Step Two Hundred and Twenty-Six


Step 226. Knowledge Is With Me. I Will Not Be Afraid.
Knowledge is with you and when you are with Knowledge, you will not be afraid. In time, fear will become more and more external to your true experience as you learn to abide with Knowledge. The value of today’s idea must be recognized in light of the fact that your mind is engaged with fear habitually to such a great extent that it seems to make the reclamation of Knowledge and the application of Knowledge very difficult for you. This appears difficult only because your mind has been so habitually engaged with fear in the past. Habits can be broken. New habits of thinking and behavior can be instilled and strengthened. It is merely the result of applying your mind. It is the result of practice.

Today practice abiding with Knowledge, which will undo all the habits that have cast themselves against you and the world. Being in life is practice and is always a form of service. Today practice the truth and serve the truth, and in this all errors are weakened. Their foundation is removed, and in its place you will begin to learn a new way of being in the world, a new way of engaging yourself with the world, and you will have a greater structure for applying your mental and physical faculties.

Upon the hour abide with Knowledge. Dispel fear and remind yourself that Knowledge is with you. Remind yourself that your Teachers are with you. Remind yourself that students everywhere who are involved in the reclamation of Knowledge are with you. In this, the world will become small and you will become great. In your deeper practices, allow yourself the freedom of experiencing Knowledge. Enter the great depth and stillness of the mind, as it immerses itself into the presence of love.

Practice 226: Two 30-minute practice periods. Hourly practice.
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.
December 12, 2013 Round One: “A new way of being in the world, a new way of engaging myself with the world” – this is what I am experiencing today.

I am also letting go of the fear that prevents me from fully embracing and reclaiming Knowledge. I am not afraid of what I know, of what Knowledge is telling me, I am overcoming my doubts about its truth. I wish to serve the truth, and I take immense joy in knowing that students everywhere who are involved in the reclamation of Knowledge are with me. They, along with my growing awareness of the presence of my Teachers, bring me the greatest confidence this day and reinforce for me the Power and Presence of Knowledge.

March 18, 2015 Round Two: I still may not have fully understood this fear thing, since I continue to want to say that I have no particular fears that interfere with living. I do not fear the future for one. But perhaps it is more complicated than that and I have unconscious fears that I don’t know about.

I recalled a passage from a revelation called The Separation in the context of this Step:


"Knowledge within you is without fear. It is not corrupted by the world. It represents the eternal part of you that is going to live beyond this world. But it is concerned that you may fulfill your destiny here, and to that end it works ceaselessly on your behalf, trying to orient you through many different means to follow a true direction, to stick with that direction and to not lose heart or be pulled off track by beauty, wealth and charm or by despair and anguish.



"While God allowed the universe to be created, the physical universe you live in, God also gave the antidote to suffering and to separation at the very beginning because you cannot really be separate from your Creator and from Creation. Even being obsessed in the physical reality, you still cannot escape your origin and your greater destiny.

"It is then all a matter of time, and time here can be equated with suffering, the suffering you experience to various degrees every day of your life. You do not even know how much you are suffering because you do not know what it is like to be free of it, except perhaps for brief moments here and there. Even your state you call “normal” is a state of suffering—a state of apprehension, concern and anxiety; a state overshadowed by the difficulties of life and the great change that is happening in the world at this time.

"It is hard for people to be honest about this. They are so adapted to their own misery that they call things “good” that are not good. They accept things that are unacceptable. They adapt to situations that are harmful or unfulfilling for them. Even if they live in a free nation and can alter their circumstances, they will cling to things that have no promise or benefit for them. For security, for approval, they will stay in a situation that can never really benefit them."
February 19, 2019 Round Three: I feel I am free of what it talks about in the last two paragraphs above. I am not suffering and I do not call things “good” that are not good. I am not calling the situation with the landlord being in our space acceptable when it is unacceptable, hence my discomfort. I am trying to live with it as best I can until I can change it and I am working on changing it. But that is different from cowing to it and accepting it as my fate. 
This Step tells me that my normal mode is fear-based, my mind is engaged with fear habitually, but I am letting go of fear and learning a new way of being in the world, a new way of engaging myself with the world. I really do not think that fear plays a fundamental part in my life anymore. I see how fear can overtake me, I see how fear overtakes others and the world and I do not go there. I see the truth beyond fear. I think I can say that fear is external to my true experience today. There is a new quality to my life. I have spoken of this before and felt it now and then. But now I can say it is becoming a permanent part of my being and life, I am feeling this inner delight and rightness about my life more and more. And seeing an even more glorious future.

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