Marshall Vian Summers Speaks on Knowledge: The Spiritual Mind Within All of Us

 

Watch a Live Broadcast of Marshall Vian Summers speaking on Knowledge: The Spiritual Mind Within All of Us, May 11, 2019.

This communication is part of a series of live, public teachings from Marshall, given to the growing Worldwide Community of students of the New Message.

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~Share Your Experience~

Sayings of the Messenger shared during the broadcast

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Patricia: Welcome. My name is Patricia Summers.

Reed: And my name is Reed Summers.

PS: And we’re speaking to you from the New Message Sanctuary here in Boulder, Colorado, in the United States. And this is a really important time as we all know, deeply know, and we’re gathering now. Some of us are here. So many of you are there, at all times of the day and night. So we thank you for coming and for being here, for finding the New Message and for finding Marshall. It’s so very important when the Worldwide Community can gather at this time with him.

So take a moment, if you will, and consider and look back in time and see the journey that you have taken to be here, to be in this moment. Take a moment. Go way back. See your initial steps. See those important moments. See the delays. Remember the pressure, the restraint, over the years. Knowledge walked with you every step, every step. And this is everything to do with how and why you’re here.

For myself, I want to be really present to you. In the last I would say 24 to 48 hours, I’ve actually been thinking of so many of you that I have had the privilege to meet and spend some time with—even if it’s just a moment—to consider your experience of being in the world and how the world looks to you from where you stand. So I’ve been thinking of you all.

RS: So from wherever you are, welcome to this morning here in the bright sunshine of Colorado where Marshall Vian Summers will be sharing with us a teaching on Knowledge, the Spiritual Mind within all of us that we are now studying in the Free School of the New Message during the months of May and June leading up to the 2019 Steps Vigil, which is a 20-day gathering that occurs every night live online and here in the Sanctuary where we commemorate the 20-day period in which Marshall received Steps to Knowledge, the book of spiritual practice, the roadmap to Knowledge itself within us.

So this is the beginning, you could think, of an opportunity for you today, starting this morning, to better understand the pathway to Knowledge, what it means to be a man or woman of Knowledge increasingly in the future, and then also after today, to enter this period of preparation and vigil for yourself for Knowledge within you to emerge in yourself and in the world.

So from today until June 14th, it’s about a month, a little over maybe, in which we have this opportunity to come back within ourselves to make space and just to come back to the center of wisdom and guidance and direct knowing, and then from there, to step forward back into our lives and go where we must go. So this is an opportunity that lasts some weeks.

So it’s our hope that you can see the need for you to make that space to have that opportunity and to identify that you want that beneath all the other things of life perhaps for you. I know for me, I want that. And that is what I need beyond anything else because that is what will lead to everything important that is to come in my life, and certainly for you as well, I think.

PS: You know, there are some very big movements afoot in the world as we all know in these consequential times. And so Knowledge itself as a force, as a living reality, and our utter, absolute greater Intelligence, as the New Message reminds us and reveals to us, is seeking to be a part of this, increasingly. And the only way that it can be is through people, through us and through others. And what I see is more people coming, almost like these meeting tents of old. And there are more people coming.

And so we have the privilege of preparing a place that others may come to join in. But I’m telling you, and you know yourself, the journey can be very disorienting. So there are those who are coming who have been through a lot. They’ve been through a lot. And one has to go through a lot to reunite with this aspect of themselves.

So anyway, that’s what we’re about, is making a way for Knowledge to participate in the world on a world level, as well as at the level of individual lives, but also for others to come, to come and undergo their process of restoration and to begin to put themselves back together in keeping with who they really are and why they were sent here and what they have the possibility of contributing. So they’re coming. I can see them. You can see them. They’re coming. And it’s an important opportunity for Marshall to be with them. It’s a fulfillment, a fulfillment of a request.

RS: And what Marshall gives today is for them, too. It’s not just for us here this morning. It’s for them, all those who are to come and all those who are at every level of awareness and life work who are all over the mountain of Knowledge, struggling here, laboring there, flat parts, steep parts. So what Marshall gives today is really a well of resource and wisdom for all of us and all those to come.

So Marshall will share this today, and then we will have a time of open floor and conversation together between Patricia and I and you and Marshall. And you’ll have an opportunity to share your experience and your dilemmas, your insights. And we can benefit all together by hearing that and responding to that.

So let’s take a moment of stillness and just bring our minds into a place of openness, receptivity, clarity…and recognize this important opportunity today to hear from the Messenger for the New Message from God.

25:40

Marshall: So today, given that we represent a one-room schoolhouse, all who are viewing us from afar around the world, I welcome you all for a one-room schoolhouse. And being a one-room schoolhouse, I’m going to share with you things that are very fundamental and some things that are more advanced so that perhaps something that I say today will speak to where you are and what you need at this moment, but also speak to people who will hear this recording in the times to come that it also may speak to something in them that needs to be heard and recognized.

Knowledge is a very big subject. I will certainly not attempt to map all of its dimensions and how it may manifest in people’s lives. I think we’re the living experiment of that—how it will manifest in your life, in particular, what you will have to find out about yourself to be able to become a real recipient of it, not only to use Knowledge, but actually to come into relationship with Knowledge and ultimately to a place where you unite with Knowledge more completely.

So I’m here today to speak about this deeper Intelligence, this mysterious force that lives within us beyond the realm of our intellect, beyond the realm of our social conditioning. A greater power connects us to where we’ve come from, connects us to who sent us, holds for us what we’re here to do, whom we are to meet, specifically, why we are in the world at this time, and what our role may ultimately be as we make this journey towards Knowledge.

People have heard about things related to Knowledge like intuition or gut feelings or insights, visions. These kinds of things can all be the outer manifestation of Knowledge, but Knowledge itself is far greater. It actually represents who you really are, not just temporarily as a person living in the world, but who you really are—permanently, forever—such a very different reality that Knowledge represents for us. It’s not just a bigger person or bigger self, the bigger identity that has a new name. It’s really a part of us who we barely know, so consumed living in the world as the world is so consuming to live in.

So today we’re going to explore some aspects of Knowledge, some of the difficulties people have coming to terms with Knowledge or even recognizing it at the outset, and what some of the stages or levels of development mean and represent, and how you might see yourself there, too.

There are certain things that always must be clarified so that even our initial approach becomes easier, more simple. Knowledge itself is remarkably simple. It’s just so vast and mysterious that it escapes our conceptual capabilities. But it, itself, is fundamental and simple. So in time, we as individuals, people in the world, have to learn to become more fundamental, more simple. Complexity here is not the issue.

The real issue or question is: Can you be in the world guided by this greater Intelligence and power within you in such a way that you become a vehicle for it? And through this, your mind is restored, your engagement with your deeper nature is restored, and what you are meant to give to this world can actually be given where it needs to be given, how it needs to be given—things that we cannot sit on the sidelines and figure out.

This is not an armchair journey. It’s not a journey of entertaining yourself with visions and fantasies and grand notions of yourself, or what the world should be. It’s something that’s going to bring you back into the world in a very dynamic and significant way. We call that living the inspired and determined life. And the question is: Who or what is determining that life?

So we have to approach this as beginners. No matter how much spiritual teaching you have responded to or been involved in, how much reading you may have done, this requires a beginner’s mind because you’ve never really been on this mountain before. Spiritual work is not an accrual of insights or grand ideas. It is a journey back to what is essential and purposeful for you. It’s not anti-intellectual, but it does mean that the intellect has to serve a greater power within you to be really truly beneficial and to be the magnificent vehicle of communication that it really is meant to be.

So first of all, to bring clarity, let us think of Knowledge as a deeper Mind within you, not the mind that you think with, not the mind that you live in probably 99% of the time. There’s nobody in the world who’s not living in this mind at least part of the time, no matter how advanced they may become. They still have vestiges of personality. They still experience fear, pain, preference to some degree. So there’s no escaping this surface mind; we actually need it. Knowledge could not communicate to the world without this being its vehicle of communication. So there’s no deprecation of the mind here, the intellect. It’s only that its role and service have to really shift here to serve a greater power beyond its comprehension—not a power far away or in some lofty distant state, but that actually works within us and through us, all of us, if the opportunity for it to express itself can be made.

Two minds. We have an intellect, a worldly mind that the world has created and you have created since the moment you were born. And we live in this mind. This mind becomes our reality, our identity. We try to find meaning and purpose there as we try to navigate an uncertain and difficult world. Your development here in early childhood and adolescence is important. You need some functionality in this mind to be able to participate in the world and to find some security here, and some meaning here. But this is an intermediate stage, seen from a larger perspective.

The mind has to be a platform for something greater that lives within you and beyond you, and this is where true meaning and purpose is found in life. The mind itself, our personal mind, being temporary, being tied to the outer world, cannot give us these greater things, try as we may, give our lives to pursuits spiritual, material, relational—anything. Whatever it may be, the real fulfillment is found at a deeper level and expressed at a deeper level.

So, whatever stages on this journey—all of us—we don’t really know where we are in this journey. You can’t really say, “I’m at a higher level,” or “I’m at the ultimate level,” or “I’m even a beginner” because you don’t know how you’ve been struck before by the powers of Heaven. You might have been struck when you were seven-years-old, something that stood out amongst all your other experiences, which are all like dross that don’t really even matter. But one or two things stand out from your early life. Something struck you. It may not make sense, may not fit into your idea of yourself, but there it was. And that stayed with you.

So even being a beginner is hard to tell. Some people who are beginners come to The Way of Knowledge actually having some real experiences of Knowledge. They just don’t know they had an experience of Knowledge. Other people come filled with spiritual idealism, thinking that Knowledge is guiding them at all times, and they are really a beginner. But they can’t accept that they are a beginner because they’ve invested so much in building up this idea of themselves. This personal mind now becomes a personal spiritual mind. It’s very grand. It’s very special. And all that has to be undone. It’s all stuff in the way now. It’s whether you have a simple mask or a complex mask, a simple mind or a complex mind.

So we have the intellect, this worldly mind, that the world has shaped and we have shaped through our response to it. Then we have the deeper Mind, which the New Message calls Knowledge, which represents the eternal part of you, the part of you that lives beyond time and space. It’s connected to your Source and to those who sent you into the world, to begin with.

This is not a resource you can use to enhance your life. It’s far more powerful than your intellect. And it’s incorruptible. It cannot be corrupted by the world or any force in the universe. Can anyone really honestly say that they personally cannot be corrupted by any force in the world or force in the universe? But Knowledge being beyond our normal definitions, functioning on its own with its own dynamic, is something that we have a hard time understanding. So we’ll talk about understanding as we go forward.

The essential element of our personal mind is to survive, first of all, and to try to find fulfillment living in physical reality, which is very hard to do for an immortal being whose almost entire existence has been outside of physical reality. I’m talking about you. It’s like trying to live your whole life in a tiny little trailer, you know, the kind of trailer that a car pulls? You’re going to find all purpose, meaning and direction within this little tiny trailer? You, who have lived in the expanse, are going to try to now recreate purpose, meaning and direction in this very constrained and changeable environment?

The personal mind is fundamentally based in fear—the fear of not having, the fear of loss. It has no real security. It has no real permanence. Tied to the body, it experiences all the pains of the body, which are real and cannot be fully avoided. It is facing an uncertain and dangerous world where nothing is really very assured, where honest and meaningful relationships seem to be hard to find, competing with all other minds who are trying to do the same thing. And what you have is a pretty chaotic reality despite the appearance of stability that we all try to create and have for ourselves, understandably. It is really chaotic. This is why you can’t create your own reality because you’re living in a reality that everyone else is creating.

I’ll let you sit with that for a minute.

Well, you can try to create your reality, but you’d have to withdraw deeper into Separation to do that. It just leads to mental illness, fundamentally.

So I’d like to read to you this quote. This is from Greater Community Spirituality. This is the teaching on What is Knowledge? which I really recommend you all read. It’s just a beautiful presentation of Knowledge, far more beautiful than anything I think I could say.

“You have an opportunity to come back into relationship with Knowledge. Here your personal mind, the mind that is conditioned by your world, and your Impersonal Mind, the mind that you brought with you from beyond the world, reunite in a meaningful relationship based upon a purpose in the world and upon relationship with the world and with people who support that purpose.

I could do the whole teaching on this one quote; it’s so rich. It ties so many things together.

So Knowledge seeks to create a true alignment within yourself. And that alignment can be said in a very simple way as your body serves your mind; your mind serves Knowledge, or Spirit; Spirit serves God. But that is not the order or alignment that we have living in the world.

Living in the world, most people’s minds are trying to serve the needs of their body and they want God to serve their mind serving the needs of their body. And many people authentically are trying to serve the Creator, but their alignment isn’t established strongly enough for that to become really manifest and purposeful.

Now, there are notable exceptions. I mean, there are individuals out there who, without even being religious or ideologically religious, are absolutely living everything that I’m going to be telling you today. They went through stages to development without even knowing there were stages of development. And they demonstrate amazing things that most people can’t or won’t demonstrate.

So why would this be important? Why is this an important thing? Why is Knowledge important? Why is what I’m going to say to you important? It’s because we’re living with a crisis. And fundamentally this crisis is the crisis of living in Separation, living in a very small container of a mind and a body trying to survive in a dangerous and unpredictable world, competing with other individuals here at various degrees, both personally and nationally, who are trying to do the same thing, trying to find meaning, or even trying to find God, trying to find life purpose in an environment such as this where everything is defined for you, not by you; where every pathway is laid out by others for you, not by you; where you either fit or you don’t fit, and if you don’t fit, life becomes very much harder.

This is a crisis. This is how Heaven looks at us living in Separation. There’s no condemnation there, it’s just simply we’ve gone out of communication. “Somehow our emissaries down there, we can’t seem to reach them; they’re not getting back to us. The channel went dead—this person, that person, this person, that person, this person…” Those who are beginning to respond, well, they get consumed by the world.

If we weren’t eternal beings, this would just be the normal course of things. Of course, you get consumed by the world. And you get so consumed that they bury you underground or dispense with you in some other way.

The crisis can be experienced if you ask yourself: Am I living the life I know I was meant to live? Am I living the life I know I was meant to live?

We know what the crisis looks like, both in harsh terms and in more subtle terms: anger, hatred, violence, degradation, the destruction of the surface of the earth; more subtle: manipulation, relationships that are not true, people using everything for advantage and everything else…

And there is harmony of…The earth has its own harmony, but it’s only a place we can visit; we cannot reside in permanently. And we’re all here for a purpose. We’ve all been sent here for a purpose. This is why mundane things can never really satisfy us for very long. They don’t satisfy us at the outset. That’s why we keep wanting more of them—more and more and more and more—trying to satiate this need that can’t be satiated at that level.

Even finding a meaningful and purposeful relationship in this world is so exceptional, aside from setting up a household and raising a family, I mean, very exceptional. Something that should be there for everyone is so exceptional, so hard to find. Why is that?

The crisis…I mean the people who are really suffering are in a way being more authentic because the veneer of happiness and stability and serenity and [security] is gone. They’re having a raw experience of the crisis.

But we’re all experiencing the crisis and feeling lost and confused, living a haphazard life, not knowing how to deal with the big world and where it’s going, not even wanting to deal with the big world and where it’s going, seeking escape in innumerable things from dangerous addictions all the way up to lovely pastimes—all escaping, can’t be present for yourself, can’t be present for anyone. Tuned out. Suffering.

So it’s when you begin to recognize your own suffering that you begin to see the need that has to be fulfilled in a greater way. I mean, suffering can bring you back to God, or it can destroy you, depending on how you respond to it.

Most people in the world probably don’t know they have Knowledge living within them or anything like it. They know they’re not being fulfilled by simple things alone, but what else is there that you can see and touch and have? So much of the world living in poverty and religious and political oppression. But even at the very center of their lives, they have nowhere to turn.

So living at the surface of our mind, we make plans and goals. We try to organize our affairs, organize our thinking, avoid chaos—understandably, of course. But everything we build is subject to destruction, undoing. We can’t really have a solid foundation at that level of existence.

So even religion becomes a matter of ardent belief rather than true association because the institution has to survive and compete with others, and so on and so forth.

So the promise that we have is the promise that lives within us. God does not have to micromanage our lives or our affairs, make our decisions for us, guide us in all little things. What kind of God is that? The New Message opens up the panorama of life in the universe—a God of a billion, billion, billion races and more in galaxies beyond count, in dimensions beyond this one…I mean, God cannot be your handmaiden or your errand boy here.

But God has put the perfect guiding Intelligence within us. Be you religious or not, whatever your faith tradition or no faith tradition, it is there for you. God does not care what religion you belong to as long as it can bring you back and connect you with this Knowledge that I speak of. Boy, there’s a lot of people who would disagree with that, being as invested as they are.

The promise for all of you who have gathered and those who will gather to hear this Message, is you’ve already been struck. Heaven has already stirred you before you even found this. It’s not that you were just dissatisfied with mundane life. Something has struck you because who we really are is connected to Greater Powers and Forces.

There are a lot of people who are dissatisfied with life as it is, feel hopeless and helpless within it, feel jaded and defeated by it, blame others for it. But some people have been stirred by a Greater Coordination because their time has come to begin to prepare for a bigger destiny in the world.

This is not merely a palliative thing to make you feel better, a little antidepressant to make you get through this day and make you hopeful again. Something has stirred you. It wasn’t you. You didn’t even know when it happened. Or maybe there was some event that showed you that it happened. “All of a sudden, I started feeling differently about something.” Or “I started dwelling on something I never thought of before, like what am I really doing here?” But something was set in motion and that’s very, very important.

And the proof of that is who comes to hear the Revelation. Some will come to judge it and compare it with other things. But for those who come honestly, sincerely, they come because they’ve been stirred. Around the world, God has stirred large numbers of people, sprinkled out through vast populations because they hold the promise, from Heaven’s perspective, of being able to do something more significant here at a time of the greatest need for the human family. Stirred.

We don’t know how that works. We don’t know who does the stirring. I mean, we’re living in this thin little dimension of awareness. It’s like a light spectrum, you know? We only see part of the light spectrum. Well, we only see part of the reality spectrum. And we try to live and have meaning and think of bigger things within this tiny little spectrum or bandwidth, if you want to think of it like that.

But Knowledge within us is engaged in something much bigger and responds to things that we personally can’t respond to. That’s why understanding Knowledge is kind of a…you will have to understand it to have a working relationship with it, but the understanding has to be open and evolving, always.

And so those people who have been stirred are those who have promised to show real progress. It’s not an assurance they’ll succeed, but it’s a beginning spark. And it’s formidable enough to change people’s lives, even with that one spark, or you wouldn’t be here. You’d be out there doing something else, trying to be happy, trying to forget, trying to cope.

So I’m going to talk about comprehending Knowledge. This is actually very important because…not that having a better definition is better or a bigger definition because beyond a certain point, big doesn’t mean anything, right, like a hundred, a billion, billion, billion races in the universes. We can’t even…the brain just sort of goes flop beyond a certain threshold. But comprehension is important because we have to grow ourselves to comprehend.

Comprehension ultimately isn’t an understanding. It’s relationship. I can’t really understand any one of you looking at you critically, all your…what you’re showing me, saying to me, you know. I can only fully comprehend you by being in a dynamic connection with you. Then all your service attributes become secondary to your deeper attributes. See what I’m saying? So ultimately comprehension leads to purposeful relationship. We’re going to go through the stages and talk about that.

So this involves an evolving understanding of Knowledge even from the outset. And understanding should never be complete because it is never complete. Nothing in the mind is permanent and forever. The mind can’t even think in terms of forever.

It’s like climbing a mountain. The New Message uses the mountain image to show us that when we’re down in the trees, all we can see are the trees. We may have glimpses that there’s higher vantage points; there’s higher points on this mountain. We never had a picture of the mountain to begin with, so we end up in the trees.

We’re down here in the trees and the valleys, and the trees are dark and, you know, they don’t give you much perspective on anything. Okay, you can see stars at night. When there’s little openings, you see stars. “There are stars up there or something.” And somehow you have to keep going up this mountain. And you will not understand where you are until you get higher up this mountain—who you are, where you are or what you’re doing.

So the whole purpose of Knowledge, in one way of looking at this, is to get you up the mountain. Understanding…okay, it’s valuable to the extent that you need to know you’re dealing with something unique. But your notions of this will change as you go further up this mountain because as you go further up this mountain you’re going, the trees will begin to thin out. You begin to get a bigger view, where there is actually a mountain there beyond these trees. You’ll get a bigger view of the universe because there’s more open space to perceive it.

You begin to have a sense that you’ve been on a journey and it’s taking you somewhere you weren’t before, which you could not really conceive of down below. You were just in those woods and you were on some kind of track, not a highway, but a little vague little trail.

You can see this also in terms of your mind, and your mind is full of trees so you can’t see anything. So somehow you’re gonna have to get to a place in your mind where you can begin to see things without judgment and filters and beliefs and associations and…It frees you to see something as it is. Otherwise, you’re only seeing your associations.

So in a sense, for the person who doesn’t see, they look in the world and all they see is themselves. They see their judgments, their evaluations, their associations. They don’t really see what’s there. It’s a really terrible handicap.

So Knowledge is trying to get us up this mountain. And this is about movement. It’s not about realization. Realization doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t lead to movement. It’s a moment when you felt something big, saw something big. Maybe it felt glorious, heavenly. But if it doesn’t lead to movement, it’s a blip. That’s it—blip and gone.

So this is not about having transcendent spiritual experiences. It’s not about going into magnificent, elevated states. Meanwhile, your life is a mess. You have no purpose. You have no certainty. Relationships are vague and confused. Your health has been forgotten and neglected. And you’re trying to have magnificent experiences. Something’s not right here.

The New Message is taking us and preparing us to go into the world, not out of it.

Every one of us is afraid of the world at some level, okay? And we may want to go into it, but only if we can secure ourselves there. But we’re talking about going into the world guided by an invisible light, which is going to take us where we wouldn’t take ourselves normally. So it’s a real test of faith and trust. It is to move us into our destined state of service in a dynamically changing world. And that means that the state of service is predetermined. But how that’s going to work or where it’s going to end up is not because the world is always changing. And there’s no assurance that you’re actually going to make that sacred rendezvous, or find or take those certain steps because you can stall or fall away at any moment.

So Knowledge is not going to give you big things at the outset because you’re not trustworthy enough, you’re not reliable enough and you haven’t proven yourself to be able to carry things forward. So if you can’t do that in little things, Knowledge is not going to give you bigger things. If you can’t do the things you already know you need to do, listen to yourself. “Boy, I know I need to do this.” That’s in everybody’s experience. “I know I need to do this.” Self-talk. You should write it down. You should look at it at the beginning of every week and work on that. If you can’t do what you already know to do, how’s Knowledge is going to give you something bigger to do?

So it’s a lot of development of us just to be able to come into relationship with this bigger power.

Another thing important here is that this is about you. It’s not about taking those people somewhere or dragging along a relationship. It’s about you. You can’t be part of a group and just go along with the group. That’s why we don’t do a lot of group work here. It’s not about trying to get a group together. You’re trying to get individuals connected and moving in the direction they need to move. Then their alliance in the future will be much more secure.

I don’t think groups should meet very often because the real work is what you do with yourself every day, particularly if you’re practicing Steps to Knowledge. That’s your bench. That’s where the work happens or doesn’t happen. That’s where you show up or don’t show up. That’s where you get serious or don’t get serious.

So that’s why we have Steps to Knowledge, and you live with it on your own. You can share Steps with others, periodically. That’s good. But really you’re not being moved by the group, or you’re just a part of a crowd. It’s not the real thing yet.

When you take decisive action in your life with this power, you’re going to take it alone. You may have some people who support you in doing that, but that’s you. You’re going to have to step over that line. You’re going to have to take those risks. You’re going to have to risk giving up benefits and security. You. You crossed over that line. That’s what matters.

So we go back to the mountain image of we have to get out of the trees sufficiently that we begin to have some vision. And getting out of the trees means that your life is moving, that you’re willing to really push your life in the appropriate direction, even if you don’t know where it’s going or what it’s going to end up looking like or where you’re going to be, who you’re going to be with…“Will I ever have a relationship?”

No. You’re just going to move. And you build your Pillars. We talk about Pillars, Four Pillars of life in the New Message: Pillar of Relationships, Pillar of Work, Pillar of Health, Pillar of Spiritual Development. That’s all work to be done right now, everywhere, wherever you are, no matter what’s going on.

So you want to build strength, build stability, build self-determination, build courage—these are things that are not innate within you. You have to build them. To become a real vehicle for Knowledge, you have to build these things in real life, wherever you are, facing whatever you’re facing.

And we come to this interesting quote. This is from The Journey to a New Life [Preparing for a Greater Role in the World] which was just published.

“The beginning student always thinks they are on the verge of great discovery. The intermediate student thinks that the next step is going to be the really big step. The advancing student just realizes they need to take the next step.

You can see the reduction in personality here interfering with this process, trying to control it, make it work for them, get what they want. You become more simple, more fundamental as you work your way up this mountain.

So that brings us to our four levels. And I want to say these levels are very much overlapping. So it’s not like going from one room to another room to another room. It’s more like you enter a stage and there’s no demarcation stages. You just have to find yourself having to take on some bigger things, or you have different kinds of challenges. So I want to keep this a very fluid, very broad-stroked idea, and not to go around telling people you’re in stage three because you don’t really know. Or they’re only in stage one.

I mean, I’ve met garbage collectors who are more noetic than many spiritual teachers I’ve ever met. They don’t know they’re noetic, but they’re just noetic. They do real stuff, right? Real work, real stuff.

So we first have the level of trying to understand. And the Knowledge experience precedes this. That’s important to understand because I said you’ve been struck; you’ve been stirred. You wouldn’t even be looking at this journey if you hadn’t been struck if something hadn’t triggered something within you. You had done some kind of noetic experience somewhere along the line. You weren’t totally blind, deaf and dumb. I mean, you were really responsive to some level. Maybe it’s a very small level, but a level.

So when you come into the range of the New Message and Steps to Knowledge, many people really struggle trying to understand Knowledge. So they associate it with Christhood or Buddha nature, or lots of other things, but it still is…They want to make it concrete so they can use it. But you can’t use Knowledge like that. The real truth is Knowledge is going to use you, but that’s you—who you are—using what you’ve become of yourself. You all follow me there? It’s not someone else using you, not even God using you.

So understanding becomes a problem, and some people won’t even participate if they can’t understand it. “I can’t understand it. It’s too much for me.” Others will bring into [this] all their religious spiritual teaching orientation to give this immense definition. “Oh, I know what this is. This is…This is what this tradition says. This tradition…” And they pack it with identity, but they’re still dealing with a mysterious force they don’t understand because you can’t understand it until you become in relationship with it.

You have to act, then know, with Knowledge.

Having a working understanding of “Okay, there’s a deeper Intelligence within me and it somehow guides me and I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced it, but I think I have,” that’s enough. That’s enough of an understanding. No personal glory. No “Well, I’m an advanced spiritual practitioner.” No, probably not. If you say so, probably not.

I’ve had many people tell me how advanced they are. That’s the first thing they want me to know is “I’m really advanced.” But their life isn’t working, so it’s not telling me very much.

So know you’re always looking at the level of mind. And the mind wants answers because it’s fundamentally insecure. The personal mind is fear based, period. Okay, I want to treat it very compassionately. It’s frightened by being in the world. It has no security. It has no permanence. It has very little strength. It feels dominated by everything around it. It lashes out against these things, but nonetheless it’s very weak. So we treat the personal mind very compassionately because we want to restore it. We don’t want to demean it.

But the mind wants answers and it wants results. That’s just how the mind is—fundamentally impatient, fundamentally frightened. Even its notions of love are fear based: the fear of not having. Its relationship notions are fear based: the fear of not having a relationship, the fear of not being fulfilled, fear of being left out. I mean the list goes on.

So we have to deal very compassionately with this part of ourselves, okay? For those of you who are very hard on yourself, I want you to listen to me. You have to be firm, but kind. It’s like being a good parent. In this case, it’s your personal mind that’s the child. And it’s unruly or reckless or destructive or out of control or having real problems.

So at this stage, I have some recommendations. These will all be posted, I’m sure, on the Community Site as we go on.

So first of all, avoid associating Knowledge with other things. We want to keep this channel clear. We don’t want to muddy it up with a lot of associations, all right? It’s okay if it looks mysterious and you’re not quite sure what it is. That’s fine. Don’t worry if you can’t relate to it because when people relate things, they relate to their past. It’s how the mind categorizes new experiences. It relates to the past. That’s why it has a difficulty seeing what’s in front of them because that looks like this, which is related to this.

People base their security, many people, on the firmness of their beliefs. This is where the mind turns to stone, right here. “Oh, if I can’t relate to it, it’s not important.”

No, this is something new. You haven’t been on this mountain before. You haven’t been on this journey before. So if you can’t relate or are having trouble, it’s okay. That’s not why you’re here is to connect this with your past. We’re trying to connect you with the present and the future because that’s where your destiny is. Your destiny is not in the past.

Knowledge is not a thing or an idea so you cannot categorize it, catalogue it or make it something that you can resist or identify.

So you can read about Knowledge: Chapter 4 in Greater Community Spirituality—it’s really recommended; it’s very beautiful. In Relationships and Higher Purpose, Your Relationship with Knowledge is really beautiful, really grand, really very clarifying.

And of course, taking the Steps to Knowledge is the beginning of actually going through the stages of engagement so that you can ultimately have a real relationship with Knowledge that’s based on something very foundational, within you, a natural association. Because you see, when we entered Separation, we not only became separate from our Source, we became separate from ourselves because we had to be something very different to live in this reality. We had to adapt to living in a very unnatural state. And so we became very adapted to that state, to the point where it completely dominates our awareness—almost completely.

But Knowledge came along for the ride, waiting for the time when you would begin to develop some personal wisdom, self-reflection, maybe get a little more sober about what you’re pursuing in life, a little more careful, more circumspect. Of course, some people never even…they just go barreling through life in the same modality the whole way and then it’s like…okay, right?

So I want you to just proceed. Participation here is what gives you the clarity. You don’t have clarity and then participate, not with something like this. Clarity before participation is appropriate in many things, but with something of this nature, you only need a little bit of clarity. You need the clarity that you know you’re not living the life you’re meant to live. You know that you have to…something else for you, something bigger. You look at life and say, “Is this all there is?” That’s clarity. That’s the kind of clarity you need here to begin. But having definitions is not clarity.

So this begins to take you in the realm of focusing on the experience of Knowledge. What is this Knowledge experience? One of the big clues you have, and I’ve talked about this often in the Free School, is that your past holds a key to your Knowledge experience if you’re willing to go face your past and go lay it out as objectively as possible to see the evidence of Knowledge. Because clearly, if you had never experienced Knowledge, you wouldn’t be here with me. There are people who say they’ve never experienced Knowledge and I have to believe them, okay.

But your past gives you an indication of how Knowledge works with you. Now you’re maybe in a different state today than you were ten or 15 years ago, but still, you know, Knowledge presents itself in different ways to different people, depending on our design, our orientation.

So it’s good to get a clue. This is not a final answer, but it is a clue. How does Knowledge speak to me? You need to know this because Knowledge is not going to speak to you the way you want it to. It’s going to speak to you the way it does.

So you begin to experience movement and change in your life. And the experience becomes a little more palpable to you—sometimes very palpable, sometimes very vague. Sometimes, you say, “I don’t even know if that was Knowledge.”

Definitely, do not claim all motivations to be Knowledge because that is just not true, or think that you have to be in a state of Knowledge at all times because you’re not there. I’ve never met a person who’s in the state of Knowledge at all times. So you can’t make claims here that have no foundation if you want to have the real experience.

So the question becomes: How do I experience it? How do I approach it? How can I recognize it? All right?

So here’s what I want to say for people who are kind of dealing with these kinds of questions and issues, primarily. Looking at your past is critical. To know where you are, you have to know where you’ve been. I’ve been saying that a lot lately. Your journey to where you are today should be very clear and objectively understood in your mind, despite the hazards, the errors, the pain, the regret. Just…this is the trail. That’s your trail through the woods. And you need it to know where you are, but you also need it to know how to assist others in the future.

Like they say, a good parent has a good memory of being a child, you know. Inner listening is very important here, not to get stuff, not to have insights. That’s not it. It’s just artifact. Listen. Learn to listen.

Your skill in listening is much more important than whatever you’re going to get by listening right now. Listen to what’s around you. Listen to what’s in you. Listen to what people are saying, without reacting. Listen to silence. Listen to sounds.

I used to be a beginning teacher of the blind and I was always amazed at what they could hear. I was part of a school that was teaching young adults how to be independent, live independently. So we lived in this…we worked in this apartment building where each student had their own apartment, their learning laboratory. And these apartments had this deep pile carpet, you know, this old kind of carpet. And I would come in and walk on this carpet and they’d say, “Oh, Marshall!” These are blind people. They’d hear the way I walked or the way I breathed. I mean, this is listening because they depend on it so much. I mean, it’s their engagement with reality, basically: touch and listening, mostly listening. So they’re good listeners.

So learning how to listen is really important.

Over time, you will begin to discern more clearly the experience of Knowledge. Knowledge is a force that moves within you. So the force of movement is the most likely evidence of Knowledge in your experience.

Not like “I got a message,” because even if you get a message, you have to verify it with Knowledge because who knows where messages come from, right? If a message is received with a state of Knowledge accompanying it, that’s important; that could be important. But getting messages is just…you put your antenna up and you’re going to get messages.

So listening, experiencing this movement—something’s moving in me. So that takes us to the next kind of level.

And that’s called Following Knowledge. Okay, you’ve got some kind of understanding. You’ve got some kind of experience. Hopefully, you’re still very open about what this could be at this stage. And then it’s about your life and what you need to do with your life and could Knowledge help me do that?

You can’t just say, “I’m just gonna let Knowledge guide me” and “I’m just gonna be a passive participant like a rider on the bus.” No. You’ve got to drive that bus. This is your bus. Knowledge is gonna be in the backseat, talking to you if you can hear it. I, as teacher, want to keep you in the driver’s seat, as much as possible. But you have to learn how to drive and learn what driving means out in the world and become responsive to the Presence within you that will move you or speak to you at certain points.

In my experience, Knowledge rarely speaks, and when it does, it delivers a message in about seven words or less, with no explanation. If you’re getting explanations, that means you’re either talking to yourself or something else is talking to you. That is not Knowledge.

Following means that you will have to act more than get information. It’s all about “We give you this to do; see if you do it. If you do it, we’ll give you something else to do. You do it or you don’t do it.” If you don’t do it, you stall. And then you want to go back to Knowledge and experience Knowledge. You fall back. You have to go back to trying to either understand Knowledge or trying to experience Knowledge, when the truth is you’re not doing what it gave you to do.

And maybe what you said to yourself—I know I need to do this—maybe that’s Knowledge. So if there’s no movement, Knowledge will become silent. Unless your life is in a real…you’re doing something very dangerous or you’re about to make a decision that could alter the course of your life and then alarm bells may go off and you might start getting some powerful feelings, messages, whatever. Like, you’re about to marry this person and it’s like, “Damn.” Or you’re gonna launch yourself in a career track that is not your destiny.

So following Knowledge—I have some recommendations regarding this.

So again, I want to remind you, you cannot use Knowledge as a tool to get what you want. You’re just fooling yourself doing that. Knowledge is much smarter than you are. And it’s also much more committed. So it’s trying to take you where it’s trying to take you. And you’re either willing to go, able to go, or you’re not. There’s no deal-making here. There are no other plans. There’s no “I’ll give you this, if you give me that.” No. No bargaining.

So in following Knowledge, you will have to face things where you do not know the outcome or even the meaning of what you’re doing. If you are going to work with the mystery, you have to be willing to take risks and go where the mystery is going. And sometimes it’s obvious what needs to be done and you’re just finally getting around to doing it. Sometimes it’s like a decision that was not in your plans. You don’t really know what to do with it. You can’t justify it. You definitely don’t want to tell your family and friends about it because that’ll be even more discouraging.

It’s a Knowledge question. And you can challenge it and say, “No, I’m not gonna do that.” See how that feels. Or, “I am going to do that.” See how that feels. You can test it. That’s okay.

But the truth is that when you begin following Knowledge in a real way, you’re going to be making decisions that you can’t understand, and you cannot determine the outcome. And it may seem to put things at risk. And often it will.

But it’s only by making decisions with Knowledge that the experience of it will grow, the potency of it will grow in your life. And you’ll begin to understand your deeper nature incrementally, more completely. It becomes more solid, more real, more trustworthy. “Hey, I trusted there and look what happened. I couldn’t have figured that out. And then I did this and this happened.”

So you build confidence and trust, like in any relationship, right? Because a relationship’s based on what you can do together—any relationship. Even your relationship with God is based on what you can do together.

So your relationship…knowing Knowledge, comprehending Knowledge, is about entering relationship and what you can do together. And in this, you find out intellectually what works in your mind and what doesn’t. You can see where your problems of interpretation are. You can see where you hold yourself back. You can see where you have trust, don’t have trust. I mean, anything that is going to produce meaningful, personal growth is going to be something like this. Otherwise, you’re just trying to look like somebody else, frankly, who seems to look better than you are.

So this is really now about movement, making decisions and some of these will be big. I will say that even at the outset, you could be faced with big decisions, like big relationship decisions. And this is not uncommon in The Way of Knowledge. You may find yourself recognizing that where you are, who you’re with, what you’ve built with that person, is not really where your life needs to go. And that’s a huge decision. And the benefit of that is you’ll see that you’re intellectually incapable of dealing with it, which is a good thing, and that you may need Knowledge, which is a good thing. But it’s still a formidable challenge at the outset.

Everyone will be challenged in terms of what they’ve created for themselves in their life at some point. But hopefully,  by this point, you’re developing enough trust and relationship with Knowledge that you feel like you can face certain things and trust the internal movement of Knowledge.

So Knowledge will move you without explaining. There’s no operator’s manual here. There’s no…it’s not gonna break everything down. But there are things you can do that will help you in these decisions, and that’s another talk.

So that takes us to Living The Way of Knowledge. Well, we’d all like to start there, but that’s not where we start.

But the more you follow, the more you’re living with, the more Knowledge becomes a more constant companion, something that doesn’t talk to you very often, but something that seems to be in the background or is an abiding presence, but not an overbearing presence. Because remember, Knowledge wants to keep you in the driver’s seat. Only if you’re about to go into the wrong “do not enter” lane or do something really dumb, will it do a correction. So it’s not going to chat and give you reassurance all the time.

The interesting thing is you may have more experiences of Knowledge at the beginning than further on because further on, Knowledge just becomes the wind in your sails and an abiding presence that, though it’s abiding, it’s in the background and you’re more in an operational relationship with it. It doesn’t stand out in contrast to your normal thinking or the way you are, actually. Your life has become more simple. You’re more resonant with Knowledge. And so your relationship with Knowledge becomes kind of a more permanent foundation for just how you function.

And here, again, it’s really important to realize that Knowledge only deals with significant things. All the other aspects of your life, the innumerable decisions, problems—that’s for your brain to figure out, all right? That’s why we have an intellect, as a navigational tool. Things that are very consequential—relationships, career paths, big life decisions—those are really…your intellect really can’t deal with those, effectively. It just mimics other people.

So all I want to recommend here is the more you follow Knowledge, the less you’ll be concerned or obsessed with yourself. You still have plenty of problems. You can do really dumb things. You can really have lapses in awareness, of course. This is not about perfection. We’re not about perfecting the intellect, here. The intellect is a platform of communication. You just want to make it functional, not perfect. It will never be perfect. Functional? Yeah. Functional means that you’re building your strengths and you manage your weaknesses. You don’t turn weaknesses into strengths. It’s very hard to do. In most cases, it can never be achieved and it can waste your life trying to do that. Just managed—mind management.

As you become stronger and more reliable, Knowledge will give you greater things to do, mostly to serve others. Unless you have prevailing personal needs or your Pillars are collapsing underneath you, your direction will be more outer. Instead of being the wounded broken-down person, you’ve now become a vehicle for something bigger.

As I said before, the more you move with Knowledge, the less you may actually experience it. Isn’t that’s strange? You’d think it would be there all the time, but you actually are experiencing because you’re moving with it. But it doesn’t stand out in contrast to your normal state. Whereas before, it was like really far out, really different, really “It’s not how I think. It’s not what I personally would do in this situation.”

I confess. I mean, I feel the presence of Knowledge a fair amount. I rarely ever hear from the Assembly, unless they want to tell me something, which probably means I’m doing what I need to be doing. They’re not holding my hand. So the more you’re doing what you really need to be doing, the less correction you require. And you’ll still require some correction.

So in summary, there are four levels. And I’d like in the time that I have to go over some errors in discerning Knowledge. I’ve spoken of some of these already in my discourse.

One is if you consider yourself to be spiritually oriented and intuitive, do not assume you’re guided by Knowledge. Being spiritually oriented is intuitive, shows potential. It could be good. But spiritually oriented, intuitive people fall under the persuasion of very dark forces, too, because their intuition experience is so controlled by their minds that whatever it was original, can be easily altered, or altered by others. Don’t ever think that everything that is moving you is Knowledge because you’re being moved by lots of other things, too.

So this is where you have to become careful and discerning and patient because what is Knowledge, what is not Knowledge is something that clears with time and experience. If you stay with this and you have determination, you will be able to really discern Knowledge is happening at a totally different part of you, at a different level. You can have tremendously powerful compulsions overtaking you. It’s not Knowledge. How can you tell the difference? Well, you may not be able to at the outset, but you will learn how to. This is part of the learning process here.

So we go on to the journey. I think the journey is something we’re already in. The New Message talks about the journey tremendously, in great detail, stages of the journey, problems in the journey, opportunities in the journey. This is where you have to really become a student of the Revelation to be able to benefit from this and apply it to your life and circumstances.

One of the key questions is always—not only for someone starting out but for someone who’s been involved with this for a while—understanding this is a mysterious journey. You have to control yourself to participate in it, but you cannot control the journey. Or you have to control your part of the journey, which is what you do. But you can’t exert your will upon this and make it into what you want it to be. If your request for guidance is honest, then you may still have preferences, but you’re willing to set them aside, which means you have to be aware that you have preferences.

The next is you cannot undo decades of social conditioning and personal behavior and decision making in a matter of weeks, a month, or a year. You’re talking about rebuilding the intellect, taking advantage of its accomplishments and skills, but really rebuilding the mind and the body and your life. That’s going to take time.

But impatience, you know? Impatience can maybe be the only sin. Who is willing to take this time? Who is willing to take the journey of many steps? Who is willing to go through periods of unknowing, uncertainty? You will. That’s also part of your training. Who can wait for the muddy pool to clear? Who is observant enough, patient enough, involved enough to do that?

So the New Message is here to bring you into contact with the greater part of yourself and its greater connection with life and to restore you individually in this process of engaging with Knowledge, experiencing Knowledge, following Knowledge and beginning to live Knowledge. Only Heaven knows how this really works. You can’t copy this and make your own version of it. So it just will not be the same.

This is a gift of Heaven for each of us at a time of the greatest need in the world. You, and like many other people in the world, have been stirred. Even if only two percent have been stirred, that’s still 140 million people. I don’t have a room big enough for 140 million people. But we can broadcast to them. If they can find us, we can find them.

So we’re living in early stages, the beginning of a new life of Revelation and Knowledge, purpose. God’s first purpose is to undo the things that hold you back, both internally and externally. I mean, you have to be…you can’t simply launch into a new life if you’re chained to a wall, either physically, practically, or if you’re chained to a wall within your own mind. So those chains do have to be broken.

And much of the early…and actually it goes on the whole way, but much of that has to happen just so you’re free to move forward. Otherwise, you’re still in the trees. You can’t get out of the trees yet. But you will if you continue.

Here the mountain image can really help us. And I call you to this because this is your destiny, not a destiny you made, but was made for you before you even came here, that you agreed to before you came here. It’s called “the agreement,” forgotten in the course of life, certainly, but real nonetheless. So Knowledge holds that agreement for you. You cannot lose it. It can lose you, but you cannot lose it.

So I call you to the sacred rendezvous that represents your purpose and destiny. The New Message has called you here to be with me today, will call others in the future, even far beyond my time, because the blessing is with us now and forever.

Nasi Novare Coram

1:49:10

RS: All right, wow. Well, we have this analogy in this Community of drinking from the fire hose. So I think you’re getting a little taste of that fire hose water here today. So we’d like to have an open floor and a conversation with you, both in the room and at a distance. But first, we’d like to take a short break, stand and stretch, use the bathroom. So if those here could be back in ten minutes, that would be great; and those at a distance, the same, if you’d like to join us for that second part of our time together.

1:50:20
[break]
2:01:50

RS: Okay, welcome back everyone. Please make your way to a seat or a spot to stand. Welcome, all those at a distance. So the floor is open. We have a microphone here. We have a chat room for all of you remotely—live broadcast chat room. Please share your thoughts, questions, insights, struggles, successes in light of this teaching about Knowledge and these Four Levels of approaching Knowledge, maybe your experience of being in one or moving out of one, or how to get to one.

So I think we have a microphone, do we not? Yeah, we do. Okay, good.

Well while you’re all thinking, I’ll just say for me, one of the most important aspects of what Marshall presented and of this whole topic is that this is actually a journey. The journey is a journey. It’s not a place. It’s not a destination or a state of awareness or accomplishment. And I, increasingly, feel if you were to ask me, “Reed, what are you doing here?” you would not hear from me, Well, I’m accomplishing something or I’m achieving something or I’m attaining, rather, I’m doing what I need to do.

To me, that is, as we proceed, really the correct footing on the path of going somewhere. And I think religion and spirituality all too often fall back into this eddy of achievement, attainment, transcending (better word, a real word) transcending, of becoming someone who is.

And again, it’s all about you. It’s all about elevating the self, ascribing more qualities, more abilities, kind of maybe escaping low self-esteem, to reach for a higher self-estimation.

And yet the lives of these people, I’ve met some of them and seen that they’re not moving. They’re not making decisions with this power within them. They are eddying. They are at the bottom of the mountain selling postcards that describe the top, but they believe they’re at the top or high up on the sides.

And for me, it has to be something much more real, something much more journey like. And for me, it really comes down to what do I need to do right now in my life at this time, or today or this week or this month? It could be about anything, any aspect of my life. But I know now that it is by doing that that Knowledge will grow within me. It is not by me focusing or fixating on Knowledge or listening at all times or becoming acutely aware of this new goal, this new power. No. What must I do? If I do that, this power grows of its own.

And so I think again and again, especially today in helping Marshall prepare for this today, that this is a journey, and don’t forget that this is a journey. And when you’re actually going somewhere, the view looks different as you proceed, does it not? You are always at risk of stumbling, are you not, because you’re walking? If you’re standing, you won’t stumble. You’ll look better to yourself and others. You will look like you have arrived, but you are standing in the same place, talking about an achievement or a state of achievement.

Whereas those who are walking, there’s a humility, a lack of investment in self or personal elevation, a simplicity, a low-to-the-ground. They’re just doing what they need to do. And perhaps this Presence is growing as a result and is helping them do it even more. But they’re not getting caught up in that. They’re not looping back into these tendencies of me myself and I and my Knowledge; you can add my Knowledge at the end of that.

So I really appreciate the New Message infinitely for its practicality, its real-world focus, the fact that it’s about empowering you to be the driver going where you need to go, which is not where someone else needs to go. It’s where you need to go, and giving you the full set of skills and dials on the dashboard over time so that you can go there. So I feel excited about that and challenged by it. And I’m sure you all do, too.

Will: Vincent Kelton in California is asking for a comment on the forces at work in the world. He quotes step 55 [Continuation]: There are forces in the world which I must comprehend.

“If these forces were not in the world, the world would be a place of Knowledge and would be totally unrecognizable from what you see today. So clearly you must understand the forces that limit you and hinder you if you are to advance.

RS: Seeking a comment.

PS: No really, how would you respond to that? How would you respond to Kelton?

RS: I mean to me, it comes back to what Marshall said earlier about learning to navigate reality as it is, and you have to know your environment. If you think you’re in a spiritual universe, a world whose only trajectory is up and up and up, you’re not actually where you are. So stepping into the reality of the environment in which this life is taking place is very important.

PS: We’re definitely navigating a world of forces, correct? Right? Aren’t they everywhere, on all sides? So the miracle of Knowledge is that it’s sort of like a point of calibration amidst all this stuff. It’s a tone. There’s a consonance to this, to some aspect of your experience. And you may initially not recognize it at all, and then eventually begin to recognize this, thank God.

But I know we’re walking all kinds of paths constructed by others. That’s one of the things Marshall said [reads] “…walking pathways laid out by others that are not for you.” All right? Lot of forces…

RS: And this is why the New Message is revealing these forces alongside the pathway of Steps to Knowledge, The Way of Knowledge. It’s talking about the new world reality and all the forces that will reshape life on Earth, the Intervention. And this is the context in which Knowledge may emerge in your life, appropriately.

But again for me, it all comes back to: Where am I? What am I doing? What am I saying? What am I thinking? And what comes next? What must I do? instead of becoming an expert in those forces or getting into their world. Evil draws one in, does it not? And the more you think about it, the more you fuel it. And it is more powerful than your thinking mind always and ever will be because this is just one mind.

And there are attempts to bring all those minds together like a great botnet accessing all that computer capacity on Earth, psychological human-computer capacity, and directing it for various agendas, some innocuous, some extremely dangerous. And welcome to the universe, right? That is the universe.

But there is the possibility to be sovereign and an individual in that universe. But what kind of footing, what kind of approach, attitude and focus, like on a daily basis, will allow you to approach that sovereignty? That’s something to be careful about because I do feel that many of these forces, the very way they would seek to influence you is to say, “Focus on me. Study me. Make me your enemy. I’m here for that. That’s how I work. It’s how I function.”

So that’s why, you know, in our family we rarely talk about the Intervention. We don’t look up at the sky or at the billboard or on the TV and say, “There it is. There they are. Oh, they’re always there.” No. We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about where we’re going. And of course, we run into rough patches or the storm clouds gather and the road turns to muck, you know, as the rain falls. And now we have to figure out how to navigate the forces. But locally, like, how to get a hundred yards down that dirt road, you know, that the river just swept through.

We don’t curse the rain. We don’t curse the storms. It’s, again, about navigation. But what you can navigate is your vehicle. What the bus driver can do is drive the bus: be aware of the wheels, the clearance, you know, the fuel, the dials, who’s on board. That’s what the bus driver can do. And that’s a humble position. That’s no freedom fighter in the universe taking on the forces of dissonance. That’s a driver of a vehicle.

And I think that it’s an apt analogy, you know, this analogy of the vehicle and the driver. So that would be my comment.

PS: We’ve been spending decades coming back to our senses, so to speak, kind of waking up in this environment. And you know, Marshall talks today about being struck. And how often do we together, as a practice, go back in time, come forward in time, and look at those times when we knew something or we saw something, you know? We’re trying to call together this experience because this is a reality, but it’s scattered across the landscape of our life here and there. And it’s perhaps this recognition experience, or being struck, is happening more often than we’ve realized, right? But we were insensitive to ourselves even, right?

So it’s a given. We’re waking up in Separation, trying to recover ourselves, trying to pull ourselves together to gain some potency. That’s what Steps to Knowledge is about. It’s almost kind of like redesigning the circuits, helping us to redesign our own circuits because we all formed however we did. We didn’t choose, necessarily, the environment. Maybe we did; I don’t know. But we formed how we formed and that may or may not be in keeping with our with how we can serve, whether you want to call that purpose or destiny. Those are really big words: purpose, destiny. The safe and sure way is to think of service, I think. And then you get to see, as do those who sent you, how far or how close to target you were with regard to destiny.

So that’s there as a prompt. So yeah, that’s a word that we see all over the New Message.

I know as a child, watching some of these space missions, the NASA space missions. And what was especially moving to me was re-entry. And I had to see what these vehicles and those onboard went through during re-entry. I mean, I can only imagine. But I mean, I don’t know, I mean just unbelievable, the pressures and the forces.

So it’s sort of analogous to perhaps what we’ve gone through in coming here is to go through that whole process of everything gets stripped away, in terms of your memory of your origins, who sent you, the briefing before you came—gone.

So it’s just like you think, “Do I have to spend a lifetime recovering that memory?” Right? Well, Knowledge is very potent. These experiences of being struck are little packets of potency. They’re very important to us.

So Marshall… [reads] “How and when were you struck? Something was set in motion.” It was not just…that was a really important thing, you know? I know for me, I’ve had a couple of experiences that set something in motion that actually took decades to play out. It’s interesting.

RS: A few great knowings.

PS: Right. So we want to hear from you.

Student: I have two comments. One is about the forces, and there’s also a step in the Continuation Training that says there are greater forces at work in the world and you have to figure out what they are, something along those lines. And so I think that this is one of the studies, like micro studies, that you can have within the New Message where you take a step and you keep it with you actually over years and years and just sort of like…because they can be very overwhelming, initially, to try to map out all the forces. And to think you might know what those are is presumptuous. But over time, you can kind of observe them.

And recently it’s been occurring to me that this may be a contribution of this early Worldwide Community to present the product of our study to Marshall for verification because he’s teaching us, the New Message is teaching us and we’re engaging with it. But are we engaging with it correctly? Are we drawing the accurate conclusions based on our own study? And so I think to let Marshall know, like, I’ve been doing this study and I think this is what I’ve…well, this is what I found is, and I think this is what the New Message is saying. Is that accurate? So that’s my side comment. Let’s hear from you, Kelton, about what the greater forces are in the world.

But before his comment, what I wanted to say was that what really struck me today and what I’ve been hearing myself saying in my own reviews is it takes time to really sort this stuff out between your very compelling feelings and what Knowledge is. And I have this feeling that, you know, the alarm bell experience of Knowledge where you’re really early on really going in the wrong direction potentially and it really flashes like, “Whoa, wrong direction, go.” And then I think that we may become reliant on that kind of alarm bell response from Knowledge or the really potent maybe experience of presence or a peaceful feeling.

And then, later on, you want that kind of intense experience for validation when you’re trying to make a decision, and so we may miss the subtler cues from Knowledge. And it seems like part of our work to sort all this out is to be able to identify both the alarm bells, obviously, but also the more subtle expressions of Knowledge in our life. And I think it would be worthwhile to talk a little bit more about, you know, this idea that you don’t experience Knowledge as much later on because, I mean, probably 15 years ago, Patricia, you said how responsive are you to Knowledge in the moment. And your example was a very regular life example, which is you’re at the store and you need socks and you need, you know…And so, do you get them? Like you know, do you need to buy one or do you need to buy two? And it’s like, how responsive are you?

And I find in my daily life if I’m very present, but usually it’s in review actually where I feel like these kind of micro forces and if I respond to them it’s very good and if I miss them, it was actually consequential. But it seems it’s like just so minor, like go right instead of left, or it’s not like that, but it’s more like I don’t know. I won’t, like, take up too much time with examples. But to me, that has felt like if I can catch those, identify those in my daily experience, then I feel more connected to like the daily navigation of life. So I’m interested in that, the sorting out of Knowledge, the big experiences of Knowledge, and then the more subtle experiences of Knowledge in the day to day experience. That’s all.

RS: I think that from what I’ve observed in my life and those around me, that that seems true, that like the big experiences were there more in the beginning because your life was more uncertain like you were more at risk, thus the Presence.

Again, though, that’s because those above are concerned with where you need to go, you know? This is not to make the day more palatable or, as Marshall said, a palliative. This is not a feel good, a growing feel good. This is about getting somewhere. And if you’re on track, okay, keep going. And of course, part of this is your empowerment. It is actually you discovering power by you, which is both the thinking you and the deeper you—Knowledge and the Soul—making decisions, following through, taking ownership. And therefore, you regain yourself, your self estimation or your power. And so getting somewhere and you getting somewhere, Knowledge is in the back of the bus, right?

So it kind of makes sense that our experience is going to change as we go up the mountain, too, not just how it looks, like vantage point, but you know, “Wow, I’m not knowing anything these days.” Okay. I mean, that could be many things. I’m not gonna paint a pretty picture and say, Great. No. You could be going dead on the inside. That could be part of what you need to be doing in a sense of…and Marshall said this, and I’ll read what he said: “Times of confusion are part of the journey.”

And I read that in the New Message recently, which is you will need to go through difficulty to generate the conviction to choose again and to choose more deeply and more completely. So if we’re always trying to be with Knowledge, we’re always trying to go to Knowledge, we’re always listening for Knowledge, we’re always, you know, versus where are you going through something difficult? You’re in the cloud of confusion, okay? How does that feel to you? Go be with that. You’re anxious. Why are you anxious? No, no, no, no. Don’t palliate. Don’t go read the New Message, per se. Don’t pray to the teachers until your anxiety goes away. This is not an antidepressant, right? This is what Marshall said today.

Why are you anxious? What is behind your anxiety? Examine yourself. “The unexamined life is not worth living.”* There’s something behind that. It could be work to do, could be something you’re knowing, could be a foreknowing about the world. This is learning to look at the dials on your own bus instead of saying, “Wow, the thing is shaking crazily.” And Knowledge is like, “Yeah, you’re going 110 miles an hour.” You haven’t looked at that dial in a while. So we’re learning to look at the dials and know what m.p.h. means. And I think that empowerment, that skill building, is just key, you know?

We’re not meant to be children being led in the power of God. I’ve actually heard that in some religious circles. “We are…you were meant to be God’s child.” No, not in this tradition. And I would say not in this world and with what with it’s facing—forces. You’re gonna face forces as a child?

So there’s a process here of strengthening, of conviction building, of sobering, of wisdom being gained and applied. And it’s tough, man. I mean, have you ever seen someone who has accomplished something like a surgeon or a great sports player or a great musician and what they’ve had to go through to be able to bring that forward? It’s real stuff, you know?

So yeah, I think going beyond this kind of like, you know, seeking of experiences or “Here I am. I don’t know who, I don’t know where I am, what I’m doing, what I’m saying but I’m, I’m…But where’s Knowledge? But, but…” You know, that’s okay. That’s a place to start. But what it means to follow or even live The Way of Knowledge, those third and fourth levels that Marshall presented, is kind of a flipping, a flipping of many truths into their antidotes, I feel.

Any other…? Yes.

Student: I have a question, actually, that came up last night, and I think you touched just now a little bit about it. Marshall talks a lot about us being the driver and that Knowledge is in the backseat and you are the driver. Well, who is that you that we’re talking about? Doesn’t seem like it’s Knowledge because it’s in the backseat. And it’s not necessarily a personal mind. So who is that you? Who is the driver? I think you said it’s like partially Knowledge, partially mind.

RS: Well, it’s the slowly reintegrating you, as I would say it. Like in the beginning, it is your personal mind, and you’re going to make some mistakes being the driver, and you need to, and welcome to life. It’s like, yeah, you messed up big time. And it’s like…but that’s just what it means to fall down, too, I mean; I hope. You can fall down and break your back and not be able to walk again. But slowly, over time, through this practice and this study, I think we’re slowly reintegrating, maybe, our deeper nature, right, the nature that we brought into the world to do this life specifically, the awareness of our soul, you know, and this Power of Knowledge, which is kind of beyond grasp.

And for me, it’s slowly…it’s like here’s the spectrum of you and there are different, you know…Or maybe consider it a pie with different slices of different sizes. In the beginning, it’s a lot of personal mind. It’s a big part of the pie. And slowly as we do that work, that starts to diminish, correctly, not completely ever, and other parts start to grow. And maybe on the outside you say, “I don’t know, I’m just feeling more sober,” or less highs and lows, more steady. And that’s a sign of the pie being kind of rebalanced. But I don’t think we can step into the pie, put our finger in the pie and start making that happen. It just kind of happens as we undergo the work, take the Steps, work on our Pillars, make decisions.

PS: It’s a recovery process, like I say. Waking up in Separation strikes me as being a recovery process, some of which is we’re recovering some aspects of our nature that are almost beyond and outside time, okay, whether this is our Knowledge experience. And then there’s our nature and how we were formed and how we may need to work with that, right? It’s a recovery process. I mean, it’s really difficult because so much of us is automatic.

You know we’re powered by an autonomic nervous system that just takes over and goes, right? We’re completely unaware of so many things that are going on that are fueling our existence right now, and that…So we are very largely unaware, recovering our sense of awareness of just ourselves personally—self-knowledge, at the level of self-knowledge—but also at the level of greater insight, greater intelligence. I don’t think we have to be the perfect people, you know, obviously. We just have to manage some things about ourselves, accept some things about ourselves.

But the question is are we going to be able to get to our place of service, and then once there, are we going to be able to work with the people who are there serving as well. Because it’s really way…it’s about something so big. It’s so much bigger than we are.

When I think of us in the early years, if…oh my God, we had no idea how big this was going to get. And so…we struggled as people and as students, trying to accommodate a mission into an everyday life. That in and of itself is pretty demanding when I look at what we put ourselves through to get here.

So do we realize when we’re knowing something when we’re in the driver’s seat? Are we managing ourselves responsibly as a safe driver and our vehicle, right? Is our vehicle going where it should be going right now, right?

But in the meantime, I think the discussion about the early years, the journey to one’s place of service—that’s a journey. Then there’s when one potentially—I don’t want to call this for any of you—one finds their place of service, it’s bigger than you are. It’s almost like, just get ready to hold for decades, because what’s happening is much bigger than the individual participants, of course. So how much do you need to know? I don’t know.

You need to be ready, if you can, to know what needs to be known, whether it’s for you so that you can stay functional and well, or whether it’s for the mission, some aspect of that. So there’s one spiritual tradition that…in fact, my older brother…and I learned a bit about this through him, that studied automaticity—how we are completely unconscious of what we do. And that was their principal practice was becoming aware of oneself to be able to be at choice a little bit, which, it’s an interesting discipline. I don’t want to go on; I don’t want to go on here.

RS: Well, what you say, Patrish, brings up this powerful statement, again very short, might have been seven words, in the New Message. And when we do these studies of a step or of a topic, a single topic in the New Message, based on the need, again, you’re responding to the need in your life to go seek that out. I think that’s very interesting.

And for me, I do that from time to time. And one of these phrases, you find them, and it’s like a dart right in the center of your head. “How do you grow stronger with Knowledge?” paraphrasing. How do you grow stronger with Knowledge by meeting what life brings? So as you’re driving the bus, the road brings things to you because you’re moving down it. You find things like a turn, like a traffic circle, like a traffic jam, like a crash, like a lone person on the side of the road—things you meet along the way.

And so when you get to your place of service, it can be a little challenging. It’s like, well, I’m not moving again. You know, you’re not supposed to be uprooting yourself every six months or relocating to have movement. Movement can’t always be physical because eventually, you’re where you need to be at that time. So what is movement? Well, what is life putting in front of you? Maybe there’s a growing depression in your life, a growing sense of drying up, a lack of awareness about what you’re doing and what you’re connected to. Or maybe the world is starting to overtake you again and its influence is starting to creep. That’s what life is putting in front of you.

And for me, I would say a challenge, bringing an opportunity. So it’s not always a great move, or a great relationship, or a big, really like “Wow, I just moved, man.” You know, this is not Woodstock where we talk like that to each other, where it’s like “It’s all about those great chords, man,” and we just play them again and again and we play these songs of movement or of Knowledge, songs of Knowledge, right? It’s like some of the music of this journey is not so sweet; some of it’s sour. But I think that’s really important. And to be right where you are and to pass through one of those internal roadblocks or that zone of ambivalence or unwillingness to participate with another, or with Knowledge, or whatever life is bringing, that’s really powerful.

So it could be as simple as that. But it is very different for all of us. And I think that’s so key here too is, like Marshall said, this is about you. You. You are not me. Yes, it’s the same mountain of life, right? But actually, to step up, up a few thousand kilometers, it’s a landscape of mountains. And we have a different nature and design, different destinations.

Will: Lots going on in the chat, including messages from Marshall.

MVS: [inaudible]

Will: Paul Davis writes: Fourth stage…what’s beyond the fourth stage? I find it a challenge to balance quote “working on the problems within my life” with the outer challenges that I can resolve with my life.

Jim Brennan writes: When I go to AA meetings, many people always gave their lives over to God and all their struggles and disappointments, etc.—putting God in the driver’s seat, which was there for them to sit in. Even back then, I had a difficulty in accepting this because I knew it was up to me—to us—to take responsibility for my life and regain my own authority. I continue to see this approach in AA meetings, but now express what I have learned more through the New Message, and what I’ve always felt having everything to do with where it is that I or we are going in life. Some are open to this now, and others want nothing to do with seeing their own responsibility. Nasi Novare Coram.

RS: Yeah.

Will: Betty writes: Before comprehending something, there is knowing what a force looks like. In my experience, I recognized what a force is within me and without, i.e. in my environment, then I can make a choice to be able to move away from that force. Or perhaps one gains understanding how this forces influences one. But the Steps to Knowledge will reveal it as you keep taking them.

Chris Sassano writes: The thing about forces is that what you think upon grows, or all things reproduce after themselves. What you think upon, then you think upon some more and then more.

And Kari in Finland writes: In my old life without Knowledge, I used to think that I know my strengths and weaknesses. Now I am confused. I do not know what are my strengths and weaknesses. I have a feeling that what I think is my weakness can be my strength. I remember reading in the New Message from God that Knowledge will show me my strengths and weaknesses.

RS: Thank you.

Student: Whenever I think about the phrase Nasi Novare Coran [sic], it reminds me that the Unseen Ones are here to help me. When I think of my own confidence, I think my body can do it, my mind can do it. The Unseen Ones are here to help me, and Knowledge is also there. So when I face a situation, do I have the confidence to go ahead and meet that situation? And my answer is, Yes, I do.

A lot of this has to do with the mental environment. So when I think of the mental environment, well what I used to think of the mental environment was it didn’t exist. There was nothing in the mental environment that would affect me. Within myself, I could handle it. I didn’t need anything from the mental environment. But now I realize the mental environment is like being in a swimming pool. There are things within that water that are there to affect me. And the main support for me is the Unseen Ones, my Spiritual Family, that’s here to guide me, to give me the ideas, to give me the confidence to meet whatever situation occurs. So anybody have any thoughts on that?

PS: Howard, what you’re saying brings to mind an experience that we had recently, well, probably within the last, I’m thinking four months.

Every two weeks Marshall goes to a major medical center, undergoes a certain treatment. And it’s an enormous place—huge, sophisticated, gigantic medical hub. But curiously, the people who staff this facility are incredibly personable, humble, accessible. I don’t know whether that’s the culture that’s established there. But be that as it is, a very busy place. And this environment into which he goes for treatment is a very busy place and there’s a lot of people, a lot of situations, a lot going on.

Anyway, we had this experience and this…the nurse walks in, okay, and she introduces herself: “Marshall, my name is Grace.” And she looked at him. She said, “How are you?” And I was so struck by Grace. I was so struck by her. She herself, she just…she had an air of awareness around her that was potent. And she…“I need to know” that was real. And here’s Marshall and whatever his state or condition, being called to his own sense of awareness. There was a moment of awareness in that treatment bay that was really something. It was a beautiful moment. I was so struck. I was so struck, you know?

Same thing happened with a physician. We’ve been in a lot of treatment rooms with a lot of physicians et cetera, et cetera. And so there they are and “How are you?” and “What’s happening?” and “Tell me what’s going on.”

Then we come along and have an encounter with a certain doctor who was a need-to-know man. He was looking for a message I did send him, and he noted, “I did get your message, Patricia. Thank you.” And then he wants just his attention, so the air of awareness that can be created in an environment, a mental environment, is potent and powerful and real. This is what I think, in part, the New Message is here to support and stimulate.

You know, the Allies of Humanity speak of education, awareness and Knowledge. So there’s our self-awareness, but then there’s the awareness of the environment, the awareness of another. This is really…I don’t know, it creates a tremendous environment for communication and for just knowing. Having to get called forward to sort of report on yourself. If someone asks you, “How are you?” We say…we ask this of each other all the time: “How are you?” Or, “How are you?”

But who says it to you with like: “How are you?” And then it’s like giving you permission, and then you have to take a moment to see how you are, so that you can be honest, you know, if you’re able. Which is okay, because sometimes we’re not. But anyway, so this is mental environment, potent mental environment stuff. I mean many of us are just this automaticity. We’re just being…we’re just…that’s how our bodies work, and action/ reaction and a lot of good things happen as a result of that and we miss some things as a result of that.

RS: There’s a lot of talk right now about mindfulness, and Marshall spoke about that earlier. You know, mindlessness, which is not using the intellect, which is giving it all over to God, to Knowledge, to the Angels or what have you, or really being in the intellect, but serving and being aware of Knowledge. And to me that’s like mindfulness level two; it’s not just being in the moment, mindful of the present, of who’s there. That’s important; I mean I’m working on that. But it’s also mindful. It’s the mind, the thinking mind, listening for, being open to, being present to Knowledge. Wow. That’s like another level of mindfulness.

PS: You know, I walked…going back to this environment where Marshall receives treatment. I’m walking down this long sort of walkway where these treatment bays are to the right with the curtains between, right? And I’m walking past one and Grace is in there. And usually, here you have the person under treatment, the patient, and maybe some of the family. And usually the family are looking at their iPhones or their handheld devices or they’re reading a magazine; they’re looking out the window. It’s so interesting. I happened to walk past just in time to hear Grace say to the patient, “So and so, how are you?” And I kind of looked in there and I could see the family members even queuing in. And I thought, “See, she’s at it again.” Amazing.

RS: You gotta be careful because again, again maintain yourself…your awareness as you hear stories like that, because this is not about behaving that way.

PS: Oh no, no.

RS: “This is what we do.” It’s like, wait a minute, sometimes the most aware and caring person can be challenging, can be confrontational, demanding, you never know what the appearance might be because of the situation. Maybe that’s her practice, maybe that’s her habit, but obviously you’re feeling there’s something else, there’s something behind that beyond just, “This is a behavior,” like there’s a will, there’s a desire to know, and then an openness to move, like if someone says, “I’m not doing well.” It’s not just, “Oh, I’m so sorry. Well, we’ll get this started and get you out early today,” right? Automaticity.

Whereas, “You’re not doing well? Tell me what’s going on because I’m in a profession of service and this is…my job, my vocation in life is to serve in this way, so that…” But just be aware of appearances and not adopting them like garb, you know? Headdress, jacket, pants…you know, this is not something we wear.

I was gonna say, Howard, and you know, it’s a perfect analogy, really, it’s a swimming pool. It’s completely different than the air, like the non-water-based environment of physical life. It surrounds you in a different way. It impacts your limbs, your movement. To me, learn to swim. What do you need to do? Learn to swim. The Teachers are like the swimming instructor standing outside the pool. But if you’re flailing and sinking…and then of course they dive in and they rescue you. And you’re like, “Wow, the Presence is with me…I need that again! I need that again!” And so you kind of sink again. And maybe they rescue you this time, maybe they can’t. But the goal is can you tread water? Can you…and you’re not thinking about how deep is it there versus here, or how wide is the pool, or you know…where is that thing that sucks the water in? Don’t want to get caught in that. It’s like, “No. Be aware of your hands and your feet. That’s what keeps you afloat. Welcome to the water. Later we’ll teach you how to go somewhere in the water, how to move in the water, how to swim in different ways.” But initially it’s, “Swim.”

But again, that awareness is not of the pool; it’s of yourself in the pool. And it’s very confusing for a child, I would imagine, like they’re feeling their hands pushing against something that’s definitely not air. What is this? It’s water, right? But they don’t need to understand so much about water as they do about their neuromuscular control. Can they control their body in space? So it’s a beautiful analogy, really.

2:48:12

MVS: I’d like to say just one thing about the driver, if I may, just for the sake of clarity. Using this analogy, I mean, when I say a driver, I don’t mean the driver is the one determining the journey. You think of a driver of a commercial vehicle, or a driver of a bus, well a bus…that’s predetermined, their journey. But the mind is like the driver. The body is like the bus. But who’s guiding the driver? If there’s no one guiding the driver, then the driver has to think, has to invent where the driver thinks they need to go from the world around the driver. “I’m gonna go where all drivers go.”

So think of your intellect as the driver. I mean, the body serves the mind; the mind serves Spirit, or Knowledge. So I want to keep the driver…and eventually the driver and who’s in the backseat begin to meld as the same individual, not because you hop in the backseat, you’re still driving. But because that whoever’s in the backseat and you begin to merge increasingly.

I think of a relationship. I mean, the more you can unite with someone, the more you begin to naturally function symbiotically together, and particularly if you have sufficient compatibility to do that, and purpose.

So I want to make sure the driver is, at least at this position that we are in, is the mind, which is where we all still live almost all the time. And so let’s be the driver, but let’s find out where we need to go. Aside from turning corners and navigating traffic signals and being aware of other drivers, let’s find out where this bus really needs to go.

And it’s interesting looking back…One of the things I’ve learned from doing life reviews is the signs of your future can be embedded in your past in certain ways. Like the skills that you went about developing or felt you needed to develop, which in and of themselves, didn’t represent necessarily a life purpose or a lifelong career or something; maybe it was just a personal interest or a personal need. These things aggregate into a skillset, which is a set of skills, which later then become highly useful for who you are and who you will become.

So a lot of our early life is making mistakes and being haphazard and meandering all over, but there’s also things that happen that are actually foundation building for the future. But you have to have a real sense of your direction to be able to look back and see the relevance, what stands out as being relevant to what you’re doing now.

The other thing, I was listening to everyone and watching the Chat in the other room, and I was amazed at how much Knowledge wants to make us strong so it doesn’t overpower us with its strength or its presence. And it will intervene when necessary, sometimes dramatically.

Eight years ago, I started getting the message, “You’re gonna die. You’re gonna die. You are going to die.” I thought, Oh, more negative imagination, right? What kinds of things have I said to myself over the years, right? But this message continued: “You are going to die.” And I know enough that when things are persistent like that and aren’t like just spur of the moment, that you should pay attention to them.

So then a month or two later I started not feeling well. And I finally went to the surgeon who had done surgery on my neck previously, got tested and I had stage four head and neck cancer.

So there are moments when intervention really does occur because your life is at risk or you need to do something that you’re not even aware of because most cancers have no symptoms.

But these little things, like Anna was talking about, these little prompts: “Do this. Do that. Do this. Do…” This is Knowledge working without kind of overtaking you, okay, to keep you in the driver’s seat, okay, so you may become a really good driver, a really responsive driver, a really aware driver. So there’s all this building. I mean we’re kind of being broken down at one level, kind of being dismantled—our minds, our habits. We’re being built up simultaneously.

So it’s not just purely emptying out. There are two movements going on of reconstruction. Reconstruction is not destruction. It’s reconstruction. It’s taking things down to what is essential and useful and building, rebuilding, from there and I think that’s a very slow route.

Knowledge is at work around the clock, doesn’t sleep, doesn’t take time off, doesn’t go on vacations, doesn’t do all the things we either want to do or have to do. But this reconstruction process, given our limits and our tendencies, our trust is the real thing.

So this is the brilliance of Knowledge exerting influence without being, you know, because I know what overshadowing really feels like. That’s why we have the Revelation. And you can’t have that happen a lot unless you’re highly trained for that or that is your role. I mean the first, my first, experiences of being overshadowed lasted about four minutes. It took me weeks to recover. So yeah, it was really overwhelming and I had to adjust, adapt to that and recover from that.

So thank Knowledge for giving us those little impulses, which is saving us time and teaching us to be responsive. I mean, if you can’t respond, you can’t be guided, you know? So becoming responsive, response-able, responsible, is really a critical part of everyone’s training here, I don’t care what your ultimate destination is.

The New Message says we each have plots, plotted positions that we’re trying to get to, but we all have to go through the same kind of training. Maybe in different stages, in different ways, but everyone’s got to learn certain things…unlearn certain things.

The four stages that I mentioned also apply to our study of Steps. I mean, first you try to understand the step, or you try to understand even why you’re doing Steps, or how this relates to what you thought before. Then there’s experiencing Steps. Then there’s following the Steps. Then there’s living the Steps. So at a certain point, far down the road, you’ll be living the Steps.

They will be predominant within your experience. You will reference them often. And they actually are not just reminders but become now actual structure that you use to be in the world in a new way.

2:58:07

RS: One thing in my doing Steps right now that’s kind of struck me that I don’t think I vectored in on before are these thinking steps. You know, these steps where it’s like, “Today will not be a stillness practice, but instead…” and you’re like, “Oh, I’m exhausted. You mean I’m going to think about something?” And then in a couple of the steps, the Teachers gave it away, in the last sentence. They said, “After looking at this, you will realize that only God knows the way to Knowledge.” And you’re like, “I know what you’re doing.”

But it’s very important because they want the step, actually to diligently do that step, is to be fully honest about your ambitions and delusions and current thinking. And it’s like, wow, that wasn’t what I needed today is to go back into myself. And the step is like, “Yes it was. Yes it was.” And so progress doesn’t always look like progress. You know, again this thing of appearances, I’m definitely learning myself to go beyond them. And the Steps are showing me that you need to go into, at times and in the right way, what is not true because there’s no other way to generate the conviction to choose what is true, really to choose it, like in a moment, or in a decision.

I’m just very struck by that, that you know…that the journey is varied. There are ups and downs. You know, Frodo and Sam had to go through the Emyn Muil, the worst territory of all to get to their destination. There’s no other way around it. They had to go through something dark. And then they get back to Hobbiton and everyone’s looking at them like, “Wow, tell us of the journey. Was it great? Was it grand? Were there kings and queens and fairies and wizards?” And it’s like…Then when you really take the journey you realize the different things you have to go through and what that builds in you for a purpose, potentially later down the road.

3:00:20

MVS: It could not be built in any other way. There is no way around the things you have to go through to get to your real destination. I mean you just…there’s no airlift, there’s no elevator.

You know the other thing about the Steps is…these Steps are also telling your mind things. They’re training your mind to think in alignment with Knowledge so that your personal mind and the Knowledge become a little bit more in natural affinity or natural sync with each other. So I mean to really think about them is very important, because we’re really lazy. Most people are very lazy, mentally, they just…“Just tell me one thing, just what do I need to know? I’ll believe in this,” you know. “I’ll follow this. I’ll listen to them, not them.” They’re lazy. And you cannot be lazy. You’re dealing with your consequence of your life, which hopefully is meaningful to you, and also the consequence of your role in the world, which is…you have to believe it’s meaningful at the outset, but becomes more meaningful as you go along.

So being really there for something is not our common experience. Being really there with our experience, whatever it is not something that we usually do. We kind of glide through the day high-spotting everything and then focusing on things that we’re particularly interested in, which may be of no consequence whatsoever.

So I think the mental part of engagement is to build the mind and to focus the mind. Otherwise, it’s erratic. It’s unreliable. It’s easily distracted and easily disturbed.

3:02:34

Student: I don’t need the mic.

RS: Oh yes, you do. You never know what might come through.

Student: Question for Marshall. You say you got a pretty direct message from Knowledge that you were going to die. But you obviously didn’t. You didn’t take that directly; you did something else. What was your thought process after that?

MVS: Well, initially I thought, I’ve heard either other things put in my mind that were self-destructive, or you know my own…you know we create our own drama internally, right? We can think of worse things happening to us, we can imagine those things, we die like a thousand times before we die. It’s just in our own minds, right? Or more than a thousand. But I first thought, “This is negative imagination.”

But it kept happening. And because I had been tested positive, then negative, for neck cancer the year before and had a major surgery done on my neck, I was really hypervigilant about that. So I wasn’t like…I was gonna sit with this; I’m gonna let this be. If this keeps reoccurring…

And then I took a trip with Reed and Patricia. And I took a little hike and I started feeling very weak on this hike, like alarmingly weak. And again, this awareness is building that something is wrong with my body, you know? I had swollen lymph nodes, but that was like from the surgery before and no other symptoms.

But when I got diagnosed, which I’ll tell you a little story if I may. I got diagnosed on a Friday. That weekend we gave an LIU event, Life in the Universe. The only people who knew that I was sick were Anna and Patricia and, I think, Darlene.

I had to get through that event having just hours before starting got told, “You have head and neck cancer, and you have to tell…I have an opening the next Tuesday for surgery and you need to let me know first thing Monday morning if you’re gonna take it.” So…oh my God. Oh my God. But I, being hypervigilant now about anything going on with my body, how I almost had had neck cancer before, then getting suddenly diagnosed, and then having to put on this big event—it’s pretty difficult.

And then Sunday night, when it was over, I had to have a conference with my family, “What am I gonna do?” So Tuesday I went into surgery and it was a ten-hour surgery. So. Which is a different problem than I’m having today. It’s not related, by the way.

So that’s what went through my mind. But I was starting to pay…when I heard it again a second, third, I started, “Okay, I’ve gotta pay attention to this. How am I really feeling? Is anything changing on a subtle level, in my energy level, or in my sense of wellbeing.” You know I started to get like, I think the awareness that something was amiss began even before the physical symptoms became apparent, and there were not many physical…

Student: But you took those words, “You are going to die,” as a heads up more or less.

MVS: Absolutely.

Student: Not an order.

MVS: No, no. I took it as a warning. As a warning…

Student: Not an inevitability.

MVS: No, no, not…but like, a real big heads up. And so if you ever hear, “You’re gonna die,” and you keep hearing it, you better get yourself checked out. But that’s the example of Knowledge. You know, that’s an emergency, okay?

But day to day, we may get little prompts, little navigational prompts. It’s when we’re facing big decisions, particularly regarding our engagements with other people or our commitments for our work, what’s going to be consequential in our life. Those are times when Knowledge will become more powerful because it has to begin to overshadow us enough. Otherwise, we’ll just go on whatever we think is important out there—appearances; you know, we go on appearances.

3:07:52

PS: You know, Marshall, you said something to us in your teaching. You said, “Knowledge can’t move us if we’re chained to a wall.” You know, so what’s the wall? Circumstances, right? Opinions. Personal requirements.

So it’s amazing you were pretty responsive. There’s an example of an engagement and experience with Knowledge, right? Let’s say. You were pretty responsive, let’s say.

Now, I have an older brother probably who would have been the same age as Marshall. A completely invincible man. Okay? Invincible. Talk about chained to a wall of invincibility. Gets a message on a Sunday night. Actually, no, the morning of. He’d started getting a feeling evidently, and as it bore out, his life concluded that day. But the thing is, he was extremely invincible in his own idea of himself. There’s like, I don’t want to seem like I’m judging him, but in my experience of him, he derived a lot of strength and forward motion from the sense of personal invincibility, okay?

So this is some of our personality traits, right? Yeah. And, God, amazing…I mean when his wife…he was going on a several-day retreat and he was supposed to be packing his suitcase and his wife walked into the bedroom and there were just two pairs of socks in the suitcase. And she looked at him and she said, “Are you getting ready?” And he said, “I don’t feel like I’m gonna be around here for very long. I don’t think I need much.” That’s the morning of. Well he did receive the message, right? God bless…and I don’t know that it could have changed the outcome for him. And it’s consoling to know he was reached.

This was one of my guides early in life, was this older brother. God bless him. Thank you, my sweetheart…even though he was…and it took him to places where he should not have gone or where he was not needed, this invincibility thing because they wouldn’t yield, right? So that’s the wall, chained to a wall. God bless. I’m not saying you were chained to a wall, but maybe you were. But anyway for us—habits, right? You know, our perception of our circumstances, I know I’m very given to this, you know, trying to manage it all, things like this. “Knowledge can’t move us if we are chained to a wall.”

So when we do this great practice of mind management or mind inventory—higher-order, mid-order and lower tendencies and activities of our mind, at least to sort of sort it out and see—then we can begin to see where we want to redirect from if we find ourselves in one of these “chained to the wall” states. Like that’s a lower order thing; I know I can’t know anything when I’m like that, so I need…so how do I shift off that?

So these are wonderful little practices, important practices, that we need to employ so that we’re available. And it’s usually not phenomenal stuff we might need to know. It’s just something that might be just functionally important or relevant or something like Anna’s saying.

RS: You know what these are like, Marshall’s experience with this message, or Patricia’s brother, these are like case studies in The Way of Knowledge. One just is leaping to mind for me, don’t have time to share it, but it’s basically if you can look back on a period of your life with clarity and see what really happened, like where you were at again, “Where was I? What was I doing? What was I thinking? Where was my awareness?” And then, let’s say you didn’t respond to that. You weren’t aware of those things I just said, and something played out that was not good, which caused other things to play out which were not good, but then you were ultimately able to step out of that or resolve it.

Right there is a case study in how you engage with Knowledge—your pitfalls, your tendencies, the things that blindside you. Not me, but you. And I feel like in a way, instead of scouring the books of the New Message looking for truth, it’s like, look at your life. You have a historical record that relates to you specifically. Now you have to be honest to see it, but there is so much there that could be your case study to show you, “Wow, my risk factors are these.” Or “The difference maker for me is often this.” Or “How I receive Knowledge is voice, image, dream…” I don’t know. But you know this is almost like, “Here you go. Look not to us, look to yourself. Look to your historical record to know how this works.”

And I’m certainly doing that. And it’s building wisdom that is my own. And it’s pretty interesting how this actually ends up working—the right move and the wrong move, and then extracting yourself often from the detritus of the wrong move to make a right move, and what that then returns to you, right?

But then, the risk of potentially going right again when you needed to go left. So anyway, these are all case studies in living The Way of Knowledge.

3:13:32

MVS: There’s a beautiful quote from The Power of Knowledge: God, Knowledge and the Limits of Belief. [Chapter 9: Knowledge and the Limits of Belief] I don’t know if that actually got into the book, but, yeah, it’s there? Okay good.

“When you become strong with Knowledge and Knowledge can shine through you more greatly, you will look at other people and they will seem like they are living in chains. Rich or poor, they are living with the yoke, like oxen pulling a wagon, the wagon of their beliefs.

That’s an incredible image. And there are other the chain, chained to the wall…Chains is another kind of sub-theme that runs through many of these teachings.

PS: It’s an incredible time we’ve had together.

I’d love to read this, a passage, to conclude our time together. This is from Greater Community Spirituality which was received in 1993, Darlene? Four? We published it in 1998, so 19, so in 1994…14. Wow, 25 years, okay. It’s from the Chapter Four: What is Knowledge?

“You will welcome Knowledge within your heart, for it will be known to you, and it will resonate within you. It will resonate in a part of you that you rarely experience. It will resonate all the way down to the core of your being. Even if your mind is protesting against it, even if your fears are aroused, and even if you are confused, angry or resistant, it will be true for you because it is true. This is communication; this is being; this is purpose; this is identity that transcends all worldly thoughts, beliefs, cultural identifications and political associations—even your personal will. This is Knowledge.

Amazing.

MVS: Nasi Novare Coram

RS: Nasi Novare Coram

So thank you all for being a part of this marathon morning, running the race, you know, taking it in. I know a lot of it might be water off the back, but it’s okay. The water’s still right there sitting next to you. You can be a duck in the pond after this.

We would like to also let you know, if we can put this on the screen here, that the next book of the New Message, The Power of Knowledge: The Greater Intelligence Within You, will be available shortly. This is the book of Proclamation proclaiming the reality of Knowledge within the individual, and presents some of the most impactful teachings on Knowledge for the world, and is but kind of the entryway to that corridor into the New Message of what Knowledge is, how it’s practiced and lived and then, ultimately, living The Way of Knowledge itself.

So that will be available May 26, 2009. We’re currently studying part of the book in the first month of the School Session. We’ll study the second part in June. And of course, it’s a resource for the Steps Vigil, which will be May 26 to June 14th. So please, I mean again, an amazing opportunity to carry this forward as a study, as a spiritual retreat, as a time to rekindle your practice to come back to that place within yourself from which springs knowing, direct knowing, about what comes next, what you must do.

So this is where we come back to that clearing in the forest this time of year

PS: It’s really been endearing watching Marshall, and together with the book rendering team, trying to work in earnest to bring this compilation of revelations forward during this School Session so that you all would be the first to receive these revelations from Marshall.

So a lot of work has gone into being able to have this part of the Revelation come forward during the Session, perhaps to prompt greater recognition, a greater sense of responsibility, certainly a huge demonstration of service. And now The Power of Knowledge is going to be able to go out into the world and strike people all over.

RS: We’re going to talk more about The Power of Knowledge up ahead, next couple weeks, give its due justice, and talk about the book and how it came together. I mean, it’s quite amazing the amount of work and the type of work going into bringing this book forward. You might think well, you know, more than half the chapters were already free online. True. Kind of looks like the last book in terms of the cover. True. But what’s really exciting is that the most important thing about the revelations is getting the maximum attention. And that is the text itself: every comma, every semicolon, every line break—dozens and dozens of hours.

The thing that matters least, which is the book cover, is getting the least amount of attention with each book. I’m getting hurrays in the back.

So it may not look like a revolutionary step, but the amount of attention and focus going into rendering this in the right way is pretty…quite something so we’ll talk more about that.

MVS: It is the Word of God. So it has to be rendered. And of course, the audio matches. Audio is available, I believe, for all these revelations. Sometimes the audio is grammatically challenging. I mean, we have to make certain adjustments. It’s very small things, but…And we have a pretty big stylesheet of what gets capitalized and how grammar is applied to an oral tradition, oral teaching. So we do this very carefully. Thank you, Darlene and Ginny, and the whole book production crew and the whole editing crew. This has many people involved. Many eyes are looking for errors.

So what we have in the end is 98% there. Someone will find a word or a comma that should be a period or vice versa, or a misspelling. So it’s okay. And reading these chapters is like…I mean, what we’re being given has never been given before. I mean, this is like, wow. Wow.

RS: I mean, as I work with Marshall and Darlene and Patricia on this book and then the book to come—there’s another book after this book—and there…So spending real time with it just shows me how this is a communication to those experiencing the need at a level that is not reconcilable with other forms of other solutions, other answers, especially those up here at the level of doing and thinking.

And around the world there are millions—plural—people experiencing need, not thinking need, not acting solutions based on a psychological crisis. They are feeling this need and I sure hope…I don’t know how to find them, to be honest. But I think we’re all part of that. Like this will not find them without all of us, period.

And so by extending, for example, this book, which again, it proclaims this reality of Knowledge, but opens up a corridor of preparation and really life development that is the only answer, the only thing that meets this need that these people are feeling. So by you giving those people this book, if you know one of them, or two of them, or have a way to find and reach them, I cannot underestimate how important that is in the process of transmission of this into the world.

MVS: Or send them a verse. I mean, sometimes a verse just…will be what someone needs in that moment. Yes, it’s amazing work.

RS: Yeah, bigger than we understand today.

PS: Can we conclude with a prayer, Marshall?

RS: Just before we do, I just want to say that Marshall’s next teaching will be in June or July, and the date and time will be forthcoming, same place, same day, 9:00 a.m. So we’ll let you know. And new topic, new area of the New Message to go into together.

And again the Steps Vigil begins May 26th every night 7:00 p.m. Mountain Time live and here in the Sanctuary. So if you’re at a distance and you can make the journey to be here, please think about doing that. If not, join us. Be a part of this gathering, this clearing, this clearing the way, making an opening.

And I also want to just say thank you to the Community of givers who are financially supporting this endeavor at the level of these books, these gatherings, this broadcast back here in the back of the room. Thank you because this would not be happening in the way it is happening without you.

3:24:27

MVS: Let us remember that Knowledge lives within us at all times. God has already given us the answer, which is not an idea or a mere prescription, but a journey to take that we were destined to take and designed to take, despite all the influences of the world, the problems that plague us from the past.

This is the calling that will bring new life to us, and ultimately to the world around us. We are blessed to know these things, but we must respond deeply, purposefully and consistently. For the Presence requires this as much as we require the Presence to live.

Nasi Novare Coram.

RS: Thank you Marshall. Thank you all those here in the room being a part of this, and all those at a distance, if you hung in there over three hours. I understand if you didn’t, okay. This video will be on the Community Site very shortly.

And be a duck in the pond, the duck in water, water of Knowledge.

So until next time, thank you. And we’ll see you on the Community Site, on the Campfire Chat of the Free School, and down the road.

3:26:23

*attributed to Socrates