spiritual teacher, you see that it is all an illusion. As I have said, the epic struggle is between two groups of fallen beings, both of whom are seeking absolute dominance over this world. Thus, there is no final victory to win. In fact, the ONLY way for the Conscious You to overcome the struggle is to simply stop struggling. You do this when you awaken to your true identity as pure awareness, as the open door for your Presence. As this happens, you see that nothing in this world can change or limit pure awareness.

Do you see the central dynamic here? The Conscious You is meant to project itself into a role on earth, and it is meant to lose the awareness that it is pure awareness. Yet it is also meant to reawaken to the fact that it is pure awareness, which is what makes you an open door for the Presence—meaning that you can now do the works that I did and even greater works. By going out of pure awareness, you establish an anchor point in this world. And by then reawakening to pure awareness, you become the open door, so you can do what the Buddha, Krishna, myself and other true spiritual teachers have done, namely demonstrate the way out of illusion.

What the devil, Satan and the forces of anti-christ want you to believe is that you cannot simply walk away from the struggle, you cannot simply walk away from your past choices. Yet what they really want you to believe is that you cannot simply walk away from THEM.

And what all true spiritual teachers have been trying to communicate from the beginning of time is precisely that the ONLY way out of the human dilemma is indeed to simply walk away from the struggle by returning to pure awareness. And you do indeed have a right to walk away from beings who will not return to pure awareness. They have a right to continue doing what they are doing, but you have no obligation to follow them in their downward spiral.

This is the true path of Christ. No being can ascend back to heaven save the being that descended from heaven. As long as you continue to see yourself as anything apart from pure awareness, you cannot qualify for your ascension. And the moment you finally let any other sense of self die and are reborn into the pure awareness of the Christ mind, at that moment you will have qualified for your ascension.

You have free will, and nothing you could do with that free will could change who you are or could permanently separate you from your I AM Presence. Thus, no matter how far you might descend down the spiral staircase into separation, you can never descend so far that you cannot come back. The true teachers of Christ will never condemn you or write you off as beyond redemption. Wherever you can descend in consciousness, there will be some teacher or teaching that will offer you a way to transcend your present level of consciousness. This is witnessed by the fact that I descended into hell after my death on the cross.

The true teachers of Christ will never violate your free will. We follow the law that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. Yet many have misunderstood what this means. Many have thought that in order to become a student of the ascended masters, you have to have a certain attainment. Yet the reality is that the deciding factor is not your outer understanding or attainment. In fact, the more outer understanding people have, the more convinced they often are that their perception of the world is reality, and this closes their minds to the teacher. They are more concerned about defending their current perception than about allowing us to take them to a higher perception.

Thus, the real deciding factor is your openness, your willingness to question your perception. Only when you are open to projecting yourself into oneness with the teacher, will you be a student of the true teachers. Until you have that openness, you will remain a student of the false teachers, who think reality can be defined by mental images. Thus, they are trapped – and seek to trap you – in the never-ending and futile quest to create the ultimate mental image, an image the God simply has to accept as real.

I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No being comes to the father save by me. No being can return to the Father except through the pure, undivided awareness that I AM.

You now know the true way of Christ. Will you walk this narrow way, or will you continue to insist on following the broad way?

 

NOTE: Click here for a simple technique that can help you gain a perspective from outside your mental box.

 

 

Copyright © 2010 by Kim Michaels

The stages of spiritual development

A message from the ascended master Jesus through Kim Michaels:

When you survey the behavior, the attitudes and the beliefs of human beings on this planet, it should not be difficult to conclude that people are in many different states of consciousness, they are at different stages of spiritual development. These stages correspond to different degrees of understanding of the spiritual side of life. To give people some sense of co-measurement, I would like to give you a survey of the different stages of spiritual development found on this planet.

The following stages cannot be put on a line and ranked from lowest to highest. A lifestream does not necessarily have to descend to the lowest stage before it turns around and starts climbing its way back to God. There are many lifestreams on Earth who never descended to the lowest stage of spiritual awareness. The numbering of the stages is therefore a practical matter of making it easier to reference the stages.

Stage 1. Lifestreams who rebel against God

Certain lifestreams are in a state of consciousness that causes them to deliberately, and in most cases knowingly, rebel against the laws and the will of God. In some of these lifestreams, the rebellion is obvious. Some promote atheism or agnosticism. Some advocate scientific materialism and vehemently deny the need for a creative being. Some are openly practicing satanism, and although they do not deny the existence of God, they defame, belittle and ridicule everything related to God, religion or spirituality.

In some of these lifestreams, the rebellion against God is hidden deep within the psyche, and it is often unrecognized by the person’s conscious mind. Therefore, this rebellion can often be camouflaged behind a facade of various beliefs, including religious beliefs. It might be surprising to many people, but some of the rebellious lifestreams have managed to attain high positions in various religious movements and churches. They claim to be highly religious and working for God’s cause, yet they have a deep anger against God and believe that they know better than God how the universe should be run or how people should be saved.

For all of these people it is common that they are actively seeking to run away from God, to reinforce the impression that God does not exist or that he does not exist here on planet Earth. Some of these lifestreams engage in an endless quest to prove that God does not exist or to prove that God is wrong and that they are right. They are literally seeking to prove that they can create a world in which God does not exist and in which they have no need for God.

You might ask how the people who work in religious movements can be said to work for this cause or to run away from God. The answer is that they use their power to cement the belief that God is somewhere “up there” in Heaven. These are also the people who cement the idolatrous belief that Jesus Christ is the only Son of God and that no one can follow my example. These are often the first people to cry blasphemy, as they did when I made certain remarks that made it sound like I was equating myself with God or calling myself a Son of God.

Stage 2. Lifestreams who try to hide from God

Many people are openly angry at God. Many lifestreams on Earth have been hurt, and they believe that God has hurt them or treated them unfairly, unjustly or in a way that defies logical explanation. Many lifestreams are afraid of God and see him as an angry and judgmental being who is always ready to punish them for the slightest transgression of his laws. Common for these lifestreams is that they are running away from God, but not because they are rebelling against God. They simply want to get as far away as possible from what they see as an angry, punishing and unjust deity. They are trying to hide from God.

Running away from God is an act of self-defense. These are the people that I referred to in the saying that I wish people were hot or cold. The people at this stage are indeed cold. They are cold in the sense that they have come to accept a negative image of God, and therefore they are running away from that image. However, they have the potential to be turned around if they can come to accept that their feelings for God were caused by a false, imperfect or incomplete image of God.

Stage 3. Lifestreams who are indifferent toward God

A large number of lifestreams on planet Earth have become so indifferent toward God, religion and the spiritual side of life that they have become lukewarm. Some of these lifestreams are indeed in a spiritual coma that makes it almost impossible to reach them with any kind of spiritual truth. Many of these lifestreams have been so hurt or disappointed by organized religion that they have rejected religion, or given up on the idea that they could ever partake of a true sense of spirituality.

Many of these lifestreams have adopted a false, imperfect or incomplete image of God. Yet trying to help them see this and trying to help them accept a correct image of God is very difficult because they often will not respond to any kind of spiritual message. Many of these lifestreams use the imperfections, real or perceived, of orthodox or organized religion as an excuse for rejecting anything related to the spiritual side of life. If one approaches such lifestreams with a spiritual message, they will often become very suspicious and feel that one is out to convert them, to manipulate them, to take advantage of them or to get their money.

These lifestreams often reject all types of spirituality and thereby put themselves in a catch-22 in which they reject the very tools that could help them heal their wounds and get on the upward path. They are often unreachable for a spiritual teacher.

Stage 4. Lifestreams who are conflicted about God

Certain lifestreams have come to the realization that there is indeed some reality to the spiritual side of life and that there is a path they can follow toward a higher understanding of God and their relationship to God. These are lifestreams who have turned around and started the path that leads them back to God. However, many of these lifestreams have been so deeply hurt that they need spiritual and lifestream healing before they can earnestly engage in the spiritual path.

Some of these lifestreams have been hurt by physical trauma. Others have been hurt emotionally through their interactions with other people or the institutions of society. Still others have been hurt by the imperfections of organized religion or have been scarred by so-called infallible doctrines that could not answer their questions about life. These wounds often cause such lifestreams to feel conflicts in their conception of or relationship to God. They might feel that religion doesn’t make sense and presents a contradictory or inconsistent image of God (which is true). Or they might feel that a just and loving God shouldn’t have allowed them to have been hurt. They often feel like victims of forces beyond their control and see no way to personally change their situation.

These lifestreams have come to a realization that they want more from life than what can be attained by material means. They sense there must be a place to go to find spiritual understanding and healing. Yet they have been so deeply scarred and hurt that they are not yet able to start walking toward that understanding. They are like people who have broken a leg and therefore need to heal the fracture before they can start walking toward their goal. Therefore, such lifestreams would do well to recognize their wounds and to focus all of their energy and attention on healing the psychology (as understood by the world) and the lifestream.

Stage 5. Lifestreams who want to experience God’s creation

A certain group of lifestreams are young lifestreams who have not yet spent a long time (meaning many embodiments) in the material world. Some of these lifestreams still have a great desire to experience everything in the material world, and this can make them indifferent toward religion. They are simply so preoccupied with the things of this world that they have no attention left over for spiritual pursuits.

Other young lifestreams are very open to religion, yet often approach it in a somewhat unbalanced manner. This can cause them to take their religious pursuits to the extremes. They often use religion not as a way to transcend the world but as a way to enrich their experience of this world. For example, they might seek to gain a position in a religious movement because it increases their status among men. These lifestreams have not yet had enough experiences to achieve the balance of being wise as serpents and harmless as doves.

Unfortunately, given the current conditions on this planet, it is common that young lifestreams, in their innocence, will be hurt or taken advantage of by both material and non-material forces. This can often cause such lifestreams to lose their innocence and slide toward disappointment or anger. If such lifestreams are taken advantage of by organized religion, they might find it impossible to distinguish between God and the outer religion and thereby become angry at God.

Stage 6. Lifestreams who seek to understand God

These lifestreams have consciously realized that there is more to life than the material realm. They know there is more to understand about life than what they were taught in school and Sunday school, and they have made the decision to start looking for it. These lifestreams have also healed at least some of their deepest wounds so that they have attention left over to focus on studying the spiritual side of life.

To achieve maximum growth, these lifestreams need to focus most of their attention on studying spiritual teachings, practicing various spiritual techniques and seeking to internalize spiritual truth and principles.
These lifestreams are the “reason for being” of any true spiritual movement. It is their quest for understanding that gives the ascended masters great hope for the future of planet Earth.

Stage 7. Lifestreams who seek to help others understand God

After a lifestream has spent a sufficient amount of time studying spiritual teachings and practicing techniques for spiritual growth, that lifestream has internalized a critical amount of spiritual knowledge. The next logical step is that the lifestream begins to give out that knowledge by teaching others.

One can be a student only for so long. When one has reached a certain level, the lifestream cannot learn any more until the lifestream begins teaching what it has internalized. Only by teaching others can the lifestream ascend to the next level of learning because it is through giving that you truly receive and it is through teaching that you truly learn.

These lifestreams are the backbone of any true spiritual movement. Without these lifestreams acting as our partners on Earth, the ascended masters would have little hope for reaching other lifestreams with a spiritual message.

Stage 8. Lifestreams who seek union with God

As a lifestream climbs the spiritual path, it gradually becomes less attached to outer manifestations, such as a particular religion or spiritual teaching. It begins to see that there is a transcendent reality behind the many different expressions of spiritual teachings. It begins to see the universal path behind all of the outer religions, organizations, teachings and teachers.

During the previous two stages, a lifestream might follow one particular religion or philosophy and use it as its springboard for growth. This is quite acceptable, as long as the lifestream does not become stuck in thinking that its particular religion is the only true religion or the only valid road to understanding God. If a lifestream does become attached, it will remain stuck at a certain stage of spiritual growth until it begins to acknowledge the universal path.

When the lifestream does begin to see the universal path, it ascends to the level of becoming a mystic. It now realizes that the ultimate goal of the spiritual path is not to understand God but to know God, to experience God and to attain union with God. This is what I demonstrated in my life, and it is reflected most clearly in my statement, “I and my Father are one.”
Some mystics might indeed withdraw from worldly activities and focus all of their attention on attaining the mystical union with God. However, in this day and age, many have the opportunity to choose to remain active in the world, and this is indeed highly needed. Such lifestreams can then demonstrate the universal path by example, and some of them can teach this path openly.

Stage 9. Lifestreams who have attained union with God

As lifestreams rise on the path and begin to teach spiritual truth, they will gradually begin to internalize more and more truth and more and more light. They will then gradually become what one might call Masters in embodiment.

These are lifestreams who have understood some of the deeper mysteries, especially the difference between “doing” and “being.” You will recall my statement that, “I of my own self can do nothing, it is the Father within me who is doing the work.” When the lifestream attains mastery, it is no longer trying to DO anything in this world. It is simply BEING who it is and therefore allowing the spiritual self, and possibly spiritual beings, to act through it.

The lifestream has become the open door that no human can shut. The lifestream might serve to bring fourth spiritual truths directly from a higher realm, thereby delivering the Living Word in its highest form. Or such lifestreams might serve in other capacities to further and demonstrate the cause of the ascended masters. These lifestreams can literally be our hands and feet on Earth.

However, there is no exact standard for how a lifestream with spiritual mastery should act, or rather BE. Some lifestreams might become world teachers. Some might live a seemingly ordinary life and can hardly be distinguished from the average person. Some might have severe handicaps or diseases. Some might sit in a cave in the Himalayas, or elsewhere, and meditate day and night to hold the spiritual balance for the Earth. Others might even exhibit behavior that is not associated with spiritual mastery.

Do not misuse this teaching

Let me issue a word of warning. There is an inherent danger in giving any kind of teaching that allows people to compare themselves to others. Many people are still caught in the spirit of vain competition, and they will use my stages of spiritual development to judge themselves and their progress compared to others. They will then attempt to set themselves up on a pedestal and judge themselves as being better or more important than others because they have reached a certain level of development.
Let me make it clear that as long as people are caught in this state of consciousness, they have not reached a high level of spiritual development because when you reach such a level there are no value judgments and there is no sense of competition.

I am giving this teaching because it is valuable and important for a lifestream to realize its current level of spiritual development and thereby take appropriate measures to quickly rise to a higher level. It is especially important for lifestreams at lower stages of spiritual development to realize that there is a path that leads them home to God. It is essential for such lifestreams to discover that path and to lock themselves firmly upon that path.

Likewise, it is essential for lifestreams at higher stages to discover the universal, inner path to God. Such lifestreams need to transcend their attachments to a particular outer religion and thereby realize the goal of manifesting their full potential as sons and daughters of God.

Let me also say that the stages I have outlined here are not meant to be seen as the only possible way to categorize spiritual development. One can take different criteria and come up with other stages. One can also divide the stages I have outlined and gain a more detailed picture. Indeed several of the stages overlap, and a lifestream might be working on two or three stages simultaneously. In future teachings, I will expand upon the stages I have outlined here. Yet I desire to give a picture that is not too complex and thereby causes people to focus on details and lose the overall view.

When you do step back and look at the big picture, you will see that the common denominator for each of the stages I described above is that they all represent a different way for the lifestream to relate to God. The importance of this realization is that no matter where a lifestream is in its spiritual development, that lifestream is always facing the challenge of working out its relationship to God.

As I explain throughout this website, every lifestream truly is a son or daughter of God, an individualization of God. The lifestream is meant to come to a full awareness and acceptance of its divine potential and thereby act as a co-creator with God in the material universe. Therefore, the most important task for any lifestream is to resolve any imperfections in its conception of or relationship with God. That is truly what life in the material universe is all about.

Therefore, the goal of life is to resolve and heal all imperfections in the lifestream’s attitude toward God. Such imperfections stand in the way of the lifestream’s union with God and its acceptance of its potential to be a co-creator with God.

Why lifestreams descended to Earth

I will use the stages of spiritual development for future teachings. However, I would like for now to give a brief teaching on the different categories of lifestreams that have descended to planet Earth. When the Earth was first created, it expressed the purity and perfection of the seven Elohim, the seven spiritual beings, who created this planet. In the beginning, most of the lifestreams that descended to planet Earth fit into the category of young lifestreams.

These lifestreams were indeed innocent and had no negativity towards God. Yet some of them did have a great desire for the things that can be experienced in the material universe, and therefore they focused most of their attention on enjoying this world. They had little thought left over for the spiritual side of life. Other lifestreams were more spiritually inclined but had not yet firmly anchored themselves on the spiritual path and had not attained a permanent awareness of their spiritual identity and potential.

Along with the young lifestreams were a group of lifestreams who had attained a degree of mastery. These lifestreams served as the spiritual teachers for younger lifestreams.

For a very long time, the young lifestreams kept descending to planet Earth without becoming trapped in the consciousness of the material universe. Many of these lifestreams did indeed ascend back to God after just one lifetime, although that lifetime was far longer than a normal life span today.

At some point a shift started to occur on this planet. A number of lifestreams started becoming attached to or trapped in the consciousness of the material universe, and they started descending further and further into that state of consciousness. One might say that these lifestreams started walking the path that leads them away from God, causing them to lose the awareness that they are spiritual beings.

As the consciousness of humankind was gradually lowered, it eventually reached a critical level. At this critical level it now became possible for certain rebellious lifestreams to start embodying on Earth. These were lifestreams who had rebelled against God in the spiritual realm or on other systems of worlds. These lifestreams are indeed the rebellious lifestreams, and for thousands of years a number of them have continued to embody on this planet. They have attempted to pull as many lifestreams as possible down to their level of consciousness and accept, even justify, their rebellion against God.

These lifestreams are very aggressive and very ambitious in trying to prove their point that they can create a world in which God does not exist. They have literally influenced every aspect of life on this planet, including the field of religion.

The influence of these rebellious lifestreams has created a perilous condition on this planet. There are still young lifestreams who descend to this Earth for the first time, yet there is a great risk that such lifestreams will be hurt by the conditions found on this planet. This can cause a lifestream to gradually slide down to the stage of being a wounded lifestream. It can then slide even further down and seek to hide from God, either from anger or fear. It is even possible that the lifestream can descend to the stage of deliberately rebelling against God’s will and God’s law.

After the fall, a number of lifestreams have embodied on this planet that are at higher stages of spiritual development, from being teachers to being Masters. These lifestreams have descended on a rescue mission in an attempt to help the lifestreams who have fallen find the true spiritual path, anchor themselves on that path and walk the path until they have regained their spiritual identity and can start the higher levels of the path that lead to the mystical union with God.

Some of these lifestreams have indeed become hurt by the conditions on this planet and have descended into lower stages of consciousness. A few of them have even become rebellious against God because they could not maintain the connection to their higher selves.

My purpose of giving this teaching is to show you that the Earth today presents a very complex picture and a very complex challenge for a spiritual teacher. It simply is not possible to give one spiritual teaching or one religion that will appeal to people at every stage of spiritual development. That is why there needs to be more than one religion, indeed more than one true religion, in order for the ascended masters to reach out to as many people as possible.

Where are you headed?

I would also like to mention that there is a clear division in the stages. The center of the scale are the lifestreams who are young and who are simply experimenting with life on this planet. A lifestream is not meant to maintain this neutral stage for very long. Given the current conditions on this planet, most lifestreams will quickly be forced to go in one of two directions.

One such direction is the lifestreams who have been trapped by doubt or have been hurt in various ways. These lifestreams now start moving away from God. The other direction is represented by the lifestreams who have realized that there is more to life than the material world. These lifestreams have discovered the path and are moving toward union with God.

So the two basic divisions you have on planet Earth are lifestreams who are moving away from God and lifestreams who are moving toward union with God. I am aware that some lifestreams were already moving away from God before they descended and some were already moving toward God before they came into embodiment. Nevertheless, the important consideration here is whether a lifestream is moving away from God of moving toward God.

Lifestreams who are moving away from God are facing a perilous situation. Although there is a final limit to how far a lifestream can move away from God, there is indeed a very great distance that the lifestream can descend. The problem is that everything in the material universe is characterized by limitations. This means that the lifestream does not have an infinite amount of time to make it back to God. If the lifestream keeps moving away from God until its time is up, it will face the final judgment, If it does not respond positively, it can be erased in the ritual of the second death. So it is indeed possible that lifestreams can be lost.

To avoid this scenario, a lifestream must come to a turning point. The lifestream must literally decide that it will stop running away from God and start the path that leads it back to God. It must come to the realization that, “I can’t do this any longer!” What does it take for a lifestream to turn around? That depends on the lifestream’s stage of development.

It is very difficult for a rebellious lifestream to turn around. Such lifestreams are often caught in spiritual pride, and some of them would rather die than admit that they are wrong. However, some lifestreams can eventually come to the realization that their attempts to create a world without God are futile. This can especially happen when they are confronted with a person who has attained Christhood and therefore refuses to be changed by anything in this world. This did indeed happen to a few lifestreams who saw me during my embodiment 2,000 years ago. They realized that even though they could kill my physical body, they could not change my spirit, and this caused them to realize that God will eventually be victorious regardless of the appearances of this world.

A lifestream who is seeking to hide from God out of fear or anger finds it a bit easier to turn around because it does not have to prove that it is right. It is possible for such lifestreams to come to the realization that they have an incorrect or incomplete image of God. Therefore, it was this image that caused them to be hurt, to become angry or to fear God.

Lifestreams who are indifferent toward God can be very difficult to reach for a spiritual teacher. However, these lifestreams have enrolled themselves in the school of hard knocks and in many cases they can be turned around by a severe outer crises. These people will procrastinate the acknowledgement of the spiritual side of life until some outer crisis forces them to realize that something is missing from their lives.

Lifestreams who are conflicted about God or have been deeply hurt can be turned around when they realize, that God did not hurt them and God did not create the doctrines that gave them the conflicts about God. When these lifestreams realize what is truly happening on this planet as a result of the misuse of free will, they can often go through an instantaneous turnaround in which they realize that God has never hurt them. Instead, they have been hurt by forces and people who rebel against God or who are angry at God. Therefore, such lifestreams will often realize that they have no desire to run away from God, and this will enable them to engage in the path that leads to their healing.

Once a lifestream has discovered the spiritual path and anchored itself on the path, the lifestream has already turned around. However, this does not mean that the lifestream is home free. The essential point for a lifestream who is moving toward God is that it realizes the absolute need to keep moving, to keep transcending its understanding of God. It is absolutely essential that the lifestream does not become attached to a particular outer expression of spiritual truth because such an attachment will cause the lifestream’s growth to come to a halt.

If the lifestream does not see the need for constant self-transcendence, it can become stuck at a particular level of the path. If it remains stuck for a long time, it will inevitably start sliding backward. There are indeed many lifestreams on planet Earth today who have discovered the spiritual path and who are walking the path. Yet they have not yet come to the full realization that the path is ongoing. These lifestreams have not yet discovered the inner, universal path, and therefore they have not yet become mystics. It is very important for these lifestreams to recognize the ongoing nature of the path and the ultimate goal of union with God.

 

 

 

Copyright © 2009 by Kim Michaels

 

 A message from Ascended Master Maitreya through Kim Michaels:

NOTE: This teaching is an excerpt from Lord Maitreya’s book, Master Keys to Spiritual Freedom.

Let me make it clear that what is going on behind everything I have told you is that people must be presented – over and over again for as long as it takes – with the challenge of Christ. The challenge of Christ is that you encounter the Living Christ in the form of a person who embodies the Christ consciousness on Earth. Thus, you have an opportunity to accept or deny Christ. Yet the challenge of Christ has several levels:

The first level is when you encounter a person who has attained the Christ consciousness on Earth. This is not limited to Jesus, the Buddha or Krishna, for it is sufficient to encounter a person who has attained some degree of Christhood. You do not necessarily have to meet such a person physically, for at this level you merely need to learn that it is possible for the Living Christ to appear on Earth and that the Living Christ represents an alternative to the duality consciousness. You learn that it is – in principle – possible to be the Christ on Earth. At this level, you clearly see the Christ as being outside yourself and if you accept Christ, you will become a follower of Christ (possibly a student of the person who embodies the Christ consciousness). This is the challenge to accept or reject Christ outside yourself.

The ability to recognize Christ is what Jesus talked about in the following passage:

15 He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?
16 And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
17 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.
18 And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Matthew, Chapter 16)

Jesus was not talking about the person of Peter but about an ability that all people have, namely the ability to recognize that there is something beyond duality and the willingness to follow the Christ that you see. This ability is built into the conscious self because it is out of the Creator’s own Being, which is why it can see beyond duality – flesh and blood – and receive direction from the “Father which is in heaven,” namely the spiritual hierarchy. Obviously, Peter as a person had overcome this first challenge of Christ. The ability to see beyond duality is the rock upon which all true religions are built, but the gates of hell – the forces of duality – will only be held back as long as people continue to look beyond duality and follow the highest expression of Christ that they see, always looking for a higher one. Which brings us to the second challenge of Christ. 

At the next level, you need to accept that the role of the Living Christ is to challenge all of your dualistic beliefs and to take you out of your mental box and into the “promised land” of non-duality. This can be a severe challenge when people are not aware of what I have explained about mental images. Many people recognize a spiritual leader, but they immediately seek to fit him or her into their mental boxes. They seek to impose a dualistic image upon the Living Christ who has come to take them beyond duality—whereby they actually refuse to follow the Living Christ and end up continuing to follow the leaders of anti-christ (while thinking they are sure to be saved). This is the test that Peter failed, as recorded in the following quote (which is often “overlooked” by mainstream Christians):

21 From that time forth began Jesus to show unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.
22 Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee.
23 But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. (Matthew, Chapter 16)

Peter was not willing to let the Living Christ take him beyond his mental box and his view of what should happen to the Living Christ on Earth. He preferred his own dualistic images – the things that be of men – over the non-dualistic truth of Christ – the things that be of God – and thus he failed the second challenge of Christ. So far, humankind – including the majority of all Christians and Christian churches – have failed this exact same test. Even many among the top ten percent – especially among those who think they are the most spiritual people – have so far failed this test. The planet simply cannot move into a golden age until a critical mass of people master the second challenge of Christ.

At the next level, you go beyond being a mere follower of Christ and you begin to accept that you have the potential to embody the teachings of Christ. As you put on the mind of Christ, you realize that you have the potential to be the Living Christ. You stop seeing Christ outside yourself and start seeing Christ as the ruler of the kingdom of God that is within you. This is the challenge to accept or reject Christ inside yourself.

At the next level you begin to realize that being the Christ is not simply a matter of transforming your own consciousness. In fact, being the Christ is really not about you but is about awakening other people. You now begin to see that the true role of the Christ is to go into the world and present people with the challenge of Christ, the challenge to accept or reject the Living Christ. Again, you have the opportunity to either accept or reject this role, and let me assure you that many spiritually advanced people have in fact refused to go out and expose themselves to the condemnation and rejection of the world, the fallen beings and the planetary beasts.

My point is that it is possible to fail the initiation of Christ even when you have reached a high level of spiritual attainment. Which is why the Ascended Host keep presenting the top ten percent with the opportunity to become the Christ, as I have now done in this book.

One of my major goals with this book is to set forth a teaching that more plainly than ever before spells out the challenge that too many among the top ten percent have so far refused to take on, namely the challenge to stand before the world and declare their Christhood by letting their light shine and bearing witness to the non-dual truth. As I have explained, only by taking on this challenge will you rise to the fullness of Christhood and become permanently free from planet Earth. Only by becoming the Living Christ on Earth can you rise and become the Living Christ in the spiritual realm. You have – in past lives, some of you even in the Garden of Eden – rejected this challenge by postponing the choice. Yet how long will you continue to reject me – the representative of the Cosmic Christ for the Earth – before you realize that it is far easier to face the challenge than it is to keep rejecting it, thereby fighting the force of life itself and condemning you and the rest of humanity to a seemingly endless spiral of suffering?

Surely, this message has been released over and over again in many different spiritual teachings. Yet it has often been shrouded in mystery or obscure language that made it hard to understand. This book is the first one to explain the challenge of Christ in such plain language that anyone who is willing can understand it. You can still reject the challenge, but do not come to me after this lifetime and accuse me of not explaining it to you with sufficient clarity. For in this book, everything that is secret has now come abroad (Mark 4:22). Will you accept my challenge or will you take another round of seeking to hide from me, your cosmic teacher?

You see, by rejecting me, you are also rejecting him that sent me, namely the Creator whom I represent for the lifestreams on Earth. One of the illusions created by the false teachers is that everything is a matter between people and their teachers. It was actually by getting Eve to doubt me that the Serpent was successful in causing her to fall. Yet in reality, it is not about me, it is not a matter between you and me. In reality, everything is a matter between you and your Source, which is the Creator itself. Your salvation will happen only when you attain a sense of oneness with your Creator. I am here to help you attain that oneness, but if you do not see beyond me, you will not understand my purpose. As a true teacher, I am here exclusively to help you become one with the Creator, so as long as you focus on me – or a false teacher – you cannot go beyond that level. Thus, even a true teacher can be turned into a block that stops your progress on the Path of Oneness. Obviously, that is not what I desire, which is why I have gone into such great detail to explain the dynamics of your situation. Those who have ears, let them hear.

 

 

 Copyright © 2009 by Kim Michaels