Greetings All –
Review …a beginning student makes few assumptions and
wishes to learn everything. Step 63~ (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!
Plan B - If the MP3 doesn’t work, here’s the link to
the folder: New Message - Student Spoken Steps Recordings -
Steps to Knowledge - Working file
If this is your first time seeing one of the “Steps to Knowledge”,
then welcome. There are 365 Steps, daily spiritual practices if one seeks to
complete them in a year, but that is not necessary. They can be used by people
of any religious tradition or no religious tradition. They will help one to
become mindful in the world.
The Step today is from the book: Steps to Knowledge: The Book of Inner Knowing. The practices were
brought to the world through Marshall Vian Summers, The Messenger for The New
Message From God. Important background for the Steps is in: “Greater Community Spirituality” and the “Wisdom Books - I and II”.
Hard copies are available from the New Knowledge Library Store. The
Society for the New Message from God also has a Free Book Project. If you need
the books now, PDF files can be found here: http://goo.gl/RJuuGP
Keeping a journal is recommended. If you have a Steps book,
write your reactions and comments, highlight or underline points that strike
you, and date the note. In this way, your Steps book can be a partial journal.
Using the PDF, you can print out pages as you need them, or use
the software to maintain a digital copy where you can enter notes and highlight
text that stands out.
Other modern methods of keeping a journal include having a
document on your PC or phone to keep notes. You could send yourself an email or
use the voice recorder function. It is important to capture insights and
reactions because it is by this means that you can understand change. Sometimes
it may just be a word or short phrase, an image or a scene.
To end this post I again offer the blessing: "May the
presence of the Teachers be with you." In the invocative language of
Knowledge this blessing is: "Nasi Novare Coram" (pronounced NAH-see
no-VAHR-ay co-RAHM)
The short form of Nasi Novare Coram used by students is NNC.
The short form of Nasi Novare Coram used by students is NNC.
NNC
P.S. 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 linked below 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.
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 anyone 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.
