CT Step 4 - If I understand the world, I will understand myself. – Journal – CT Step 3

Today:  CT Step 4 - If I understand the world, I will understand myself. (MP3)

If I understand the world, I will understand myself. CT Step 4

You have a fundamental relationship with the world because it is the world that you were sent to serve. You were not sent here to condemn the world or to avoid the world or to ridicule the world or to malign the world or to grieve over the world. You were sent here to serve the world. To serve the world, you must understand it. You must understand its beauty, its conflict and its fundamental predicaments. You must have this understanding without denial or avoidance. If you can understand the world this completely, you will know why you are here and you will experience those who sent you and who are with you even at this moment.

Therefore, as you go through your day, you are building a greater understanding and a greater awareness. You are establishing yourself at a higher vantage point on the mountain of life, even as you witness the mundane events of your daily affairs. What power this gives you! What freedom to see and to know and to act according to the true direction that lives within you. Understand, then, the world. Understand where the world is going in its emergence into the Greater Community. See yourself as part of the bigger picture, not simply an individual living within your little shell, preoccupied with your own fears, goals and anxieties, but a person who was sent to give something in the world with other people. Create this larger context today as you think about today's lesson.

Stop upon the hour and see where you are and what you are experiencing. And in your one long practice in stillness and silence, let yourself come into harmony with the world's greater nature, for Knowledge lives within the world as it does within you. And you can experience this today if you are still.

Picture: Development model of Beijing Town, a part of expansion for the city of Beijing, China. June 26, 2012

From the journal:  CT Step 3 - I must be patient in order to proceed.

9:45 a.m. Monday, August 27, 2001 –

Home now. Went to work at 8:30 a.m., but was sweaty – so I came home. That's a first. Step 3 – "I must be patient in order to proceed". It seems I've been working on patience all my life.

The text says learning patience is difficult because people are living without Knowledge – they are establishing goals in life without K.

This is confusing for me. I did establish goals in Plan-Do's development – and I thought I was in contact with spirit.

I was involved in frantic pursuits – my inspiration was not shared in the regional arena – so – it had to end it did. I was unburdened. I take away the lessons – the region continues to become a community. That took 30 years. This is the prologue of my life.

4:47 p.m. Has anything healed this day? I see why I should be patient, but it is hard to be without frantic pursuits. I feel paralyzed. Sweaty & sick – unable to sleep – but my health is not threatened, only uncomfortable. I am safe – yet, as the text says, "… your mind is racing here and racing there, trying to solve this and trying to establish that".

Unable to sleep, I watched C-SPAN taped shows – must not waste time…get some input…more learning…more insight…more frantic.

There were some gems in the tapes… I do have a way to see the greater world here through the eyes of others – and that puts on a pressure to integrate what I see, yet I don't know how. Many just pray or do global meditation.

One speaker quoted from an old book he found – a Parson's Perspective I think, an old English book from the 1850s. The author wrote about a trip he was taking, up early for a train and – referring to how difficult it is to believe in the spiritual aspects, he found the physical – in the moment of stillness and quiet – hard to believe. As happens in the woods when alone. It all seems so impossible.

Then I return to the room and wait for David's call. Time for another truck payment. Good money after bad is it?

→ Before I die I must articulate regional community. That will require patience… today's lesson.

6:35 p.m. Practice #3 – long meditation – difficult to still my mind, but my intent to serve is clear. That I shall continue to develop.

Nasi Novare Coram

T-om Su-ne

The journal did focus on the practices. The reference to Plan-Do is for a personal planning method I developed in the 1980’s. I formalized it into a workshop when someone at The Lord’s Chapel asked, “How do you get goals?” I offered it a few times. It was very effective in motivating people about their lives, but the changes that came up included things like a changed spouse. That was an area I did not want to deal with, so I didn’t pursue making it a full-time business. Today one might be called a life coach. The process has worked for me – I’ve maintained an annual written personal plan since 1991. The seven goal categories I set up later came together organized under the Four Pillars. The workbook is here if you’d like to consider the process.

NNC

Note: If you’ve some interest, but this is the first time you’ve seen Steps, you should go to the beginning blog post. From here you will learn about Steps to Knowledge and can begin it on the day that makes sense; then progress as needed. Begin at the beginning.

If you do know about Steps, but have not done Steps twice completely, read the related materials, and have a sense of the direction of this study, you won’t get the experience. The Introduction begins:

“This is the Steps to Knowledge Continuation Training. It is designed to build upon the Steps that were learned in Steps to Knowledge to enable you to experience the grace, the power and the direction of Knowledge in your life and to become an expression of Knowledge in everything that you do. If you have completed the book, Steps to Knowledge, twice through and have followed the instructions as they were given without altering the curriculum in any way, then you are now ready to begin this more advanced study”.

If you are an independent student, that is certainly an option. Posts here provide a trail that may let you have a virtual companion when and if you want one. One may have to study alone, as I did in the beginning. There are other Steps students blogging their experience and you might find a person more like you as a companion, or use a number of such Steps journeys. There are options as well through the Free School of the New Message.