I will remember those who have given to me. Continuation Training Step 11

I will remember those who have given to me. CT Step 11 (MP3)

I will remember those who have given to me. CT Step 11

In today’s practice in gratitude, recall those individuals who have given to you. Think about what they have given, and do not limit them only to those who seem to encourage you in a positive way. For even your adversaries have made you strong, have made you stand upon your own ground and have required you to establish your freedom and to secure it for yourself.

Ask yourself, "Who do I need to acknowledge today for serving me?" And you might be surprised to who comes to mind. Whoever does come to mind, recognize their gift. What did they give you to enable you to find yourself and your way in life? Here your supporters and your critics alike become valuable resources. In this, you learn not to be offended by those who seem to criticize you today, for tomorrow you will recall them in such a way that you will appreciate the opportunity that they provided you to become stronger with Knowledge and closer to the Grace that lives within you and all around you.

Beyond your practice in stillness and your hourly exercises in awareness and discernment, spend time considering the meaning of today’s lesson and receiving those who come to you as you think about it. The past must be a record of gratitude if it is to have any meaning or value at all, and today we learn to seek and to find that gratitude.

Practice 11:    One 30-minute stillness practice.

                         Contemplation practice.

                         Hourly practice.

Picture:  The Lord’s Chapel is on Greenway Road, outside Winchester, Virginia. It is a place where I was able to pursue my expanded journey beginning in 1989, so I remember and the founder and Minister Suwaylu Anniah, woman of vision. Date sign picture taken: September 27, 2009

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 10x1

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.

I will forgive my past today. Continuation Training Step 10

I will forgive my past today. CT Step 10 (MP3)

I will forgive my past today. CT Step 10

Ultimately, your past is meant to serve you as a resource, a resource of learning, accomplishment and failure, a resource to draw upon to illustrate what you have learned and are learning in The Way of Knowledge. But until the past can serve in this greater capacity, it still weighs upon you and casts a shadow over your life. You are still trying to run away from what has happened before, trying to counteract what you did before, afraid you will repeat your former errors, afraid the past will come to haunt you. Everyone lives with this burden to some degree, and some suffer under it tremendously every moment of every day.

In The Way of Knowledge, forgiveness means that you come to see the real meaning in things. You take a different vantage point, a different position. You see it in a new way. This does not mean you forget things or try to obliterate them from your awareness or tell yourself that they do not matter or that they never existed because the ghosts will haunt your house as long as they are allowed to be there. And they will be there as long as you create a place for them.

Therefore, today we practice forgiveness. In addition to your practice in stillness and your hourly exercises in Knowledge and discernment, recognize what you must release in your past. See what is still casting a shadow over you, what is still a weight upon your heart, a deep regret, an anger, a grave disappointment, a constraint from some earlier decision which is no longer necessary for you. What from your past haunts you today, disturbs you today, draws you backwards and out of the present moment?

Becoming a student of The Way of Knowledge will liberate you from the past because it gives you a whole new life, a whole new way of being, a new experience of being in the world and brings you to that greater purpose and meaning which are your inheritance. However, for you to advance towards this, you must look at your past to see what it can give you and show you in the reclamation of Knowledge. All true contributors have suffered and can now use their own suffering to help others, to free others and to educate others. Their past now becomes a resource for giving, a reinforcement for the truth rather than a denial of the truth. Even though you have lived without Knowledge in the past to a very great degree, the past can now serve you. Here the Creator brings all that has been created in the world and gives it a new purpose, a new meaning and a new application.

Look at each painful event and say, "What can this teach me about learning The Way of Knowledge?" And if there is still pain, feel that pain but understand that it can now serve a greater purpose for you. Wisdom is hard earned. Earn it. Practice it. Use it today.

Practice 10:    One 30-minute stillness practice.

                          Contemplation practice.

                          Hourly practice.

Picture: Butterfly wings on the forest floor. Symbolic of what? September 4, 2010

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 9x1

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.

The Greater Community is in the world. Continuation Training Step 9

The Greater Community is in the world. CT Step 9 (MP3)

The Greater Community is in the world. CT Step 9

Forces from the Greater Community are in the world. This can be known. This can be felt. Perhaps you are feeling it already or have felt it in the past. The world's emergence into the Greater Community is well underway, but who can respond to it? Who can understand what it means or what its implications are? In developing your relationship with the world and your relationship with Knowledge, you must come to understand the condition of the world that you have been sent to serve. Knowledge understands this, but the personal mind, having been built upon fear and preference, cannot see this yet. Therefore, what is obvious escapes the attention of nearly everyone, and what is imaginary seems to be highly agreed upon. At this point, it is important to remember that Greater Community forces are in the world, and you must come to learn what this means for you.

In your practice in stillness, let this awareness naturally emerge, which it naturally will do over time. In your hourly practices, try to be attentive to where you are and to what is happening. And today take time to consider today's lesson. Perhaps it does not conform with your ideas. Perhaps it does. Perhaps you have experienced it directly. Perhaps you have not. But if you become attentive, you can realize that the condition of your world has changed, and part of this change is the presence of other forms of intelligent life here. Become still and over time this will become very clear to you.

Practice 9:      One 30-minute stillness practice.

                          Contemplation practice.

                          Hourly practice.

Picture:  This ET looking statue was at the Hidden Treasures shop on Topanga Canyon Boulevard. We headed up that road from the Pacific Ocean Highway, heading south to Malibu from Santa Monica during a visit to California. It may have been a movie prop, but here it was in an artfully arranged collection of modern civilization’s artifacts. I took several pictures. ET representations are all over the commercial world today. ET is a joke. Steps does not consider that either a knowledgeable or wise approach. Date take: April 15. 2013

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 8x1

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.

There is a greater harmony in the world. Continuation Training Step 8

There is a greater harmony in the world. CT Step 8 (MP3)

There is a greater harmony in the world. CT Step 8

In your relationship with the world, you will find conflict and you will find harmony. It will be difficult to reconcile the two, for they seem to be mutually exclusive. But they are all part of the same condition. This seems ambiguous and contradictory, and yet you must approach both with a growing equanimity. The man and woman of Knowledge only value the power and the presence of Knowledge, whether it manifests itself in situations that seem harmonious or in situations that are conflicted. The man and woman of Knowledge are not bound by simple definitions. They are free of the restraints of this kind of thinking. This gives them the ability to see, to know and to act.

There is a greater harmony in the world. You bring this harmony into the world by being close to Knowledge. There is no deception. There is no dishonesty. There is no avoidance.

Therefore, look at all things today and wait for the real understanding to emerge within you. Do not ask for the situation to explain itself to you. Do not ask for people to reveal themselves to you, for this must come about naturally. It is this looking and this waiting that bring your mind in service to your Spirit and give you new eyes to see.

Practice 8:      One 30-minute stillness practice.

                          Contemplation practice.

                          Hourly practice.

Picture: Close-up of the building in the picture today.

This is the building of the Royal College of Organists – London, England. We can assume it is a place of teachers and students dedicated to musical harmony. Religious music, ideally, is intended to contribute to harmony among people. We know music and musicians are not free from conflict, but often they are mellow. People passing in front of the building in the Step photograph above, are likely having conflict and/or harmony at that moment, with no relationship to the college. Both pictures taken October 8, 2009

Journal entry link CT Step 7x1

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.