The Deeper Power of Steps to Knowledge
Watch Marshall Vian Summers speak at the Steps Vigil, June 8, 2015.
The Steps in Steps to Knowledge have great power, and the more you abide with them and take them into yourself, the more they take residence within you—to speak to you later, to remind you, to be contrast between what you’re seeing around you and your own inner sense of what is true. And they advise me often.
What the Steps do is teach you to see with your own eyes, to think with your own mind, not the mind that the world has shaped for you, not the eyes that have been given to you by your environment and the people who have influenced you. See with your own eyes. Listen with your own ears.
So in this way, the Steps do not change you. They just clear the path. They just clear the way so that the deeper Mind within you can shine into your awareness.
The world is a difficult place. People are not what they seem. They don’t express what they really mean. They don’t clearly demonstrate their intentions. There is much deception and deceit. So how will you know how to navigate this world and this life, the life you have now? How will you know what to do when things seem so clouded? How will you know who to be with? And do you have the patience to wait for the ones who are really meant for you?
This is the quandary. People are not seeing with their own eyes. They are not thinking with their own minds. They are not listening with their own ears. They are not having a direct experience of what is around them. They are full of conflict and confusion so they cannot see. They do not hear. And they are afraid to know the very things that could open the way for them.
So this is Steps to Knowledge, the miracle that it is and the miracle that you could respond to it. Those are the miracles that really matter. Doing extraordinary things does not change anyone or anything, but this alters the experience of life.
To feel connected to Heaven while you’re living here in this world is incomparable. To know that there’s a greater compass within you to refer to is incomparable.
Then you can begin to see beyond deception within yourself and others and understand how trapped people really are, how unknown to themselves they are, how estranged from themselves they really are. You can forgive them and learn from them and with some, see the opportunity to reach them, to remind them.
But it is not you who will do the teaching and the reminding. For it will take the Power of Heaven to awaken someone from their troubled dream. And that is now with us, given to us, a gift of incomparable value, a gift from our Source, to let us see with our own eyes, to think with our own minds and to listen with our own ears—the eyes, the mind and the ears that live within us, unclouded by the world, unaltered by the world, unspoiled and uncorrupted by the world.
This is what Steps to Knowledge is for. And if it comes to you, it comes to you for a purpose. If it presents itself to you, it is for a purpose. If it crosses your path, it is no accident. It is meant to be. Do not lose this opportunity to receive the sacred gift.
You will not understand how it works. Your motivation for it will be intermittent, changeable, but it itself is strong enough if you will abide with it—to reach beyond this confusion and this ambivalence, to strike at a deeper part of you, the heart of you, the center of you. For it is to bring you back to who you are and to your mission in life that the Steps to Knowledge has been given.
Return to relationship. Return to purpose. Return to meaning. Return to what you knew before you came here and the power of those who watch over you and wait for you to respond.
This is Steps to Knowledge.
so so so powerful. so inspiring.
The living mind within me us is always with me/us yet much of the time I am somewhere else. To take the Steps with me each day is a miracle for me because it keeps me grounded in a way I cannot describe but can feel strongly. I do carry my Step for the day with me each day. Each time I read the step and bring it into my life I am awakened more to the many realities I have missed along the way in my past experiences living in the jungle with my crown of thorns around my head. The Steps have given me the ability to learn how to see beyond deceptions and the errors we all make. The Steps is such a gift for us all if we can open our hearts to the truth they give. Being in the world for as long as some of us have we have been given the gift from the world in its “grandeur and its folly” to give us the contrast between the false and the true and the lessons each contains to teach us. Now many of us have come to see the false and its lack of substance and have developed the desire to see what is true. This is such a precious gift for us all!! Blessings to you Marshall for this teaching for it is full of wisdom and rich in experience. Nasi Novare Coram
Being with Marshall in this space, listening to him and feeling like he is speaking only to me…feeling so known by him and by Steps. A miracle to be reached by the Messenger and by Steps.
Interesting that you should bring up Step 11. I Am Not Apart From Life. I too remember being very perplexed by it the first time I did Steps. And I also zoomed in on that sentence: “You are an individual unaware of your Source and your total inclusion in life.”
I remember finding some clarity in Greater Community Spirituality, Chap. 1 “What is God?” “You must enter into the experience and the Mystery of life, which is the doorway to God, which is at the very heart of your life and contains the very purpose for your coming here that is unique to you but which you share with all life.”
I feel this is the key to understanding this Step – understanding the relationship between my uniqueness and what I share with all life. Once I accept that I am not apart from life, that I have nothing unique that sets me apart from the rest, I can use my individuality to express life itself and this will be to my great benefit.
Now I say, this is so empowering! Where else can you get this kind of teaching and this deep understanding of life as we experience it in the physical?
I too am so deeply grateful to Marshall for bringing this practice and preparation born in Heaven down to this earthly level where we can benefit from it and learn from it while in our separated state.
I would just like to add that I really resonate with what Marshall says here about Steps taking up residence inside you. So true! His whole message here is so empowering.
This is an incredibly clear message from the Messenger on the power of Steps to Knowledge.
It really speaks to me, as it may for you as well, as we have all been raised in the context of this world, raised by our culture and our unique life experience in the world. And now, to come back, closer and perhaps a bit closer yet, to what is true and real and has never really been apart from us. There is much work in this but simplicity, too.
I remember my first round of Steps and being very perplexed by the Step, “I Am Not Apart From Life”. I did not understand what it was saying and really did not comprehend this Step, and I believe, I am just beginning to experience what this means.
“You are an individual unaware of your Source and your total inclusion in life,” this Step says.
Unaware of my/our inclusion in life. The Separation that had to occur to come into the world and that was fostered and forged further by the majority of our experiences here, though all along, the thread of Knowledge was always there. And now, encountering this man and this message there is the possibility of return. A miracle really.
Through practice, through preparation, through work, through remembering and through greater simplicity and greater service, however slow it may be, let me/us make the return.
And thank you, Marshall, for your preparation and ability to communicate this profound reality so that we may learn to make a contribution while we are here as well.