Ascended Master Saint Germain, March 22, 2010 through Kim Michaels.

This is the very foundation for the consciousness of elitism, the consciousness of exclusivity. And this is the consciousness, that humankind has been faced with the challenge of transcending during the past 2,000 years. For by the very embodiment of Jesus himself, the challenge became absolute, in the sense that no human being on earth has been able to ignore it completely. Yet of course, many human beings have ignored it to a very large extent.

And what you see in the past 2,000 years is indeed the pattern, that the majority of the population have wanted strong leaders to rule them, precisely because that meant, that they could ignore the challenge of acknowledging and expressing their true creative potential. Look at the teachings we have brought forth about the human ego, about dramas personal and epic. Look at the teachings and read between the lines, and you will see, that what we have given you are the very keys to overcoming this precise consciousness that I am addressing here. Whereby you overcome your own reluctance to acknowledge yourself as a co-creator with God, to acknowledge your co-creative potential.

We have given you the keys to overcoming this consciousness. Yet the problems here is, that this requires a certain effort, as it seems. It is not truly an effort, in the sense, that you have to struggle against something. But it is an effort in the sense, that you do have to go through a process, that will seem like a struggle. Because you do have to go through the process of raising yourself beyond the downward pull of the mass consciousness—that simply wants to live an unconscious life, an unawakened life. And thus, you have to follow the process – demonstrated by Jesus, demonstrated by the Buddha and other spiritual examples – of raising, of accelerating, your consciousness, your sense of self beyond the level of the mass consciousness. So that you can accept, that you are not simply a human being, you can accept that you are a co-creator with God, you are an individualization of God.

And therefore, you do have the potential to be part of the Golden Age of Aquarius, be part of co-creating and manifesting that age as a physical reality on planet earth. This is somewhat of an effort. Many of you have been engaged in this effort for decades, but you have not fully engaged it—yet. You have fallen prey to a subtle state of consciousness, that we have also exposed in our many discourses and dictations, namely the belief that you can follow an outer path. As we have said before, even in spiritual organizations, there is that consciousness of believing, that if we only study the outer teaching, give decrees or prayers or rosaries, do this or do that, then we will one day ascend.

But as we have explained, most recently by Serapis Bey, the ascension is not an automatic or mechanical process. It will never happen by you doing outer things. The outer things may have a beneficial effect of transmuting energy, but they will not raise your consciousness. For raising your consciousness can only happen as the result of a conscious will, a conscious decision, a conscious choice.

You have been given free will by God, and what has enabled the fallen beings to rule the earth is precisely that they have found ways – clever ways – to subdue free will, to make people give away their free will, to give up their choices, and leave the choices to the rulers, the emperors, the kings and the potentates of this and that system. You have been given an individual free will. It can be exercised only by you, and it can be exercised only consciously. And given the current state of the mass consciousness on earth, it is indeed a certain effort, that is required for you to consciously choose beyond the mass consciousness.

This I freely admit, as it was an effort for me as Columbus to choose to go against the mass consciousness and say, “No, the earth must be round.” We all understand this in the ascended realm, yet we have all raised ourselves above it, and we know you can do the same. We also know, that you can do it only by doing it as we did it: by consciously making the effort, making the determination, that you are willing to be conscious, that you are willing to make conscious choices—conscious choices, instead of blindly following the mass consciousness, or the leaders who claim to have superiority, even infallibility. This is the choice faced here at the beginning of the Aquarian age. Will you begin to make conscious choices—for which you take full and exclusive responsibility? Or will you find some guru or leader, who claims to have some infallible characteristic, and then blindly follow that leader?

For as the Great Divine Director, and my own guru, has recently explained, divine direction is not a straitjacket; it is not that you have one choice to follow divine direction and then you make no more choices, for now you just do what you are told from above. Instead, the reality is that divine direction has only one purpose: it is to help you make better choices and thereby grow in self-awareness and the use of your co-creative abilities.

Overcome the attachment to outcome and stop judging yourself

You see, an aspect of the fallen consciousness is the attachment to specific outcomes and results on earth. And therefore, they have set up this entire consciousness, that certain of your choices are wrong according to some standard. And they use this to get you to judge yourself, until you have had so much pain of making these so-called wrong choices, that you finally reason: “I’ve had enough of making these wrong choices—I will no longer make any choices.” I will follow an outer leader, I will follow a religion, I will follow a guru or messenger. Or, I will seek for some divine direction from someone who will tell me what to do. Well, my beloved, if you are looking for some nonmaterial entity to tell you what to do, I can assure you, that that nonmaterial entity will not be a member of the ascended masters.

For we do not have the goal to get you to a point, where you never make wrong choices on earth. Our goal is your overall growth in self-awareness. And as we have said many times, you can grow equally from any choice you make, whether it is “wrong” or “right” according to some earthly standard. Our only concern is to help you learn and grow, and thereby transcend and grow in your co-creative ability and awareness. That is our concern.

Do you, really and truly, my beloved, believe, that we sit up here and watch your every move and judge you harshly? Do you believe, that for every choice you make, the karmic board is sitting up here with a scorecard, and they put a little check when you make a good choice and they put a minus when you make a bad choice? And they add up all the minuses, until you reach some critical mark and then “Bam” you are going down into that fiery hell, that the Christians have portrayed so vividly for so many centuries. Do you seriously believe, that this is how the karmic board works? Because if you do, I can tell that you, that you have fallen prey to the fallen consciousness and their mind control and their brainwashing, and their projection of these false images into the collective consciousness.

And if you seriously believe, that this is how the karmic board and the ascended masters work, then it is time for you to realize, that you have been had by the fallen angels. And it is time to wake up and throw away these preconceived image, based on duality and judgmentalness. It is time to go within and be honest and say: “I am beginning to see how the fallen consciousness has affected my view of God and my view of the ascended masters. And I am hereby determining – by my free will choice – that I am willing to know God and the ascended masters as they really are. I am willing to know reality.”

My Beloved, ask and you shall receive. Ask with a willingness to look beyond your mental boxes, your preconceived opinions, your epic dramas, and we will reveal our true beings to you. For we are right here with you all the time. It is only in your mind, that there has been created the impression, the image, of a distance, of an unbreachable gulf between you and us. And that unbreachable gulf was created precisely in the fallen consciousness. For there is an unbreachable gulf between the fallen consciousness and the ascended consciousness. There is no question about this. There is a gulf between the fallen consciousness and the ascended consciousness. But you are an individualization of the Creator’s Being, and you have a choice: Do you want to step into the fallen consciousness; do you want to step into the ascended consciousness?”

To which station do you want to attune the radio of your consciousness? Turn that dial of consciousness. It may have been stuck on a certain station for many embodiments. The dial might have gotten a little rusty, my beloved. It might be stuck on a station, that it has been tuned in to for so long, thinking perhaps it was the only station—or that it would get you to heaven if you just kept tuning in to it long enough. So make that effort to wrest the dial free from the corrosion, to get it moving again. Turn it back and forth perhaps for a little while, just to clear the rust and the dirt. But then turn it towards the higher stations, until you reach us. For it is not that difficult, but it has become much easier, as the planet has shifted from the piscean to the aquarian mindset.

It requires less of an effort today to tune in to the reality of the ascended masters than it did yesterday. And, as time progresses, and as the collective consciousness continues to progress, it will require less and less of an effort. But it will still require the choice, that you are willing to question your old mental images, the graven images. Without a willingness to question your graven images, no progress is possible. This is the way it has been always—always. For free will is the essence of growth.

This is an excerpt from a longer teaching. You can read the full dictation HERE.