Step One Hundred and Twenty-Seven

Step 127. Today I Will Not Try To Get Even With God.

Do not try to get even with God by being a miserable person, for God only knows you as part of Creation. Do not try to get even with God by making the world destitute, for God created a world of beauty and opportunity. Do not try to get even with God by refusing to love or accept yourself, for God still knows you as you are. Do not try to get even with God today by ruining your relationships for your own selfish purposes, for God understands your relationships as they truly exist and understands their greater promise as well. You cannot get even with God. You can only harm yourself.

Therefore, accept that you have lost the battle against God. In your defeat is your greatest victory, for God has never lost you, though you have lost God temporarily in your imagination. Your love for God is so profound that you are as yet afraid of it, for it represents the greatest power within you that you can possibly possess. You must learn of this through direct experience. Therefore, do not try to get even with God today by reinforcing an idea about yourself based solely upon error and assumption, for Knowledge is with you. You are the happy victor in your own defeat.

In your two practice periods today, repeat this idea and then attempt to think about it. Our practices today will be engaging the mind in exploration and analysis. This is a useful application of your mind. Think about this message and all of your ideas surrounding it, and you will begin to understand your own current belief system. You will be able to understand this objectively. Then, you will be able to work with it, for the mind is fixed in a certain structure until it is utilized for other purposes. Do not accept this structure as your reality, for the outward manifestation of your mind is a structure that you have imposed upon it. Yet, its real inward harmony and nature seek only to be expressed. To enable this to happen you must have an adequate structure in the mind to enable the mind to express itself in the physical world without restraint or distortion. It is towards this, then, that we will work today.

Practice 127: 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.

April 28, 2013 Round One: "You cannot get even with God. You can only harm yourself."

I have always known that I am my own worst enemy and this Step reiterates it. And I take great comfort and encouragement in the fact that “God understands [my] relationships as they truly exist and understands their greater promise as well.” This is something to embrace and nurture.

It is interesting though that the word “God” is used so often in this Step. It is used previously in the Steps, but not in such a personal way or so abundantly. To me the very concept of “getting even” implies a personal target, you “get even” with “someone.” However, I have long discarded the image of God as a person or individual, so the very idea of “getting even with God,” not to mention fighting a battle against God, is alien to me and sort of contradictory. As I practice Steps, I am increasingly using the word “Knowledge” to stand for “God,” they are becoming synonyms... (this is still open-ended).

P.S. Today is Sunday May 7, 2017. My understanding of God has expanded. Knowledge is the deeper mind that God has placed within me, so God is greater than Knowledge, although an integral part. Knowledge is the part of God I carry within me, given to me by God, the Source of All There Is. Knowledge is a God-given tool to guide me through life. God has given me all I could ever ask for, so it makes no sense to "get even with God," for God has given me everything I could ever want.

November 27, 2014 Round Two: My relationship with God has changed so much since I did this step the first time. I have moved completely away from thinking of God as an entity with personal attributes. God is but a word to describe my total inclusion in life, the sum of my being and all my relationships. God is the dynamic movement in the Universe, the fabric from which all is woven. The words “for God only knows you as part of Creation” struck me this time. This removes the notion of a personal God entirely. God is not of my own ideas and preferences, God does not fix things or tend to wrongdoings, petty grievances, personal problems, and so on. God is what moves through everything with quiet certainty and permanence. It is up to me to know God, for God already knows me as part of Creation. This is striking home for me in all its potency and profound meaning.

Actually, I don’t think I have ever wanted to get even with God, because I have never blamed God for anything, either in my own life or in the world. I have always known that God does not work in the world the way many people think or would like God to work. God is not to blame for how things are in the world, so I have no reason to get even with God.

This idea that the mind is fixed in a certain structure and that its outer manifestation is a structure I have imposed on it is rather baffling. I am not sure I understand what the practice today is aimed at, what I am supposed to be exploring and analyzing. All I know is that I am not satisfied with some of the ways I used to see things. I am seeing some things in a different way and am not sure how to manifest this. Still, it is becoming increasingly clearer to me that it is futile to use the mind to “figure things out” because my mind has its own mechanism and I am not able to utilize it yet in the best way. My mind serves my spirit, not the other way round, but this must be experienced, not analyzed.

In Chapter 2 of Relationships & Higher Purpose I read:

"As your mind begins to serve Spirit, it increasingly will know what to do, and it will learn how to manage itself in relationships. It will learn how to discern others and their motives. This will lead you to those individuals who are essential for your purpose and progress, and it will take you away from divisive engagements with those who are not. It will heal the need for pain. And it will heighten your capacity for joy."

I am trusting this and encouraged that my mind will learn how to manage itself in relationships as it begins to serve Spirit.

November 5, 2018 Round Three: The practices today call for engaging the mind in exploration and analysis, objective thinking, understanding the structure of the mind and its belief system. This is still a bit of an enigma to me. Break this structure and the mind will be free to engage in its true purpose (serving the spirit) and express its inward harmony. I wish to impose a flexible structure on my mind. I do not take things at face value, I see the possibility of other ways of being and trust I am open to new consciousness, new ways of seeing things and understanding. I have never been angry at God. I have never blamed God for the things that go wrong. God is All and All just is. If I am loving, grateful and accepting, all will be in harmony, all will be well. I trust and I am happy.