A Full Teaching from the Messenger | Night 5, 2020 Steps Vigil

So tonight I’d like to talk about the pathway, the early stages of the pathway because I think for most of you, you are in the early stages of the pathway. And the pathway is actually much bigger than most people realize or we want to think. It’s not a pathway that is achieved by having ideas or insights or high spiritual notions, or holding yourself above other people or decorating yourself with spiritual icons or imagery. None of that gets you up the mountain. And getting up the mountain is what Knowledge is trying to do. 

I use the mountain analogy because at the bottom, you don’t really see anything, except trees and maybe some portion of the mountain. You don’t see the landscape surrounding it. You don’t even see…have a notion of what the trail above the tree line would actually look like and how long it might be, or how many twists and turns and how many points you might reach where you’re not sure you want to go on. Now it seems long. It’s not always exciting and edifying. In fact, much of the work you have to do within your own mind in life is real work—difficult, challenging. Not for the faint of heart is this.

So Knowledge basically has three tasks or three stages. And everyone has to go through this to some degree, depending on your destiny and also depending upon your circumstances and where you stand within your life. Obviously, someone who’s young is going to have a different kind of destiny than somebody who’s old, or older, just because they do not have the time, the energy or the ability to do certain things that a younger person could do. And because Knowledge is needed everywhere in all circumstances, there’s no end of opportunity in the world, surely.

So our task at the beginning is to go through these stages of development. And the first stage of the pathway to Knowledge is the path of unburdening from what is unnecessary, harmful and meaningless. Unburdening. You’re more in the process of letting things go than taking things on. But you are taking some things on. It reminds me in Steps to Knowledge—it is so amazing—it is breaking you down and building you up kind of at the same time.

So you’ll have a Step [ 93 ] that says, “I am here for a higher purpose.” It really feels great, doesn’t it? “I’m here for a higher purpose.” And then it gives you a Step [ 8 ] saying, “I will be still today”—which you are entirely unable to do—to show you how far you have to really go. It just gives you practices that are beyond where you are right now to humble you, but also to show you how big this journey really is. 

And while it’s beginning to dismantle your old notion of yourself—which is based upon assumptions, beliefs and social conditioning for the most part—it’s also building up your courage, your determination, your ability to experience inspiration, while it’s developing your skills of dedication, consistency, purpose, purposeful application of the Steps. It’s building all these skills, which you need for everything.

So Steps is working in many levels at once. And I wouldn’t expect any of us to fully know what all these levels are, even myself. But we’re in a process not of our own making, not made by human hands or human ideas: Divine gift. 

There may be many ways to Knowledge through many traditions, but this is the way that God has given for our time and for our circumstances here on Earth.

So the process of unburdening is about letting go of things that are unnecessary, harmful or meaningless. Many activities that we do physically and many processes of thought we have are harmful to us, degrading. Why would you ever take any action that would lower how much you value yourself? Or think things that would make you look less than who you are? 

So the unburdening is very deep, very…oh, my goodness…Because you can’t get where you’re going from where you are without dismantling at least some of your thinking and behavior and obligations in life. It’s just not possible—at least some, in some cases many, depending on your destiny and where you are in life.

This is not initiated by realization, self-realization. It takes something more powerful like a crisis, like a crisis where you look at your life and you know you cannot live that life anymore. It’s not just that you’re dissatisfied or irritated, or that you know it doesn’t work but you live it somehow. I’m talking about a crisis. Because it takes a crisis to move your life if it hasn’t moved for a long time—takes a Fire of Knowledge. It takes something really strong. Something has to strike you from within; from without, perhaps.

Because you see, people become so acclimated to where they are and how they are that they think they’re okay compared to other people, of course, which is a very low standard. They think they’re okay. You ask them, “How are you?” “I’m okay.” But they’re so not okay. But they’ve acclimated themselves to be a certain way and to see themselves in a certain way to avoid the kind of crisis of conscience that would impel them to make a radical change in their life. 

So everyone wants to avoid crisis. But sometimes crisis is the best thing. You could pray and say, “God, bring me to what…give me whatever it takes so that I can set my true path, get on my true path and travel down that path—whatever it takes to set me free to do that.” That’s a powerful prayer. Yeah.

So the beginning is not about acquiring things. It’s not about building up your personality or your ideology or your sense of yourself and your importance in the world. It’s about unburdening. If you’re willing to do that, you create an opening; you create space in your life for new learning and space in your life for Knowledge to fill. Here you begin to recognize what’s holding you back.

I was interested to see some of your comments about this. But I’d like to make…I’d like to establish what’s holding you back in a more pragmatic manner. 

The key things that are holding you back are people, work, place and things. Now your testimony indicated more internal things like fear and resistance and ambivalence and low self-esteem and laziness. Okay. That may seem to be what’s holding you back. But what’s really holding you back are people, work, place and things. You have relationships with all these things that are very predominating in your life. 

Of course, you feel all these internal factors. But trying to work out your internal factors alone is not going to resolve your problem. For many of you, it’s more a situational depression than it is an internal depression. If you’re not in the right place, you’re not going to meet the right people, you’re not going to see the things you need to see, you’re not going to have learning experiences you need. 

If you’re with the wrong people, they’re occupying your life; they’re influencing you. You’re adapting to be with them, probably in ways that really don’t represent your integrity. And they’re actually affecting you probably more than you’re affecting them.

Work? Well, your work is either functionally useful or unnecessary or even harmful. Because your greater work comes later. I’m just talking about work, the kind of work that is mundane.

Place? If you’re attached to a certain place, well then, if you’re meant to be somewhere else, you’re not going to experience the things you really need to experience in the place that you are. You would have to go to that place. This is not all about internal. You cannot work this out internally. You have to work out much of it circumstantially. People, work, place and things.

And then there’s your Four Pillars, which is a beautiful teaching in the New Message about how to recognize what makes your life stable or unstable. We’re going to be talking about stability and instability a little later on. So Four Pillars is very important. And your life is really only as stable as the weakest of your Pillars. So your Pillars is ongoing work. But it happens in the context if you’re moving in life. Otherwise, you’re just building a stronger foundation for where you don’t need to be, which is not what you want to do.

So over the years, you’ve given yourself to your fears and your habits of thoughts and your tendencies. And you can be stuck there for years trying to work that out. That is not what is going to move you down the road. Here you have to exercise your authority to break out. You have to deal with what your fundamental relationships are, and begin to work to set them or change them, reorient them or let them go. That’s movement. Without movement, there’s no real understanding. There’s only assumption and self-validation, basically.

So the problem here is you don’t really see the stage you’re in. Some of you think you’re kind of on the foundation of building a new life, when in fact, you’re still unburdening. Or you haven’t unburdened sufficiently to be able to really have your life move to the degree in which it may need to move. 

And then the problem with each of these stages is the time it takes to see, know and act. How long does it take you to see, know and act to do something you even tell yourself you know you need to do? Now be honest. Days? Months? Years?

So we go on to the second level. If you’ve unburdened sufficiently—doesn’t mean you’ve unburdened everything, but you’ve unburdened sufficiently that something opens up for you—you feel a sense of direction, and your life begins to move where it wasn’t moving before. You have some more energy because all the things that are holding you back, you’re losing energy to. Getting weaker instead of stronger the longer you linger there where you don’t…aren’t supposed to be. Because basically when people start out, almost no one is where they need to be. 

There’s a saying, a kind of a spiritual saying, “Everyone’s right where they need to be.” But the truth is that most people, or nearly everyone, are not where they need to be. And that’s why they’re suffering because from where they are, whatever needs to happen in their life is probably not going to happen. That’s suffering. That’s not just discomfort. That is suffering. Suffering is pain without end. So suffering ultimately is what brings you to God. It’s the thing they can move you out of the circumstances within which you live and cannot develop.

The second purpose of Knowledge is to rebuild the foundation of your life. You’ve already dismantled part of it. Maybe it seems like you just dismantled all of it. But you never really dismantled all of it. You carry forward the wisdom you’ve gained. You carry forward the strengths you have; you carry forward the good learning you’ve done; whatever you have done in your Four Pillars that has been beneficial and productive, you carry all that forward.

So there’s no total relinquishment or giving it over to God. Because if you give it over God, God gives it right back to you. “This is your problem. This is for you to work out.”

So building a foundation…Now…and the foundation is not the house. I want to make this clear. Some people think the foundation is where you get to see how it’s really going to turn out. No. The foundation is a foundation. If you’ve ever seen a foundation of a building, it’s like poured concrete with maybe some rebar or wood sticking out of it. Sure doesn’t look like anything. But that’s the work you have to do is that foundational work. And the New Message makes a big emphasis here. 

And to do this you have to stabilize your outer life, which means you’re withdrawing from the things that destabilize you, the people that destabilize you, the attractions that may generate nothing but confusion or self-doubt, the people who are weakening you. Because frankly in life, every relationship either strengthens you or weakens you to some degree, particularly with people you’re close to. So you begin to see this and recognize this and to withdraw from those things that are weakening you: People, places and things. And work.

This stage has many actions to take. So it’s not like you’re in a stage for a few months and then you go onto some other stage. You have many, many things to do here to begin to build a new foundation with what’s more appropriate to who you are. And this is where Knowledge can actually guide you to do certain things and to hold you back from doing certain things. And you can’t go back to where you were because that’s unthinkable. And you don’t really know where you’re going yet. So you’re kind of half-built. Your understanding is half-built, or partially built. You look more like a foundation than a house. But you’re building foundation: inner strength, determination, consistency, practice. This is where you practice stillness because you really need it, not because you’re gonna try to do it.

These things are all fortifying your foundation as a person. And you carry forward whatever foundation you’ve built prior to this. Because before you can do anything greater you have to become stronger and more resilient. As a weak person, you cannot do it. And Knowledge does not expect you to do it because you’re not ready. In this phase, you won’t have probably greater permanent relationships, but you may have some people who inspire you, who can walk with you for a while. The great relationships come later.

Now again, the problem is kind of still the same problem that you had the first stage was to recognize what stage you’re in. If you think you’re in some higher stage or more advanced stage, you will not understand where you are and what you really need to be doing. You know, seeking answers, high, high answers from Heaven or Knowledge, trying to put together the mysteries of the universe is not what you’re doing now. You are reorganizing your life—practically, foundationally. 

And the other problem is how long does it take you to see, to know and act? You could spend years in this stage, and this is only the second of the beginning set of stages. You could spend years here, kind of slowly tweaking your life…trying a few new things…This is why The Crisis is so important because the crisis creates fire. And fire creates intention. Should is not the same as must, nor as real or authentic.

We’re entering a world of great instability that’s going to be quite hazardous for people who are unprepared and who are not resilient. The world is helping you right now because there is no comfort zone. You are going to have to sidestep a pandemic that will be here for years, to be safe. You are going to have to do so many things…you’re going to have to be so with it to deal with what’s coming over the horizon, as well as rebuilding your own life. In fact, the world around you is telling you the kind of things you’re going to need to build. It’s a great way of giving up fantasy and delusion and stop dreaming about your future or who you are. The world is serving you in this way.

Now if you’re able to make progress here, another door can open for you. And this is the third stage of the beginning stages. 

The third stage of Knowledge is to build a new structure and focus for your future: practices, learning, new thinking, activities, Steps to Knowledge, great practices, re-engaging with the world. This is where you can build a whole new platform for a career in the world, for example, that can sustain you going forward within a new world reality. And I can’t think of too many careers that could sustain you going through a new world reality consistently.

So again, the world becomes part of your reference point here in your work Pillar. It’s not about what it makes me feel good and fulfills me. No. It’s what can you do that can make you stable, give you stability so the greater things can be given to you in the future? 

Again, the problem is not seeing where you are and the time it takes you to see, know and to act to do the many things you will have to do in this stage. If you do not build this platform for yourself, Knowledge cannot give you greater work to do. You can help others do greater work, and that’s beneficial. And that’s actually pretty important. But if that’s really not it, if that’s not your destination, then you have a longer journey and you have not yet arrived.

I began to receive the Revelation in January of 1983. But it would be 16 years before it would revealed to me what I was doing and who I was. Because during all that time, I had to prove myself to those who watch over me. And as I mentioned before in the Vigil, even before receiving Steps to Knowledge, I had to completely change the circumstances of my life—physically, geographically, relationally—everything. And every person and situation that I’d been in that wasn’t a part of that was gone—just because I had a long road to go.

But I still had to prove myself that I’m reliable, trustworthy; I have enough humility to do this. So they kept me in a cave for years and years and years with just a few people helping me to receive the Revelation. It’s a great way to undo ambition because the ambitious are never chosen. And whatever ambition was in me was certainly burned out in those years in the cave—what I call it the cave; it was actually a house, but it was like a cave; felt like a cave. 

There are more stages of development to come and you don’t need to know about them right now because that’s not where you are. And you would just fantasize about them and think that you’re in them, and you would try to imagine what they could be and all this, rather than seeing really where you are. I mean, if you have been studying this teaching for four or five years and your life hasn’t gone anywhere physically or tangibly, then you’re still in unburdening. 

And if you don’t yet have a real platform for what’s yet to come, then you’re probably in the second stage; your building that, or trying to. But if you take too much time, time unused is time lost. You may never make your rendezvous. You can’t run down that road, but you also can’t tiptoe down that road either. 

So as Steps says at the beginning, the intention is to keep you moving with the pace of the Steps—not too slow not too fast. 

So this is…I want to give you all a real picture of what the journey is like within the context of these three stages. Because if you do not succeed through these three stages…And none of them require perfection, by the way; I should make that point. There’s no mastery here; there’s only functionality. You don’t have to be perfectly stable. You don’t have to have…your life doesn’t have to be built solid. You don’t have to have immaculate circumstances. No—just enough to move forward. And Knowledge within you will move you or hold you back to tell you these things. 

And because you’ve already—if you’ve gone beyond the first stage—you’ve already given up at least much of what is meaningless, harmful and unnecessary, you certainly don’t want to take on anything new that fits into that category. So you become more guarded about what you do, who you’re with, what you give yourself to and so forth. And this represents maturity. And this is necessary. 

So in the process of having your old life dismantled and the new life being built simultaneously, as Steps to Knowledge does, you gain strength even while you let things go. There’s no jumping off a cliff here. 

So each stage has many Steps. Even if you were to move through them quickly, it would take quite a while to do them correctly; and you can languish in any one of them. And if you’re languishing, all Knowledge can do is urge you to go forth. There’s no other answer to seek. There’s no other remedy. 

And as far as lack of intention and laziness and all the things that you might have mentioned in our little exercise today, all that stuff gets burned off in the process. And you become stronger, more determined, more capable, more able to do things you’ve never done before or learned how to; more assertive in what really matters, and more guarded around things that don’t really matter. Naturally. 

It’s not like you had to…you can’t work this out internally. You’ll be there for years having the same conversation with yourself. This is why in my journaling, I never write down things like that. I only write down what I did and what happened because that’s what matters. And when you’re functioning in life, with life-like this, your life becomes more authentic, more meaningful, more sustaining; and you’re able to escape some of the internal eddies and endless conflicts that just paralyze people around you. So this is part of the pathway and no one gets to sidestep it. If they try, Knowledge will not emerge and they’ll just be creating a delusion for themselves in its place. 

So welcome to the big time. This is what it looks like. Nasi Novare Coram