A discussion about death - Part 2

This discussion took place at the Shangra-la Ascension Class, held in Chicago in May, 2006.
 

Audience: Well, the Seven Stages of Being to Oneness with I AM THAT I AM that Lorraine wrote on the site two days ago I think was very right on. It was very direct and very explicit in many ways.

Lorraine: Did any of you read it?... How many?... Just a few of you.

Audience: Can we go into what it is though, first?

Lorraine: The seven stages?

Audience: The Dark Night of the Soul and the Dark Night of the Spirit

Audience: It's the third stage, third and fourth.

Lorraine: Let's start with the writing down the stages.

1. Focus on Self
2. Focus on Others
3. Oneness with Jesus
4. Oneness with I AM
5. Being I AM
6. Being I AM THAT I AM
7. Oneness with I AM THAT I AM

Audience: At the first stage we change our diets, we make some changes and it can last several lifetimes

Lorraine: Diet is just an example.

Audience: Focus on Others we expand our oneness withÉ

Lorraine: That would be like giving out your positive experiences and love.

The third stage was specifically Oneness with Jesus, it wasn't Oneness with the Christ, at least that's how I got it. But Jesus is the exemplar of Oneness with the Christ. As a master, obviously if you focus on that oneness with the master then you become one with the Christ.

So I think the dark night of the soul happens between stages three and four and then the dark night of the spirit is between stages four and five.

OK, so you're working on Christhood. And many people who find the teachings of the Ascended Masters are here, working on Christhood. You'll find New Agers here [stage one] and then between the stage of the New Agers and actually coming into something like the Ascended Master teachings or finding the AskRealJesus website would be here [stage two].

So stage two is just the jump, you know you have to start giving out what you're taking in. Many people can stay, as I mentioned in the article, on stage one a long time, with just focus on the self, they can even spend a whole lifetime. Who knows? It's their choice. But eventually they have to start giving it out. And when you give it out then you, of course, are preparing yourself for Christhood. There's no other way. Christhood is not a matter of just an inner thing where you just be with yourself. Christhood is an expression, it's an outer thing.

So they have to jump from focusing on themselves to giving outward. So stage two is basically focussing on Christhood. And then three is where they have to see themselves as one with the master. So for me I was told I was one with, oh they used various masters with me, "You're one with Saint Germain, you're one with the Goddess of Liberty, you're one with Theosophia, you're one with Mary Baker Eddy." I'm going, "What are they doing?"

But I, being who I am, was obedient and I said, "OK, well if that's what they're saying, then that's what I'll do." And it's a miraculous experience saying, "Hey yes I'm one with a master." It is. You don't come out the same. But for some reason I went along with it, don't ask me why.

But you can't do it if you're up here [stage one] or people who are beyond even these first stages definitely. And you even have difficulty [at stage one] because there is just so much healing going on here. The idea that you can be one with anything greater than yourself is very difficult. Even though you might intellectually say, "Well, yes I know I'm one with God in some far-off aspect."

So we all have to go through this, seeing ourselves as one with a master. And it can vary. But it's Jesus basically for all of us and then other masters as well.

So the dark night of the soul is a period in your life where you experience the descent of your karma in a big package. It kind of comes at you all at once and although you might have found the Ascended Master teachings or you're a spiritual person, you will feel alone. You'll feel like, "Why God? Why are you doing this to me? What have I done so wrong that I'm having all these problems?" Everything goes wrong. And there are usually major changes, big changes in your life.

And it supposedly happens at about 51% of your karma. That means that you've balanced 50% of your karma, you go over the 51% and then this karma load comes upon you.

Audience: I imagine you don't have to be aware of the masters. You can be working with them on other levels. Correct?

Lorraine: I think the oneness with Jesus happens for people who believe in Christianity. They don't have to know anything about the Ascended Masters.

Audience: But I mean they don't have to physicallyÉ

Lorraine: Oh no, you don't have to have a physical experience with the masters.

Audience: That's what I meant, I just wanted to make sureÉ

Lorraine: OK, so this can last however long you take to get through it. There is something out of your control in it, because it takes time to process through the karma.

Audience: So there's going to come a point in everyone's evolution that they're going to have a period of time where things really stink and you feel alone.

Kim: Well, it depends on your karma from past lives.

Audience: But it's also a thing that comes and goes.

Lorraine: Yes, it's a dark period.

Kim: There can be cycles in it, that's true.

Audience: Yes there are cycles within that darkness, that's how I experienced it.

Audience: [draws on the white board] So this is the Sun of your I AM. The soul thinks it does not have light of its own. So it needs to have the light from the Sun of I AM. But the karma is eclipsing the light of I AM. So you're looking directly at it. You're looking at I AM and then you are able to see the karma for what it is. "It's darkness, I need to deal with it. It's not real, I need to get rid of it."

That's when you surrender, "God help me with it, I can't do it on my own" and you surrender. So you take the next step.

Lorraine: Through love, love is surrender.

Kim: But you also have to maintain the faith, because there's a psychological aspect of this dark night of the soul. Not sure I understand completely, but the way I experienced it myself was that like you were saying, after I had learnt about the Ascended Masters teachings and I realized that there was a reality beyond. There was something to strive for, there was something to work for. But then all of a sudden my karma started descending and I felt like, "Where are the masters, where's God, why aren't they fixing this problem for me?"

So you have to come to the point where you do two things. You do what Jesus said, "You can't give away what you don't own," so you have to take responsibility and say "I created it," because our first tendency is to run away and say "God why is this happening to me?"

Lorraine: Because we want to blame.

Kim: Yes, we want to blame somebody else.

Lorraine: Because when the karma's returning you're going to have it with other individuals, and obviously you can put the blame on them and say, "They're doing these things to me." So your choice is to forgive them, because obviously the interaction is from prior lifetimes or early in this life or whatever. And then to choose forgiveness and love rather than re-enacting certain things.

So I remember, I think I might have gone through the dark night of the soul twice because I went through it alone and then I went through it with Kim again. And so his karma affected me because we were married, and it's joint when you're married. So going through it twice I know how painful it is experiencing that.

Both of us had ex-spouses. I had two ex-spouses, and both of them were tied heavily to my children and Kim also with his ex-spouse and his children. So divorce was in there, but for him it involved the government, the INS and immigration. And that was extremely heavy and an extreme burden on us as a family, so we all experienced his dark night

Kim: Well the thing that I remember from it was that it was conditions that you thought you had no power over, there's nothing you can do about it. Because it was bigger, like the governmentÑwho can fight City Hall and the whole thing.

Lorraine: So he wrote the Governor and everyone over a year's time. Probably his dark night was two years it took to go through. And writing all of these people seemingly didn't have any effect, but Kim decided he would apply to God for his freedom and his victory in overcoming this. So he did a vigil for a year to Surya.

Kim: Yes I did a vigil and it seemed like it changed nothing. Because I had a certain concept of how God should solve this for me. And I hadn't done what Jesus said. I hadn't taken responsibility and said, "I have created the situation. I need to uncreate it, or I need to take responsibility for it. But then I also need to let it go" and it was not until I let it go that it changed.

Lorraine: So after about a year he comes and says, "I'm not supposed to do that anymore" and when he decided that it wasn't going to be this way, things started changing for him.

Kim: Well, I came to the point where I said, "It doesn't matter whether these outer conditions persist or not." What I had basically done before then was I thought, "When these outer conditions are resolved, I can fulfill my divine plan. Then I can be the Christ." But see that's the illusion. You have to come to the point where you say, "I'm going to strive for Christhood no matter what the outer conditions are." That's when you overcome the dark night of the soul, I think. Because it's like you have all of these burdens and you're saying, "Oh I can't walk the spiritual path, I can't be the Christ because I have these outer burdens." And so you are doing what Jesus said, you are putting something before seeking God. And that's why he says, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and then all these things shall be added unto you."

Audience: So you can actually prolong the dark night?

Lorraine: IndefinitelyÉ well for a long time.

Lorraine: You can keep recreating it, creating a cycle and keep non-forgiving. You're not likely to. The point is if you've already gone through stages one to three you're not likely to get into that judgment and the non-forgiveness. That's why you can go through the test. You should be able to pass it and not keep recreating it.

Now interesting for Kim's was that although we didn't see any outer things changing, what happened was the whole INS in Montana had put the church [Summit Lighthouse] in a group and was going after them, and Kim got lumped into that group. And through Kim's actions, and it might have been other people's actions as well, the head Gestapo guy Ð and I call him a Gestapo because he was just like out of the Nazi camps, the way he treated people, he came into our home to arrest Kim one day and Kim wasn't there and I said, "He's at work" and he said "He's not allowed to work!" (Kim had his work permit taken away) and I said "Well, how is he supposed to feed his family?" and he said, "I don't care, it's not my problem" Ð and eventually this man was forced to retire within a year. And it was because of all these casesÉ

Kim: Oh, he had misused his power and it finally got up to a high enough level where they realized this guy is going beyond the lawÉ

Lorraine: But I think it was in part the people's prayers and applying that. And you become the judgment, you see. Kim didn't turn against the man for doing what he was doing, he was just trying to get his right.

Kim: Yes but my point of the whole thing is just like we've been talking about with death. It's like it's hard but it seems much harder, like Nadim was saying, it eclipses the I AM Presence. We think we can't be the Christ, we can't walk the path, we can't do these things, so we become attached to it. We become attached to having the outer conditions change. And it's only when we come to the point where we're willing to let that die and say, "Whatever the outer conditions are I'm still going to strive to be the Christ."

Lorraine: The problems really seem to be insurmountable. So that's why it's so dark, because you're living in the problem. You can go to church and still have your little high in church and your communion with the masters to some degree. But you always have this burden of this terrible darkness that you're going through where life seems to be against you. I mean Kim and I were living off credit cards to eat at one point, because we had no money. And that never leaves you. You can go to church and you can feel good about something for a moment but that's the reality of what you're living through.

So that's the dark night.

Audience: Before you go one more step I'd like to relate something. I think we all have these issues where we wake up one morning or one night you go to bed and you're all sad so you start to qualify that issue, "Is this really the dark night of the soul? Is there many dark nights of the soul? What's going on in my life?"

I don't have the answer but, speaking for myself and many others I've spoken to, we experience these many dark moments in our lives. Are they related, one way or another to the dark night of the soul?

Audience: Is the dark night of the soul when Jesus said on the cross, "My God, my God why hast thou forsaken me?"

Lorraine: That's the dark night of the spirit.

Kim: It gets worse.

[Laughter]

Lorraine: Would you say that the dark night of the soul would come before the arrest, just at the time of the arrest?

Audience: In the garden [of Gethsemane].

Kim: Yes that was probably the culmination of it.

Lorraine: See, he knew what was going to happen, and he was sweating blood and he's going through this dark night where he feels alone. And he was, remember his disciples went to sleep and he has that feeling that there's no one there for him.

Audience: One view of the dark night of the soul is the loss of infrastructure, the loss of a support system.

Kim: So everything that you're familiar with, that you base your sense of security on is taken away. Yes I would agree with that.

Audience: You know a lot of people have those experiences as part of their life. So how do you distinguishÉ

Kim: Oh yes we all have that.

Lorraine: Because if you're on this, if you can put yourself on one of these stages and you're feeling it right here [between stage three and four] then that's the dark night of the soul.

Audience: What I wanted to say is it doesn't come in one lump, it comes in bits.

Audience: Well it depends on your karma.

Audience: Certainly, but I experienced it in bits. But what I also experienced was a total loss of energy, because it's not only light that you don't see, but you don't get the energy. You're cut off from that and you're in a sort of black hole.

Kim: Yes that's what it feels like.

Audience: And sometimes you kind of come out of it, but then you fall again. Because as long as you haven't surrendered, it comes in waves, until you surrender.

Lorraine: [The dark night of the soul] is more the eclipse of the Christ and the dark night of the spirit is more the eclipse of the I AM Presence. So however attuned to the Christ you are here, you're feeling being cut off from that Christic energy.

So then you come out of the dark night of the soul and the process Ð again Ð can take as long as it takes for you to move up into the heart. So the more loving you are, the quicker you can move up. Because the idea is you're going through the chakras here. You're bringing up that Mother Light from the base so you've got the Mother Light at the base and you have to come up through the Soul chakra, that's where you're experiencing the karma, the dark night of the soul. And then you have to come up through the Solar Plexus Ð and the Solar Plexus is the energies of fear, doubt, anger, that kind of thing Ð and you have to go up and come up into the Heart.

So when you're going through these stages here, Oneness with I AM, which I went into more detail [in the article] when exactly. But to go into the Secret Chamber [of the Heart] you have to be in Being.

So it's at Oneness with I AM that you're going through the dark night of the spirit. So the dark night of the spirit. Do you know when you went through yours Kim? Can you differentiate?

Kim: No.

Lorraine: Mine was very tangible. In fact the masters deliberately sent me into it, deliberately set the stage and put me into it. And mine lasted for two years. And just before it happened I remember El Morya came to me and he said, "You're co-dependent on the guru" and then he's gone. So I didn't speak to him for two years. And I thought, "Co-dependent on the guru? I'm not co-dependent on anybody." But in essence I was, because if I was relying on him to make my decisions, I'm obviously not in the I AM. So at that point for two years, I mean the dark night of the soul is painful in the karmic aspect, but the dark night of the spirit is not karmic in the same way. It's a deep inner sorrow. And it's a sense of feeling separated from that oneness with the I AM.

Audience: That's the definition of it Ð separation. It's a loss of connection with your I AM Presence and you're left to exist on the momentum of the light within your causal body.

Kim: Well, here's how I look at it. It's the same thing you were saying but I'm just saying it in different words. We're walking the spiritual path and we come to the point where we recognize that there are masters, there's God and they can help us. So what happens is, we have matured to the point where now we are able to carry our own burden, to resolve our karma and move beyond it. And so what we need to do is take responsibility for our own life, for our own path, for our own karma.

Basically like Jesus said, "If any man will come after me let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me." And that's what we're doing before we go into the dark night of the soul the way I see it. We are denying a part of our worldly identity. We're saying, "I'm not going to run away from my past, I'm willing to face it, I'm willing to deal with it, undo it, compensate for it, make things right with God. So in doing that, in making that decision, that's when you take up your cross. Your cross is a symbol for Ð among other things Ð your karma. So you're saying "OK, God I want to make it right, I want to work through this." And that's why they say "OK, here it is" and then they dump it on us.

And then as long as we are caught in our ideas of how it should go and how it should be resolved, we hold on to it. Like I did, I had a certain expectation of how it should unfold and they werenÕt met so I held on to it. So not until we let go of that and say, "OK, I know I can't do it myself, I'm willing to accept God's help and let God do it his way," that's when the masters can step in. They're willing to help us but they won't do it against our free will.

So we have to do what Jesus said. First we take responsibility, then we give it up. First we take ownership, then we give it up. So at that moment when we give it up, then the masters will step in and they will help us work through our karma and the dark night of the soul.

Now when we have started working through this, there comes a period, just like Lorraine was saying, when we realize that we have only worked through this by the grace of God, by the help of the ascended masters and God. But we see that help as coming from outside ourselves. Even the concept of the I AM Presence can be a trap if you see your I AM Presence as being above you and you're separated from it, you're down here.

And that's why the chart [of your divine self] of the Summit Lighthouse for example can become a little misleading because the I AM Presence is up there and you are down here. So in other words, what I am saying is that this is the level of Oneness with Jesus where we realize that we're separated from God and in order to come back to oneness we need a mediator between us and God. Because we can't bridge the gap alone.

But then comes the point where we are so used to having that mediator help us that we become co-dependent on it. We think we always need the mediator Ð something from outside ourselves. And by law there will come a point where we have now reached maturity where we need to be able to walk on our own. And that's when the masters and God will seem to withdraw from us. Because the test of the dark night of the spirit is that we need to realize that the light is actually here in the heart. We don't need anything from far away, outside ourselves. We have it right in here because the kingdom of God is within us.

And so then we have to surrender that, even the concept that we need help from outside. At a certain stage we do need help from the outside. But then there comes the higher stage where we need to surrender that concept.

Audience: It's like you're healing yourself, let's say you have a problem with your leg and you walk on a crutch. And you get used to walking on a crutch comfortably. But you cannot really get back to walking normally as long as you are always holding on to the crutch. And the crutch needs to be surrendered.

Lorraine: You actually surrender your Christ. When you come into this Oneness with I AM you have to surrender your Christ Self. Because you don't need him anymore.

Audience: Do these tend to happen in the same lifetime?

Kim: They can, certainly.

Lorraine: Mine did, I went through all these steps after 25 years old. So 25 years it took.

Kim: They don't always I think, but they certainly can. If you're really on an accelerated path and you're close to breaking through to the higher level, I think they can.

Audience: So what happens when you reincarnate with more than 51% of your karma balanced?

Lorraine: Then you have gone through the dark night of the soul in a previous lifetime.

Kim: You shouldn't have to go through it again. Unless you create karma in that lifetime and then there comes a point where you have to deal with that.

Audience: We had a previous understanding from dictations given in the past that said after you balanced 51% of your karma you could take your ascension. So with that idea in mind how does the dark night of the soul and the dark night of the spiritÉ

Lorraine: It's really misleading, because if you're thinking, "Oh I only have to make 51% and then I can leave this planet." It's not that easy.

Audience: Right because Ascended (Lady) Master Magda spent a great number of years balancing karma before she actually ascended to higher levels, because she hadn't balanced all of it.

Kim: Right, they've always said that it's very difficult to balance it from the ascended level. But if you think about it, this is where you have to realize that there can be a difference between what is actually taught in an organization and then what the popular culture is.

And there was a popular perception that the main requirement for your ascension was to balance 51% of your karma. And then once you've done that, you could pop out of here. But the masters always said there were other requirements involved in making your ascension including fulfilling your Divine Plan and your Sacred Labor.

Lorraine: Balancing the three-fold flame, you actually have to balance all seven rays.

Audience: But if one of the ascended masters said that at one point, do you think it might have just been an understanding that people needed to have at that time?

Kim: No, what they were saying is you don't have to, like in the old dispensation, balance 100% of your karma before you can ascend. You can ascend with 51% balanced but there are still other requirements that you need to fulfill before you can ascend. So my conclusion based on that was that it's possible to balance 51% of your karma but you haven't fulfilled the other requirements so you can't ascend. I just think we didn't have a clear enough concept of it.

Audience: So would you go through the dark night of the soul and the dark night of the spirit at inner levels if you ascended with 51% of your karma balanced?

Lorraine: No, wouldn't think so as you cannot experience karma on inner levels, it is a physical manifestation.

Kim: They had a whole list of requirements but we always focused on the 51%. That became the big thing, the philosopher's stone.

Audience: Everything else was in fine print.

Lorraine: Yes but the idea could very well be to get you focused on balancing your karmaÉ

Kim:Éand working on that goal. They give you one goal at a time that seems attainable to you and then once you've fulfilled that they say, "Oh but there's this other little thing you have to deal withÉ and by the way this third little thing"

[Laughter]

Audience: The focus was at that time to get out of the cycle of birth and rebirth. The 51% how I understood it at the time, you are getting out of the cycle of birth and rebirth so you don't have to be born again because there was the potential that you might fall again because of the density of the planet.

So now you don't have to. But you have to balance 100% of your karma before you are totally who you are. You cannot leave without paying back to life and balancing all the [energy] that you have misqualified.

Kim: Yes there's a tendency Ð and I think it was pretty prevalent in the Summit Ð to look at things in mechanical terms. It was almost like the ascension was in the popular culture approached in a mechanical way. Karma is just like owing money to the bank, so if I pay X amount of dollars back then I'm free of this debt and then I can ascend. And that ties in to the whole outer path that the masters have talked about through us, where you think it is mechanical and automatic.

A number of years ago, I had a real revelation. I was thinking about this because I was studying one of the masters' books where they listed all the requirements for the ascension. But I realized there was a requirement that wasn't even on that list because everything is free will. So theoretically you could have fulfilled all the requirements for the ascension, all of the outer requirements. And now you're standing here and here's the straight and narrow gate. You are standing right here and if you take one more step, you've ascended. But in order to take that step you need to realize that you are permanently leaving the Earth behind. You will never come back. Or at least that's the frame of mind you have to be in, even though you theoretically could.

So what that requires you to do is you have to be willing to leave behind any attachment to anything on Earth, any sense of something being unfulfilled, any sense of wanting to do something. You really have to be willing to leave all that behind permanently. You have to be willing to let it die.

Now, if you look at the spiritual path, what it is really about is that we have a certain concept of God. And the concept separates us from God. So we are walking step by step towards the real truth about our concept of God. So the masters gradually give us a higher concept.

So you might have a certain concept in the New Age movement like we were talking about, "Oh everything is good, we can choose whatever we want." That concept can help people grow to a certain level. But then if they become attached to it, it becomes a trap. Now it no longer serves to help them grow, it's actually holding them back.

Now the question is, can you let that concept of your relationship to God die? And if you can, you can ascend to the next level. Then you get the concept, "Ah I relate to God through the ascended masters, through Jesus, or a mediator. There is a God and I can relate to him through a mediator." And that can then help you grow again. But then there comes a point where that becomes a liability. Now that's holding you back.

So if you hold on to it, that concept that helped you at some point. If you hold on to it that's when you go into the dark night of the spirit. And you will stay in that until you let that concept of your relationship to God die and come up to a higher one, where you now start realizing that instead of the mediator or the God outside of yourself you need to focus on the inner God.

Lorraine: So the big turning point is going from the outer path to the inner path. So the dark night of the spirit happens about when you go from 51% to 75% of your karma, [where the dark night of soul is experienced] so now you only have 25% of your karma left to balance. And you have to let go of all reliance on the world, and you're working on all reliance on God.

And so you go through this period of time, through the dark night of the spirit, where seemingly there isn't any help whatsoever. And everything that you have ever believed has to be let go. Everything. Because anything that you have received from outside of yourself you have to throw away. You have to let everything go, every practice, every belief. And that's what's painful. Because you're letting go of the world and you're putting in its place the inner, and the inner in you is the only reality.

Audience: Why do we have to let it go? Is it that we're emptying the cup, the outer cup so that the inner cup can be filled?

Kim: No, it's just that you have grown out of it. If you insist on wearing the pants that you had when you were ten years oldÉ

Audience: Oh I see, I see.

Kim: They've served their purpose, but now you've grown out of them so you have to let them go instead of trying to squeeze into them.

[Laughter]

Lorraine: It's not actually just the old pants.

Kim: No, it's the whole sense of identity that you have built.

Lorraine: Even the pants that fit you, because say you wore a particular color of pants because your mom liked them, or your child liked them, or your husband liked them and you went to the store and said, "Oh I'll buy this pair of pants" but you made that decision based on some outer opinion. And so you need to throw those pants away, or put them away in the closet. In the surrender you're not really saying, you are surrendering it all to God, but it doesn't mean you have to physically leave everything in your life. It's all inside of you that this is happening, but there are outer symbols. There are things that you will literally throw away.

But you put it all in a box, so to speak, and you say, "Here God" and God gives you back just what might fit you, according to your I AM Presence. And so you might take out one of those pairs of pants that you really like because you go, "Wait a minute, I picked that out, I really like that" and then all the other pants go out the door and they never come back.

Kim: It's like if you're willing to let go of it, you might be able to still have it, but you have to be willing to let go.

Mother Mary in one of the later chapters talks about how we cannot make the leap from where we are when we are at the lower levels of the path to the top of the path. We can't do that in one giant leap, there's no shortcutsÑwhich is what a lot of the New Age movement want you to think there is. And many false gurus want you to think there's a shortcut. Even the concept that Jesus has taken upon himself all our sins, it's a shortcut Ð he's done it all for us.

We can't do that, so therefore they give us the concept of the path that we can walk step by step. So we take small steps that seem believable to us because we can do that, we're not overwhelmed. But she also says that there comes a point where the concept of a path becomes a liability. It can become a trap. Because what does the concept of a path imply? I'm here, I need to go there but I haven't arrived yet. So the concept is that while you are still walking the lower levels of the path, you're not at the top. But it is possible to come to the top of the path and you're not accepting that you are at the top of the path.

And now you are actually spinning your wheels, because the only thing that prevents you from Being the Christ is that you accept, ÒI AM the Christ.Ó And you have to be willing to accept that. In other words you have to be willing to throw away the concept that you haven't arrived yet and accept that you have arrived.

Because you will not arrive until you accept that you have arrived. As long as you hold on to that concept that you are not there, you will not be there. Even though you really are there, you just don't realize it. It's like the train has gotten to the station but you refuse to get out, thinking, "No there must be another station"

[Laughter]

Lorraine: So that process [dark night of the soul] is at the Christ level. But you have the same process at I AM. Where you have to accept I AM. So you can spin your wheels and never accept that I really AM, until one day you do. And when you do, you go to the Secret Chamber of the Heart and there you are in I AM.

Kim: And what it all boils down to is the first two of the ten commandments, "Thou shalt have no other God's before me" and "Thou shalt not take unto thyself any graven image."

The graven image is the mental image we build of our relationship to God, based on the separation from God. So we have this concept, we build this image, that we're separated from God. We need to relate to this remote God. We need to come back into Oneness with God, come back into God's kingdom and in order to do that we have to go through this process. And that's fine; we have to have that.

But if we then create an image and now we say, "This is the absolute and infallible truth about my relationship to God," that's when we turn that image into a graven image.

So again, even the concept of a spiritual path, even the concept of ascended masters, even the concept of an I AM Presence that's remote from you will at some point become a trap if you hold on to it. And that's when we violate the first commandment. We have created a false God and we are holding it before the real God, refusing to see the real God.

Audience: There is a subtlety which is perhaps a bit difficult to understand which is that at one stage we develop oneness with I AM. There is a sort of fulfilling feeling in that oneness. How do you distinguish this from dependency? Because it seems to me that if you feel one with your I AM and a master and then this is withdrawn from you, of course you're going to feel empty because you have developed oneness, which is not necessarily dependenceÉ

Lorraine: At that point [of being dependent] you're not really feeling oneness. You're feeling an affinity with a master, with your higher self, but you're not accepting oneness.

Kim: Yes, you're feeling a connection but it's still a connection between you and the remote God.

Lorraine: And that's the dark night of the spirit, when that connection is cut off.

Audience: So the stage of Oneness with I AM therefore means you haven't developed that oneness yet?

Lorraine: That's what you're working on and what you need to do is see yourself as the twin to the I AM. That's how you develop the oneness. So your I AM Presence becomes your twin flame. And so there's nothing but you and your I AM Presence, no outer master, no nothing. And so everything is between you and him. And you can see yourself as one if you can see that I'm really the polarity, I'm really a part of this flame, the twin to this flame.

Audience: But you said in your dark night of the spirit you had the impression that both the master and the I AM were gone.

Lorraine: Because the I AM was not outside of me. And so I could not conceptualize it, "Where is the I AM?" It was me, and I'm thinking, "He's not here, he's not talking to me, I'm not hearing him, where is he?" But it was me. And this is really hard. I mean masters were telling me in this Being, after I got out of the dark night of the spirit, "OK, now you can Be." Be what? Being was like another language, I didn't know what they were talking about.

Kim: Any concept can become a limitation. For many years we were into this concept that we had to communicate with the ascended masters. But you really don't communicate that way with your I AM Presence because as Lorraine said your I AM Presence is inside of you. So it's almost like we're listening for a voice that's coming from outside ourselves and so we don't hear the voice that comes from inside. Because it's different, it's coming from a different direction. And it's almost more subtle.

Audience: The I AM Presence doesn't talk to you. If you're hearing somebody talk to you it's your Christ Self.

Kim: Yes the I AM Presence talks through you, from inside out.

Audience: Just like when I was earlier standing here making the calls.

Lorraine: Yes, that was his I AM Presence. He said something a while ago that was the I AM THAT I AM.

Audience: It was not something that I intended to think about, I didn't write notes or anything. I just stood there and I said I will Be, so it came out.

Kim: Yes, you let it flow rather than planning it.

Lorraine: You can also Be More. Because he can be I AM, but he also can be More. So it could've been a master doing that as well through you, and because of that oneness, he becomes one with any being at any moment.

Audience: Especially when you're purifying, you allow that to happen and you surrender to it and you Be it.

Lorraine: So coming out of the dark night of the spirit, I don't know what propels it except that you finally throw everything out the door and you just let it all go. And you just say, "There's nothing but you God, wherever you are."

Kim: Well, I can describe my experience of it because I had been in the Teachings of the Ascended Masters for a number of years and I had the concept of a Divine Plan and I had always felt since I was a child a strong sense of having a mission. There was something I had to do on this planet, I'm here to help change the planet. And then you learn about the Teachings of the Ascended Masters and you really want to help the masters turn around the planet, raise up the planet. And I came to a point where I was starting to feel frustrated because I'd been doing an awful lot of studying, a lot of decrees, I'd done therapy work to work on my psychology. I'd done everything the masters said Ð I thought Ð on an outer level. And still I didn't feel like I was doing my Divine Plan. I wasn't making a difference.

And finally one day I was sitting in my office and I'd just given some decrees and all of a sudden I felt this stillness come upon me. It was almost like I'd stepped outside of my normal sense of identity, my normal box. And I looked at myself and I said, "But this concept that I have of a Divine Plan and a mission is a limitation." I didn't say that consciously but this is what I felt. This concept was really separating me from being who I AM.

And all of a sudden I looked at my life and I said, "OK, if I never do anything on Earth Ð if I don't write any books, if I don't make a difference Ð if it doesn't seem like my life has made any difference whatsoever, that's fine, I can accept that." And all of a sudden I felt like my soul was crying out to God saying, "God you can take me home this very minute." And I really felt that if I had died at that moment I would have had no regrets and no sense of unfulfilled business.

And that had throughout my whole life been such a strong drive in my being that I had something I had to do. But then I came to the point where I realized that that feeling was what I had to let go ofÑthe sense that I had to do something, that it wasn't fulfilled and what if I missed it. And when I let go of that, all of a sudden I felt this peace. Jesus describes it in ÒThe Christ is Born in YouÓ where it was like I was saying, "Okay there's nothing more I want to do on this planet," that's what I realized consciously. And that's when he then approached me at inner levels to say, "Well, if you don't have anything you want to do, I've got a few things you can do for me!"

[Laughter]

And that was really when my Divine Plan started unfolding. But it was not until I let go. And think about this Ð I had a human concept with my human mind of what my Divine Plan should be and how it should unfold. But it was my Divine Plan! So until I let go of the human concept, how could the Divine Plan unfold?

So in other words I had to be willing to let that expectation die, without knowing if there was anything else?

Lorraine: So it was the final surrender. And now I realize what mine was because I always wanted to be a healer. And so I'd been doing my kinesiology work for years and then El Morya says, "Go to Utah." And I said, "Well, I'll still be able to have my practice won't I?" and he said, "Yes you'll still be able to have your practice." I didn't, so I had to surrender that.

"You mean the thing I love to do, I can't do anymore? I have to give up my healing work? I mean why am I here El Morya?" Mormons didn't want healing from anyone outside their circle. First of all I wasn't a Mormon, so they wouldn't come to me for healing and they weren't really into that although I tried.

And so I guess that would have been mine when I finally surrendered it or my idea of what a healer is and then I was propelled into be a healer on an entirely different level, being a Messenger, which I never had any dreams or aspirations of being. I only wanted to fulfill my mission of helping people heal their psychologies.

Kim: Because you also had a concept of what your Divine Plan should be and how it should unfold.

Lorraine: So it's an ultimate surrender of a conceptÉ and then you come out of it. And then you come into Being I AM. And you enter the Secret Chamber of the Heart and then you have to believe that you are Being in everything you do, and you have to stay there.

Kim: And in Jesus' life you see it in a couple of places. You see it when he's sitting in the garden sweating blood and he's saying, "God if it be thy will, let this cup pass from me, nevertheless not my will but thine be done." So in that "Nevertheless not my will but thine be done" he surrenders.

And then he again surrenders when he's hanging on the cross and he gives up the ghost.

Audience: Can you tie that in to the Aquarian Age where we're not told what to do? We're supposed toÉ

Lorraine: Well, all this Ð before the dark night of the spirit Ð you're told what to do. So with Kim and I, we had very strong religious practices. And we're definitely individuals so we do our thing. We decreed a little bit together but then we kind of gravitated so that we were doing them separately and then we both kind of pulled back - and God knows what we were each doing because we didn't keep track of each other. And then all those spiritual practices went, because again the masters told us that we needed to decree the violet flame to transmute your karma, Michaels for protection and on and on. You've got so much and you can only do so many rituals and practices.

And so Kim and I just both let them go. We just let it all go and said, "Wait a minute, why are we doing these?" Now, I continued, after I got through the dark night of the spirit I was decreeing up a storm every morning. But I was doing it because I loved to do it. Nobody told me. I'd already thrown that out. That was the outer thing that was Òyou had to do this and you had to do that...Ó And so the masters kind of precipitated that consciousness, they put us in that space of pushing our buttons. If you added up all the things the masters asked us to do in dictations, it's physically impossible and they used to chastise us if you didn't come to four or five services a week. All that while you had a family, and for me, four children living with me at the time.

Kim: Well, that was again like we talked about yesterday, to push our buttons to get us to the point where we realize we cannot do it, it has to be God, so we have to surrender it.

Lorraine: When somebody backs you into a corner there's a point where you really do, you just go, "Oh, okay I just have to let go." In that book Kim was talking about, ÒCreating MiraclesÒ [by Carolyn Godschild Miller] - I've mentioned it several times - I think that book has the essence of that letting go, because she describes stories of people's experiences of getting to that point of being backed in a corner. Where they're driving off a cliff, where theyÕve just spun around on the ice and they're heading off a cliff and it's like, "Okay, here's the end of my life, and they just let go" and the moment they've let go, something takes a hold of the wheel of the car and they're back on the road and they go, "How did that happen?"

And I had a dream that I experienced one day which I've shared in one of my stories because it was so profound to me. I've already experienced what it is like to let go and let God, but there was a point of not totally accepting the Being I AM as able to take command. And in the dream I'm driving on a narrow road and there's a tunnel and it's dark on both sides and it's very narrow. And I'm driving and I'm going, "This is really hard because I can't see the edges of the wall and I might hit the wall." I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and so I go, "Well, you know what, I can't do this" and I let go of the wheel. And the moment I let go of the wheel, I was there in the light. And so that was a profound telling to me. Wait a minute you don't have to do anything. You ARE at the moment you let go. So surrender is it, it's all about surrender, and in the surrender, being in the place of Love. It's really the essence of the pathÑsurrender.

Kim: Yes, I got the concept years ago that it's not what you hold on to that's going to get you to heaven, it's what you let go of that's going to get you to heaven.

Lorraine: So then you get to the path of the Buddha and the Middle Way. And the moment you go into that Buddhic consciousness, you're in the center of the heart in that Buddhic peace. You have no attachments, that's the philosophy of BuddhismÑnon-attachment.

Audience: Is it possible for the ego to trick you into thinking you're at a place on the path where you are not?

Kim: Sure, absolutely.

Lorraine: Yes but why do you need to take the ego anywhere when it's been outlined over and over again by Jesus and the masters and so on, identifying the ego.

Kim: No but it is very subtle, and it's very true. There's two extremes. You can think you're unworthy because you're a miserable sinner or you think now you have been on the spiritual path for so many years, you've given all these decrees and prayers, you've attained this position in an outer organization so now I must be somebody.

Audience: Thinking you're at the station when you're not at the station yet.

Audience: But if you let go of everything, the ego has nothing to hold on to.

Kim: That's right, because the ego can only trick you as long as you're holding on to something. So when you let go of the whole concept, like what I did Ð that I needed to be somebody special, that I needed to make a difference on the planet that I needed to have this or that outer thing Ð I basically let go of the whole need to be a good chela, or the savior or whatever concept you can have. Then the ego has nothing, like Jesus said, "The prince of this world comes and has nothing in me" because you've let go of everything.

Lorraine: El Morya is prompting me to share this, the last bit surprisingly is that Solar Plexus. And it's fear. And that's the last bit that tricks you. It's subtle, the ego. Because anger is overt, you see it and you're quite aware of it and you've gotten past that point of not being able to see your own anger but fear becomes very subtle. Because, as you were talking about yesterday about the fear of making decisions, so you think you're being a good person, one with your I AM Presence, he's making all the decisions for you, nothing you have to do, everything is okay. But that's really fear. It's a fear to Be I AM.

Kim: And it's a fear of lossÑif you let go of the ego there'll be nothing left. If you let go of your dream what will there be? I mean I could sense it in myself that there was a certain fear. It would seem like if I let go of this dream of what my Divine Plan should be, then my whole life would be a failure; I hadn't done anything. So out of that fear you have to hold on to it. And that of course prevents you from going into the heart, just like was said by the Elohim of Peace LINK, when you have the fear in the Solar Plexus, you're pulled into the Solar Plexus. You can't be in the heart.

Audience: The ego wants to know outcomes.

Kim: It wants to know ahead of time that everything is going to turn out rightÑaccording to its judgment of what is right.

Audience: The Holy Spirit knows that the I AM Presence will provide all the proper outcomes necessary.

Kim: And I saw it in myself. Talking about the dark night of the soul, when I first found the Ascended MastersÕ teachings I was so enthusiastic. "Oh now I've found what I'm here for, my reason for being. I'm going to serve the masters and do all these outer things" and I thought everything was going to be wonderful. And then when my karma started descending and I had to deal with this, it's like, "I don't want to deal with this, it should've been easier, it should've turned out differently." So then you have to deal with that. And that's where many people get mad at the outer organization or the outer guru that they felt made promises that aren't fulfilled. And so then they get angry and sue them and this and that, the whole scenario.

Audience: Do you know when you're done with your karma?

Kim: I think you do, I think you get an inner prompting where you suddenly just realize itÕs over.

Lorraine: I was actually told. Because at some point you really cannot feel the difference between your karma and the world karma. Because the moment your karma ends, you take on world karma. So you feel exactly the same. But you will notice, if you look at your life, you'll notice that things don't happen to you like accidents and illnesses and that kind of thing. So it's a much more peaceful karma when you take on the world karma.

Audience: Could you take on world karma in the form of an illness?

Kim: Yes definitely, many people do that.

Audience: (Writes on white board)

D - eified

E - nergy of

A - lpha

T - aken into the

H - eart

spells death. It just came to me. I was thinking about the word.

Kim: Oh I could see the wheels turning, there was smoke coming out of your earsÉ

[Laughter]

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Copyright © 2006 by Kim Michaels