Greetings All –
LEARN TO RECEIVE AND YOU WILL LEARN TO BE HAPPY.
Learn to give and your happiness will be confirmed. In the simplest of words,
this is what you are undertaking. If you do not make this complicated with your
own ideas and expectations, you will be able to see the ever present truth of
this, and you will learn exactly what it means and what it will require.
Remember that complexity is a denial of the simplicity of truth. The truth will
carry forth its activity each day, step by step, as you are carrying forth your
preparation each day, step by step. As you learn to become a student of
Knowledge, you learn to live the truth. The simplicity of this is ever present
to you, for truth is simple and evident to all who look for truth and to all
who look without the weight of condemnation or judgment.
REMEMBER YOUR PRACTICE UPON THE HOUR and in your
deeper meditations, once again reinforce your capacity and desire for
stillness. For if you experience a little more stillness each day, it will grow
and grow and will fill your life and emanate from your life like a great light,
for you are here to be a light unto the world.
PRACTICE 341: Two 30-minute practice periods. Hourly
practice.
This Step tells us again: “… the greatness you will experience will
express itself in simple and mundane things”and “Your practice is your gift to
the world. From your practice all gifts that you will give in the future will
be able to be given with confidence, with love and with certainty.”
So Practice is “the thing.” How long will it take?
We cannot know. Yesterday, a deep and complex response to the Step; today simpler, yet complimentary.
From the Journal:
7:15
a.m. June 21, 2000 the summer solstice – most daylight of the year.
6:20
a.m. June 22, 2000 Thursday. Good MIF meeting yesterday – RP [Regional Partnership] today – it is very frustrating that Bev doesn't
acknowledge my role in getting the successes they represent.
But…that
isn't the high point of the day. I was going to the woods to meditate late 8:30
p.m. I would go to the store after. Driving south on Royal Ave. The message was
"Home." I could meditate on the back porch. I finally got it, went to
the store first. About 15 minutes later when I came out – to the north – I saw
dark clouds of a storm moving in. By the time I'd gotten home – the winds were
swirling – and it was beginning to sprinkle – the woods wouldn't have been
good… Home…was the place to be. I'm glad I listened; I'm thankful I could.
Life – seems there is some understanding one
minute, then that’s gone. We persist. Let us continue.
NNC
P.S. At Step 341, we are 23 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. January
1 is a good day to do so. Daily blog entries and Tweets begin again with Step 1
on January 1, 2015. I will be blogging year two, and referencing this
collection of year 1 – day by day. Regardless, any day you choose to begin, you
can use the posts on this blog as a companion if it helps.
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.
