Step Sixty-Nine


Step 69. Today I Will Practice Stillness.
In your two 30-minute practice periods today, practice stillness. Allow your meditation to be deep. Give yourself to it. Do not enter meditation with demands and requests. Enter meditation to give yourself to it. It is the temple of the True Spirit within you to which you bring yourself. In your practice periods, then, be present and be still. Allow yourself to bathe in the luxury of emptiness. For the presence of God is first experienced as emptiness because it lacks movement, and then within this emptiness, you begin to feel the presence that permeates all things and gives all meaning in life.

Practice stillness today so that you may know.

Practice 69:
 
Two 30-minute practice periods.

Here you will find the entire book free for download http://stepstoknowledge.com/


Here you will find pointers for getting started if this is your first encounter with this practice: Taking the Steps to Knowledge.

February 3, 2013 Round One: This transcends all words, but I do not trust what I feel.

Mary responded with, “Til now all your posts did emphasize this trust.”

Yes, I am confused myself, since of late I have been experiencing doubts about what is "real" and what is just a figment of my imagination. I have no trouble entering the stillness of the temple of the True Spirit when I meditate and while practicing this Step I immediately see what I can only describe as Light Beings (one in particular) rushing to my side and others gathering around me. But this is what I want to see and experience, so I doubt the "reality" of it. Am I not just projecting my own wishes, or is this the deeper mind, the mind that "sees and knows," as described in one of the texts I read called The Great Love

As revealed to
Marshall Vian Summers
on November 23, 2007
in Boulder, Colorado
"But you were born with a deeper mind, the mind of Knowledge. This mind does not think like your intellect thinks. It sees and it knows. It is not what people think of when they talk about the subconscious mind. That is more associated with your worldly mind, or intellect. This deeper mind is not subject to conditioning in the world. It is not patterned or conditioned by the world. It is not threatened or intimidated by the world. This deeper mind is called Knowledge in the New Message because it is related to the experience of direct knowing, the experience of affinity, the experience of true recognition and the experience of true relationship."


September 19, 2014 Round Two: I did not trust what I felt the first time I did this Step, but oh what a difference a day makes. Metaphorically speaking that is. It has been more than a day, but it is of no consequence how time is measured. What I mean is that having practiced stillness for quite a while now, I have come to trust very well what I experience when I am in that place, the temple of the True Spirit.

First practice period – it feels good to enter deep into stillness without demands or requests, without questions to be answered. There is a quiet penetrating darkness, a vast emptiness that is ever so welcoming. I allowed myself to bathe in the luxury of this emptiness (how poetically this Step puts it) and feel its nurturing power. When I feel my mind drifting to something else, or when extraneous thoughts creep in, I push them away and gently bring myself back to stillness.

Second practice period – it is becoming easier to enter a place of vast emptiness and just float there. There is a presence in this emptiness. I will not attempt to put it into words since it is beyond description. I just know that I trust what I feel in stillness now. I know I am in the presence of my Teachers and that they love me and wish me well. 
August 31, 2018 Round Three: I need this stillness practice today because my brain is frazzled and I am being taken sideways by Sasha’s nerdiness and digs about returning to Moscow. I am not returning to Moscow and if Sasha does, he will only ruin things for everyone here. I wish he could see that and stop being so boorish. I did a 20-min stillness practice from 5.54 - 6.14. I came out of stillness after exactly 20 minutes. I was in a large cavern or hall or huge empty space with magnificent acoustics. I felt immense expansion of the mind and remained there without thoughts for as long as I could. I felt refreshed and in a better frame of mind afterwards. I have to go to the tax office today to get my tax number and then back to the office to fix my pension. I hope all goes smoothly since I am definitely feeling out of whack today. Plus we have been having some thunderstorms and it has been raining.
Even though I had to wait about 40 minutes for the bus and was beginning to think there was a conspiracy going on and there was not a way to get to the tax inspection office today, I did make it and found it was all free sailing. No lines, no bother, I was handed a piece of paper with my INN (tax number) no questions asked and sailed on my way. I had no problems with the pension people either at my next stop. I have now successfully raised my pension rate on the basis that I have officially been living in Moscow for 10 years. Of course, I’ve been living here much longer, but it doesn’t count if you don’t have a stamp proving it. As of November 2007 I did, it just took me a little longer to actually go and tell them about it.
I tried to do the second 30 minute practice a couple of times, but kept drifting off. I also did Hilary’s guided meditation to the Heart Center where I am embraced with Divine Love. I had a lovely vision of the radiant space of Divine Love after spiralled through the heart’s four chambers to find the portal leading to it. I feel that I spent enough time in stillness today to merit a good practice. I spent time in the temple of the True Spirit within me and allowed myself to bathe in the luxury of its emptiness. There is a benevolent Presence there.

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