In this passage from 2014, Archangel Michael explains what he means when he says that gatekeepers especially go back and forth across the Ascension portal.
He’s not saying we’re fully ascended when we go back and forth. Only that we spend a while in that state and then return. As he advised on another occasion: “Visit. Don’t stay.” (1)
Archangel Michael in a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon,
May 9, 2014.
AAM: We’re not talking about full ascension. Think of it in this way ― and there are many, many who have done this …
Think of it as going to a car wash, coming out bright and shiny, but you are still a car…
You make a U-turn, you get back in line and go back to the front of the car wash to get ready to go through again because you are collecting everybody else in line to go through with you.
Steve: Okay. All right. Thank you.
AAM: The key to this Ascension is keeping the form. To do it in form, to ascend…
Steve: Yes.
AAM: … in form. Too many are thinking about the release of the body, or that their body is so remarkably different ― it will be eventually ― but not in that snap.
It is not a snap. It is a process. And humanity is in the middle of that process.
Now, will they shine more brightly? Will their consciousness be completely different? Expanded world view? Yes. All of that is true.
The unity, the heart consciousness, the ability to create and to co-create with us? Yes.
But it is not to wake up and find yourself [disembodied] ― that would be a shame, actually. It would not mean that the Plan had worked. And that is impossible! So you will not find yourself floating on a cloud [in the afterlife]. (2)
Steve: Okay. I have to update my impression. Now, you did say about two years ago that Ascension [itself] would be a snap [i.e., Sahaja Samadhi].
AAM: Yes. It is a snap and a moment in time when someone truly gets to that point in the car wash where they are clean and bright and shiny.
Steve: Right.
AAM: But it is also a process going through [the car wash]. (3)
In other words, Ascension is a gradual process with several enlightenment experiences along the way (snaps). Our heart opening, which is in the gradual stage still and is more than halfway done, will or may be an example of one of these experiences or snaps.
So at some points in time Ascension is a process and then in a few points in time it’s a snap.
Footnotes
(1) Steve: Can you help me make sense of returning to my interdimensionality while not becoming a [meditating monk]?
Archangel Michael: It is very simple: Visit. Don’t stay. (Archangel Michael in a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, May 6, 2013.)
The Divine Mother makes sure that we visit but don’t stay by truncating experiences that would send us off course, such as my experience of the Self at Xenia, as she acknowledges here:
Steve: The experience at Xenia, Mother, was that truncated?
Divine Mother: Slightly, yes.
Steve: I had the thought [it was]. … The Light I saw should have been brighter than a thousand suns. The fact that it wasn’t suggests to me that the experience was truncated. …
DM: It was not is brilliant as possible, let us put it that way.
Steve: Alright… And again, the reason is to keep me in sync with my readers?
DM: It is to keep you in sync with your readers… But let me be very clear about that. If you had seen the light as it actually is – yes, a million, billion suns – you would have simply departed. …
We don’t mean die but you would have departed the life that you have designed – yes, with us, for yourself, for the service you are providing – you would have departed and simply said, “I do not need to do this. I will simply sit in the bliss of love and good luck, everybody!” (Divine Mother in a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, Oct. 26, 2018.)
(2) In other words, we don’t have to die this time to ascend as, say, Jesus and Buddha did. Unlike them, we keep our bodies.
(3) The car wash represents purification and going through it is going through the ascension portal. The car wash is a process. The moment of seeing that we’ve become clean and shiny is the snap.
Monks may meditate for twenty years (the process, the car wash, the gradual phase) before having an experience of enlightenment (the moment of realization, the snap, the sudden phase).