Step Three Hundred and Eight

Step 308. Review

In your longer practice period today undertake the Review of the past two weeks of training according to our previous instructions. This is a very important review period, for you will be reviewing the invocations that have been given to you, and you will be reviewing as well the potency of the task that you are undertaking as a student of Knowledge. Recognize in these past two weeks your own fear of Knowledge. Realize your own fear of the mystery of your life. Recognize any attempts that you might have made to re-enter illusion and imagination. Recognize this contrast in learning which is so essential to your understanding.

Review this with objectivity and compassion. Know that your ambivalence towards life must be realized and that it will continue to express itself with ever decreasing potency as you come closer and closer to Knowledge. Remember that Knowledge is life itself, the very essence of life. It is changeless and yet expressing itself through change constantly. To experience it, you must strengthen your participation as a student of Knowledge and remember that you are a beginning student of Knowledge so that you cannot rely upon your assumptions. You must receive the curriculum and be guided in applying it. In this way, you will be safe from all misapplication, all misinterpretation and thus safe from error.

This review is very important, for you are now reaching a great turning point in your participation as a student of Knowledge. Knowledge is beginning to have potency now. You are beginning to feel its power. You are beginning to realize its total importance to you. You who have been partial with life in the past are now realizing that life is completely with you and will require that you be completely with it. This is your salvation and your redemption, for here all separation, fear and misery are dispelled. What can you possibly lose to receive such a gift? You lose only your imagination, which has haunted you, threatened you and frightened you. Yet, even your imagination will be given a greater purpose with Knowledge, for it is meant to serve you in a different way.

Carry on your review with great depth and sincerity. Do not be concerned how long this takes. Your time cannot be better spent. Review the past two weeks so that you may observe the advancement of Knowledge within yourself. You will need this understanding if you are to support others in the future in reclaiming Knowledge for themselves.

Practice 308: 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.

April 20, 2013 Round One: I am thinking as I do this review that I still do not feel the contrast between what is real and coming from Knowledge and what is fantasy, illusion and imagination. This review asks me to recognize any attempts I have made to re-enter illusion and imagination, and I find I am questioning something I thought was coming from Knowledge as really being just my imagination running away with me. So I am still unable to recognize the contrast. I think I am feeling the power of Knowledge in my life, I think I am feeling its potency, but when I rise up on its crest, I am pulled back down again into doubt and uncertainty. I become ambivalent again, perhaps even fearing Knowledge, it is too powerful and potent for me. I recognize this and also realize my fear of the mystery of my life. It can be daunting, particularly when faced with the absence of Knowledge in the world, the absence or ignorance of Knowledge in those around me. I am still a beginning student though, and I need to trust that by pursuing Knowledge myself I can be a vehicle for it in the world and not let the burden dissuade me from my path.

The beauty of it is though, as I continued with this review I received the gift of knowing. As I slept yesterday, although I felt fully awake and conscious at the time, I felt this powerful feeling of certainty in what I know to be true. All doubt, ambivalence and fear dissipated and I can say that Knowledge is beginning to have potency now. I am beginning to feel its power.

June 14, 2015 Round Two: It is very serendipitous for me that these past two weeks of Steps have coincided with the 2015 Steps Vigil. In addition to my daily practices, I have been engaged in watching and listening to the broadcast from the New Message Sanctuary in Boulder, Colorado every morning (my time), if not always live, then immediately after it ends, and I am blessed by its potency and the feeling of connection with other students around the world and those gathered in the sanctuary. This has affirmed the power of Knowledge working in my life and dispelled even more the ambivalence, doubt, uncertainty, illusion and confusion that manifest in my life from time to time. The difference now is that I am immediately recognizing these times as coming from my surface mind, my imagination, my old patterns of dealing with the world and am able to guide my mind back to Knowledge.

I can confirm indeed after doing this review that Knowledge is beginning to have potency now, I am beginning to feel its power, I am beginning to realize its total importance to me. There is indeed no better way to spend my time.

Day 20 of the  2015 Steps Vigil, Final Broadcast, hosted by Patricia and Reed. Reed asks us to re-experience and return to the impact this Vigil had for us. For me, it has been powerful and reaffirming. I needed re-confirmation of the verity of this path for me and I found it. I emerge from the Vigil renewed in my resolve and determination to continue following the Way of Knowledge and keeping on, for I must. I have the opportunities this Vigil offered to take forward with me. I feel renewed and refreshed and I do indeed have a greater sense of what really matters for me in this life. I have a dream I wish to continue pursuing (my life in the county), but I am still willing to take what comes and trust that whatever this may be it is what Knowledge has in store for me to do.

A never-before-released revelation was shared received by the Messenger on March 8, 2015 called “How to Regard the Messenger.”

At the 1.55.50 mark, Marshall spoke the following words:

“This makes me very happy. There is enough power and devotion in this room and among those watching to affect great change in the world, even now.

“So my prayer tonight is a prayer about freedom. For the journey is about freedom and about contribution – outer freedom, inner freedom. Outer freedom is so rare in this world and in the universe, and inner freedom is even more rare, and lacking. I pray that Heaven’s gift to you will be deeply received and recognized. For it is here for your freedom, not just for your happiness, not just to give you resolution, but to free you to live the life you are destined and meant to live, you who are fortunate enough to have enough outer freedom to consider such things and to take a greater journey in live. It is unavailable to so many people in the world. It is our duty then, those of us who have been given a degree of outer freedom, to claim that freedom in service to those who do not have it, and may never have it. To preserve freedom in this world, Knowledge in this world, the freedom to know, the freedom to express and the freedom to give. This is where happiness resides, and a deep satisfaction. Without this, happiness is an empty promise and a phantom that can betray you.

“I pray this freedom will be honored here, for those of you who are so fortunate to be amongst the first to receive God’s teaching of freedom, and all that it can bestow upon your life and upon others through you. You have been given the map, the plan, the vision, the purpose, the clarification, the coordination and the means to restore ourselves.

“Let us then hold this sacred amidst all of the chaos in the world, amidst the fear and uncertainty within yourselves, the sacred flame. For God has given you a light, a lamp, and with this lamp you can begin to see where you are, in the darkness, you can begin to see your own condition, in the darkness, you can take stock around you that you could not see before, you see your circumstances which could not be seen before, because the lamp is being brought forth. You cannot extinguish this lamp, it can only be neglected or denied or hidden. But once you begin to find it you will know it is there and you will want it and need it ever so much as you go forward into the difficult times to come.

“This is your freedom, claim it. Do not let any person, place or thing compete with it, do not sacrifice it for love or money, do not deny it for any rationality. For it is Heaven’s gift to you. May the presence of those who have sent us and who watch over us be with us now. Nasi Novare Coram.

“With that we conclude the 2015 Steps to Knowledge Vigil. May the blessing be with you.”

May 12, 2019 Round Three: When this review asks that I recognize my own fear of Knowledge and realize my own fear of the mystery of my life, I immediately thought that this does not apply to me. But then I wondered...as I did the first time. Am I not re-entering illusion and imagination, thinking that building a house is what I am supposed to be doing, that it is a Knowledge-guided decision? I am tired of having doubts about it when so often I am confident that I am on the right path, that all the events in my life are leading me in this one direction, that there is no other choice for me, no other place to go. This is freedom for me, because I am exactly where I want to be and have no other choice. Everything that has happened in my life has been leading me gradually to this very spot, these very circumstances, and the serendipitous conditions surrounding the buying of our plot and building our house.

These past two weeks of Steps have been about the mystery of my life, calling on those who are reclaiming Knowledge with me through the invocations, both those in the world and my Teachers and others beyond the world who have already taken this path, not falling victim to fear and anxiety, not resisting the world or being drawn into the world’s persuasions, resting in Knowledge and knowing that Knowledge is living within me now. In other words, it has been about strengthening my bond with Knowledge, living Knowledge, being a true and dedicated student of Knowledge, being disciplined and not wasting my time and energy on meaningless tasks and pursuits. It has been a time of warm weather, much warmer than any other year we have been here at this time, it has been the May holidays - five days for May Day and four days for Victory Day. It has been a time of planting, of shared tasks out in the garden, of working together in harmony, doing things together that my husband and I do best together, being in tune out in nature, basking in and appreciating the glory of our life, our shared dream come true. Truly it is a miracle!