Greetings All –
DO NOT TRY TO GET EVEN WITH GOD by being a miserable
person, for God only knows you as part of Creation. Do not try to get even with
God by making the world destitute, for God created a world of beauty and
opportunity. Do not try to get even with God by refusing to love or accept
yourself, for God still knows you as you are. Do not try to get even with God
today by ruining your relationships for your own selfish purposes, for God
understands your relationships as they truly exist and understands their
greater promise as well. You cannot get even with God. You can only harm yourself.
THEREFORE, ACCEPT THAT YOU HAVE LOST THE BATTLE against
God. In your defeat is your greatest victory, for God has never lost you,
though you have lost God temporarily in your imagination. Your love for God is
so profound that you are as yet afraid of it, for it represents the greatest
power within you that you can possibly possess. You must learn of this through
direct experience. Therefore, do not try to get even with God today by
reinforcing an idea about yourself based solely upon error and assumption, for
Knowledge is with you. You are the happy victor in your own defeat.
IN YOUR TWO PRACTICE PERIODS TODAY, repeat this
idea and then attempt to think about it. Our practices today will be engaging the mind in
exploration and analysis. This is a useful application of your mind. Think
about this message and all of your ideas surrounding it, and you will begin to
understand your own current belief system. You will be able to understand this objectively.
Then, you will be able to work with it, for the mind is fixed in a certain
structure until it is utilized for other purposes. Do not accept this structure
as your reality, for the outward manifestation of your mind is a structure that
you have imposed upon it. Yet, its real inward harmony and nature seek only to
be expressed. To enable this to happen you must have an adequate structure in
the mind to enable the mind to express itself in the physical world without
restraint or distortion. It is towards this, then, that we will work today.
PRACTICE 127: Two 30-minute practice periods
To get even with God – that is what many want to
do. On occasion, we might have had that goal ourselves.
Yesterday: Step 126 -
Review
From the Journal:
5:51
A.M. Saturday, November 20, 1999
Awake
early. Greater Community – it makes all the sense in the world to me from the
spiritual perspective. The Spirit is the parent and manifestation is the child,
and it is one. Creative spirits must share manifestation experience in order
for sustainability. Sharing is a no brainer. Creating a framework to understand
and utilize greater community is my mission.
Thoughts/Rules
for regions
…
6:35
p.m. Out of the woods. After finishing my review at Little Bear I noticed the
light of the nearly full moon. It was not cold and I was in no hurry. I had corn
and tobacco – it was time to do the offering to spirits of the land, the trees
and sky. I started it at Little Bear doing the seven directions in this order North,
east ( moon), south, west, above, below, here. (8 points in the woods + home
for 9 points.)
10:28
p.m. in bed early … I shall get my life to be simler – day by day.
Quite a bit of writing this day, but not all is shown
here. You will note that I had been influenced by Native American traditions as
I sought to honor the land. My family heritage is German and Scotch-Irish.
These were tribal societies long ago, but the historic ceremonies for honoring
the land were lost in the civilizing of Europe. So, when the land needed to be
honored, I used ideas from the Native American traditions I’d seen. Some do not
like a white man doing this, but when the land calls to be honored, what can
one do when their own tribal traditions have been long lost, but seek inspiration
from surviving tribes? That’s what I did privately – and told no one, only
recording it in this journal.
The Steps book has both green ink (1st
time) and blue ink (2nd time). As I learned through Steps, other
teachings and perspectives I had studied and absorbed receded as practices, but
their spiritual value for those earlier times remains in a place of honor along
the path. Something close to this may be true for you.
NNC
