Living the Inspired and Determined Life

We’re about to produce a book that was given to me 20 years ago because there were so many other books that came before it. And we had, until more recent years, not the means to produce these books. So it’s pretty amazing.

But our development had to keep pace with our role, you see? And once you have a role like that, your development isn’t just about being happy or being peaceful or, you know, resolving personal issues. It’s like your development is about keeping pace with that role: being consistent, being present, being productive, gaining some control over your mind and emotions, at least enough that you can be consistent; you do have staying power; you are resilient; you are trustworthy. And this produces a level of personal development that just would not happen without these kind of demands because nothing’s expected of you, really.

So people may fear that God will ask them to do something. But—and I can understand that fear—it is until God asks you to do something that you will really begin to rise because otherwise, what? Rise for what? Why put in the effort to develop yourself if it’s not for something bigger than you, if you don’t find a role there that requires that of you, needs that of you? And the world needs something from you. You have to grow to be able to provide it, to receive it, to provide it.

So I look at this as kind of the second stage of personal development. The first stage is getting ready to have a real role, and the second stage is to grow with that role. And that’s a very different phase. It’s very focused. It’s specific. It’s functional—very functional. 

What you can do becomes more important than your ideology or your imagination or your spiritual understanding. It’s really what can you do to serve that which has been given to you? And I feel from where I stand that just makes all the difference because you’re never going to lead an inspired and determined life if it’s about you. You can be full of hyperbole or self-inflation or grandiose notions, but it’s never going to be the inspired and determined life, which means it’s really not going to inspire people very much.

So like the British MP working on peace in Northern Ireland, I mean, that man really did something through tremendous…I mean, always almost hopeless situation.

So this is something to think about is, I’m either developing for my real role or I’m developing to keep pace with the role as it’s beginning. And the role just doesn’t happen one day. It’s like an evolution. I mean, now I have to keep pace with this role that’s emerging in my life, which is requiring different things of me, more functional, more elemental, more real, rather than just looking good to myself or other people. 

The New Message says there’s only two things in life: There’s Knowledge and looking good. It seems kind of silly, but when you think about it, how much of everything we do apart from Knowledge is about looking good to ourselves or to someone? That’s another story. I won’t go down…another time for that one.

So being a part of the WWC, whether this is your ultimate goal or not, you’re here; you’re asked here to serve something. And to serve something begins to give you the evolution of a very small role, but a real role. Can you maintain that? Can you serve that? Can you overcome your own inertia? 

You know, we’ve talked about inertia. The thing that makes you feel like you’re trying to slog through the mud is inertia. It’s too much non-action has built up in your life. And then when you try to start to move, you feel like you’re just stuck in concrete, you know? And that’s what happens to the brain. The mind becomes like stone if you don’t keep working it and refreshing it and challenging it and giving it new learning.

So the problem of inertia is a really important thing, but the role begins to move; it requires you to move. It’s not, “I should move. I want to move. I will move.” No, you must move. And somehow that must is the missing ingredient, not that you to yourself must only, but the situation you’re in creates a sense of imperative that now begins to break down that inertia or that resistance or that ambivalence, whatever it is that’s making you sluggish or non-responsive.

In my situation, I had to keep moving constantly. There was so much movement required to keep pace with what was happening in my life. It wasn’t like I’d just go to sleep for six months and wake up, like saying, “Where have I been?” It’s like I had to keep pace. 

Steps to Knowledge was like a gift for the world and I’m sitting there with it: What am I going to do? How do I put this into a form? How do I begin to present it to people? Do I even know what it is?

So it’s interesting with the reception of Steps to Knowledge, it was kind of like the beginning of a family that now is a family of…how many books? They’re all kids. They’re all my kids. And they all gotta go out in the world and I gotta help them do that. It’s a lot of must there, okay? I mean, they’re not like kids, you know, they don’t misbehave and keep you up at night, but they’re there waiting for you to do something. He [Reed] was pretty good.

So I’m thankful for that in a way that movement really shaped me and really got me going. It kept me going. And even when I went through a period of illness, I was still going. I’m still going. Even when I was going through infusion, chemo, radiation, I was like a ghost. I had so little energy. I was so weak, I was still going. The motor never stopped running. And I just did whatever I could do with whatever I had in those times, and it was good for me to do that.

So the imperative of our world, the imperative of the Great Waves of change, this stuff can all ignite you like an ignition that slowly builds within you. That’s a gift. Otherwise, we just stall out in life and become self-obsessive and obsessive about other things and become very unhealthy, mentally.

I have created a list of what I think are important themes from this Vigil and things, perhaps, that were part of my core teachings and other teachings of this Vigil. And I’m going to make that available on the Community Site. So a big take-home set of things for everyone, both now and into the future, I’d like to have available to them. We don’t have time tonight to go through them all, okay.