Greetings All –
Today I will not try to get even with God. Step 127 (MP3) [Open in Drive or copy to your Drive –
Download folder or play from Drive – Step PDF also.]
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| Today I will not try to get even with God. Step 127 |
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
Picture: To get even with
God – that is what many want to do. On occasion, we might have had that goal
ourselves. Today’s picture is not of a statute representing God, but the
traffic cone on the head of this statue is the sort of disrespectful action
young people do to be funny. History has not been fair – they want to get even
with life and may be carrying anger. Nobody on the street is taking notice.
This is from Glasgow, Scotland, September 11, 2004.
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.
