Greetings All –
Step 349 - I am happy
that I can finally serve the truth. (MP3) [Open in Drive or copy to your Drive – Download
folder or play from Drive – Step PDF also.]
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| I am happy that I can finally serve the truth. Step 349 |
IT IS YOUR GREATEST JOY, it is your greatest
happiness and it is your greatest contentment to finally serve the truth. Your
past has been frustrated and dismal because you have attempted to serve things
without foundation and meaning. You have attempted to identify with things
without purpose and direction. This has rendered to you the feeling that you have
no purpose, meaning or direction. Feel happy now that you can represent the
truth and serve the truth, for the truth gives you all that is true. It gives
you purpose, meaning and direction which are what you have sought in all of
your engagements, relationships, activities and endeavors. This is what you have
sought in all of your fantasies, in all of your concerns and in all of your
hopes.
EVERYTHING YOU HAVE TRULY WANTED is being given to
you now. Learn now to receive what you have truly wanted, and you will realize what
is true. You will also realize what you have always truly wanted. This enables
the truth to become simple and evident. This enables your own individual nature
to become simple and evident, for in simplicity all things are known. In complexity
all things are concealed. Only what is mechanical in the world can be complex,
yet its essence is simple and can be directly experienced. Only in controlling
what is mechanical in life, which you must do to a certain extent, are there complexities,
but even these complexities are simple to determine step by step. Thus, your
approach to life must be simple, whether you are dealing with simplicity or
complexity. The complexity that we speak of, which is a form of denial,
represents the complexity of your own thinking and the difficulty in your own
approach.
BE HAPPY, THEN, THAT YOU CAN SERVE THAT WHICH IS
TRUE, for this will simplify all things and will enable you to deal with
mechanical complexity in a direct and effective manner. Be happy, then, that
your life has purpose, meaning and direction, for you serve that which has purpose,
meaning and direction. Remember this upon the hour, and in your two deeper
practice periods re-enter stillness with great receptivity and devotion.
Remember that you give yourself here, that practice is giving, that you are
learning to give and that you are learning to serve. You give what is true and
you serve what is true, and as a result you experience what is true and you
receive what is true. Therefore, this is a day of happiness because you serve
what is true.
PRACTICE 349: Two 30-minute practice periods. Hourly
practice.
Picture:
This door knocker, “As for me and my
house, we will serve the Lord”, Joshua 24:15 is on my neighbor’s front
door. I don’t recall how long it was there or when I first noticed it. My
initial thought about it was that “my house” meant simply the physical
building. Since perhaps 2010, the last five years, as a consequence of Steps study,
it came to me that “my house” is my Spiritual Family. I’m not the head of this
family, but a member.
This is another powerful Step. That will be the
norm as we close in on a first completion of the “Steps to Knowledge.”
The last part of the first paragraph is underlined:
“…your being knows while your mind thinks and your
body acts. Thus it is that the power of Knowledge is the power of being,
of which you are a part.”
In response, at the top of the page I wrote: “Being w/o question ACIM” and “I am that I am”
in response to “being
knows.”
This Step gave a confirmation of earlier studies. The
“I am that I am” teaching came from “Diagrams
for Living: The Bible Unveiled” by Emmet Fox.
Here are excerpts from - Chapter 19
The Power in Your Name
“The key to the name of the Lord is found in what
we call Jehovah, the personalized God of the Old Testament. Here we begin to
get a sense of God expressing Himself as Man. Pure, unconditioned Being - I
AM THAT I AM - has now become differentiated as men and women. …”
“Man is one with God, the self-livingness of God,
and thus he has the power to attach the I AM to all the attributes of God:
freedom, joy, health, success, abundance. Always I AM connects you with Divine
Power because you are the I AM of the I AM THAT I AM. I AM is the Word
of Power. It is the presence of God in you. It insures that you can go direct
to God, that you do not need any intermediary.”
This is an earlier expression of the precepts in
The New Message from God. The style of the language may bother some, but the
wisdom in these writings fed me on my journey.
I bought the book at public library book sale for
ten cents in the mid-1980s. It remains the best dime I’ve ever spent. His
Wikipedia entry begins: “Emmet
Fox (July 30, 1886 – August 13, 1951) was a New Thought spiritual leader of
the early 20th century, famous for his large Divine Science church services
held in New York City during the Great Depression.”
Get the book PDF: Diagrams for Living. It is a good start for someone to learn of the
metaphysical nature of Christianity and religion.
“Being without question” is a phrase from “A Course in Miracles” that has been with me since I began that study in
1989. The phrase only appears once – in Chapter 6: The Lessons of Love - “The Voice
for God speaks only for belief beyond question, which is the preparation for being without question.”
“Being without question” in this passage is a goal,
a future state of understanding. I am that I am is an early expression of this
understanding.
I have been there, experiencing/knowing "being
without question." Body and mind go in and out of doubt and confusion, but
deeper is being, which calms doubt and confusion, reminding body and mind of
emergent meaning, purpose and direction.
Journal entries demonstrate the expanded thinking
being provided in Steps.
June
29, 2000 Thursday – How did my life unfold yesterday? Not much different than
any day in the past 10, 20, nearly 30 years @ LFPDC – solving, for the present,
some problem, then moving on. At the end of the day, more behind than at the
start. Knowledge gained does not lead to wealth for free time to incubate and
write to promote the lessons learned.
Guided
life – guided meditation. Experiences are guided to me. I could do the next ten
years here – implementing the Valley Vision – to the dismay of some, but
benefit of many. The Auto – Suburban Century.
Myers-Briggs
– all characteristics of a personality type can't be balanced. I can't have
every skill to be & do everything – and w/o time for politics, being too
far ahead of the customer. I need some shelter.
Being
guided – in partnership with spirit in this life – I need faith. If there's
error, misinterpretation, who suffers? Who is at fault – the guy in the earth
suit! Oops – dead again, injured again, under a rock again, in a bad
relationship again; Send Help – but who sees and understands the need?
Regional
geography as the basis of Community –
7:53
a.m. Step 348 – Today I will witness the world unfolded.
The perfect lesson for my soul, or rather for my
mind and body, since soul already knows.
Yesterday,
looking for unfolding, I wondered if it wasn't really an unraveling – ?
Unfolding moves forward, unraveling, goes away from order. That's how it often
feels – out of control.
Step
348 – endorses/supports the Gaia/Logos do you – mother/father Earth
→ Shenandoah
River Respect
Shenandoah
Valley Respect
– River Respect
– Valley Respect
– Heritage Respect
– Nature Respect
I am
one with the SV unfoldment. The body guides the mind.
Minds
can be filled with crap.
→ Spirit speaks
in few words since the goal/need is focus.
10:31
a.m. – Use the PDC vehicle as one can. It is about the coordination of body, mind,
Knowledge – All that is manifest has intelligence – moving with Knowledge is
wisdom.
8:48
p.m. Have spent the last 40 minutes in Practice #2 looking at the world unfold
– Driving around town looking for a spot to watch the world from. Not the Park
– unfolding there is nature – I needed to watch people… So Burger King was the
place – to eat dinner – and watch unfolding… Messages sent into the world… Who
receives them? What is – represents great unfolding – the biology is less
visible in the built and motorized environment – but it's clearly there. And
how do I unfold? S2K has been/is a great blessing. There being destiny points –
the unfolding is directed with options along the way. Apparently not everyone
gets it. Had I not done Steps – I might be in a less good place, given the work
environment.
Learned
by thrashing. With whom do we have relationships? I don't know.
As a consequence of this study, I’m having great
insights which connect many points in the teachings I’ve studied in the
previous 53 years of life. This is beginning-beginning. Great leaps, yet there
is so far to go – so much to Know. Let us continue.
NNC
Journal second time x2
Step 348. 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
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.
