2020 Steps Vigil, Full Messenger Teaching | Closing Broadcast

But you know, throughout Steps to Knowledge and the Teaching in the New Message, it keeps creating this picture of what happens when you go back to your Spiritual Family when you leave the world. This is a reoccurring theme, excuse me. It’s like a reoccurring scenario that it presents to you. 

So you go back to your Spiritual Family and at that point, you know, the illusions and the dominance of the world and your fixations all leave you, for the most part. And there you are as you originally were, like you were before you came into the world, and the senior members of your Spiritual Family, which are your Inner Teachers, so to speak, will ask you: “Did you accomplish what you set out to do?” 

Now I want you to think about what the question is. It’s not, “Did you realize what you needed to realize?” It’s not, “Did you purify yourself to the level of which you needed?” It’s not, “Did you attain happiness or contentment or lasting peace?” What they ask you is: “Did you accomplish what you set out to do?” That question holds the meaning of your life.

There are three elements to what really matters, essentially, when you boil everything down: what you do, what you serve and why you serve. What you went through along the way—the peaks, the valleys, the wonderful moments of realization, the deep pits of despair, confusion, anxiety, recklessness, self-destruction—in the end, it matters what you do, what you serve, why you serve.

So if what you did in life doesn’t lead you to what you serve or meant to serve and doesn’t refine your intentions for serving—your responsibility, your motivation, your determination, Knowledge—then you didn’t get the job done. Because where we all come from is a place of being into a place in the world of doing. If self-realization does not lead to real constructive action, beyond what is self gratifying or meaningful to you, then it doesn’t register.

Because They never ask: “What did you realize down on Earth?” It is: “What did you do?” And what you do has to really meaningfully do with what you serve and why you serve. All the inner work is to get your life to move through the first three stages of your development, which I talked about in the last Vigil. 

The first stage is unburdening. The second stage is re-evaluation: Where have I been? Where am I now? Where do I need to go next? And then the third is beginning to build a foundation for a new life, not overlaid on your old life, necessarily, but really what are the elements of the new life that you can and need to build.

So I really want you to listen to the Revelation when you hear Them ask questions like this. When we leave this world, return to your Spiritual Family and they ask you: “Did you accomplish what you set out to do?” That is so rich if you can be with it and think about it. It doesn’t matter what you realized in the end. It doesn’t matter, all the other things. What matters is what you did, what you came to serve and why you serve. Everything else is momentum either in a good direction or a bad direction. And you could do bad things. You could serve bad things. And you could even have the incorrect reasons for serving. The peaks and the valleys are…it’s like delivering a child. I mean, you’re going to relive every moment of the delivery, maybe some moments. But it’s when the child is born that’s a whole new beginning. So this is what Heaven is looking for in you.

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Makes me think of, you know, in my view, there’s a kind of a critical waterline. And you’re either living a self-possessed life, struggling to survive, struggling to be happy, struggling to get what you want, struggling not to lose what you have, struggling to make sure you get what you want—that’s kind of below the waterline. And you may have moments of prescience or self-awareness in that reality, but they’re only moments. They’re not decisive.

But at some point, if you develop, you will cross over this kind of invisible line where you are now beginning to live the inspired and determined life. And your commitment to Knowledge…maybe it’s 51 percent over 49 percent—very slight at this point of juncture—your commitment to Knowledge is stronger than your commitment to everything else. And if you will stay with that…and that’s kind of…and many of you may be at that juncture or approaching it, or at it, or just past it. It’s very confusing because you still have all the desires, the potential desires. So much is still there driving you to try to seek personal fulfillment in Separation. But it’s almost like you can’t leave that part of you that knows, “No, I’m really here for something bigger.” 

And if you nurture that…And this is where Steps to Knowledge—you do it first two or three, four or five times—begins to build, build, build that connection to Knowledge. You become stronger with Knowledge and you…other things begin to fall away or you just lose interest in them; or you see that they’re limiting you, harming you and are never going to give you what you want, so you consciously voluntarily relinquish them. 

I don’t know what to call this line of demarcation, but…It’s not like you have an experience of Knowledge and you’ve arrived. No, you just crossed the line. And if that experience is big enough to move you to begin to reshape your life to whatever extent is needed, then you have to continue to feed that so it becomes stronger and stronger and stronger. It can’t just be a high moment in your life. It’s got to be something that actually changed your life, and is changing your life, so you can be in a position to know what to serve and to have the right approach and attitude toward service, which is a real internal shift away from personal fulfillment and ideology to one of being part of a Great Coordination, of which you’re already a part.

* * *

So in light of this, this being the kind of higher truth that has brought us together—and truth not being an idea here but a reality, a force, a presence, an abiding presence—is to invite you to walk with me. I’ve come a long way. I’m probably near the end of my journey, or close. And I need to know who’s walking with me. Maybe…I want that to be a natural and innate kind of decision on your part, not something that I’m forcing you to make—not drawing a line in the sand. But I am asking for you to ask this question of yourself because either preparation is to walk with me or to serve in some other capacity in the world. But in either case, it’s beyond your personal dimensions, even though your personal dimensions will either enable or disable you from being able to carry out this service. 

And when I speak of service, I’m not speaking of grandiose things. I’m not speaking that you’re going to be an emancipator or you’re going to be a great teacher or you’re going to invent something for the world the world’s never seen before. This is within your scope. This is within your reach given your nature, what you’ve learned so far in the past that’s been beneficial to you, the kind of real learning you’ve done over the years, despite whatever errors or mishaps may have happened—this is what really matters. But you have to cross that line of living a self-possessed life or simply being a product for culture into something that represents who you really are and honors those who sent you into the world and a recognition you’re part of a Greater Coordination that’s beyond our understanding, beyond our visible range, beyond any religious theology in the world—beyond enlightenment. 

So I’d like to read to you a passage from a teaching that was given to me in my own training and preparation that I think is kind of applicable to everyone here. This was given to me on September 19th, 1994, probably in the middle of the night: 

To give yourself to a mission of this nature, you must rise above your personal preoccupations or you simply cannot do it. This represents a tremendous turning point. What will bring a person to this turning point but a growing inconsistency with what one Knows, as opposed to the way one lives?”

So I want you to copy this and be with this because it is saying things that are tremendously important to what we’ve been talking about the whole Vigil. I mean, first of all, “rising above personal preoccupations” does not mean that you’ve reached enlightenment and you have no desires and you’re at complete equanimity. It’s just rising enough that you can engage with life at a higher level and stay engaged. 

Now certainly your preoccupations will diminish and your attachment to them will diminish in the course of this, but it’s not an ultimate state. You know, enlightenment as it’s conceived in this world, is probably attainable by about 1 out of 5 to 10 million people. So to save humanity from disaster and from subjugation in the universe, obviously, something much more accessible has to be made available that, in the end, may be far more important under any circumstances. 

So I invite you to save this teaching. It’s one of those things that, like all things of great meaning, you have to walk around them. You can skim the surface and get value or insight. But the things that really matter, you have to walk around them; come back to them. It’s a contemplation. They don’t yield up their gifts at the first viewing, and you don’t even have the eyes to see yet. 

That is why when you do Steps to Knowledge for the third or fourth time, you see things you never saw before in them, not because Steps has decided it’s going to tell you something different. It’s because your eyes have opened up; your life has opened up; your mind is more receptive. You’re thinking of bigger things now, not just little things. 

So the whole purpose of the Four Pillars is to get your life in order to recalibrate its direction, its priorities; to reshape it enough so that your life can begin to move in the direction it’s really meant to go. And the degree to which you can do that, each step taken will give you energy, will give you confirmation, will give you things your old life could never really give you. 

And it’s mysterious because you’re breaking new ground. You’re going to go somewhere, yourself, you’ve never been before. You’re going to entertain things you’ve never thought before, or maybe haven’t thought of very much. You’re going to enter a new territory. So it’s going to be confusing; you’re going to be uncertain. You’re not going to have answers to everything. You didn’t have answers to anything before but didn’t really matter, did it? You’re going to be confused at times, even feel lost at times, not because you’re really lost but because you’re just entering new territory, new learning. 

All real learning should take you into new territory and challenge what you already think or believe. Any learning that doesn’t do that is just a process of self-validation and really isn’t that helpful, and actually is quite limiting and destructive. 

So walk with me. I’ve gotten far enough up the mountain to see what’s there and the pathway has been given to you, and the tools and the wisdom. You just have to keep walking. Remember that statement from Winston Churchill, which I love—I think I already said this during the Vigil: “When you find yourself in hell, keep walking.” Keep walking. Some days are diamonds; some days are stones. Sometimes the mountain comes into view, but usually, it’s out of view because you’re going through all the valleys and forests that approach it. 

And once you get to that mountain, the only thing that’s going to get you up that mountain is Knowledge. Your good intentions? Personal willpower? No. Knowledge takes you to Knowledge. But Knowledge is trying to take you somewhere so you can do what you came here to do and engage with the people you are destined to engage with. This is what really matters. Sitting at the bottom of that mountain with lofty thoughts or having esoteric experiences is not going to matter, given who you are, why you’re here and who sent you. 

So for me, increasingly, my sense of dedication and commitment is based upon serving those who sent me because I mean, to yourself, would you really put out this much effort for lofty ideals or lofty things? Probably not. But to serve Them who serve you, to serve those who are waiting to be served by you in life at whatever level your service will be? If you fail, they go unserved? Mmm…now we’re talking about a different level of accountability, different level of responsibility, different level of, “Gee, I’m not just doing this for myself anymore. I really need to do this or I’m not going to be okay with myself at a deep level.” 

God is not going to punish you if you fail. You just will be an unfulfilled, unhappy, distressed person your whole life. And you’ll go back to your Spiritual Family and you’ll know instantly if you did what you set out to do or not. And what are they going to do but okay, give you a number? I don’t know what they do. But try again, maybe even in a world much more terrible than this one, which by all means is not very terrible, by the universal means. 

So this is my encouragement, but it’s also a calling. Steps to Knowledge is a calling. The response within you to practice isn’t just, “Well, I’m doing this because I want to feel at peace or I want to be elevated and I want my problems solved.” That may be your initial intention because people usually come here to try to meet their needs or their desires. But what keeps you here when those things begin to kind of fall away is what really matters. 

Nasi Novare Coram.

* * *

Important messages are rarely for this moment. I’ll say it again. Important messages—like real big kind of messages—are rarely for this moment. They are a guidepost out in the distance.

I had the opportunity to fly in a small aircraft—and not to fly the aircraft, but to be its only passenger—and the pilot told me how he would navigate by points in the distance, particularly if there are mountains or things like that that could be seen at a distance instead of just a flat surface. And it really helps your triangulation. I mean, it gives you a point either on a map or something you can see.

So your guidance way back then was probably a future reference point to help you orient your life. It’s not the key. You don’t get the key at the beginning. You might get what you think is the key, and then you run off with it and try to do something; and that just almost never works. I mean, you have to prepare for the key. 

And the preparation can’t be something you invent for yourself or a patchwork of “I’ll borrow from Buddhism and I’ll borrow from…I’ll put together in my own pathway.” That almost never works. 

So I think your guidance sounds true. But it wasn’t for that moment. And you still had mistakes to make. You still had things to learn. You had not reached a point of maturity and determination where you could really follow a preparation. And you have that preparation now, and I encourage you to follow it. And you actually do have enough fire and energy. But keep looking. Look ahead now and not back.

Everyone’s lost time. And you’ve had time to go through whatever you’ve had to invest in, relationships, workwise, whatever that has meant for you. But you need to look forward now, and let that passion that is within you—I can see it—carry you forward. And understand that that distant point, which was your guidance at a time, is part of your orientation.

You know, around 1981 or 1982, I was told, “You’re going to receive an important teaching, training for the world unlike anything that has ever been given before.” But it wasn’t until 1989 that it was given. But between those years, I had to really divest my old life. I got married, had a child, put everything in storage; traveled the country; ended up on the other side of the country in a very different state of mind in a very different set of conditions, different relationships—everything.

And it was true. What was given to me back earlier, seven or eight years earlier, was true and it happened. But it didn’t happen back then because I was not in the right place or state of mind or ready. I couldn’t receive Steps to Knowledge back then. It took me years practicing the Presence for hours at a time to be able to download something of that magnitude. It took a long training and a lot of reorientation in my life. 

So I just want to share this with everybody that if you get a big message point, don’t necessarily think it’s for now. Is this for now or for the future?  You can ask yourself. But rarely things of that significance are rarely for the moment you’re in. They’re a point in the future to help you navigate your life towards.

With all great truths, there are other things that need to be clarified. So yeah, if you have a flat tire on the road in the middle of nowhere, you’re still going somewhere. But you have to deal with that flat tire in the middle of nowhere with nobody in sight or whatever. This is just an image and analogy. So…

I don’t want anyone here to underestimate the power of this pandemic to change the surface of the world. I don’t recommend you be obsessed with it. But also on the other hand, it is affecting you. And it’s affecting your circumstances and your future. And it will be with us for quite a while. So do not underestimate the forces of nature, which is what this is, probably the biggest event, natural event, of your life and one of the biggest events even in this century—not the biggest—but it will portend other things in its wake. It’s not all about consciousness. If you don’t fix that flat tire, you’re in the middle of nowhere with no one in sight.

Follow Knowledge. But also be observant of your environment—big environment; even your mental environment—not obsessed, but just observant because the man or women of Knowledge is always gauging the environment and that’s part of the outer engagement. 

And then there’s of course an inner engagement happening at the same time. So don’t retreat into yourself, into your cave of Knowledge. You could take a retreat and do something like that, but in normal life you want to, on a larger scale, sense the movement of things. And life will yield to you its signs if you do that. 

It won’t answer your questions necessarily, but you’ll see certain things which you may understand or not understand. But write everything down. That’s always important. Nothing gets done in your head. So write it down and you can look at it over time and see if it looks like it’s going to mature into something else or mean something else. So I think that’s just a general important approach to have for everyone.

Seeing, knowing and taking action; the knowing has two parts. You have to know what you’re seeing. And then you have to know or come to know, what you’re going to do in response to it. So sometimes what you’re seeing is very confusing. 

But to know what something is…I’ll give you an example. When I first learned this was a pandemic, I went to learn everything I could about pandemics. Did you do that? Because pandemics behave in a certain way through our history, see what I’m saying? What am I looking at? Or if anything else, you see something; sometimes you’re sure what you’re seeing, sometimes you’re not sure. But that really is important. And that’s part of the knowing. It’s part of this mental assessment. And part of it is a recognition assessment. And that will lead to action either in the short term or the long term. That’s another stage of knowing.

So the second part actually has two parts to it that are distinct from each other because if you don’t know what you’re looking at, knowing what you’re going to do is going to be very questionable. It might be premature. It just might be blind. So I think seeing is not something we can just conjure up. It’s something that happens because we’re looking. If you’re never looking…like the birds in the air and the animals in the field, they’re always looking. People are just…they go through life talking to themselves, not looking. So a lot of looking without coming to decisions, just to look…the Watchtower; there’s a teaching the New Message calls The Watchtower—very valuable—and just being able to be observant without trying to decide or evaluate; just looking, looking. And you will see things other people don’t see because you are looking. And you’re looking very objectively, not to get things, not to validate your ideas, not to come to conclusions, but just looking: What am I looking at? So that’s a practice in and of itself.

You know, seeing, knowing and taking action actually has kind of components to it. To see, you have to be looking in a certain kind of way. To know, there’s different aspects of this where Knowledge is appropriate. And then taking action could be simple or have many steps, depending on the nature of the action that has to be taken. So in that case, you may only know the next step or the first step.

This is like a methodology to bring to your understanding.

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You’ve all been through a lot to get here. And your errors in life will be the seed of wisdom for the future if you can use them properly.

So with that I would like to give thanks to those Greater Forces that have called each of us to a greater preparation and a greater service in the world. We are so fortunate to receive the gift of Revelation as the first responders, but burdened as well because it is a great calling, and not many people around us can yet experience that. But we’ve been given a gift that can liberate us from endless suffering, confusion, self-doubts and condemnation of others.

Let us then receive this gift gratefully, but purposefully as well, for it is not merely to liberate us from the past, but to prepare us for a future unlike the past. This is a freedom from and a freedom for—a freedom from suffering and aimlessness in life; freedom for a greater life of purpose, meaning and direction.

May this blessing then guide us and keep us moving and remind us when we falter or fall into doubt. For the Power and the Presence is with us now. We are learning to be with this Power and Presence with each passing day. 

Nasi Novare Coram.