Step 63 – Review ~ This week your practice has been expanded. It has been taken into the world… (MP3) Entry for Step 62 - Today I will learn to listen to life.

Greetings All –

Step 63 – Review ~ (MP3)  [Open in Drive or copy to your Drive – Download folder or play from Drive – Step PDF also.]

AS BEFORE, IN YOUR REVIEW review the past week of practice and learn the extent of your involvement and how it can be increased and enhanced. This week your practice has been expanded. It has been taken into the world with you to be applied in all manner of situations, regardless of your emotional states, regardless of the emotional states of those who influence you and regardless of where you are and what you are doing. In this way, everything becomes part of your practice. The world, then, instead of being a fearful place that oppresses you, becomes a useful place to cultivate Knowledge.

REALIZE THE STRENGTH THAT YOU ARE GIVEN when you are able to practice regardless of your emotional states, for you are greater than your emotions, and you need not repress them to realize this. To become objective with your own internal states, you must operate from a position where you can observe them and where you are not dominated by them. This will allow you to become present to yourself and will give you true compassion and understanding. Then you will not be a tyrant with yourself, and tyranny in your life will come to an end.

IN YOUR ONE LONG PRACTICE PERIOD, evaluate this prior week as carefully as possible without condemnation. Remember that you are learning how to practice. Remember that you are learning to develop your skills. Remember that you are a student. Be a beginning student, for a beginning student makes few assumptions and wishes to learn everything.

PRACTICE 63: One long practice period.

Review again. The objective is set out in the Step: "The world, then, instead of being a fearful place that oppresses you, becomes a useful place to cultivate Knowledge." Bonus!

Yesterday: Step 62 - Today I will learn to listen to life.

From the journal:

Friday, Sept 17, 1999 -

...

→ Steps to organization - What is the goal, the balance, the vision?

S2K - I'm not here for the reason I think I'm here?

Note: Journal entries need not be profound, or even close.

Here we are being instructed to listen. The beginning paragraph is poetic, a song/psalm that might be put to music.

Today I will learn to listen to life -  (Step/Song/Psalm 62)

Verse:

1. If you are present to the world,

you will be able to hear the world. (repeat)

Refrain:

Today practice listening,

Today practice listening. (repeat)

2. If you are present to life,

you will be able to hear life. (repeat)

Refrain.

3. If you are present to God,

you will be able to hear God. (repeat)

Refrain.

4. If you are present to yourself,

you will be able to hear yourself. (repeat)

Refrain.

That the Psalms were songs is something I learned reading The Urantia Book. It said Jesus and the Disciples would sing psalms as they walked from town to town. Other than the 23^rd Psalm, I don’t recall hearing any other sung in my life. They were always read.

Perhaps someone can put this to music for The Music Department. Let us continue.

NNC

Journal 2^nd Time Step 62.  This is for those who have completed Steps once. Doing Steps with only the texts, messages and your life experience, including what you may have studied and practiced is your journey. I’m showing my first year Step comments after the Step, so as not to influence you in advance. It is a wilderness trek to be left to your own wits, but then you can also listen more closely for guides, angels and teachers, always first saying: “I surround and protect myself with the Love and the Grace of God.” Thankfully, I was taught this practice in 1989.

P.S. 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.