Your Universal Self
By Ansaluia, Goddess of Light
Channel: Shelly Dressel
Posted on February 1, 2025
The Inner Voice Gide Us Into Strength and Self-Trust
Posted on February 1, 2025

“The eyes of the multiverse are upon us.”
I wrote those words the other day and it occurred to me that we have more and more new readers as more and more people notice … something is happening. … Something!
But what?
It occurred to me that a common-sense description of what it is that’s happening right now, at a higher-than-street level, might be useful. I’ll footnote the references for further reading. (1) I apologize for its length.
This planet, when it was in the Third Dimension of consciousness, followed a temporal pattern of ages or yugas. I said I’d keep it commonsensical (with references) so let me say we’ve recently left the Iron Age, Dark Age, or Kali Yuga and entered the Golden Age, Age of Aquarius or Sat Yuga. (2)
And we did so on Dec. 21, 2012. On that day we left Third Dimensionality and began our gradual journey through the Fourth. (3)
It doesn’t mean that we’re in a Golden Age, bing bang, that’s it. Go walk on water.
It’s a gradual process.
What’s a gradual process? Our expansion in consciousness which “changes the channel” from Third to Fifth Dimensionality … or higher … as a result of a process both gradual and sudden that we call “Ascension.” It’s for the most part a gradual process. And then there are also sudden “snaps” or “ignitions.” (4) But I’ll leave that aspect of the story for another time.
Who’s we? We Lightholders and lightworkers. I’m a lightworker. This lifetime. Specifically, a writer.
What is Ascension? Jesus ascended. Buddha ascended. But they were avatars. Having descended from God, they ascended to God.
Ascension for all of us means an expansion of vibration to a more refined level or dimension, with enhanced capabilities and knowledge. It also means liberation from death and rebirth. It means the power of manifestation, space travel, on and on.
But what makes it all possible and is the predominant experience of all higher dimensions is the love that flows freely and endlessly there. On that I have written volumes. (5) And never tire of the subject.
Jesus and the Buddha ascended individually but only after shedding the physical body.
Moreover they passed through the dimensional world on their way back to the Mother/Father God who sent them. They would have passed through several dimensional worlds that had been closed to them until now (while incarnated), as they sped back to the One.
That’s the way it was. Are you with me up till here?
(Continued in Part 2, below.)
Footnotes
(1) A good place to start would be the Downloads Page: https://goldenageofgaia.com/2021/07/06/downloads-page/
(2) A good starting place for a study of the yugas would be Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri, The Holy Science. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1984, available online at https://www.starcenter.com/holy-science.pdf.
(3) Matthew Ward: “Earth enters fourth density at the end of your year 2012.” (Matthew’s Message, Aug. 11, 2011, at https://matthewbooks.com.)
(4) For the curious, see Gateway to Higher Dimensionality. Vol. 3: Ascension Sudden and Gradual at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Gateway-to-Higher-Dimensionality-V3-R5.pdf
(5) Articles on love are everywhere; many were gathered together into one volume; many have not been incorporated: See Love Like We Never Imagined It to Be at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Love-Like-We-Never-Imagined-It-to-Be-R15.pdf
After being hit with numerous malware attacks, the Golden Age of Gaia now only links to its own sites.

Closest i can come to my Universal Self
I keep going back and forth, debating whether I should share this.
On the one hand, I feel blocked until I do. And on the other hand, I get signals that it’s wanted. So as part of an Ascension ethnography….
I have to preserve confidentiality so let’s just say that, after a long time of being patient (I say, self-servingly), I put my foot down the other day. When interrupted once too often, I said, in a Moses-like voice, “Let me SPEAK.”
Wooo-wheeee! So far so good. Maybe hurt feelings but message received.
But then it took an unexpected turn. As if in response to the unasked question. (who are you to speak to me like that?), for perhaps 1-2 seconds, a very much deeper “me” looked out through my eyes in a silent, fixed, and stable glare. That’s who I am. (And who you are too.) And then it vanished.
Never mind hurt feelings and message received. There was a shift in relationship brought about by whatever it was that just happened.
Years … OK, decades … ago, I would have said I just “arrived” in my life. That’d be a growth-movement view of the matter. We knew nothing of a Universal Self.
But, no, something much more expanded than myself just took the microphone for an instant, delivered its message, and then disappeared.
I was so happy to see what arose out of it that I never again mentioned the incident. I didn’t want to spoil this one. I probably will never mention it just in case.
It showed me the impact of committed speaking, its power magnified by not being overly attached to anything. I’ll have to revise my writings on the cycle of conflict to include committed speaking as another way out of the cycle.
***All the questions it raises!
Who was that masked man? Who just looked out through my eyes for a brief instant?
I’ve experienced myself being inside my body and looking out through my own eyes as if they were windows. (1) But never have I experienced someone else arise, while I’m there, and take the periscope, so to speak.
Yes, an unknown energy joined me once inside my body and we merged. (2) And I also merged with my Universal Self once. (3) But, again, no one has taken the microphone till now.
In this present circumstance, the energy stayed so briefly that I didn’t have time to enjoy it. But its “influence” was that of a natural nobility. Its energy resonated with that of my Universal Self.
What does it mean? Is it just another one-off experience? Or are our angelic capabilities beginning to show through? (4) Is the Universal Self drawing closer and even peeking in, from time to time?
I certainly hope so! I was totally enraptured with the way I felt at the moment of its manifestation.
Footnotes
(1) See “Mapping a Possible Soul Merge” in An Ascension Ethnography at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/An-Ascension-Ethnography-8.pdf .
(2) “‘Is This What You’re Looking for?’ – Part 1/2, August 21, 2017, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2017/08/21/289210/.
(3) Loc. cit.
(4) Archangel Michael: The awareness, when you choose to acknowledge it, and the, shall we call it, the angelic abilities, are present in the human race, in the individual human form at this time. (Archangel Michael in a personal reading witth Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, Sept. 16, 2020.)

Posted on February 13, 2024
Ibn Arabi: “To know God is not an easy matter, until one becomes a knower of one’s self.” (1)
Al-Ghazzali: “He who knows himself knows God.” (2)
The illusory, apparently-individuated entity known as the “Self” is like a Babushka doll.
Whatever its original form might have been, that’s the largest of the dolls. And we in Fourth Dimensionality are the smallest.
But, I believe, they’re nested inside of each other in a non-physical way which I couldn’t possibly describe or understand.
We’re out here in the cold and rain and the door into the locked warmth of the interior of the Babushka Doll has this sign over it: “The Heart.”
We want back in to the light and warmth. Who’s got the key to this door?
Well, of course, the Divine Mother does. And, along with her, our archangel does, and our Higher Self, all agents of the Mother’s Will. (3)
We look back and we see that we approached the door by Awareness Avenue. Others are beginning to congregate now, also wet and cold, some coming from Service Avenue; others from down Wisdom Street. All wanting in at the door.
Let me spin the metaphor a little longer.
I can only talk about Awareness Avenue.
We cannot become a knower of God until we become a knower of the self. It could not possibly be that God is everything and not us. Since everything is God, if we know ourselves as deeply as is possible, we should eventually know God. God is the residuum, the default, behind all appearances.
Moreover, we now know that things are provided for us along the way, to make things easier or speed our journey. Channeled messages, spiritual experiences, mentors, books falling off shelves, suggestions whispered in our ears. (4)
We’re not being asked to do something exotic – climb a mountain or cross a river. We’re asked to know, most deeply, the very thing we carry around with us night and day and use for everything – our very own self.
Example: Since our feelings don’t last, they cannot be what we’re looking for (God). But our divine states don’t flee as quickly. They bear looking into as a stairstep to God.
And, yes, at some point we have to stop looking. It’s only brush-clearing. If we keep on past its point of usefulness, we busy the very thing we’re looking for: The “I” that’s looking is the “I” we’re looking for!
Crazy-making!
If something is not divine, or God, it will disappear when the truth of it is known. An upset will disappear when the truth of it is known. A headache or other pain may lift when its true message is known. (Maybe not. I’m not a doctor.)
The opposite is also true: I for instance am fond of using the phrase “a pain in the butt.” I now have a slipped lower disc which is causing … you got it … a pain in the butt. No accidents.
Or if you prefer the path of love to address an upset, love it and it will release its grip and gradually pass away: This too shall pass. Resist it and it will hold onto you forever: What we resist persists. (5)
Using the truth as our machete, we clear away the brush of our misconceptions, revealing the Truth that is and was already there. Well, that’s my preferred route, as a writer.
At Xenia, gazing upon the Self, I felt my own native purity and innocence (I can feel it now). We labor under the memory of countless lifetimes of errors and mistakes, which burden us like Morley’s chain. (6)
But free of that burden through, as Kathleen points out, the forgiveness of everything, we are as pure and innocent as her granddaughter Amelia.

Just here. Without a care in the world. Just love and curiosity.
Can you imagine that that’s you? Because, deep down, it is.
Raising the ways of the self to awareness causes them to lift, if they’re held in place by anything other than love – such as jealousy, strategizing, fear, etc. Underneath them, we’re all just like Amelia.
Only love persists eternally. And that same love, in ways that are beyond my understanding, turns out to be the essence of who we are, now liberated from the endless desiring of the ephemeral self.
Footnotes
(1) Muhyideen Ibn Arabi, Kernel of the Kernel. trans. Ismail Hakki Bursevi. Sherborne: Beshara, n.d., 3.
(2) Al-Ghazzali, The Alchemy of Happiness. trans. Claud Field. Lahore: ASHRAF, 1971; c1964, 19.
(3) See Our Enlightenment Partnership at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Our-Enlightenment-Partnership-4.pdf
(4) See Our Enlightenment Partnership at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Our-Enlightenment-Partnership-5.pdf
(5) Werner Erhard.
(6) Morley was Scrooge’s deceased business partner, now dragging around the chain of his misdeeds and heartlessness while on Earth.
Posted on December 10, 2023

I’ve spoken a few times on the process of emergence that I believe all lightworkers – and perhaps everyone on the planet – is going through. (1)
I’ve never really examined it from the standpoint of being called forth and calling myself forth.
Let me bank on a familiarity with the process of emergence and start from where that leaves off.
When I looked at my process some time ago, I saw a pattern that led me to ask Michael if he was “calling me forth.” This was after a strong disagreement I had with a colleague. I didn’t feel guilty and I was wondering if I “should.”
AAM commented:
Archangel Michael: It is time for that assumption of leadership responsibility to be front and center. So the avoidance due to prior injuries – terrible injury, particularly to one that has been in a leadership or cutting-edge position not only upon Gaia but elsewhere – that was deep devastation.
Now, I am very busy healing the wounds of war and who do you think I am starting with?
My inner cadre, and, dear heart, that includes you. I need you as you need me.
Steve: You are calling me forth, right?
AAM: That is exactly what is happening. That is why this line in the sand is being created [an incident in which I felt I needed to assert my authority].
It is not about the old realm of control or greed, or anything like that. It is, in order for the plan to be unfolding, in order for the practical building blocks (which is what you’re asking for – money) to be in place, there has need to be a very strong re-assumption of leadership. …
You are getting there. Simply bring [leadership] back up, dear heart, and let it flow. It is dormant. You haven’t been attending to it as vigilantly as you might because you have been worried and in fear around finances. Be re-assured and go forth. (2)
What is the “me” he’s calling forth? Well, as you know, I had an experience of that “me” on June 12, 2023. (3) I used to call that “me” the “Commander” and “Big Steve.” Psychologist Eric Berne (Games People Play) called it an “Adult” ego state. (4)
Werner Erhard used to speak about “presencing” the Self. For me, that covers the same territory as what I term “calling myself forth.”
I can tell you how I pick up a glass. Ride a bike. Drive a car. But I can’t tell you how I or anyone else presences the Self. It’s something we don’t usually do unless needing to lift a car off our child.
The philosophy that has programmed out of us that we have a Self to presence is called empirical materialism, the belief that only what we can see, hear, and touch (i.e., sense) is real. Most people get how to presence the self or call ourselves forth, I think, as a realization or a revelation or guidance – an “Aha!” moment.
Calling myself forth, presencing myself we often called “arriving.” It’s something I’ll have to practice and process again. It’ll be required in any of our dealings with our star family, I imagine, and in any of our leadership initiatives.
Footnotes
(1) See Lightworkers: Creating a World that Works for Everyone. Volume 3/3: Emergence and Service at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Lightworkers-3-6.pdf
(2) Archangel Michael in a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, April 3, 2015.
(3) See “Co-Creative Partners with the Company of Heaven,” June 12, 2023, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2023/06/12/co-creative-partners-with-the-company-of-heaven/.
(4) Mike Quinsey may be referring to it when he speaks of his “Higher Self.” (I don’t know.) Use of the term “Higher Self” usually refers to the Oversoul, which is a Seventh-Dimensional version of ourselves.
I experienced my Oversoul at a 2011 meditation retreat and discussed it with Michael at my next reading:
Steve Beckow: I had an experience at a meditation workshop in which I felt regal. It was a partial experience. Can you tell me what that part of me was that I accessed.
Archangel Michael: … Your Highest Self, your Oversoul, is very regal.
SB: So that was an experience of the Oversoul.
AAM: Yes. (Archangel Michael in a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, Sept. 13, 2011.)
Search on “Oversoul” in An Ascension Ethnography at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/An-Ascension-Ethnography-12.pdf
Based on that experience, I don’t consider my “Commander” to be my Oversoul. He’s the same dimension as me, but … Adult, as Eric Berne says. (See also “Me and My Higher Self,”
Steve BeckowPosted on November 9, 2023
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| The Self lives in the deepest reaches of the heart, the Seat of the Soul. Credit: Ute Possega Rudel |
Three days till 11/11.
When, at Xenia Retreat Center in Sept. 2018, I ventured in meditation into the very bottom of my heart, the depths of my heart, called the Seat of the Soul, I there found the Light of the Self. (1)
But, after the experience, I was filled with doubts. The soul doesn’t “live” in the heart; it fills the whole of creation. Who else can be found to support that statement? And then I promptly forgot about the matter.
But today I came across a section in From Darkness Unto Light, which features a large group of enlightened masters saying exactly that: That the Self, the soul, the spirit lives in and is to be sought and found in the heart. (2)
I feel buoyed up having found such a range of evidence in support of what sounded to me like a statement in need of corroboration. Here is that evidence:
Within the city of Brahman, which is the body, there is the heart, (1) and within the heart there is a little house. This house has the shape of a lotus, and within it dwells that which is to be sought after, inquired about, and realized. (Swami Prabhavananda and Frederick Manchester, trans., The Upanishads. Breath of the Eternal. New York and Scarborough: New American Library, 1957; c194, 74.) (Hereafter, UPAN.)
The ancient, effulgent being, in-dwelling Spirit, (1) [is] deep-hidden in the lotus of the heart. (UPAN, 17.)
Smaller than the smallest, greater than the greatest, this Self forever dwells within the hearts of all. (UPAN, 18.)
Both the individual self and the Universal Self have entered the cave of the heart, the abode of the Most High. (UPAN, 19.)
He who … sees [the Atman] inhabiting the lotus of the heart, living among physical elements, sees Brahman indeed. For this First-Born is the immortal Self. (UPAN, 21.)
The Supreme Person, … the Innermost Self, dwells forever in the heart of all beings. (UPAN, 24.)
The Self exists in man, within the lotus of the heart, and is the master of his life and of his body. (UPAN, 46.)
Within the lotus of the heart (1) he dwells, where, like the spokes of a wheel in its hub, the nerves meet. Meditate on him as OM. Easily mayest thou cross the ocean of darkness. (UPAN, 46.)
I am the Lord in the midst of the earth. (1) (Exodus 8:22.)
The devoted … know Him always There in the heart, Where action is not. (Sri Krishna in Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, trans., Bhagavad-Gita. The Song of God. New York and Scarborough: New American Library, 1972; c1944, 59.) (Hereafter BG.)
There in the ignorant heart … I dwell. (Sri Krishna in BG, 87.)
The fire (1) shall ever be burning upon the altar; (2) it shall never go out. (Leviticus 6:13.)
The Lord is in his holy temple: (1) let all the earth keep silence before him. (2) (Habakkuk 2:20.)
Oh, Lord, dweller within; You are the light in the heart’s lotus. (Shankara in Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher lsherwood, Shankara’s Crest-Jewel of Discrimination. Hollywood: Vedanta Press, 1975; c1947, i.) (Hereafter CJD.)
Here, within this body, in the pure mind, in the secret chamber of intelligence, in the infinite universe within the heart, the Atman (1) shines in its captivating splendour, like a noonday sun. (Shankara in CJD, 53.)
The Atman, which is pure consciousness, is the light that shines in the shrine of the heart, the center of all vital force. (Shankara in CJD, 63.)
The Atman is … the real I, hidden in the shrine of the heart. (Shankara in CJD, 69.)
The first step to self-knowledge is to know that thou art composed of an outward shape, called the body, and an inward entity called the heart, or soul. (1) By “heart” I do not mean the piece of flesh situated in the left of our bodies, but that which uses all the other faculties as its instruments and servants. In truth it does not belong to the visible world, but to the invisible, and has come into this world as a traveller visits a foreign country for the sake of merchandise, and will presently return to its native land. It is the knowledge of this entity and its attributes which is the key to the knowledge of God. (Al-Ghazzali, The Alchemy of Happiness. trans. Claud Field. Lahore: ASHRAF, 1971; c1964, 21.)
There is something nearer to us than Scriptures, to wit, the Lord in the heart to which all Scriptures come. (William Penn in Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy. New York, etc.: Harper and Row, 1970; c1944, 14.)
The heart of the devotee is the abode of God. He dwells, no doubt, in all beings, but He especially manifests Himself in the heart of the devotee. A landlord may at one time or another visit all parts of his estate, but people say he is generally to be found in a particular drawing-room. The heart of the devotee is the drawing-room of God. (Paramahansa Ramakrishna in GSR, 133.)
Footnotes
(1) See “The Heart is ‘the Seat of the Soul’,” December 17, 2018, at http://goldenageofgaia.com/2018/12/17/the-heart-is-the-seat-of-the-soul/
(2) From Darkness Unto Light at https://goldengaiadb.com/index.php?title=From_Darkness_to_Light
Posted on September 1, 2023
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| The best representation of my Higher Self as he appeared to me (1) |
The degree of influence of the Higher (Seventh-Dimensional) Self, the Oversoul, on us seems to determine the degree to which we can be stalwart, valiant, determined.
The extent of courage of the Higher Self is such that we can “import it” or “borrow from it” – perhaps, “draw on it” may be a better metaphor.
I say this after a few days of observing myself following my experience of drawing my Higher Self to me. My Higher Self is blissful, relaxed, finished with all harmful thoughts, philosophical about all the fumbles and lapses I’ve made in this lifetime.
I’ve seen one person in documentaries that resembles him but he was a wartime personality and I don’t want to stir up old passions by mentioning him. I have him in mind when I want to draw on an example. (I just remembered a second.)
His example seems to suggest that it’s possible for the Higher Self to shine through these dense bodies.
And certainly the emergencies of wartime would offer ample motivation to reach back into our heights or depths to find our courage. Witness Medal of Honor winners. (2)
After Lahaina, the rumor is that we’re now officially at war with the deep-state faction of government and the military. Let this be the opportunity for so many of us to reach back and find our Higher Self.
Our doing that, I believe, signals our Board of Directors (3) that we’re ready to experience the closer influence of our Higher Self.
I saw my Higher Self in vision in 2017 (one of two experiences) and merged with it. I described that experience as being like water soaking into blotting paper. (4)
I don’t think it was by my efforts that that happened. In my opinion, my Board of Directors determined the time was right. And then they metered out my contact and everything else about it so that I wouldn’t fly off to another planet.
That’s my hunch, based on past performance.
Now it’s a matter of identification. Just as with love and bliss or anything else, if I forget about my Higher Self and don’t keep polishing my armor, so to speak, my Higher Self will gradually disappear from my experience.
It’s up to me to identify with him and come from him if I want the connection, eventually, to be permanent.
Therein lies the work.
That is, if not for the fact that we’ll all ascend and thereafter have, if my understanding is correct, unimpeded access to our Higher Self.
Footnotes
(1) He appeared to me as a knight in shining armor, seated on a white horse, with a lance. Kathleen had a similar vision. I felt incredibly privileged to have been given such a sight.
For an account of the vision, see “Is This What You’re Looking for?” – Part 1/2″ in An Ascension Ethnography at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/An-Ascension-Ethnography-12.pdf
(2) A third example: Hacksaw Ridge, the story of a pacifist medic and Medal of Honor winner.
(3) My Board of Directors includes the Divine Mother, Archangel Michael, the Lord Arcturus, my Guides, and my Higher Self.
See Our Enlightenment Partnership at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Our-Enlightenment-Partnership-3.pdf
(4) Here’s Michael discussing the variables that went into giving me a heart opening:
Archangel Michael: This [heart opening] occurs, not merely because you have asked for it, but because you (and this does apply to the collective) have done your, can we say, your homework, your due diligence….
When one is clinging to core issues, to fear, to lack, to limitation – you know the list – there is not that sense, not only of spaciousness, but of acceptance, allowance, readiness and even permission. Because as you know, we continually say that we will never override your free will.
So, if the will, either actively or subconsciously, is actually choosing to still engage in the issues or the drama, then although we are standing at readiness and still penetrating you, that open door is not there. ( Archangel Michael in a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, March 13, 2015. Also “Activating the Wellspring – Part 1/2,” March 14, 2015, in An Ascension Ethnography at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/An-Ascension-Ethnography-12.pdf, 87-93.)
Steve Beckow