Greetings All –
I will learn of freedom this day. Step 264 (MP3) [Open
in Drive or copy to your Drive – Download folder or play from Drive – Step PDF
also.]
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| I will learn of freedom this day. Step 264 |
TODAY
YOU WILL HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN more about freedom. The step you take
today will be very substantial in giving you a new viewpoint about freedom,
about bondage, about problem solving and about the nature of true advancement.
TODAY
THINK ABOUT YOUR LESSON ON THE HOUR and think about what freedom is. In your
longer practice periods, devote your mind to thinking about freedom. This is a
very important focal point today. In your longer meditations in particular,
devote your mind entirely to reviewing your ideas about freedom. What do you
think constitutes freedom? What do you think prevents people from being free?
What produces a freedom that is lasting and secure? How can this be achieved?
What will support it in the future? After you spend approximately thirty
minutes thinking about all this in each practice, enter into stillness and
silence. Open yourself to allow Knowledge to speak to you. Abide with your
Teachers there. After you have exhausted your ideas, enter into stillness and
receptivity.
IT
IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU BE AWARE of your own ideas about freedom because
until these are recognized and adjusted, they will continue to cast their
influence upon you. They will continue to dominate your thinking and thus your
behavior. A greater freedom is now available to you, but you must learn how to
approach it. Today you shall learn more about freedom—what you think freedom is
and what freedom really is.
PRACTICE
264: Two 40-minute practice periods. Hourly practice.
Picture: A college campus is a place to study freedom. This the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) campus.
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.
