By Kim Michaels

In this article I will try to explain how I see myself as a messenger and what is important to me about serving the ascended masters. I am using my own view and example because I do not want to evaluate how other people should or should not serve the ascended masters.

I have personally studied the teachings of several organizations that were sponsored by the ascended masters within the last century. Each of these organizations followed a similar pattern. They ended up claiming that their messenger was the only genuine messenger at the time, and they all claimed that after their messenger became inactive, there would be no more progressive revelation forthcoming.

I see myself as working for the ascended masters; not the other way around. No messenger and no organization ever has had and ever will be granted a patent on the ascended masters. I realize that the ascended masters do not work exclusively through me but that they use many other people to bring forth new ideas in many different ways. I have no opinion about what the masters should do, either now or after I am no longer a messenger. I fully expect that progressive revelation will continue because the ascended masters are not limited by anything on earth.

The reason the ascended masters are so valuable for our spiritual growth is that they are “incorruptible;” they cannot be corrupted by the human ego and the false teachers on earth. The tragedy of the Piscean age was that the Catholic Church claimed to have a patent on Jesus and distorted his teachings as they saw fit. I don’t think we need to repeat that pattern in the Aquarian age by thinking any messenger or organization can claim exclusivity and use the teachings of the ascended masters to “support” a sense of superiority.

Progressive revelation is progressive, which means that at any given time, only a certain level of teachings can be given. As a critical mass of people use that teaching to raise their consciousness and raise the collective, a higher teaching can be given. And the masters will always find a way to give that higher teaching, even if an organization claims the masters no longer have a genuine messenger. That is why Master MORE says: “If the messenger be an ant, heed him.”

What is a messenger?

Being a messenger implies a two-fold action: I receive a message from a source and I pass it on to a recipient. This means that as a messenger, I have to be able to do two things that are contradictory in nature. Receiving a message, especially from the ascended masters, requires me to go within and to attune my mind to a higher level of vibration. Yet passing on the message is an outgoing action, which requires a certain power and an ability to communicate.

If I have attunement but don’t communicate it to anyone, then I am not a messenger. I don’t become a messenger until I have passed on the message. On the other hand, if I do not tune in to a higher source, I am not a messenger either, because communicating something from my own subconscious mind or a lower source does not make me a messenger for the ascended masters.

In order to be a messenger, I have to both receive a genuine message and I have to pass it on. And this requires balance. I have to balance the ingoing action of attunement with the outgoing action of passing on the message. The key word to being a good messenger is balance—balance in all things. When I have balance in my own mind, I will be able to fulfill the requirement for being a messenger, which was described by Jesus as follows: “I am the open door, which no man can shut.” Again, this is a two-fold action.

I want to be an open door so that I can receive the purest possible message from the ascended masters. This requires me to overcome some of the preconceived opinions and beliefs in my own mind, what the masters call my perception filter. If I have too many of these and if I am attached to them, I will subconsciously color the message I receive. In order to be the open door that no man can shut, I have to be so free from preconceived beliefs and images that a relatively pure message can pass through my mind.

I also have to be willing to pass on a message without being attached to how it is received. I cannot allow other people or their opinions to stop me from expressing the message or color the message. Being a messenger is not a popularity contest. A true messenger will always be a threat to some people, because the messenger will bring forth messages that threaten the ego’s sense of being in control. I cannot allow other people to shut the door to my messengership.

Many people can receive something from the ascended masters, and the messages can fit within a wide range. It can be a practical idea or invention concerning how to improve some aspect of life. It can be inspiration for helping other people on a personal level. It can be inspiration for a book. Or it can be more direct messages. In many cases, we do not need to say that the idea or message comes from the ascended masters.

We each have a unique mission

There are millions of people in embodiment who have volunteered to be part of the process of raising the collective consciousness and bringing the Golden Age of Saint Germain into manifestation. Before we come into embodiment, we meet with our ascended teachers and we create a divine plan for this lifetime. The creation of this plan takes into account our divine individuality, our experience, the outer personality and our karma from past lives. It then defines a set of goals for what is realistic to achieve and what we want to achieve and learn in the coming lifetime.

Each of the millions of spiritual people have a divine plan for how we can make the best possible contribution to the progress of humanity. We each have a mission, and each of our missions is important to the progress of the whole. The ego loves to play a game of setting up a scale with a value judgment, saying that such and such a mission is more important than others. In my view, this is all nonsense. Each person is equally important, and each person’s divine plan is as important as that of any other person.

For me being a messenger is simply one way of serving the ascended masters. It is not more or less important than any other form of service. Seeing it as more important than other forms of service, is in my view an ego game. It is not possible to use a human ambition to decide that one wants to be a messenger. We need to discover whether being a messenger is part of our divine plan.

One cannot choose to become a messenger. The ascended masters choose whom they want as messengers. It would be non-constructive to desire to be a messenger if that is not part of our divine plan—because it might prevent us from doing the equally important service that is part of our divine plan. On the other hand, it would be unfortunate if it is part of our divine plan to be a messenger, but we ignored or denied this potential or did not develop it to its fullest.

I didn’t have a personal desire to be a messenger yet it was part of my Divine plan. It took me a long time to sense this, but I think it was important for me to be neutral about being a messenger. As they say about the Holy Grail: “You do not find the Grail; the Grail finds you.” In order for the masters to find us, we need to be open to being a messenger without lusting after it. Again, balance is the key.

Idolatry of messengers

Idolatry is when people think a messenger is very important and has some superhuman status or authority. I was personally a member of the Summit Lighthouse in which the messenger, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, was seen as having a superior status. It was said that the messenger had been in embodiment for two and a half million years on earth, and during that time she had been trained by the masters to fulfill her role of being a messenger in this, her last, lifetime. It was said she had been various famous people in history. It was said that she had special spiritual attainment and a variety of mantles, given to her by various masters, some of which were very high in the hierarchy of ascended beings. In other words, she was portrayed as having the most important role for saving the planet and bringing forth the Golden Age.

In the Summit, her word was law. She was the supreme leader, and she was looked upon by many members as being God’s representative on earth. Whatever she said was infallible because it was either by the Holy Spirit or it was El Morya speaking thorough her. In the Summit, the messenger had the same kind of status as the Pope has in the Catholic church.

The messenger would sometimes talk about the problem of idolatry, and the masters gave dictations about it through her. Yet many of her followers still had idolatry towards her. I think this contributed to the fact that she did not appoint a successor. By her being so special, it was almost impossible for anyone else to fill her shoes. The idolatry around the messenger gave the office of being a messenger a special status in the eyes of many people. And this means some people developed a human desire to have the kind of status and power that they saw the messenger have in the Summit.

I am not hereby saying that what happened in the Summit was wrong. My understanding is that Summit was the last organization that the ascended masters could sponsor in the Age of Pisces. The organization and its teachings were specifically designed to give people the kind of tests they needed in order to pass the the initiations of Pisces and move into the Aquarian mindset.

One of these initiations is precisely idolatry. The essence of idolatry is that we elevate another human being to a special status, thereby automatically saying that we cannot attain the same status or do the same work. This gives our egos a watertight excuse for denying our own Christ potential. The quintessential example is how the Catholic church elevated Jesus to being “God of very Gods, begotten, not made,” thereby eclipsing his true mission, which was to serve as an example for the potential we all have. This has given all Christians a watertight excuse for not developing their own Christ potential.

I was a member of the Summit for about 15 years, and for 10 years I lived near the headquarters of the organization in Montana, attending many services and conferences, including hearing hundreds of live dictations. During all that time, I never even had the thought that I could become a messenger, nor did I want to. I always looked at Elizabeth Clare Prophet as being a fully adequate messenger, and she did take very powerful dictations during which both immense spiritual light and profound teachings were released.

Yet at an early stage I became aware of the dangers of idolatry. This happened when I read a dictation by El Morya (now Master MORE) about the need to avoid having idolatry, even – or especially – of the messenger. I took that to heart, and this allowed me to see that the messenger was fulfilling her office in a fully adequate way, but her way was not the only possible way to be a messenger. In other words, there are many ways to be a messenger, and I realized it is important not to let the example of one messenger set a pattern for all succeeding messengers. After all, the essence of the ascended master’s activity is progressive revelation. And how can revelation be progressive, if a new messenger seeks to imitate an older messenger?

I also saw that the messenger for the Summit had certain personal characteristics, including a need to be in control. I saw how this set certain limitations for both herself and the organization, and I saw that I had no desire whatsoever for being in her position. I did not desire to have power over others, and I had no desire to run an organization. I also had no desire to tell people how to run their lives or their spiritual path. I observed how the messenger’s time and attention was increasingly being eaten up by having to deal with the organization, leaving her less and less time and attention for taking messages from the masters. As the organization grew, it became increasingly difficult to be both a good messenger and a good organizational leader.

This led me to make a determined effort to rise above idolatry. I realized that if I idolized the messenger, I would be denying my own Christhood. And towards the end of the 1990’s I became increasingly aware of the need to stop denying my Christhood, to stop denying God the ability to work through me, to stop limiting what God could do through me. I realized I had to get myself – my lower self and ego – out of the way of the masters. I still had no inkling whatsoever that I would become a messenger, but I did start opening myself to discovering a new level of service that was beyond the way service had been defined in the Summit.

I also started realizing that my spiritual service was not a matter of what I can do with my outer self. Spiritual service means that I allow God, the ascended masters and me I AM Presence to be the doer through me. God is in every one of us. If I say that God can work through a special person but not through me, then I am denying God in myself. I became very determined not to do that. And of course, if God is working through me, what is to say that the same God cannot do the works through me that God did through Jesus—or anyone else?

Where does the message come from?

Although I don’t consider taking a dictation to be the same as channeling, many spiritual people don’t seem to distinguish. For them, any kind of communication with another realm is channeling. A few years ago I read a book about channeling, and it described how some people in California had developed a course where you could learn to channel. Their motto was: “Anyone can channel.” Based on my experience, I disagree.

Taking a worded message, where you speak it out in a somewhat coherent manner, is not easy. So you have to have good communication skills and a quick mind. I have met people who had the ambition to channel, but simply could not speak a message out loud. Some of them could write down a message, but speaking it is complex. So not everyone can channel.

I will agree that many, many people can learn to channel. In fact, many more people can learn to channel than the number of people for whom it is part of their divine plan to be a messenger for the ascended masters. In my view, the ascended masters will not give a message through a person for whom it is not in their divine plan to be a messenger. We cannot force the ascended masters to give a dictation through us. So if a person decides to channel and is successful in taking a message, where does the message come from?

As the masters have explained, there are four levels of the material universe. The highest is the identity or etheric level, then the mental, then the emotional and finally the physical. Let us look at each of them.

You obviously don’t channel beings at the physical level, because you might as well pick up the phone. There is a level of the emotional realm that is very close to the physical in vibration. Some souls spend time there after the physical body dies, and some souls get stuck there for a longer period of time. When you see a TV show where a medium takes messages from dead relatives, the medium is basically channeling souls in the emotional realm. Or in some cases, the medium is channeling beings who claim to be the souls of departed loved ones.

The emotional realm has many layers, and some of them have a very low vibration. In fact, some of them are like the visions of hell that people have seen throughout the ages. The ascended masters call this the astral plane. At the lower levels of the astral plane, there are some beings who are so angry that they cannot hide their anger or evil intent. It is difficult to channel such beings, because it ends up being more like a possession where the entity takes over a person’s mind, sometimes shouting profanities or angry messages. Since becoming a messenger, I have received emails written by people who were clearly possessed by such astral entities.

There are higher levels of the astral realm where there are beings who are better at disguising their anger. The important point about the astral plane is that the beings there have lost their inner connection to the spiritual realm. They cannot receive light directly from above, which means they must steal light from human beings in order to survive. They will do this in a variety of ways by telling people exactly what their ego’s want to hear.

I have heard about channelers who had a desire to have great power, and they channeled entities who would give very powerful messages, even sometimes manifest visible phenomena, such as flashing lights, sounds or extoplasm. Yet after having taken a message, the channeler was exhausted and couldn’t walk or talk for several hours. To me, this is a sure sign that the channeler is working with a lower entity. The ascended masters are in the spiritual realm, and they can get all the energy they need directly from the Source. They need absolutely no energy from us; in fact, part of their mission is to give energy to human beings.

I have done conferences where I would travel a long way to get there, not having gotten enough sleep. I have been active for several days, giving lectures, talking to people and taking several dictations. In some cases I have been standing up for over an hour, taking a dictation where I have been projecting my voice with greater power than normal. There can be a purely physical fatigue from the effort. Yet I have never felt depleted of energy after taking a dictation. In fact, after a dictation I don’t even feel the physical fatigue until I get to bed. I have taken dictations where I lost awareness of the body, not realizing that my knees or ankles were sore until the dictation was over. Sometimes I even feel such an upward pull from the masters that I stand on my toes for a period of time, something I can barely do normally.

The ascended masters never take energy from me during a dictation. Which means that if taking a channeled message depletes a person of psychic energy, it can only be because the person is channeling an entity from below the ascended level. Such entities may give a person energy temporarily, but there will always come a low later. If I ever felt I was losing energy during a dictation, I would be extremely concerned and would either make an effort to raise my consciousness or refuse to take messages.

Entities in the astral plane have no desire or need to be honest. They will often portray themselves as ascended masters, which is what the real masters call “false hierarchy impostors.” Of course, a false hierarchy impostor will boldly accuse a genuine master of being false or will accuse a genuine messenger of taking false messages. I have experienced this from several people.

What about so-called trance channelers where the person is in a trance and does not know what is being said, often speaking with a different voice? Again, the lower beings have no respect for the laws of God, the most important of which is the Law of Free Will. When you are in a trance, you are giving up your ability to make conscious choices, meaning you set your free will aside and let another entity use your body and mind. This is a violation of the principle of free will. A lower entity will have no problem with that, but an ascended master will not violate God’s law. Thus, an ascended masters will never give a message through a person who is in a trance. Yet the lower the entity, the less respect it will have for free will.

In the higher levels of the emotional realm, there are some entities who are not actually malicious or deceiving. They will not call themselves ascended masters, but will channel under some other name or even as a group of beings. Such beings can seem quite benign, and they often give messages that make people feel good. Quite a few channelers channel from this level.

In the mental realm, we also find several levels of beings. Again, some beings in the mental realm will claim to be ascended masters, thus being part of the false hierarchy. These beings can be very clever in presenting intellectual or logical arguments, and if a person is not very intuitive, it can be difficult to avoid having such messages cause one to doubt oneself or the real masters. I have read messages from such beings where I had to admit that with my outer mind, I had no way to reason with what they were saying. Yet I clearly felt that the vibration of the entity was lower than that of an ascended master. These entities can be so good at imitating ascended masters, that one cannot tell the difference purely by looking at the words.

In the mental realm, there are also beings who use other names and do not make any false claims about their identity. Some of them present themselves as intergalactic beings or “space brothers.” Some messages I have read are benign, and you really cannot say they are saying anything that is wrong or contradicts the teachings of the ascended masters. Yet again, the vibration is clearly lower. So while such entities are not seeking to deceive people, they still get energy from them by the fact that people put their attention upon them.

Much the same can be said for entities in the lower identity or etheric realm, although I have come across few channelers who can channel from this level. The important point about the etheric realm is that it also has layers (33 to be precise). The ascended masters have etheric retreats in this realm, but they are located in the upper 22 levels. It is only at the lower 11 levels (a number that will go down as the planetary consciousness is raised) that we encounter beings who are not yet ascended. If a being needs to get energy from people – even in a seemingly benign way – this proves that the being is not following the time-tested path of seeking energy from a source inside itself. And it is difficult for anyone to rise higher than their teacher.

The ascended masters do not descend any lower than the pure levels of the etheric octave. Which means that in order to receive a message from them, we have to be able to raise our consciousness and tune in to that level. There is simply no substitute for this. If we take messages from any lower level, they do not come from ascended masters.

Christ discernment

Some false hierarchy impostors are so good at imitating the words of ascended masters that it can be difficult to tell the difference with the outer, analytical mind. Yet a false hierarchy impostor cannot imitate the vibration of an ascended master. Of course, this does no good if people have never experienced the vibration of an ascended master, for then they have no frame of reference. This explains why so many spiritual people study any message that tells them what they like to hear or feel that all messages are equally valuable or genuine.

In order to become a messenger for the ascended masters, there is only one way, and that is to develop the ability to discern between the vibration of an ascended master and that of a lower entity. There is simply no substitute for this discernment, and it comes only through the Christ mind. That is why the ascended masters stress the need to develop Christhood, and in order to do this I suggest doing the Christhood course. I am not saying it is the only way to develop Christhood, but it is a good step in the right direction.

I realize this will at first sound discouraging, because it can seem impossible to develop this discernment. But actually, most spiritual/intuitive people already have some discernment. As you are studying a message, pay attention to your heart chakra and feel whether what you read or hear raises or lowers the energies in your chakra. If the energies are lowered, there is a high probability that the message is from a lower source, and if they are raised, it is most likely from an ascended master.

If I had not developed Christ discernment, I would not have been able to function as a messenger. I believe that even if it is in your divine plan to be a messenger, we obviously are not brought up to be messengers. So we often have to raise our consciousness significantly before we can begin to take messages. And in my experience, we have to continue to raise our consciousness for as long as we are in embodiment.