TOPICS: A direct inner relationship with an ascended master – a true earthly teacher will not stand between you and the ascended masters – spiritual self-sufficiency – recognizing the next teacher – your ego wants you to follow a teacher forever – be loyal to your inner growth – don’t give away your responsibility – the lie that you need no teacher – a true teacher gives you an outside perspective on your psychology –
Question: I am a Christian and I follow a true living spiritual Master of the Sound and Light of the Word. I read your website for the last two years and a half and I am still reading it. Since I do research about your teaching I used many, many teachings you gave in my research. And I think I am inspired by you to find sometime new ideas. My question: Can I become your direct disciple? This means I will have two Masters: One living, and one ascended. Is it possible? There will be any conflict?
Answer from ascended master Jesus through Kim Michaels:
Consider my saying:
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. (Matthew, 6:24)
There is no room for compromise in that statement. You truly cannot serve two masters, you cannot be equally loyal to someone on earth or someone in the spiritual realm. So the question becomes whether you actually have two masters?
If you want to be my direct disciple – or the disciple of another ascended master – you must develop a direct, inner, personal relationship with me. Everything I give on my website is designed to help you reach that goal. Anyone has the potential to reach that goal, although the more spiritually inclined people are closer to attaining it than others.
Having a direct relationship means that your relationship with me does not depend on or go through anything or anyone outside yourself, including an outer teacher or teaching—and including this website. However, this does not mean that you do not need or cannot have an outer teacher or teaching. A true teacher knows that he or she is only a temporary bridge between the student and the ascended masters. Thus, such a teacher will never seek to hold back the student from developing the direct, inner relationship with us. The true teacher will find joy in becoming obsolete, in helping the student reach a point where the student has inner communion.
If you have a true outer teacher, that person will not work against the goal of your direct inner connection to the ascended masters, and consequently you do not have two masters. Your outer teacher and your inner teacher are one in purpose—namely your growth toward spiritual self-sufficiency. Yet if the outer teacher or teaching starts to come between you and your inner connection with me, then you need to make some hard decisions.
I cannot give you a general, fool-proof rule for how to find a true teacher or when to move on from an outer teacher to an inner teacher, for the path is an individual endeavor. However, let me give you a few thoughts to ponder.
The timeless mottos is, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” If you have a teacher or teaching now, it is because that is what you were ready for when you found it. Yet if you grow with maximum speed, you might be ready for another teacher at some time—and at some time you should be ready for direct inner communion. When that time arrives, the teacher – inner or outer – WILL appear, but the question is whether you can recognize him/her. If you are not open to moving on and looking for the next teacher, you might ignore the opportunity.
It is a fact that many of our students become attached to a particular organization, teaching or guru. There comes a point on the path when you must dare to strive for inner communion and set this before anything else. If you do not, the outer teaching becomes a trap that will hold you back. Thus, what was given as a tool for your liberation, you have now turned into a prison for your lifestream.
If you are a spiritually inclined person, your ego knows that it cannot stop you from looking for a teacher. So it will try to make you accept a false teacher and then make you believe you have to follow him/her forever. There are indeed many false teachers in the world. One way to recognize false teachers is that they seek to make their followers codependent upon the teacher and will not allow them to have direct, inner communion. They do this by setting themselves up as being so far above everyone else that they are the only ones who can commune with the spiritual realm. They say you are not able to commune directly with the ascended masters and thus you should only listen to the outer teacher.
Be especially aware that your first and foremost loyalty must be to your own growth. The path is ALWAYS an inner path. Regardless of what you do on the outer, your personal progress takes place inside yourself. An outer teacher can help you attain progress, but NO outer teacher can do the work for you. Be very suspicious of teachers who claim they can “save” you if only you give them your unconditional loyalty. No true teacher will make you swear allegiance to him/her above your allegiance to your inner growth and to your inner teachers. If a teacher wants you to pledge that you will follow him/her forever and that you give your life or soul to him/her, you need to be careful.
There is a legitimate method of helping a student overcome the ego by pledging unconditional obedience to the guru. By obeying a true guru, you can overcome the tendency to blindly obey your ego—thus you can free yourself from having the ego as your guru. Yet this is not the same as giving your life or soul to the guru, for it is not yours to give. In the end, God has given you full responsibility for your path and salvation. If someone encourages you to give away that responsibility, they are not working for God’s purpose.
As I try to point out throughout this website, the ego creates two opposites and seeks to trap you in either one. The opposite extreme to the viewpoint that you should follow an outer teacher forever is that you don’t need an outer teacher but can and should do everything on your own. It is folly – and a subtle form of pride – to think you can walk the spiritual path without a teacher. Yet the teacher can take many disguises and may appear in the form of your friends or family who can give you a balanced perspective on yourself. In many cases the teacher appears for a brief moment to give you an instruction you need in order to move on. Be alert and ALWAYS listen for the teacher in disguise. As El Morya says, “If the guru be an ant, heed him!”
Some students think they already have inner communion and others seek to take heaven by force. Such people often establish a connection to the false masters while being completely convinced that they are communing with the real ascended masters. Such people are often unreachable by anyone Above or below, and thus they would have been much better off had they continued to rely on an outer teacher. Such people also have two masters in the sense that they have a genuine desire to serve God but are seeking to fulfill it in an inappropriate manner.
Even if you find a true outer teacher, your ego will try to make you believe you have to follow him/her forever and not strive for inner communion. It is not constructive that some people have been in a teaching sponsored by the ascended masters for decades, and they still do not dare to even strive for inner communion. The willingness to TRY is essential for your continued progress on the path.
Some people have in past lives attained a direct inner communion with the spiritual realm and they can easily reestablish it in this lifetime. Yet for those who have not done so, it can be difficult to attain this communion without first following a teacher or teaching that they can see or hear with the outer mind and senses. That is why we give outer teachings and train teachers or messengers to represent us. Many spiritual seekers need an outer teacher for a time before they can establish inner communion. As long as an outer teacher does not come between you and your inner communion, then you do not have two masters—even if you continue to learn from and support an outer teacher.
Even after you start having inner communion, you can still benefit from having a genuine outer teacher. The teacher can help you see yourself from the outside, the teacher can serve as a mirror and help you see what you cannot see on your own. As long as you have not fully overcome the ego, you will have blind spots, for the ego cannot see itself from an outside perspective. Thus, you need a teacher in some form to give you an objective point of reference. However, this can also be attained in a community of equals.
As you can see, I cannot give you a general statement of when you need to go beyond an outer teacher or teaching and establish direct inner communion. Nor can I give you a clear-cut rule for when or if you need to leave behind an outer teacher or teaching. What I can say is that if you never close your mind to further growth and continually strive for more accurate inner communion, you will recognize the next teacher when he/she appears.
The willingness to TRY something new, to go beyond present boundaries, is the essence of walking the spiritual path. Attachment to anything in this world – or even attachment to a connection to a non-material being – is the surest way to stop your progress. As always, the only general rule that can be given is that a balanced approach will give you maximum progress without taking you into any of the extremes that so easily become a blind alley.
Copyright © 2005 by Kim Michaels