Going Beneath the Surface of the Mind | Revelation Broadcast Event

My question for you tonight that I’d like to begin with is: 

What is the spiritual need in your life at this time? 

Take a moment. Think about your day, the day you just had. Think about the week that is now beginning, or just look at your life in general, and ask: What is the spiritual need in your life? Perhaps in a moment you can just capture a flavor or an image or an idea of what that is. Hang on to that. 

The teaching we’re going to hear tonight has a lot to offer you if you do have a spiritual need in your life. If you do not, I don’t think tonight’s teaching will offer you or be able to give you that much. So, feel free to be on your way if that’s not for you.

Tonight we’re going to be listening to an original revelation from the New Message being revealed or given for the first time tonight by Marshall, and it is titled Going Beneath the Surface of the Mind. This revelation really strikes at the heart of one of the biggest questions there is, which is: Who are you? How do you identify yourself? And what is your sense of self on a moment-to-moment basis?

And this revelation, as much of the New Message does as well, asks us to think of our deeper identity or ourselves as consisting of two minds. And that is really what tonight’s revelation is about, and is for; is for the fact that we have two minds. We have a surface mind and we have a deeper Mind. The surface mind is the mind that we think with, that we live in all day long probably, that we interact with others within; and it is typically very highly conditioned by culture, society, religion, family. It consists of all the ideas and thoughts within the mental environment around us. It’s not just us; it’s the collective us, operating through our own personal personality and psyche. So this is the surface mind.

And then there is a deeper Mind, and this is really our deeper spiritual nature—who we were before we were born into this world, and who we will become when we pass away from this life and from this world. The New Message calls this deeper spiritual Mind, Knowledge.

This goes back to the very earliest days of the New Message, almost four decades ago, when it described the knowing Mind, the Mind within that has an inexplicable ability to know things and to be certain about things, even without evidence to substantiate that. 

Really, that’s just an outward manifestation of a whole different Intelligence that lives within every sentient life form throughout the universe, and that includes us, every person in the world today. Within every person is this consciousness, this Intelligence which really represents our life beyond physical manifest form. 

And this is what the New Message calls Knowledge, because the most common outward manifestation of it is this ability to know things—to simply look at a situation, or be talking to someone or thinking about something and to have a spontaneous knowing, which is not the result of our own personality, our own preferences in the matter, or our conditioning in the world. It’s really an inexplicable certainty that is possible for each person. 

And I’m sure maybe you can look back on your life and see moments of knowing, moments where you just knew something to be true. And maybe others around you didn’t or saw it very differently, but you knew. And it might have borne out very powerfully in terms of a relationship or a decision that you made where it was very important to have known that.

So this is the Mind of Knowledge, and the New Message gives us so much to think of when it comes to Knowledge. There’s a whole book called The Power of Knowledge in the New Message, and there’s a whole book of preparation called Steps to Knowledge.

So tonight’s revelation is about going beneath the surface mind toward this Mind of Knowledge and building a practice and an approach that can bring our thinking conscious state into greater proximity to a knowing state, and over time through practice, to marry the two minds together, to bring them together so much that there is a channel from one to the other that can operate moment to moment and allow the Mind of Knowledge to speak through us, to guide us, to give us directions to take or a move in life to make.

So this is what’s possible here in the New Message. And so with the question I asked you to begin with—which is: What is the spiritual need in your life?—I would encourage you to consider another question, which is: Is there any need in your life for a spiritual practice of some kind? Do you feel like you need to be practicing something at a spiritual level day-by-day? Or if not, life on the surface in the thinking mind, is that enough?

I know for me as I face a very busy life and as I engage in the world around me, which feels very different than it did even just a few years ago with all the change occurring around us, the need for some sort of anchoring or centering to the Knowing Mind is very much a part of what I feel is needed. And so building that practice, finding a way within your life, my life, to do that could be very important. And I know it is for me.

And so as I listened to tonight’s revelation, I took a lot of tips and insight into what I could do now to begin to rebuild my practice after a time being away from it. And I found this revelation very, very special in that way. 

I’d like to share with you three passages from the revelation:

Knowledge is trying to move your life in a certain direction, but if you keep trying to move your life in a different direction, you will feel a tremendous inner conflict and uncertainty. And the more willful you are, the more determined you are to take your life where you think it should go, the greater this conflict will be, and the more you will be disassociated from your deeper nature and the deeper current of your life.

This disassociation is the fundamental problem and source of suffering for people. Beyond sheer physical deprivation from lack of food, water, shelter or sufficient security, this is the source of people’s anxiety. It is the source of their longing. It is what they are attempting to find in their relationships, what they are seeking through their pursuits and their acquisitions—this feeling of being connected, of being whole, of escaping the plaguing and driving sense of fear and inadequacy.

So this feeling of being connected, of being whole and of escaping a sense of fear and inadequacy—this is what’s possible by building this connection to the knowing Mind within and beginning to integrate into your daily life some form of spiritual practice which could be helpful to you.

So tonight we’re going to listen and read the revelation. We’re the first people to do so, so thank you again for being here for that. And after that, I’ll be available to take any questions you have about the New Message, about Marshall, about what you heard in the revelation tonight. And I’ll share with you one thought, or one very important insight for me, that I took from this, and then we’ll wrap up. So with that, let’s listen to and read the revelation, Going Beneath the Surface of the Mind.

[The revelation plays.]

This was the revelation, Going Beneath the Surface of the Mind, received by Marshall Vian Summers and released to you and to the world for the first time. Hopefully you found some things in this message to be most poignant for your life situation, and hopefully you can revisit that.

I’d like to share three messages from this revelation.

You have two minds within you. You need to pay attention to the deeper Mind.

Learn to escape the agitation of your surface mind.

It is not just about being at peace. It is about making a real connection to the deeper Intelligence within you.

Something really leapt out for me from this revelation, and I’d like to share a little bit about that and then also some passages which really speak to it. 

You know, I think we all arrive at this moment where we need something, something needs to change. We’re seeking maybe just comfort and consolation or maybe a next step or a key to understanding our current experience or the condition of our life. And we land at that place and we open ourselves to something—maybe this revelation, maybe this broadcast, maybe the whole New Message—and we say to ourselves after hearing it, “Yes, yes. This is good. I should do this.”

But in a week or a month or a year, you haven’t done it. You know, you’ve gone along. You got a little bit of spiritual comfort to ease the continued journey in Separation, the continued journey of doing what you would like to do or are obligated to do or just in the demands of life on the surface which can be unending. And then this need builds up and you come back to the watering hole, you take a sip and then you wander back out into the desert. Nobody ever wants to stay at the watering hole and change their life and build a new life—a hydrated life versus a desiccated life. And why is this?

And this topic of dissatisfaction I think really reveals it and this revelation speaks to it. Without recognizing the facts and the feeling of our actual existence apart from Knowledge, without having that courage and honesty to see it for what it is, we cannot generate the willpower to actually take the steps necessary to undergo this transformation that the New Message is talking about of bringing our thinking, surface mind into a married state—a deeply connected state—with our knowing Mind, and thus integrating ourselves completely.

So I’d like to share the three passages that really brought this up for me.

Even if you are successful in your pursuits and are able—through sheer determination or manipulation and deception of others—you are able to achieve your personal goals, you have made no progress at all if you are not moving in the direction that your life is meant to go. In fact, you have taken yourself farther afield, and you will feel restless and incomplete as a result.

…you will be restless and discontented because the deeper need of your soul has gone unmet, and you have taken yourself so far afield, so far off course, that you do not know where you are now. You are lost, and your life is empty. You keep trying to have more things, do more things, have more experiences to somehow offset this feeling of inadequacy and longing. You keep the mind stimulated, focused and preoccupied, but deep within you, you know you are not living the life you are meant to live.

It is this awareness and this dissatisfaction that finally can enable you to make a fundamental shift and a re-evaluation of your life and circumstances. It is this dissatisfaction that is the light of hope, the light at the end of the tunnel, a sign that great change may be achievable.

I definitely personally resonated so much with that statement a few quotes ago about trying to offset that feeling, right, that haunted feeling on the inside—keeping the mind stimulated, focused, preoccupied. And deep within you, you know you’re not living the life you know you must live, and so you come to this broadcast. But what do you do tomorrow? What is your direction in life which accounts for the days and weeks and months to come? What will actually happen? And I really feel that having the courage to recognize our real state and condition internally and externally and to muster the confidence to set out in a direction that could actually address that is so important. And here two statements actually leapt to mind for me as I was listening to this revelation a few days ago. I’d like to share that with you. 

Don’t fight the feeling.

Start telling the truth about your experience.

Don’t fight the feeling that you’re having about how your life really feels. And start telling the truth to yourself and to others about your experience. This may help generate that conviction to really go another way, to really build a spiritual practice, to really take the Steps to Knowledge, which is not just a book, a step a day; it’s a pathway in life. And in all likelihood it’s not the path you’re presently on. And so to actually get onto that path as a lived path—not an idealized path or, you know, a cherished possible goal for some day—but to actually be on that path, I think, requires going in, not fighting the feeling, starting to tell the truth to yourself about your experience, and generating the conviction, the willpower, that heat that’s going to be required to really do the work to get to Knowledge over time and to stay with it and to want that. Not as a big should like something you should do, but something that really does bring together what you know and what you want into one will over time.

If you’re going to ever do that, you have to account for the surface mind, the personal side of yourself. And do not silence that voice; that voice is a key participant at the table. And really what the New Message is about is  bringing that voice into its order, into its right order alongside the knowing voice and so that one can serve the other, but both can move forward as they will to do. So I really feel that this topic of dissatisfaction is something that could be important for some of us. 

I also want to—for the longtime students here, those who are not new—I want to share this passage as well. Oh, there’s one more passage I wanted to share on dissatisfaction. Actually, this is the home run hit right here.

When you stop pretending that you are happier than you really are, when you stop identifying with all your possessions and accomplishments and begin to tell the truth about your deeper experience, then you realize there is a greater need within you that is calling for you and that you must respond to.

That’s the home run hit right there: to stop pretending that you’re happier than you are. To stop identifying with your possessions and accomplishments, to begin to tell the truth—I think that combination of events on the inside combine to create a tipping point in our experience. And it may not be time in your life for that, and I acknowledge that. I mean, I think it needs to be time. 

So this is not another ideal, another, you know, way to get the knowing experience, another way to get what you want. It’s an authentic and original event that’s meant to take place in our experience, but it needs the whole other darker side of our experience for us to actually do it. It can’t just be we’re questing for the light, we’re seeking for truth, we have all these spiritual ideals and beautiful images and names and language and poetry. It can’t all be the beautiful, good stuff. 

I think the darker side of life—which we all have, every single one of us, we will or do have a darker side to our life experience—that is probably where the bulk of the fuel will come from to actually power the rocket out of the atmosphere. It’s down there. It’s in the ground. And so I do feel the New Message is inviting us to go into the ground of ourselves, of our life experience, the record of our life events to get that fuel and to start bringing it not just to burn it on the surface of the ocean, meaningless, right, and polluting, but to actually get it into the rocket and to get the rocket up out of the atmosphere. 

So the New Message is the whole picture. It’s not just, you know, the spiritual side of life. It is the other side of life. And I think bringing the two together and doing that level of inner reckoning or inner recognition is really it. So thank you for letting me share that with you. 

I do want to make time for a few questions because there’s a really good question, and I really want to talk about it. But before I do, I do want to bring forward just this one other passage because I think it’s really important for us who are students of the New Message or have been for some time.

The answer is within you, but you must bring your life into a kind of focus and orientation in order for this Knowledge to emerge. It is not like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Your life must be moving in the direction it is meant to move. Then you will feel the movement of Knowledge within yourself.

So there’s a lot going on in this passage actually, more than may meet the eye at first. And it’s not the rabbit part, either; it’s the other parts. It’s this thing of bringing one’s life into a focus and orientation, which is to say you have to be facing in the right direction. You know, like a vessel at sea, you can go in any direction. You can spin the vessel 360 degrees. And you can get very confused doing that, especially if you’re not moving in any certain direction. 

But the orientation, I think, is really important. And I have many times in my life experienced being facing in the wrong way or being out of orientation, and therefore everything goes out of focus. And I can be asking all the right questions and doing inner work to discover maybe the answer, but I’m not even facing the right way. 

And so I think it’s really good at times to really look at your life and do a 360 and see, you know, where does my energy go? What do I think about? How do I spend an average day? Okay, that’s very important to understand that. That’s a lot of what accounts for direction, orientation. And then do the 360. Is there anything that’s behind you that you’re not facing that’s there? Or that you’re not looking at but it’s starting to, it’s starting to bark at you? And go look at that. What’s barking at you in your experience? Do that 360. 

The second part of this passage, then, is once you’re facing in the right direction, you have to get moving because the movement affirms the reality of Knowledge itself. It’s not like you’ll know or you’ll have a deep profound enlightenment level experience of Knowledge that will then compel you on this great journey in a certain direction and then all the movement will just happen. It’s like, no. There’s confusion all along the way, especially when you stop moving. 

And to continue movement is really important because that’s like the real vote, right? There’s the fake vote and then there’s the real vote within. You can entertain doing what you know. That’s not a real vote. That doesn’t have the weight of a real internal commitment. But when you actually do something—even if it’s relatively small and there’s impact, there’s results; other people are impacted by it—that is a commitment made within, a vote cast on behalf of Knowledge. So, just my encouragement. Keep moving. I know I’ve always advocated it, and that’s the heart and center of my studenthood is: Where am I going? And: Am I going? 

And if I’m stalled out, I can think about why I’m stalled out—and that’s important—and understand some dynamics or tendencies or disabilities that are causing that. But ultimately it’s, well, where do I need to be facing? And how can I take a meaningful step in that direction and then do it? Because once you do it, the sense of confirmation at the level of Knowledge—literally Knowledge in that moment awake within you and communicating to the thinking part of you—is happening, and that’s what you need. You need live feedback from the deeper part of yourself telling you, “Yes, you’re in the right place doing the right thing. Keep going.” Like, I think that’s food for the soul right there. 

And so if everything is entertained or thought about or mused upon, it’s not enough. It’s not enough. We actually have to be on the road. And so I advocate a movement centered approach to spiritual practice and especially to engaging with the New Message. So, I’ll leave that with you there.

I want to turn to this question we have. This is a question from Lewi: 

“Where does personal responsibility and the guidance of Knowledge meet?” 

That is a phenomenally good question, and one that has been at the center of my studenthood for some years. And I want to share a few thoughts on this. I’ll start by kind of voicing or painting a picture of the two extremes. 

So there’s the extreme of absolute personal responsibility, which is you are the director of your life; you are the commander in the chair. Whatever you do in your career, your family, your house, your projects, your hobbies, it’s all directed. And I think if you look around you, you can see folks who are demonstrating that approach—master and commander, you know—and that domineering energy over one’s life and what happens in one’s life. I’ve known folks who have been in that dynamic for a long time. I worked for one, actually, in my employer; and that was very important and interesting for me to see where that kind of life leads you and leads one. And that maybe is a topic for another discussion. 

The other side of the extreme is the person who is all about waiting for Knowledge. They are living in a beatific universe daily, even momentarily, and it’s all about what Spirit and grace and the mystery of synchronicity and all—okay, lots of different spiritual concepts I could throw out there—but they’re living in this kind of circus land of spirituality.

And they’re not taking responsibility for their health. They’re not making moves in life and owning the responsibility to do so. They may just be putting on God or Knowledge. And so things happen, but it’s not their fault when it goes wrong and it’s…Or it doesn’t go wrong. Maybe they paint a picture where nothing’s ever gone wrong, only the right thing has ever happened. So it’s a dangerous avenue to go down.

So those are the two extremes. I think ultimately you have to…Lewi, it’s a great question, and I know I have fallen on one side or the other many times. I would put out that in my experience where that line is between personal responsibility and the guidance of Spirit is way over; it’s not right in the middle. Some might say, “Oh, it’s right in the middle.” No, it’s not. It’s way to the side of personal responsibility because day-to-day, moment-to-moment, decision-to-decision, there’s a lot that you need to do just to stay functiona, healthy and even alive. And you just need to make the obvious rational decisions you need to make in many cases and not put that on Spirit to guide you. 

I think as you step out and look at your life more broadly, that’s where that meeting point starts to center out. But day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month I think it’s very much on the side of our personal responsibility. And I think the New Message advocates that time and time again. And Knowledge itself needs that from us. It needs us to be a responsible actor in our lives.

If we let everything go haywire and then rush to Spirit, what is Spirit going to really be able to do with a person who has deeply ingrained habits around not taking responsibility, not doing difficult things, not having difficult conversations, for example? 

So I think the marriage of two minds indicates a meeting point, you know, two-thirds over, if not more. And of course that’s different for all of us. We all live different lives with different levels of responsibility. I do think you’ll find that meeting point as you look at your record of decisions, as you look at your life condition, the condition of your health, your affairs, your relationships.

If you can do so honestly, that’s where you’ll start to see, “Oh my goodness, I did not take enough responsibility in this and this and this.” And it’s right there to be seen. I mean, it’s strewn across the landscape, frankly—the wreckage of life, the detritus; it’s right there to be seen. 

And then there are other times where we realize, “Wow, I was just being willful and assertive and doing what I wanted to do, and I was not actually guided and I actually needed to be guided at that time.” So there’s definitely a lot of benefit from doing The Deep Evaluation that the New Message puts forward, which is a practice in the New Message, and really trying to find that meeting point where it does feel right on both sides of the coin. So I invite you to look to your own life for the record. 

And I also want to contribute that, you know, there is a process that I’ve developed or learned—both—through the New Message on how to make responsible Knowledge guided decisions. And of course, I can’t claim to be an expert in this, and I’ve certainly made decisions that were not using this process, but I increasingly anchor into this and it does me well.

The way I experience it is that something is off. Something’s not right, or something needs to be done that’s not being done. And often the evidence of that, it’s not immediately obvious that that’s the case. The evidence is     actually in my moods, attitudes, thoughts, emotions, which is one reason why I highly advise not shutting down the listening feedbacking from those to yourself. Like, you really need to be listening to your personal side because your personal side is going to be putting off signs and symptoms that something needs to change at a bigger level in life. It’s like the canary and the coal mine, right? We have to look over to the canary occasionally.

And so the personal is side is putting off signs and symptoms. If you can recognize those and then step back and actually take stock of your overall experience of a situation or your whole life, you start to kind of zero in on what is the need or what is the problem or what is the opportunity. And again, that 360 is really helpful here. 

If you can zero in on knowing that a decision is needed in a certain area of your life, then you begin the process of actually making the decision. And for me, what I tend to do is I walk around that. I look at it from multiple perspectives and I have to account for the stakeholders, you know. I think it’s really important before going to Knowledge with a question that you ask yourself: What do I want? And, what do I fear? You have to bring that forward. Otherwise, those will be creating powerful false knowing experiences. They’re almost like knowledge that’s not Knowledge. But it feels like Knowledge because it’s powerful and deep.

So if you can bring forward desire and fear, preferences, put that on the table, and then test the decision in multiple directions. Say, “Okay, I will do this and this is how I’ll do it”, and just sit with that for a few days. Imagine it. You can do a visualization around that. And then you can test it the opposite direction. And you really do start to gain a feel for the outcome should you make one decision or another.

And then for me, I’ll make that decision, but I’ll be honest if I’m not following Knowledge. And if I know I’m not following Knowledge, I’ll move cautiously. Sometimes it’s not just a clear yes/no. Sometimes it’s a yes, but there’s something else here influencing me or the decision. And you have to proceed with caution without that resounding yes. And I’ve definitely experienced that in recent times.

So there’s a process. And I’m not sure I brought that forward all that coherently here, but there’s a process for making responsible Knowledge guided decisions, I think. And I do really feel feeling out where that meeting point needs to be in your life is so important to not give it all to God or to Knowledge, and to not become the rugged individualist or whatever…Many, all cultures have their equivalent persona or archetype of of the person who is taking full control. And so to not be on either side of that extreme: really important. So Lewi, thank you again for your question.

We have a comment from Carol here getting back to the first question in making a decision, quote: “Should I make this decision?”

Marshall has taught in the past on this topic of the first question—and the New Message also speaks of it—which is often the question we’re asking isn’t the question to ask. And so the answer either is not there or it just represents a very strong preference or emotion. And so, that’s a moment to back away and get down to the root question that really speaks to the core need that we’re experiencing. 

And again, this is why the dissatisfaction teaching and this whole thing about being honest about one’s experience is so important because it’s often in that hard rough feeling exists the core need itself, which we often try to resolve up on the surface of life. You know, “I think I’m going to move or get a new job or buy a new car or take a trip around the world”, or “I think I need a new partner”, or whatever. I mean, it’s endless what the mind can try to do to alleviate something, you know, a mile down. The key is to go a mile down, I think. And that practice, Carol, yes, of getting to the first question is a way to do that. Thank you. 

So, thank you all for being here to listen to this new revelation from the New Message. I’ve got a few books of the New Message here where you can read and learn more about the topic of spiritual practice and building the foundation for a new life. 

I invite you to read or listen to this revelation again. It is up on NewMessage.org as of this moment. And all the books and revelations of the New Message are up on the New Message Library. And we have three more revelations that we will be bringing forward in the months to come: The Still Mind, The Retribution, and Errors in Religious Understanding—three seemingly very different topics, but mysteriously united in one very common theme, I think.

So, thank you all so much for being here. And hopefully tonight gave you something, some insight into how to build your spiritual practice and your approach to the mind of Knowledge within. And I know I’ll be taking more from this revelation in the days ahead, as well.

So with that, I’ll say good night thank you all for being here and take care.