Ascended Masters, Shangra-la Mission,

A New Perspective

Discourse I

by Kim Michaels
January 15, 2002

The following discourse claims no authority beyond what it might gain, if it is confirmed in your heart. Please, feel free to distribute this as you see fit.When you have been emotionally involved with an organization for a long time, it is easy to lose sight of the big picture. It is easy to think that because Church Universal & Triumphant was founded by the Ascended Masters, it is in some way different from or even above other churches. Yet, the church is no different from most other religious organizations. Most religions were started by a charismatic leader who eventually had to leave. The organization was then faced with the question: “What do we do now?” and in too many cases this led to an internal struggle.

In the process of adjusting to the loss of a leader, it often happens that many of the members and leaders of an organization enter a state of consciousness in which they believe that because of this or that condition, the organization does not have to change. When faced with a dramatic change, it is easy to cling to what is familiar. Church Universal and Triumphant is not above the Divine laws that govern the physical universe, and therefore the organization can rise no higher than the consciousness of its members and leaders. There are people in the church who believe that because this church was founded by the Ascended Masters, it could never go wrong; it could never fail. This viewpoint is based on pride and it has no place in any religious or spiritual organization.

A Look at History
A dose of humility would be helpful, and we only need to look at history. You have to be delusional to believe that Church Universal and Triumphant is the only organization ever started by or sponsored by the Ascended Masters. Obviously, Christianity was sponsored by the Masters. Yet, when you look at the history of the Christian church, you can see that the church failed miserably in conveying the true teachings of Christ. You must realize that any organization in this physical octave can rise no higher than the consciousness of its individual members. If the individuals do not exercise their full potential, then the organization as a whole cannot reach its divine potential. And this, for that matter, is true whether or not you have a messenger in embodiment, because the messenger is also subject to the laws of God. The messenger has free will, and the messenger, despite his or her mantle, is no more or less than any other follower of the path. Therefore, the fate of an organiza-tion depends on the consciousness of the members.

Unfortunately, there is a certain mechanism that starts acting when you organize anything. There is truth in the old story of St. Peter and the devil walking down the street. They see a man on the other side of the street who bends down to pick up something from the sidewalk. St. Peter says: “Did you see that man; he just found the truth. What are you going to do about it?” The devil replies: “I’m not worried, I’ll just ask him to organize it!”

In any organization, certain mechanisms start acting and some of those mechanisms are either influenced by or completely controlled by the human consciousness. If the leaders of an organization are not aware of this, or if they are not willing to acknowledge it, then the organization will not reach its full potential. It will be caught up in the cycle of arguments and squabbles that will consume the energy and attention of the people. Instead of directing their energy and attention towards fulfilling the goals of the organization, people spend their energies in arguing about this or that. If you look at other organizations, you can see how these patterns have occurred numerous times. Again, many people seem to think that this church is in some way unique, and therefore it is above and beyond that. This is an extremely dangerous illusion, and if the leaders of an organization maintain that illusion, history proves that the organization will fail. There is simply no question about this! If you do not learn from the mistakes of the past, you are destined to repeat those mistakes.

Opposing Factions
The main characteristic of this process is a fragmentation of the membership so that people are divided into two or more opposing factions. One faction will take a stand, and the people in that faction believe that their standpoint is completely right, and if the organization does not comply with their view, it will fail. Therefore, it is their supreme duty to force their views upon the organization. The other faction takes the opposite view, and they have the same sense of supreme responsibility. Each faction is seeking to beat other people into submission, all for the “higher good.” Two things can happen in this process:

The two factions will keep squabbling and arguing for the rest of their lives or until all their energies are spent.
The two factions will come to a dividing line and will split up the organization.

If you are serious about avoiding this problem in the organization, you need to step back and take a broader look at the situation. You need to realize that whenever two factions are formed, the vital question is not: “Which of the two factions is right and which is wrong?” The vital question to ask is: “What is the higher understanding that will resolve the conflict?”

From a spiritual standpoint, it can be stated quite clearly: When two people are arguing, none of them are right in the Divine sense of the word! What human arguments amount to is simply two people who are defending their own human consciousness, and each person is saying: “My human consciousness is better than your human consciousness and here are all the reasons why!” From a divine standpoint, none of those reasons are valid even though some of them may be correct. In other words, you can be right about a particular point in the argument without being right with God. When two factions argue, they can both have viewpoints that are correct. However, their approach to the situation can still be wrong, because they are not seeking a higher understanding of the issue, and they are not seeking harmony. The two sides often take their viewpoints into the extremes, and they forget about the Middle Way.

The Teaching is There
The Ascended Masters have for centuries witnessed how people and organizations that they have sponsored have been caught up in and destroyed by this eternal human squabble. Now, the Ascended Masters have infinite love for human beings, and they have absolute respect for the law of free will. However, sometimes even the patience of an Ascended Master can grow thin when they are seeing that the people who know better refuse to do better.

In this organization there really is no excuse. In the history of humankind, no organization has had a more detailed teaching about the human consciousness, the Carnal mind and the Dweller on the Threshold. No organization has offered its members more valuable and efficient tools for overcoming the human consciousness. The members of this organization have free will. They have the right to choose not to use the teachings to overcome the human consciousness, and instead seek to use the teachings to defend some aspect of their human consciousness. But if they do, the individuals doing this will fail to attain their Christhood. And if these individuals are in leadership positions, the organization will fail to complete its mission. It is really that simple, and it boils down to the old question: “Choose ye this day whom ye will serve!”

The real problem here is an unwillingness to look in the mirror and ask yourself: “Do I have a tendency to judge any other human being? Do I judge the beliefs and ideas of any other human being? Have I created a standard in my mind, and do I use that standard to classify other people as somehow acceptable and unacceptable, right or wrong, better or worse? Do I use such a standard to argue that other people are wrong and that I am right?”

If you answer yes to any of these questions, then you should be willing to admit that the tendency to judge others can only come from the human consciousness. The simple fact is that in heaven there is no conflict. If you find yourself in a position where you are in an argument with another human being, then the reason why you got into and maintain that argument is that you allow your human consciousness to get the better of you.

Oh yes, you might have the most wonderful reasons why it was necessary to engage in this argument and why you are right and the other person is wrong. Oh yes, you might say: “Well, then the other person is also acting out their human consciousness!” And while this is correct, the real question is: “What is that to thee, follow thou me!” It all boils down to this: “Do you want to unite with your I AM Presence, or do you want to to remain identified with your human consciousness?”
If you want oneness with your I AM Presence, then you must rise above all this human consciousness and human nonsense. For centuries, the Ascended Masters have realized that there are no solutions to human problems and there is no resolution to human conflict. The only possible resolution is to bring in a higher state of consciousness that allows both parties in a conflict to rise above the insignificant human questions that caused the conflict.

The Creators and the Organizers
In this context, it is important to wrestle with a mechanism that has destroyed numerous organizations. The simplest way to explain this is to start with the fact that the human brain is divided into two halves. The right brain is the more artistic part of the brain, and it looks at the big picture. The left brain is the analytical part of the brain, and it looks at the details. Most people have a tendency to use one part of the brain more than the other. They have a dominant side of the brain. One might say that people who are left-brain-dominated are the Organizers. People who are right-brain-dominated are the Creators.

If you want an organization to be successful, you must realize that both types of people are needed in the organization. And you must realize that both types of people are useful only when they are balanced.
The Creators are often the people who can start an organization and they can bring it to a certain point. They can also help ensure that the organization remains vital and alive, so that it meets the needs of its members. Creators can always come up with new ideas that will help the organization adapt to changing times and to the changing needs of its followers. However, the Creators simply cannot run the organization on a daily basis. They are not well-organized, and they quickly get bored with the mundane details of the everyday life of an organization. In the business world you often see that Creators can start a business, but that they cannot ensure its survival.

The Organizers are people who have a flair for organization and detail. These people could never start an organization, but they can run it with constancy and consistency. However, if the Organizers are allowed to run the organization, the organization will never change. Well, as the Great Divine Director has said: “Change is the order of the day!” Times change, and the needs of an organization’s followers will change. The Organizers are not able to adapt the organization to these changes; they will keep running the organization the way they think is right. If Organizers are allowed to run an organization, the organization itself might go on forever, but the number of members will dwindle. People begin to find that the organization is no longer meeting their needs, and it is not willing to change either. Therefore, they quietly leave. One might argue that this has already started happening to the church.

It is essential to realize that successful organizations are those who have a balance between Creators and Organizers. The Organizers give the organization stability and endurance, and the Creators make sure that the organization continues to meet the needs of its members.

The Rise of Conflict: Rebels and Judges
To fully understand why this is so important, you need to look at what happens when the Creators and Organizers move too far away from the golden middle way and take their characteristics to the extreme.
The Creators will reason that to create something new, you cannot be bound by what is already in existence. Organizers like to organize things and maintain stability, and you cannot maintain stability if you are constantly trying to go beyond what is already there. So we must realize that there is a built-in tension between the creative and the organizing tendencies in our brains. In essence, this is precisely the creative tension that gives rise to the universe. The ideal form of this tension is expressed in the symbol of the Tai Chi in which the two creative forces are in perfect balance. The yang force represents the Creators and the yin force represents the Organizers. When these forces are balanced, the result is a creative tension that creates a balanced and sustainable growth. While there is constant change, this change never occurs so rapidly that it destroys the stability of the universe.

As long as balance is maintained, you have harmony, and this is precisely what takes place in the spiritual octaves. Some Ascended Masters are Organizers and some Ascended Masters are Creators. The tension between them leads to growth, but it never leads to conflict. How could you picture conflict between, Alpha and Omega?

When you add the human consciousness to the mix, then the process of creative tension is all too easily turned into an unresolvable conflict. A Creator, who is not balanced, will reason that he needs to create without being bound by any rules or regulations. He will see the Organizers as backward-looking people who are trying to destroy his creativity. He will resist these restrictions, even to the point where he rebels against them or leaves the organization altogether. An unbalanced Creator often becomes a rebel who accepts no authority above his own desire to create. This is obviously unbalanced, because the rebel does not accept Divine law. The rebel does not accept that although he has a right to create, he should do so within the framework created by God. This framework is not meant to restrict him, but to channel his creativity in such a way that it does not lead to self-destruction. In its extreme, the rebel becomes a person who is no longer concerned with the mission of the organization. Instead, the rebel seeks self-expression for the sake of self-aggrandizement.

An Organizer, who is not balanced, quickly reasons that the most important thing of all is to maintain stability and continuity. In the context of a spiritual organization, an unbalanced Organizer will reason that the most important task of all is to maintain the purity of the teachings. This must be done at all cost. When there is no balance, the Organizer quickly becomes the “letter-of-the-law” person who sets himself up as the judge. The judge will often reason that it is his supreme responsi-bility to maintain the word of the law in its literal sense. Anyone who seeks to go beyond the literal interpretation of the law is a rebel, and must be shut down and restricted. In the extreme, the judge becomes a person who is no longer truly concerned about maintaining the stability of the organization. Instead, the judge is now consumed by a desire to punish anyone who questions the authority of the judge and his interpretation of the letter of the law. A classical example of this is the conflict between Jesus and the Orthodox Jewish church. The church hierarchy had set themselves up as judges, and they thought their supreme responsibility was the upholding of the letter of the law. In doing so, they were willing to kill the Christ in the process.

When they go to the extremes, the rebel seeks glamour and the judge seeks power.

Our Church Right Now
Church Universal and triumphant is right now going through the classical struggle between the Creators, who have turned rebels, and the Organizers, who have turned judges. If the present conflict is allowed to continue, one of two things will occur:

The judges will gradually gain complete control of the organization, and they will enforce that control by all means available to them. As a result, the Creators will all leave the organization. The organization will then become gradually more rigid, and many of the ordinary members will also start leaving the organization. Within a few years, the organization will shrink to an insignificant size, and it will become like the I AM Movement. It will turn into a small organization that is simply publishing the existing teachings of the Ascended Masters.
The organization will fragment into two different factions. This is what happened to the Theosophical society. The Creators, turned rebels, will create a faction of the organization and they will claim that they have the sponsorship of the Masters and that the old organization is simply stifled by the judges. The judges will claim that they must maintain the purity of the teachings, even if those teachings (or the organizational structure and culture) no longer meet the needs of the followers.

In either case, the Divine potential of the organization is lost in the ongoing human struggle for power. If you step back from the situation, do you really think the Ascended Masters want either of these options to come to pass? If you do not, then the question becomes: “How can we prevent this from happening?” Or perhaps we should ask: “How can we prevent the church from sliding even further into this process?”

Let No Man Take Thy Crown
An important question here is: “Are the rebels and the judges willing to look in the mirror and admit that they have moved too far into the extremes?” And if they come to this realization, are they willing to do what is necessary to come back to the center of the Christ?
Right now, the Ascended Masters cannot interfere with this process because they cannot violate the law of free will. They can only sit back and watch with their fingers crossed, hoping that for the first time in history a group of people will actually decide to rise above the human consciousness instead of simply watching that their organization slides into the abyss.

The only possible solution is that all church members become more alert and learn to expose the subtle mechanism that can cause people to become spiritually blind. Your supreme responsibility on the path is to make sure that nothing comes between you and your God. “Let no man take thy Crown” means that you must not let anything in this world take away your inner connection to your I AM presence. Obviously, the goal of all dark forces and your dweller and human consciousness is to do exactly that.

The Key to Spiritual Growth
You must understand that the real key to your spiritual growth is the realization that your spiritual growth stands and falls with the decisions you make with your free will. These decisions should be made by your conscious mind. Unfortunately, most people allow a lot of decisions to be made by the subconscious mind where they are almost always influenced by or completely controlled by the human consciousness.
The key to spiritual growth is to realize that you must take back your free will and your power to make decisions. You must also realize that the only way to make right decisions is to have right knowledge and right understanding. So before you can make right decisions, you must make an effort to get a higher understanding of the topic at hand. With all thy getting, get understanding!

What often happens to people is that they do not make the effort, and in the beginning it can be a tremendous effort, to bring their decisions about life into the conscious mind. Therefore, many subtle decisions are made in the subconscious mind and the individual is not fully aware of of what is influencing the decision. This explains why it is sometimes very difficult for a person to realize what they are doing wrong, even though it might be obvious to many other people.

The more you identify with the human consciousness, the more that human consciousness will influence the decisions you make. What the human consciousness will do is to create some kind of condition that seems to make it either impossible, unnecessary or impractical for you to exercise your spiritual potential. In other words, your human consciousness will tell you that because of this or that condition, you either cannot be the Christ in action, or you don’t have to be the Christ in action or you don’t have to be the Christ in action right now – you can do it in the tomorrow that never comes. In essence, your human conscious-ness is saying that because of this or that condition, you do not have to change, and you can stay where you (or rather it) are comfortable.

If the church is to change, the individual members must understand the mechanisms that will either make or break the organization. People must consider if they are Creators or Organizers. If you determine that you are a Creator, then you must ask yourself: “Have I become a rebel?” If you determine that you are an Organizer, you must ask yourself: “Have I become a judge?” You must then consider if the tendency to rebel or judge is really just an excuse, created by your human consciousness, that prevents you from exercising your Christhood. Are you in reality saying to yourself: “My involvement with the church and the issues at hand are so important, that I cannot be the Christ until this is resolved!” If so, you need to realize that the only way to resolve the issues at hand is to be the Christ. Do not throw the Christ-child out with the dirty bath water of the organizational struggle!

The Emperor’s New Clothes
What is happening here is really just a new version of the story that was told in the fairy-tale about the emperor’s new clothes. Both the rebels and the judges are completely convinced that their position is the only right one, and that the opposite side is completely wrong. In reality, both sides are wrong because both sides are (at least in part) motivated by the human consciousness. What is needed is that a little child, a little Christ child, in the organization will finally cry out: “But they’ve got nothing on!”

The Move Back to the Center
In this respect, it should be pointed out that the outcome of this conflict is not merely determined by the rebels and the judges. In all reality, it is unlikely that the rebels and the judges will be able to pull themselves back to the center. The move back to the center can only be instigated by those who are already balanced. Therefore, the people who have a healthy balance between the Creator and the Organizer within themselves have a responsibility to speak up and state their case.
Unfortunately, history has proven very clearly that once the battle between the rebels and the judges has started, it will often consume the organization to the point where it is very difficult for the balanced people to have a say. However, it is still necessary for such people to speak up and try to make the rebels and the judges realize that they have gone too far.

Unfortunately, making the rebels and judges come to this realization can be extremely difficult. Because the more they go into the territory of the extremes, the more convinced they are that they are right and that they have to keep going in that direction despite the warnings they receive from others.

It is important for the balanced people to realize that the rebels and the judges are not bad people, and they are not willingly doing their thing. They simply do not realize what they are doing (if they did, most of them would be willing to change). In other words, it is important not to create a new struggle between the balanced people and people in either or both extremes.

The true spiritual potential of community is that people can help keep each other balanced so that neither individual members, nor the community as a whole, stray too far from the middle way. If this can be done in love, conflicts can be healed rather than strengthened. Trenches can be filled in rather than made deeper. So, the final question is: Do you love something, be it the church, the Masters, God or your I AM Presence, more than the human desire to be proven right?

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