Greetings All –
Become objective about your life. Review Step 196 (MP3) [Open
in Drive or copy to your Drive – Download folder or play from Drive – Step PDF
also.]
TODAY
REVIEW THE PAST TWO WEEKS OF PREPARATION. Read each day’s instructions and then
review your experience of practice for that day. Begin with the first day in
the two-week period, and follow each day step by step. You will now begin to
review your preparation in two-week intervals. This is given you to do now
because your perception and comprehension are beginning to bud and to grow.
REMEMBER
EACH DAY. Try to recall your practice and experience. The lessons themselves
will recall this experience to you if you have forgotten. Try to see the
progression of learning so that you may understand how to learn. Try to see
that which confirms Knowledge and that which denies Knowledge within yourself
so that you may learn to work with these tendencies.
BECOMING
A TRUE STUDENT OF KNOWLEDGE will require greater self-discipline, greater
consistency of application and greater acceptance of worth than anything you
have undertaken thus far. Following prepares you to become a leader, for all
great leaders are great followers. If the source of your leadership represents
goodness and truth, then you surely must learn to follow it. And to follow it,
you must learn how to learn of it, how to receive it and how to give it.
LET
YOUR LONG REVIEW TIME TODAY, which may exceed two hours of involvement, be a
review of the past two weeks, keeping all of these things in mind. Become
objective about your life. There is no condemnation that is necessary here, for
you are learning to learn, you are learning to follow and you are learning to
employ Knowledge, as Knowledge will certainly employ you. Here Knowledge and
you come together in true matrimony and in true harmony. Then Knowledge is more
powerful, and you are more powerful. There is no inequality here, and all
things find their natural course of expression.
USE
THIS REVIEW TO FURTHER and deepen your comprehension of your preparation,
keeping in mind that understanding always comes in hindsight. This is a great
truth in The Way of Knowledge.
PRACTICE
196: One long practice period.
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.
