I must have courage to choose my freedom. Continuation Training Step 46

I must have courage to choose my freedom. CT Step 46 (MP3)

I must have courage to choose my freedom. CT Step 46

What is worth protecting if it denies you your freedom? What is worth having if it binds you and bonds you to the past? Who is worth being with if all that they can do is remind you that you are weak and pathetic and unable to follow what you know? These are all valid questions. The impediments to freedom are still greatly valued, and freedom is looked at with anxiety and uncertainty. Your prison cell door is open and has been all along. But are you willing to venture out of the seeming security of your bondage?

Many people will stay right where they are because things are familiar, even if these things create intolerable circumstances. People will not leave their bondage. And some even think that their bondage is spiritually important as if they must stay and work through some aggravation within their nature, when in reality God is calling them to step out and step away and move forward. You will hear every kind of excuse and every kind of justification for people staying in a state of bondage. And you will feel their ambivalence. Even if they are drawn to the truth, they are afraid of it. And the strength of their fear can overcome their natural inclinations.

This is vital for your learning in discernment and discretion. This is part of the reason you cannot share the mystery of your life with anyone with whom you are friendly. This is why you must choose your partners very carefully. You cannot be reckless in relationships and have any hope of fulfilling your greater purpose here.

In your deeper practice in stillness today, let your mind be free of its constraints. Focus your mind. Allow it to be still. Upon the hour, when you are in the world, look and listen. Stop yourself and look and listen. Recognize how people are not present for what is happening right now. See how preoccupied they are. See how they do not know what is occurring. They do not know what they are doing. They are just acting as if they were programmed to do something and they are doing it.

Look, but without condemnation, for you know this behavior well. And now you are beginning to learn the challenge of becoming free from it—-a formidable challenge and yet a worthy one.

Practice 46:   One 30-minute stillness practice.

                         Contemplation practice.

                         Hourly practice.

Picture:  Richard Serra's 2006 sculpture "T.E.U.C.L.A." (Torqued Ellipse UCLA) at University of California – Los Angeles's Murphy Sculpture Garden.

Plan B - If the MP3 doesn’t work, here’s the link to the folder: New Message - Student Spoken Steps CT Recordings - Steps to Knowledge Continuation Training - Working file

Journal entry link CT Step 45x1

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.