For thousands of years this planet has been enveloped in a thick cloud created by the epic dramas that where defined by manipulators who rebelled against God. These dramas have influenced the thinking of individuals – even entire civilizations – in many subtle ways.
By “subtle” is meant that the dramas have distorted people’s view of life in such a way that people truly and firmly believe that the illusions defined by the dramas are real and give an accurate view of reality. They mistake illusions for reality. As a result, only very few people are able to understand how the ascended masters look at the earth and how they seek to help human beings rise above the clouds, the veil, created by the drama consciousness.
The grand illusion of right and wrong
It has been said that if people knew better, they would do better. This is true because when the conscious self truly sees how it is limiting itself, it will change.
The problem is that the drama consciousness prevents people from actually knowing better. As long as people think their dramas present an accurate view of reality, why would they even consider questioning their dramas, their world view?
Why would they even consider that their thought system is simply seeking to fit the entire universe and God into a particular mental box? They will be absolutely convinced that they are doing the right thing, even doing God’s work, while they are simply outplaying an epic drama and their personal dramas.
People who are trapped in this state of consciousness cannot fathom that they might be living a lie, they cannot even consider it. How do you know whether you are affected by this subtle lie? Here is a guiding rod. We have talked about the Law of Free Will and that this law gives all self-aware beings the right to create any experience they want and to hold on to it for as long as they can. This law makes you responsible only for your own growth and ascension, but you are not responsible for the growth and ascension of anyone else.
One of the most subtle effects of the consciousness of the epic dramas is the belief that there is an absolute standard for right and wrong. If you follow the standard, you are a good person. If you violate the standard (repeatedly), you are a bad person. Choices can be divided into right and wrong and people can be divided into good and bad. If you believe in this division into right and wrong choices and good and bad people, then you are affected by the epic dramas created by the manipulators.
There are no two ways about this. The ascended masters have ascended precisely because they have transcended all of the epic dramas and their illusions, especially the one just described. They do not evaluate the choices of human beings by comparing them to any standard that can be defined by words and labeling them as right or wrong.
The ascended masters do not evaluate people and label them as good or bad. To them, there are no bad people—but neither are there any good people. They do not look at people and label some as evil, or as beyond hope—even though they are aware of the history of each being.
When the masters look upon the earth, they see only self-aware beings who are making choices based on their present state of consciousness. To them, the choices you make are irrelevant in the sense that the cosmic mirror will reflect back to you what you send out.
The ascended masters are not seeking to influence your choices. Why not? Because they understand the eternal truth that your choices are the products of your state of consciousness. They are focused on one thing, namely to inspire you to raise your consciousness. They know that when you do raise your consciousness, your choices will automatically change.
No need to judge others
Here is the problem with the epic dramas. They sprang from the minds of certain beings who came to believe that the fact that co-creators could get lost proved that there was a flaw in the Law of Free Will. These beings reasoned that they had to correct this flaw in God’s design by seeking to force other beings to change their choices.
Traditional, mainstream religions on this planet are indeed focused on changing your behavior by making you change the choices you make. What is described as the outer path is based on the promise that if you change your outer actions – without changing your consciousness, without looking at the beam in your own eye – you can (and will automatically) enter the kingdom.
This is a direct effect of the epic dramas, and it has caused most people to believe in the overall illusion that if only the actions of all people conform to a standard defined by their belief system, then God’s kingdom will come to earth. If not, the earth will be destroyed and all souls be captured by the devil.
Such people think that it is their duty to change the actions and choices of other people. The net effect being that they look only at the splinters in the eyes of others and do not look at the beam in their own eyes—which means they cannot escape their own dramas and are not growing. They cannot move from the broad way of dramas to the strait and narrow way of Christ.
Consider how subtle and pervasive this state of consciousness is. If you think that you have to “help” other people by getting them – by means that you think are legitimate and benign – to change their minds, change their choices, then you are trapped in an epic drama. If you think you have to evaluate other people’s choices and judge them as right or wrong based on any standard, then you are trapped in an epic drama.
The ascended masters have no need to judge or evaluate people’s choices, as they know a simple reality:
For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned. (Matthew 12:37)
The masters also know that this quote is not entirely correct. The true meaning is that by thy WORD thou shalt be justified and condemned. The term WORD refers to a person’s total state of consciousness, the sense of self with which you express yourself in this world.
This is comparable to the concept of the LOGOS, which is the basic vision – held in the universal Christ mind – that the Creator defined before creating anything that had form. You likewise have a basic vision of life through which you color everything you do in the world of form. This basic vision is shaped by your life experience. Jesus referred to this when he said:
A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things. (Matthew 12:35)
Obviously, you can see that while in embodiment Jesus did use the dualistic term good and evil, but nevertheless the point is that what Jesus called “the heart” is your WORD, your LOGOS, your basic approach to and outlook upon life in the material world.
We might say that entering the kingdom of God, which is the Christ consciousness, is like entering a door with a screen that holds back anything too big to fit through the holes. Any illusions that spring from the duality consciousness – any remnants of a personal or epic drama – cannot pass through the screen and will thus keep the conscious self from passing through the door as long as you identify with them.
The ascended masters have no need to form opinions, to evaluate or to judge anyone on earth. They know that the law is unfailing and that people will enter the Christ consciousness only when they take full responsibility for their own state of mind instead of worrying about other people’s state of mind. The masters focus all of their attention on inspiring people to raise their consciousness.
In doing so, they are – naturally – having to adapt to people’s current state of consciousness. They always have to challenge people’s existing mental boxes, but the question is how much they can challenge the mental boxes without disturbing people’s sense of equilibrium too much—meaning that they panic, close their minds and start to defend their mental boxes. The masters walk a delicate balancing act.
The cosmic delay factor
Let us return to the basics. The purpose of life is growth in self-awareness, and the entire world of form is designed to allow a self-aware being to progressively expand its sense of self-awareness from any level to that of a Creator. The vehicle for the expansion of self-awareness is your life experience, the experience you get as you interact with a particular environment in the world of form, including other self-aware beings in that environment.
Your growth in SELF-awareness cannot be forced upon you from without—it must happen as a result of your internal process, meaning how you choose to respond to your environment. You can be put in a situation where you have conditions that make it easier for you to develop self-awareness, but there is no guarantee that all people exposed to the same situation will respond the same way or that all will grow.
What does it mean to grow? It means that you come to the realization that it is not the external circumstances that affect you but your reaction to them that affects you. Your inner life experience is what affects your sense of self, and the master key to your personal growth is to take command over your life experience.
The real question is how long it will take for you to come to this realization. However, this can happen only after you have had enough of the experience of allowing external circumstances to control your state of mind. You have the right to have this experience for as long as you want—within the framework of the law.
What is the framework of the law? Since the very purpose is the growth in self-awareness, the law is set up to make sure nothing can stand still. You are either raising your awareness or you are lowering your awareness—there is nothing in between.
This will seem contradictory to common experience. The density of the energies of the material universe creates a delay factor so that it takes time from when a mental image is projected from the mind until the cosmic mirror reflects it back as a physical form/circumstance.
This delay factor is what creates the illusion of time and that you can maintain a certain experience over time. In reality, you are always affected by the two basic forces, namely the force of life (the upward pull) and the force of death (the second law of thermodynamics that seeks to break down any structure).
Even though it may seem as if you can maintain certain physical conditions or even a certain inner condition over time, you are always being pulled in one direction or the other, which means your sense of self is either expanding or contracting. You are either flowing with the River of Life and growing, or you are resisting it and thus falling further and further behind, which increases the downward pull.
The two ways to grow
There are two ways to evolve and grow, one is to flow with the River of Life and expand your sense of self and the other is to resist. How can resisting lead to growth? What does growth mean? It means to expand your sense of self, or we might say it means to expand the mental box in which the conscious self has chosen to clothe itself.
When you resist the upward pull, the second law will eventually – and it will happen – challenge your mental boxes. Growth happens when your mental box is challenged to such an extent that your sense of equilibrium is disturbed. It is important for spiritual students to understand what this means.
The effect of having a sense of equilibrium is that you are not really thinking about life and evaluating your approach to life. You feel that everything is stable and you see no need to rethink your basic approach to life. It is only when your current mental box is challenged to a critical degree that your sense of equilibrium is disturbed to the point where you acknowledge the need to re-evaluate some aspect of your WORD, your LOGOS, your approach to life.
What will it take for a given being to come to the point of acknowledging the need to re-evaluate life? It depends on how attached the being is to its sense of equilibrium. The most advanced students have very little attachment and are constantly re-evaluating some aspect of life, always looking for insights that can help them expand their current mental box—which is seen as simply one step on the staircase of growth. They have taken full responsibility for their state of mind.
Those who are trapped in a drama are very attached to their sense of equilibrium because they stepped into the drama in order to avoid taking responsibility for themselves. They have closed their minds to any knowledge that is beyond the mental box of their drama. Since the mental box is seen as reality, it is believed to be the final view of life—it is a closed system, an end in itself.
This means such people are unreachable and unteachable to the true spiritual teachers who have uncompromising respect for free will. These people simply are not on the radar screens of the masters, so to speak, as they know the law and physical conditions will take care of their growth. How does this happen? It is what is called the School of Hard Knocks, and it has three main elements:
- People are not alone but live in an environment with other people who are trapped in the drama consciousness. Because the epic dramas are defined from the duality consciousness, they always have a built-in conflict. An epic drama is based on a concept of right and wrong and a standard for judging other people as good or bad. It is inevitable that those trapped in one epic drama will see themselves as being in opposition to those trapped in another drama. You see all kinds of groups on earth who are essentially challenging each others mental boxes, and the ascended masters really don’t need to do anything—people are so good at doing it themselves. The effect of the epic dramas is that you cannot leave other people alone, and this makes sure that everyone’s mental box will be challenged by someone.
- The material universe is designed as a cosmic mirror that reflects back to you what you send out. The base energy will take on forms that outpicture the mental images projected upon it. As an example, it is the mental images of human beings that have created disease, poverty, starvation and all other limiting conditions on earth. By experiencing such conditions, people’s mental boxes can also be challenged to the point where they see the need to re-evaluate their approach to life.
- The base energy will take on any form projected upon it, but the second law of thermodynamics will instantly begin to break down any form and return the energy to a state of formlessness. This also works in terms of people’s mental boxes, as the second law works only in closed systems. Because of the two factors described above, people begin to defend their mental boxes and close their minds to new knowledge. As soon as their minds become closed systems, the second law begins to create disorder and chaos internally, and this can eventually lead to such stress and mental disease that people can no longer stand it and become willing to rethink.
The School of Hard Knocks
The School of Hard Knocks inevitably leads to suffering. It is really only a matter of how much suffering people are willing to take before they decide to rethink their lives.
People create their own suffering by their own resistance to growth—the harder the resistance, the more intense the suffering. It is only a matter of time before people cannot maintain their sense of equilibrium. As their mental boxes are challenged, people do get an opportunity to look at life without the filter of the mental boxes.
The effect is that even though people have been going deeper and deeper into the drama consciousness, they can – at any time – come to the point of being willing to rethink life. If they truly are willing to look beyond their mental box, they can have a true conversion experience that in an instant puts them on the upward path.
The ascended masters do not condemn people for taking this road, for they know that even the via Dolorosa can lead to genuine growth. Growth means that the dramas are transcended, and you can do that in two ways.
You can use a spiritual teaching to see through the illusions of the dramas or you can live out the dramas to the fullest until you have had enough of the struggle and see through them—finally taking responsibility for your life experience. Either way works, and one is not necessarily better than the other. Most self-aware beings have to experience some drama in order to truly gain the experience that empowers them to see through the drama consciousness in all of its forms.
To the ascended masters, the difference is that those who take the School of Hard Knocks are not open to direct assistance from them, which means they leave them alone and let the law do its work. Only when someone is open to ideas beyond their mental box, do the masters step in and get more directly involved in helping people grow.
Seeking to help people through spiritual teachings
The ascended masters do not judge people based on a dualistic standard, but they do – naturally – evaluate people. The criterion is simple: Can the masters help people or can they not help them? Most people on earth are still in the School of Hard Knocks, and such people simply are not on the masters’ radar screen, as they are not open to their help. What will it take for people to be open to the masters?
In the most general sense, people become open to help when they reach a critical point of being willing to question their mental boxes even if it disturbs their sense of equilibrium:
- This might happen as a result of people receiving such hard knocks that their mental boxes and sense of equilibrium are disturbed by force.
- It might happen by people using the mind’s built-in ability to analyze and compare whereby they see contradictions in traditional or mainstream thought systems. It might also happen as a result of people developing a love for something more than the dramas.
As said, all larger or mainstream thought systems – be they religious, political or scientific – have been influenced by the drama consciousness. They have all become tools for promoting the epic drama that those in a specific thought system are the good people who are working for the ultimate cause, and this gives these people a firm sense of equilibrium. Only when people – one way or another – become willing to question the mental boxes defined by established thought systems, will they be open to direct teachings from the ascended masters.
What we are talking about here are teachings that are given for a general audience and are available for anyone to find and study. Examples are the teachings of the Buddha, the teachings Jesus gave 2,000 years ago and the teachings the ascended masters have given through various messengers over the past century.
Consider the reality that the ascended masters face. Contrary to what some students prefer to think (based on the drama consciousness) the masters are not seeking to bring forth an ultimate or absolute teaching. They realize that no teaching expressed in words can be absolute or ultimate. Your conscious self has the capacity to experience ultimate truth – what Jesus called the Spirit of truth – but only by going beyond any expression in the world of form and experiencing its source, the higher self.
The masters are practical realists who are seeking to reach as many people as possible, meaning they inspire or release many different teachings. Each teaching is carefully adapted to a group of people who are affected by a particular epic drama or mental box. In order for such a teaching to be successful, the first requirement is that it must contain something that the people can fathom and relate to with their present state of consciousness.
Even a teaching given by the ascended masters must be adapted to people’s mental box, which means that it can be necessary for the masters to seemingly confirm certain illusions to which the people they seek to reach are attached. In order to reach people, the masters cannot challenge their mental box beyond what their sense of equilibrium can deal with. If they give a teaching that is too far beyond people’s mental box, they cannot reach them at all, and thus they cannot even begin to help them. The masters’ teachings are not given in order to set forth ultimate truth. They are given in order to offer a specific group of people a way to transcend a particular mental box—and once they have done that then connect to the ongoing path.
Many of the teachings the masters give and inspire are given for people who are not ready to acknowledge the existence of ascended masters so they keep their identity secret. There is a great variety of such teachings, often disguised as self-help or as belonging to a particular tradition. For example, the masters must take vastly different approaches in order to help people from a Christian, a Muslim or a Buddhist background.
Within the last century, the ascended masters have also sponsored certain teachings that openly spoke about them and that sought to give forth a more universal teaching for people who had attained a higher degree of openness. Even such teachings are not meant to set forth an ultimate truth.
This realization has many ramifications. One is the fact that people who find these teachings respond to them based on their personal and epic dramas, their mental boxes. The teachings have been published for anyone to find, and the only real criteria is people’s willingness to question their mental boxes. The important question is how this willingness came about.
Most people on earth have enrolled themselves in the School of Hard Knocks. For some the knocks eventually became so hard that they developed a willingness to question certain mental boxes. The crucial distinction is that for most people this did not mean that they also developed a willingness to take responsibility for themselves.
Take note that people can indeed develop this willingness through the School of Hard Knocks, but the fact that they are in this school proves that at one point they refused to take full responsibility. They have a big hurdle to overcome and must go through a change of heart.
The vast majority of the people who have – over the past century and more – found a teaching released by the ascended masters have come in without the willingness to take full responsibility for themselves. The masters have been fully aware of this, and their teachings have been designed to help people take that responsibility. They have also been fully aware that there is no way to guarantee that people will actually accept responsibility.
It is quite possible to be willing to question your mental boxes in terms of questioning outer teachings or thought systems without being willing to look in the mirror and take responsibility for yourself. For example, many people can clearly see the fallacy of mainstream religion, and they are quick to place blame upon various external sources who supposedly tricked them and other people.
However, an illusion can only appeal to you if you have something in your own consciousness that corresponds to that illusion. That something is a spiritual blindness that prevents you from seeing through the illusion. Where does spiritual blindness come from? It comes from your unwillingness to look at yourself in the mirror, which comes from your unwillingness to take full responsibility for your state of mind.
Misusing the teachings to build an equilibrium
A majority of the people who come into ascended master teachings are willing to question their mental boxes but are not – yet – willing to take responsibility for themselves. For this discussion, the mental box is how you look at the world, including an outer religion you follow. It is how you look out from yourself. Your sense of equilibrium is how you look at yourself, meaning how you look in at yourself.
As an example, let us take a person who grew up in a mainstream Christian religion. He eventually receives some hard knocks that cause him to acknowledge the contradictions of his belief system. He is willing to question his outer religion, his mental box.
As a result of this, he finds the ascended masters’ teachings and it opens his mind further. He comes to reason that his traditional religion was influenced by the manipulators, and he places all responsibility on these external forces.
What he has not done is look at what it was in his consciousness that caused him to be born in that environment—what it is he needs to learn about his approach to life and religion in order to rise above his current level of consciousness. He has not yet taken responsibility for himself but is placing responsibility outside himself. While this may still lead to a growth in his understanding of the world, it has not yet led to a growth in his state of consciousness.
Another way to say this is that such a person has had his mental box challenged, but he has not yet had his sense of equilibrium challenged so severely that he is willing to look at himself. Most of the people who find the masters’ teachings either have their sense of equilibrium largely intact or have only had it challenged to some degree.
Most students come to the masters’ teachings with a desire to reinforce or repair their sense of equilibrium. They quickly take the teachings and build a new sense of equilibrium, which means they have now used the teachings to justify why they do not need to look at themselves!
They have taken an ascended master teaching and elevated it to some ultimate status, such as claiming it is the most advanced teaching on the planet. They have selected certain aspects of the teaching and used them to build a sense that they have no need to truly question their basic approach to life and religion. After all, since they have found and accepted this advanced teaching – as opposed to the majority who are not evolved enough to accept the teaching – they must be advanced students. As such, they have no need to even consider that they have a beam in their own eyes.
As a result, their minds become closed systems. The ascended masters cannot reach them, even though they claim to be their best students. The masters can only stand by and say to them (which they cannot hear): “Hello, if you want to see us, look inside yourself. When you have been willing to look at and see through anything that is in there, you will see us on the other side!”
The self-esteem trap
Why is it that people need a sense of equilibrium? All self-aware beings need some foundation for their interaction with their environment, some sense of who they are. A new co-creator who is playing a role gets this sense of identity from the role he or she is playing, and it gives a sense of self-esteem.
As you come to the turning point of having to take responsibility, you awaken from the first forgetting. You now reconnect to the fact that the core of your being is the conscious self, which is an extension of your higher self. You also become aware of your higher self, and thus you begin to know your spiritual individuality—as opposed to the sense of self you have built as a result of playing roles in your environment.
The importance is that you gain the best possible foundation for developing true self-esteem, namely that you realize that you are a spiritual being who is beyond any role you have played in this world and beyond any self you have developed in this world. The only true source of self-esteem is to recognize that you are an extension of the Creator’s Being—and that all other self-aware beings are also extensions of the same source. It is a self-esteem that is beyond and thus independent of anything in this world.
How do you develop this self-esteem? There is only one way. You must take full responsibility for yourself. You must realize that it is your responsibility to connect to your higher self and that you must never allow anything in this world to come between you and your source. You must take full responsibility for being in command of your state of mind, regardless of anything that happens in this world.
When you do this, you realize that your conscious self is more than any other sense of self you have developed in this world; it is more than any sense of self based on the illusion of separation or the consciousness of duality. As such, you have the potential to transcend, to rise above, to leave behind any lesser self and begin to express your spiritual individuality in this world.
You can come to the point where your sense of self – the self you use as a vehicle for self-expression in this world – is in complete alignment with the individuality in your higher self. You are here below all that you are Above.
What happens when a lifestream refuses to take this full responsibility? It goes into the drama consciousness, and that means it accepts a dualistic illusion as a justification for not looking at itself. It now builds a sense of self-esteem – a sense of equilibrium – on this illusion, and as explained above, any illusion will inevitably be challenged in the School of Hard Knocks. You now have a being who is in a constant struggle to build, secure and defend its self-esteem, its sense of equilibrium.
On an even deeper level, the unwillingness to take responsibility for yourself makes a being vulnerable to the epic dramas. The reason is that the epic dramas seemingly offer an easy way out of the self-esteem problem.
These dramas – in any number of different variations – define a thought system that divides people into two categories, those who are good and those who are bad. By entering into this consciousness, you take over the basic belief that there is an absolute right and wrong – as defined by your belief system – and that it is perfectly justified to judge people and label them.
You enter the “us versus them” mentality and the advantage it offers you (when you are not willing to take responsibility for yourself) is that by merely belonging to the good people, you have a foundation for self-esteem. You are part of the group of people who are not only good, but who are actually fighting for the victory of God’s plan on earth and for the defeat of those who oppose God. What better foundation for self-esteem could you have—in this world.
All are affected by epic dramas
The illusions of the epic dramas have been so intricately woven into the fabric of consciousness on this planet that it is virtually impossible to grow up without being affected by them. What are the ascended masters to do when they give forth a new teaching?
They have to give something that appeals to people and also is in line with the lessons people have to learn at the time. One of the main lessons humanity was meant to learn in the Age of Pisces was precisely to overcome the epic dramas. This explains why some spiritual teachings have contained certain elements that are clearly dualistic and adapted to the epic mindset.
Each teaching is a calculated risk. The ascended masters know very well that most people – the vast majority – who find the teaching are affected by the epic mindset and have built their self-esteem on its illusions. They know it is inevitable that such people will use the teachings to reinforce their sense of self-esteem, their sense of equilibrium, based on the belief that they are the good people and that they are on the side of ultimate good.
The masters cannot require that people leave behind their epic dramas before they enter the door—as that would defeat the purpose for giving a teaching. If people had already transcended the epic mindset, they would not need an external teaching as the masters could work with them directly within themselves.
Those who do need an outer teaching are guaranteed to be in the epic mindset, and the masters must adapt the teaching to this fact. This means that they must cater to the need that people have, including the need to feel special because they have found the teaching. There is no way around this. It is a practical reality that those who are above the fallen consciousness must work within the framework defined by the manipulators.
If it is likely that the teaching will reinforce the epic mindset and the false self-esteem, does that not defeat the purpose from the very beginning? Not necessarily, because the masters have options for helping people transcend the epic mindset once they have walked through the door. For those who can read between the lines of any teaching – for those who have eyes to see – there are innumerable clues that can help people see beyond the epic mindset.
The masters know the initiation faced by Gautama Buddha as he had entered Nirvana and contemplated returning to earth in order to teach what he had discovered. The temptation was that the difference between the state of consciousness he had attained and the state of consciousness of most people on earth was so great that no one would be able to understand his teaching. He overcame that temptation by stating the eternal truth guaranteed by the upward momentum of the world as a whole: “Some will understand.”
For each teaching the ascended masters have given, some have understood and have bridged the gap between their epic mental box and the ascended consciousness. By talking about these topics in a more direct manner than has ever been done before, even more will understand and rise above.