Step Two Hundred and Sixty-Six

Step 266. Review

Today as before review the past two weeks of preparation. Take this opportunity in your long practice period today to review all that has transpired in these past two weeks concerning the directions given in this preparation, your experiences of the practices and the overall results in your life. Carry on this Review with as much objectivity as you can, especially regarding the results in your life, many of which you still cannot assess objectively.

Many things will change as you progress in your studies. Some things will fall away from you; other things will begin to build. Worldly problems will press upon you that require your engagement and application. Other things that you thought were problems will become increasingly remote and unnecessary for you to concern yourself with. Thus, your outer life adjusts itself so that you can recognize where you are to apply yourself now. Then, your inner life and outer life can reflect one another. This is very important. You are beginning to learn how to learn, and you are seeing the world change as a result. The quality of your experience will be transformed in time so that all things, both common and extraordinary, will be viewed from a different viewpoint than before. You can then learn to take advantage of all opportunities and thus learn to appreciate life, even in its disappointments.

Practice this in the review today. Be very thorough in your investigation. Begin with the first lesson in the two-week period and follow it day by day. Recognize what happened in your life each day. Try to remember. Try to concentrate here. In this way, you will feel the movement of your own life. It is in recognizing this movement over a period of time and seeing how the stages of your life progress that you will realize that you are firmly on the road to Knowledge. You will then see that there will be less and less behind you to hold you back and that the future will open itself to accommodate you increasingly. This is the beneficence of life bowing before you who are becoming a student of Knowledge.

Practice 266: One long practice period.

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 24, 2014 Round One: As I did this review and contemplated what has transpired over the past two weeks, I see I have greater clarity, on the one hand, but also realize that I am confirming things I already knew and have been experiencing up until now in my life, only now I am seeing them from the perspective of Knowledge.

Before, I did not know it was Knowledge moving me and influencing my decisions and experience, now I can put a name to what has been happening and no longer doubt the things I have been led to do. I no longer think I am weird and inadequate, I realize I am heeding a deep calling within me, and beginning to recognize who I truly am, embracing my True Self.

I am feeling this particularly lately in my work – I am drawing boundaries, letting the people I work for know what I am willing to do and not willing to do in no uncertain terms, refusing to put myself in compromising positions, or feel obligated to do stuff that stresses me out. I am now in a position to pick and choose what suits me best and I am not hesitant to let my employers know.

"The quality of your experience will be transformed in time so that all things, both common and extraordinary, will be viewed from a different viewpoint than before."

This is what I am experiencing today.

May 2, 2015 Round Two: And so it comes to pass...

"Then, your inner life and outer life can reflect one another."

As I did this review, I realized that my outer life during this two-week period has indeed been a true reflection of my inner life. The peace, harmony, freedom, self-application, buoyancy, well-being and joy I strive for within are revealing themselves in my outer life. Knowledge is manifesting its potency inward and out.

“This is the beneficence of life bowing before you who are becoming a student of Knowledge.”

March 31, 2019 Round Three: These past two weeks of study began with an uplift when I reached Step 253. All Things I Truly Need Will be Provided for Me on the day I planned to call Pyotr about getting my year’s salary in advance. That was on March 18, a significant day two years ago in the story of acquiring our plot. I was not prepared, however, for hearing that Pyotr did not have that much money on him and would have to consult with Irina Shostakovich, who is not in Moscow at the moment. He will be seeing her in Paris this week. So I have been living the past two weeks in a limbo, up and down, although still confident things will work out. I have been up and down in general, just feeling a bit off balance and the weather has not helped. The thaw has begun, but it is not moving very fast, freezes at night, some new snow and blizzards, windy and not too friendly outside. This means that walks have not been too satisfactory. And I am out of work again. Nothing new yet from Shostakovich, they have not even written anything. So I am waiting on all fronts…