11/23/14

Step 327 - I will be at peace today. Entry for Step 326 - The Greater Community is something I can feel but cannot understand.



Greetings All –


YOU CAN BE AT PEACE TODAY, even while you consider greater things in the world and beyond the world.You can be at peace today even while you meet the challenge of becoming a student of Knowledge and the challenge of observing your world with objectivity. How can you be so active and have such challenge and still be at peace? The answer is that Knowledge is with you. As you abide with Knowledge, feel Knowledge and carry Knowledge out into the world, within yourself you will be still, though on the outside you may be actively engaged.There is no contradiction between peace and movement, between inner stillness and outer engagement.Though the world is a difficult and frustrating place to be, it is a natural recipient of Knowledge. Its difficulties and its frustrations need not affect your internal state, which is becoming ever more unified and harmonious.


REMIND YOURSELF UPON THE HOUR to be at peace while you are in the world. Release all fear and anxiety and fortify your adherence to Knowledge as you do so. In your two deeper practice periods when you take refuge from the world, rekindle the fire of Knowledge and take comfort in its warm presence. Realize that within this fire all things that are imaginary and harmful are consumed.The fire of Knowledge will not burn you, but it will warm your soul.You can enter this fire without fear of pain or harm. It will purify and cleanse you, for it is the fire of love.Today be at peace, for today is a day of peace, and peace is given you to receive this day.


PRACTICE 327: Two 30-minute practice periods. Hourly practice.


This was a confirming Step for me. That may not be the case for others, but then, I don’t really know what or how others think. Two notes on the Steps pages give my response:





So, I write: “Knowledge is unity! The community already exists.” My work in regional planning has led me to understand that community precedes cooperation. The challenge is to build/recognize community around issues. This may sound academic, pedantic, bureaucratic, but it is really experiential.

While Greater Community is the challenge to Humanity, it is also the solution. Humanity must itself become a Greater Community. It is the path of evolution we are told, as hard as that might be to accept.

From the Journal:

6:45 a.m. June 7, 2000 GC – The Long View – K – the reason gloom & doom do not triumph.

– with the Internet/media/communication any tragedy or success can become the center of the planet –

– we can have multiple centers – success everywhere – instead of tragedy everywhere/need strategy everywhere

Practice #1 – "The Greater Community is something I can feel but cannot understand". This explains a lot – we cannot see beyond local – but can sense greater community. That worked last night at Sue M--- graduation. It was interesting to see the community of Augusta County and how it had – 37 years ago – consolidated schools to create Buffalo Gap HS & how it renovated all its schools. The community there richer and more community cohesive than FR – Warren.

So – it is the "sense" of Greater Community which is the "Knowing".

Practice 1.5 – 7 p.m. A chaotic day – some progress at work – better than having gone to Richmond and how much further that would create problems. ME called about David – more stress there. She may be getting more realistic about the limitations.

Today's practice is easy for me. Sensing community is what has driven most of my life – though family dysfunction remains the greatest challenge. The next generation is living it.

Keeping patient as flesh is torn from your bones – now that is control/Knowledge – not going to chocolate, coffee, food.

Judging here or just an awareness of tools?

Sense of community saves more than are abandoned – the breath rescues. Some have good homes, sane parents, and life moves along – the plugger's.

– text "as you attempt to become one person instead of many people…" (RUOW fragments?)

"… all individuality seeks community, for in community it finds its true expression, it's true contribution and its true role."

This lesson I can truly sense – word easily confirms what can only be. Thus all becomes community to me – and the great strength of K – comforts.

Where do these waves of community? And oceanic tide that ebbs & flows, moving – yet still.

The community emphasis may or may not be easy to understand. It has been a primary attraction of the New Message to me. In the day’s journal I hit a few points that this message and teachin rubs other teachings I’ve encountered. The Right Use of Will (RUOW) says we/our souls fragmented and the challenge is to reconnect our fragments.

The dysfunctional family is a situation I experienced and had to understand. Like the Steps, an attitude of gratitude based on understanding of the limitations of parents and their life situations, an acceptance and gratitude is required in order to move forward; to be relatively healed, is required. Does the need to deal with this ever end? Perhaps not in life as we do it here, on earth.

Many big lessons ahead. Let us continue.

NNC



P.S. At Step 327, we are 38 Steps from the end – Step 365. This is not the place to begin this Practice. If you’ve some interest due to this or other Steps, you should go to the beginning blog post. From here you will learn about Steps to Knowledge and can begin it on the day that makes sense; 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 post 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