Greetings All –
YOUR LIFE IS FULL OF YOUR OWN NECESSITIES AND
IDEAS, full of your own requirements and ambitions, full of your own fears and
full of your own complications. Thus, your vehicle for giving is burdened and
cluttered, and your energy is largely misappropriated. That is why it is God’s
first step to unburden you. Until this happens you will simply attempt to
resolve your situation without knowing what to do, without understanding your predicament
and without accepting the assistance that you will surely need in time. Therefore,
accept your unlearning, for it will unburden you and give you reassurance that
a greater life is possible and inevitable for you who have come here to give.
UPON THE HOUR REPEAT THIS STATEMENT and consider
it. View its reality in terms of your perception of the world. In your two longer
practice periods, once again practice mental stillness in silence, where
nothing is attempted and where nothing is avoided. You are only engaging your
mind to be still so that it may learn to
respond upon its own to that which calls to it. With
each step you make in your unlearning, Knowledge will fill in that which had replaced
it. This is instantaneous, for you are only moving yourself into a position to
receive so that your giving may be generous, genuine and fulfilling to you.
PRACTICE 102: Two
30-minute practice periods. Hourly practice.
This may be a challenge for any educated person,
that is, to consider that something nominally known/learned, has to be
unlearned. That some of what one may have been taught needs to be removed,
thrown out, put in the trash, flushed down the toilet – unlearned, may be shocking
and thus hard to recognize. I was 53 at the time of this Step and had learned
much and had some success, but still – something about my life wasn’t working.
What might that have to do with my challenges and feelings, many of which you
have witnessed in the entries and I’m re-living as a read these ancient texts –
all of 14 years, but still, a long time ago, and yet, yesterday. My mind might
have been tied up in knots, but since I owned the knots, they weren’t visible.
Unlearning is untying mental knots which have held things together, but not in
a satisfying way. Stick with the Steps. This stairway to heaven actually
enables movement in that direction. When one might arrive, well that is a
question for the beyond.
From the Journal:
8:42
A.M. Wednesday, October 27, 1999
“There
is much that I must unlearn.” – S2K – That was part of ACIM. I remain open to
my strange life, or is it my life within the strange?
10:51
p.m. – Where am I? Sarah is out of the Detention Center. I spoke to her at noon. …
Not much written this day. In the book, some green
ink.
For me, I've interpreted the work I'd done for 25 years at this point with my work in the world. Is that the case? It will be an exploration for me, relative to my life, and for any other Steps student. Whether or not one does Steps, this is an existential question that perhaps a majority of people at one time or another in their lives ask about their own lives. To have the question arise within oneself is perhaps the stirring of Knowledge in the soul.
NNC
