7/30/14

Step 211 - I have great friends beyond this world. Entry for Step 210 - Review


Greetings All –


YOU HAVE GREAT FRIENDS BEYOND THIS WORLD. That is why humanity is seeking to enter into the Greater Community because the Greater Community represents a broader range of its true relationships. You have true friends beyond the world because you are not alone in the world and you are not alone in the Greater Community of Worlds. You have friends beyond this world because your Spiritual Family has its representatives everywhere. You have friends beyond this world because you are working not merely on the evolution of your world but on the evolution of the universe as well. Beyond your imagination, beyond your conceptual capabilities, this is most certainly true.


FEEL, THEN, THE GREATNESS OF THE UNIVERSE in which you live. Feel, then, the opportunity you have to serve the Greater Community of which your world is a part. You serve your great friends within the world and your friends beyond, for the work of Knowledge goes on everywhere. It is the attraction of God. It is the application of good. It is the force that redeems all separated minds and gives purpose, meaning and direction to the universe. Regardless of the mechanism of physical life, its value is determined by its origin and its destiny, both of which are beyond your comprehension. Realizing that Knowledge is the means that propels the world in its true direction, you  can then value and receive that which gives your life purpose, meaning and direction.


UPON THE HOUR TODAY consider that you have friends beyond this world, both in other worlds and beyond the visible as well. Consider that you have this greater association. In your two deeper practice periods today, allow your mind to enter stillness so that such things may be experienced. Do not dwell upon them in your imagination, but allow instead for your mind to become still so that it may bestow Knowledge into your awareness and experience. You have friends beyond this world, and they are practicing with you today.


PRACTICE 211: Two 30-minute practice periods. Hourly practice.


Yesterday:  Step 210 - Review

When making journal entries, it is important to note the right day, date and time. It was hard for me to figure out why the Review came on Friday instead of Saturday, as I’ paused early on to get that alignment. I had to go and review my calendars for that period to figure out why things did not match my expectation. Eventually I remembered that I’d skipped ahead for a more positive Step from 200 to 201, and that put me on a Friday for review, which is why the journal seemed confused.

Two graphics are included, the first a very simple mind map, a technique I’ve used since learning of it at a World Future Society event in the early 1980’s. It is a technique that is part of the Plan-Do personal planning process.   

From the Journal:

Friday, February 11, 2000

2:40 p.m. Here in the wilderness? – After Rotary – I need to connect. Went home for a short meditation; only could do 15 minutes, though timer set for 30. After that – a need/desire for coffee – my mind map attempt was basic and reproduced here:


   [Yes - Knowledge is missing its last e, not a cropping error.]

So I went to LTWK – and in Spiritual Development reread about the differences between communities of law and communities of Knowledge. They are different. I want the Community of Knowledge. At work – in the world – we deal in communities of law. It is a matter of scale.

So my burn out work dilemma is that I'm trying to get the community of knowledge in a community of law



 9:30 p.m. Two week review. S2K. How am I doing as a student? Very hard to do hourly – the meditations have been short this past week, though in Texas at David's not – no problem.

I've had some tough days relating this to the world and keeping my discipline. Energy with --- has been up and down.

>Regions – a new one planet geography of community e–regions

Why am I even concerned with regions?

Public focuses on taxes – not what is done with them.

The S2K goal – a stronger minds in service he spirit/KNOWLEDGE

11 p.m. As a student – average – C or C-/ too distracted – bringing in too much

The Steps page contains a self-evaluation from 2009:





It is easy to judge one’s self as a: “slow student,” however the slowness, looking again five years later – 2014, is just a consequence of the depth of the material. Each time one returns to a Step or text, there is always more in there than you had seen in prior readings. It is, I think, because as a student, one has lived in the world with the greater community perspective, contemplating the new perspective, expanding one’s own thought and receptivity to outside perspectives, and thus new insight appears. It is the thinking mind as a compost heap of ideas, generating richer soil. Like a tree, each season a new ring is added to the core, roots go deeper, branches reach higher, and stronger winds can be survived.

As a student, I have certainly grown, yet remain from the greater community perspective, a “beginning student.” “In the beginning” is a vast territory.


For example, in the review today, done outdoors in the woods, reading again Step 202  – “I behold the Greater Community today,” this grabbed me: “You do not live in a human universe. You do not live in a human world. You do not live a purely human life.”

Spending time with that, I recognized that I’d been the only person on the trail most of the four hours I’d been there. This part of the world, Shenandoah National Park, was trees, rocks, plants, birds and mammals, to it was easy to again see that humanity in the world’s environment is as an optional species. Nature would not miss us. The world is not human, though humans now are the dominant species. Perspectives change as a consequence of this practice. Let us continue deliberately.

NNC




P.S. At Step 211, we are into Part Two of Steps, so if you’ve found this and find some appeal in this or other Steps, you should really go to the beginning blog post. From here you learn about Steps to Knowledge and can begin it on the day that makes sense and then progress as needed. You can use the posts on this blog as a companion if it helps. They will remain in order in the archives - one per Step.

Often it takes 18 months to get through the Steps once. For this blog, the pace is one-a-day, but it really makes no difference how fast you do it, only that you begin, persist and repeat. Posts here provide a trail that may let you have a virtual companion when and if you want one. One may have to study alone, as I did in the beginning. There are other Steps students blogging their experience and you might find a person more like you as a companion, or use a number of such Steps journeys. There are options as well through the Free School of the New Message