There is much emphasis in Holy Scriptures admonishing people to worship God, and rituals have been developed and incorporated in many religions focused almost totally on worship of the divine. How important is it to you, whether or not humans bow down to you and kneel before your altars and bow their heads before prayer as gestures of respect? In what way do these rituals serve you or them?

The rituals are not important to us in terms of establishing your status as subservient, as needing to pay some homage in order to be recognized or accepted by the divine. This is a distortion and misinterpretation of divine teaching. All humans are divine. All are worthy. All are loved and accepted by Creator without exception. This depends not on what you do, or say, or think, or feel, or even believe within your heart. You are part of us and we accept and love you as is. We know too, that any distortion and departure from your spiritual origin and focus is a consequence of the current life situation and its demands and limitations in awareness and in the inherent ability of people to survive the onslaught when there are heavy obstacles to keeping one's balance. So we understand many are heavily abused and threatened in ways that undermine them, as well as the infiltration into their very thoughts by mind-control manipulation and subjugation by external forces of all kinds, including dark spirit attachments that will corrupt an individual from within without their conscious awareness, and so on. We do not judge people by the consequences of their externally applied negativity. We do not judge—period. We only allow and observe and accept ALL as being in process on a path of soul progression whether fast or slow, whether moving steadily upward or going up and down, forwards and backwards, at times both. This is the nature of the soul journey—to be uncertain and sometimes complex. There is no time limit on Enlightenment. Each will have their own path, for their own reasons, as an expression of their individual and unique soul makeup as well as the unique circumstances in which they find themselves in every new experience they undertake.  All are doing something somewhat different. All come from different origins in terms of soul make-up. So not all will act the same, or be the same. This is to be expected. And when humans compare themselves to another they are always comparing apples with oranges, but do not realize this. This is not a divine approach. So the use of ritual to recognize the Divinity of Creator can be very useful. There needs to be an awareness of the awesomeness and great power we represent. For we are the ultimate source and the ultimate answer for many dilemmas. This is what we are teaching you now and the effort to help humanity with the interlopers: that you need powerful friends and we are THE most powerful friend you can have. You do not have this friendship by virtue of your obedience and observance of ritual in the form of worship to prostrate yourself, to diminish yourself, to show your lowly status in comparison, or to obtain approval from us by humbling yourselves. To be sure, we do not look with favor on expressions of ego taken to excess, because we know this is a fault and feel badly for those who fall into that trap. We know this will not serve them and ultimately, they will pay some price for this as they will become less effective in what they do. This is not done at our hands. It is a consequence of karma and what others will do to them when they see them overreaching. The universe itself will act as a kind of buffer and give feedback to such excesses and will counterpose them with obstacles to force a rebalancing and a retrenchment. The ego will need to rein in its horns, so to speak, to once again be in polite company and be accepted. This is human learning about human issues and not a series of judgments and punishments meted out to correct people from their errors. The universe is designed to be self-correcting. So within that scheme there is not a requirement for worship per se, of the divine. Worship has had value historically in human social development and cultural development both, by providing a framework, to put some emphasis on the special nature of the Divine and the divine realm and to represent, in a symbolic fashion, the truth of the nature of things—that humans are disconnected and need to take steps to connect with the divine realm to achieve extra things needed. The ritual serves to make this point quite clear, that it is a special connection and special bond that is needed between unequals. This is simply the practical reality of things in the dilemma of divine human being in a corrupt world with a defective body and a very significant disconnection from their higher self and beyond, to the soul level and Creator, as well as a disconnection from the deepest part of their own mind. In these respects, humans are lesser beings. That is all we are saying, not that they are unworthy. It is no different than looking at a wounded animal and seeing at once the contrast with its true potential and noting the dilemma posed by the lack of function, due to an injury. That is not judging the animal as unworthy, but only pointing out the current status of things—that an impairment has occurred and there is a need for healing to restore the animal to its highest expression. This is true currently for all humans. So we do not see you as unworthy, we see you as having been altered and impaired in various ways, through much outside manipulation, and see this as a need and an opportunity for tremendous healing work to once again restore all humans to a higher level of performance. This will change everything about the human experience. To get there will require human effort, not acquiescence, not subservience, not the humbling of the self, or focusing on rituals that leave the human essentially showing up and then shutting down their free will in service to a ritual action of some kind, perhaps a prayer said in a mantra-like fashion from rote memory, to do so over, and over, and over, and over. If the focus is solely on pleasing God, this will cause no harm, but represents a preoccupation of their time and resources that they could be devoting to growth and enlightenment, which would also serve God and in fashion more uplifting for them and more satisfying for Creator as well. We enjoy people who are expressing their soul desires in new ways that push the boundary of what came before and result in an expansion of possibilities. We have no joy in watching people carry out rituals repeating the same words and gestures over, and over, and over again. There is no growth in this. There is no accomplishment of any significance in this. It is a kind of “make-work” exercise that keeps the idea of the divine alive and is a gesture of respect, to be sure, but it is a draining of human capital that has little other purpose. We would rather see people breaking new ground, spreading love in new ways to new places, and helping one another with their energy in a loving fashion, rather than practicing rituals to express gestures of love over and over to Creator, which often become so automatic they lose their passion and almost lose their meaning through becoming so routine that they can be done almost in one's sleep. So we see a place for ritual, as it can be quite satisfying and it will help people mark an occasion as a solemn and important one. This can prepare people for what comes next, in something new and something varied, that may be unique and a focused issue needing attention. But a service of worship filled with endless ritual, that is repeated for the thousandth time, will not uplift people very greatly. After so much repetition, it is inspiring for the young who are seeing the ritual splendor with fresh eyes and may be filled with awe at all the trappings.  But this will begin to wear thin over time with endless repetition. So the main message here is: we do not need to be worshiped directly, except as to be acknowledged, and that is more profitably done through making prayer requests to assist oneself or others with their lives, and not through committing gestures of subservience.