A Calling to Persevere

Perseverance: any attribute like this has to be understood in terms of the purpose that it serves. For everywhere people are persevering to accomplish things or gain things of little value, even things that are obviously harmful to them.

So perseverance alone is only valuable in terms of what it serves. Everything that Steps to Knowledge offers and promises, everything that The New Message from God reveals to you that is your birthright, purpose, destiny, true relationship, a quality of love and fulfillment that nothing else in the world can possibly provide—all this can only be found with perseverance.

It is the commitment to participate in an ongoing way and ultimately, without pre-conditions. For only God knows the way to God; only God knows the way for you to discover the real purpose that has brought you here, the gifts that you secretly carry, unknown to you.

You don’t come to God on your terms. You don’t come to Higher Purpose on your terms, saying, “What’s in it for me?”—or thinking, “Well, I’ll go along with this as long as it feels right or good, or as long as it resonates with my ideas and my beliefs.” Knowledge will take you beyond your ideas and your beliefs.

It will ask you to face things that are difficult, within yourself—painful, even—your remorse, your grievances, your failed endeavors, your failed dreams. Sooner or later you’ll have to face all of these things.

You continue because you know you must. That is how I was able to continue through some very difficult times, over the long span of time it took me to prepare for this and to receive the Revelation that you have with you today.

Many times I thought of quitting, just because it seemed too uncertain, too mysterious. I didn’t know where it was leading; I didn’t know what it was for. And it’s a very good thing I did not quit at any of those moments of doubt or frustration or despair, because we would not have today what we have before us.

This is why I say to you Perseverance is so important, because the rewards come later; the product of your effort comes later. You’ll not experience it fully today. Your engagement ultimately is a demonstration of Knowledge. We find Knowledge with Knowledge.

Ambition, personal goals, enrichment, spiritual fulfillment, spiritual enlightenment—in the end, you persevere because you must. It is clean. It’s not contaminated with your personal motives or expectations or personal goals, which sooner or later will have to be transcended.

So I say to you, complete what you have begun; not for love or money do you quit. You will go through confusion. You will go through hopelessness. You will go through ambivalence. You will go through the disapproval of others, because that’s just what it takes to find that which is great within you and to bring it into the world.

It may rain; it may storm. (Marshall chuckles: rain from a thunderstorm is pelting the Sanctuary roof and skylight.) (Laughter) Lightning will strike (More laughter)—but you persevere.

In a way my life is a gift to you as a demonstration, but there are many other important demonstrations of people who have persevered. Your parents persevered in raising you, and did the best they could with what they had. Others have persevered in serving you, in providing for you all the conveniences and enjoyments of your life. Everything you enjoy today is because someone else you did not know persevered. They didn’t give up.

In the end all that matters is that you continued and you found the pure service and the pure motivation to do that. When you leave this world and return to your spiritual family who watch over you here, the only thing they will want to know is if you completed what you set out to do.

Nothing else matters. Great experiences, romances, successes, failures, good times, bad times, tragedy… Did you do what you set out to do? Because only that yields for you and for them, that which carries forward beyond this life. So…

The New Message says, “If you stop climbing, you don’t get up the mountain.” The reason you stop doesn’t matter in the end. It’s whether you kept going or not that matters in the end.

When you start out, you don’t really have the strength and commitment to take a journey of this magnitude. I know that. They know that. They know you’re weak and faltering and are going to try to use The Revelation to enhance your life. They know all that, but you will outgrow that as you continue—and then you will have to choose again, “Why am I really doing this?”

And maybe you will have spiritual reasons why you are doing this, but in the end you’ll even outgrow those. And you’re left with the pure motivation, which is the evidence of Knowledge. Sometimes people here say, “Well, I don’t experience Knowledge very much; I don’t know where it is; I don’t know how to experience it,” and I say to them, “If you were not experiencing Knowledge, you would not be here and you would not persevere here”.

Look back two or three years and ask yourself, “Am I willing to go back to that?”

One of the first challenges is ambivalence, the disease of the modern mind. Unsure of what to do, you’re now unsure of everything. And because you have committed yourself in the past to things that have proved to be unfulfilling or disappointing, now you don’t want to commit yourself to anything.

So people will come to The Revelation saying “Well, yeah, I’ll try it out; I’ll participate as long as it feels right to me.” This is ambivalence.

I’ll read to you now a passage from the Teaching on perseverance from Wisdom from the Greater Community Volume Two:

“The cost of ambivalence is dreadful. It stifles people’s certainty, creativity and ability.”

Sooner or later, if your life is going to amount to anything, you have to commit yourself to something and the value of that life is based on the meaning of that commitment.

So ambivalence is something to be avoided, not promoted. And Steps to Knowledge is significantly challenging but very simple. But whether you can show up to practice, day after day after day, is a demonstration of your strength and your integrity and your purpose. People struggle at the beginning because these things are weak. They have never been supported in their life.

And then they come to difficult thresholds. And I will say a few words about thresholds, because everyone avoids the thresholds, but they are the most important turning points of your life. They represent an intersection between what you want, what you know and what the world requires of you—triangulates and intersects, creating tremendous disturbance; explosive, so explosive, it’s enough to shift your life. And you find yourself different, as if you had been struck by lightning.

Thresholds are also gates through which you pass. Each gate requires the decision to continue. There can be tremendous confusion at these gates—uncertainty or the persuasions of others—or when you find out that your personal goals and wishes are not being fulfilled through this greater journey, you may re-commit yourself to them, elsewhere.

It’s OK; you’ve got plenty of time. God doesn’t care how long it takes for you to awaken.

Thresholds are times when you can really not know who you are or what you’re doing, because you’re outgrowing your old identity, your socially constructed identity. You’re outgrowing your old ideas and you’re building a new framework, but a new framework is a house yet unbuilt. It is a foundation with a few things built on top of it; it’s not yet complete.

So you have to persevere through these times of confusion and not succumb to them. You know, people quit because they’re unable to differentiate their thoughts and feelings from who they are. They’re so governed by their thoughts and feelings that they cannot step back and just see what that is, and have any freedom to decide how they want to respond.

But Steps to Knowledge teaches you to step outside your mind so that you can have this freedom, so that you can observe your confusion rather than be immersed within it, to prevent yourself from being swept away by the flood of feeling or the flood of doubt or the flood of disapproval from others.

Step back and you can see these things clearly, for they do not represent who you are. They’re only stages of life that you’re passing through, because you have somewhere to go and there is a Power within you that can take you there.

And that Power within you is the Power you’re really looking for. And the only way you can find it, is by following it and allowing it to give you the strength, the courage and the determination—and humility—to proceed onward.

And as you do this, you will begin to feel the call and pull of Heaven, that there’s not just something moving you inside, there’s something moving you from the outside, that’s drawing you forward, drawing you up the mountain.

It’s not a thing; it’s not a person. It’s something magnificent that you can feel throughout your being. It’s the attraction of Heaven—not to pull you out of this life, but to bring you back, with a purpose and a meaning and a destiny.

This is the inspired and determined life, but you must build a place for it and deconstruct those things within yourself that prevent its emergence and go through periods of re-construction and de-construction internally and even in your circumstances, so that you may have the opportunity to have a new life, a new mind and a new destiny.

May the Presence be with you always.
Nasi Novare Coram