Activating the Knowledge, Wisdom and Power within You

From the very beginning it felt like an overwhelming task. But those who are wiser than I are confident in its purpose and its Mission and the readiness of humanity to hear this.

So I’m very pleased when I see you, and I know that we have a whole other roomful of people behind us. And I’m happy for all of those of you who are joining us from around the world at all hours of the night and day. This is our Vigil now together. This is where we deepen the well of understanding and the power that lives within us, which I’ll be talking about tonight.

For I’m here to reveal through the Revelation a greater power of Wisdom that lives within us inherently and in all people, in fact in all sentient life in the universe, put there by the Creator of all life, put there to assure that though we venture in a physical reality as separate individuals, that we live in this separated state from our Ancient Home, which is so very different than what we see to here today, that our redemption would be assured.

For God’s Plan is to save everyone. To make sure that Plan is successful, God has put within us an Intelligence that we cannot lose, that will be with us no matter where we go, where we wander or what we subject ourselves and one another to. I’m here to affirm this Knowledge in the world and to call it forth from all who can respond.

Humanity, despite its many flaws and weaknesses, is a very promising race in the universe because the Spirit is alive here where it’s been deadened in so many other places, in highly technological societies. For the evolution of societies is so often merely technological and not spiritual or social—something the New Message reveals to us. We would probably think otherwise without this Revelation and make the mistake of thinking that those who are technologically advanced are spiritually advanced. And indeed, many people in the world make this assumption, which is a very dangerous one in fact.

I’m here to call from you the greater power that lives within you. And because you have responded to the Revelation, you’re demonstrating this power already. Though you may have personal reasons for being here, or maybe for perhaps a few of you, you’re just here just to see who I am or find out what’s happening, something bigger has brought you here. This is too big for personal curiosity or idle interest.

People have been stirred for this. Before it came into the world, they have been stirred; you have been stirred. Heaven has stirred you that the time of Revelation would be coming. And though that perhaps was not your understanding, you became expectant, and you began to look in the world to see what it might be: “What is this thing that is stirring me? Why am I not content with simple things, even with the luxuries of certain societies? Why am I restless? What does my heart need that I’m not seeing and cannot touch?”

We live in Separation. We’ve forgotten that we’re still connected to our Source through this deeper power of Knowledge that lives within us, tethered to the Creator, though we wander in the universe dreaming the dream of living apart.

But the dream is only a dream. It does not have the power of a Greater Reality within it. And once that begins to be stirred, something has changed. Perhaps you can feel it within yourself. You crossed some invisible line back there and now something else is happening inside of you.

There’s a greater brilliance to your life that goes unseen and unknown, but lives within you nonetheless. And once that begins to emerge, you must make a way for it. You must begin to respond and to be able to respond.

You were prepared for this before you came. So as I said the other evening, I don’t need to win you over with the truth. I only need to have this honest conversation with you. And that will be enough. Even for your doubting mind, even for your fear and uncertainty, that can be enough.

So the people of Revelation come at the time of Revelation, from everywhere. As far as we can spread the Revelation, make it available and known to people, people will come from everywhere. And if they can’t come physically, they will respond. And this is happening now.

To activate this Knowledge is part of my reason for being here. For I have come from the Assembly to assure that this could happen. But I have lived in the world as a man and I have been frail as a man. And I have been confused as a man, except that I have always felt somebody was watching over me, even as a child.

It made me very uncomfortable when I was a child. I used to get in bed and pull the covers over my head so I wouldn’t have to think about someone else in my room with me. Not that that was an evil or dangerous presence, I just didn’t know who it was, what it was, as if they were standing guard over me.

But like you, they allowed me to make mistakes, to taste the few pleasures and the great sorrows of this world, the illusion of success, fulfillment, the disappointments that follow.

I would have to know this. I would have to really know this—suffer—because this kind of suffering brings you to God if it can be understood .

So here we are facing the largest Revelation ever given to the human family, given at a pivotal turning point in the evolution history of humanity—facing now a world in decline, facing contact with a universe of intelligent life, facing realities we really have never had to face before, all of us together. For we are now the native peoples of the world, all of us together, facing Intervention. And that Intervention is here because we’re living in a failing world.

These things may sound amazing and tremendous and unfathomable, but the truth is you were prepared to hear these things, and maybe you’ve been feeling them for a very long time. This is not so foreign to you. Somehow the Revelation has been living within you waiting to sprout forth, waiting to be initiated.

And in life you’ve been held back; something’s been different. Perhaps you said yourself: “I know there’s something important for me to do in life, but I just don’t know what it is.” Or, “I’m gonna be part of something.” Or, “I’m gonna do something that I can’t make sense of it based on what I’m seeing in the moment.” This other sense, it makes you noetic, it makes you feel things that other people don’t feel or see things or concern yourself with things that other people don’t see or concern themselves with, a sensitivity that makes it harder to be in the world, not easier—more sensitive to suffering, dishonesty, depression, poverty, degradation.

So Knowledge, then, is what is responding within you. People say, “Well, I don’t know if I’ve experienced Knowledge.” But I say: Knowledge is what has brought you here. Knowledge is why you’re responding. Knowledge is not some chattering little mind in you that talks like your personal mind does, or is filled with ideas and speculation and fantasies and conflicting ideas and things like that. It’s a pervasive force like a force of gravity, a gravitational pull from Heaven.

And it’s been waiting for this within you, for it cannot be initiated by other things. Only Heaven can initiate what Heaven has put within you to respond. Human power, human glory, wealth, charm, beauty, sensational experiences can’t call this forth from you, and you cannot call it forth from yourself. Something has to activate you to enable you to respond.

The New Message tells us that redemption occurs through the power of Knowledge in the individual—not just here, but in every world in a non-human universe, that God doesn’t have a plan for our world. It’s a plan for the whole universe.

And you would not understand that Plan unless you could see that it was for the whole universe, for sentient beings so unlike us by culture or appearance or adaptation. This is the Plan. And the Plan exists and is assured success because of the presence of Knowledge within us and each other.

It’s very simple. Only a genius could figure out how to reach each one of us in our peculiar state of individuality and all of sentient life, which is so different, a myriad and amazing amount of forms and expressions, could speak to all everywhere with the same force. That’s pretty smart.

And even if you’ve never considered yourself a God person, and I wasn’t a real strong God person early on, it doesn’t matter because God knows how to find you like a speck upon the ocean and to give your life destiny and purpose and meaning, and a deeper relationship. (So are you ready to do the slide?)

“The Spirit knows. The mind thinks. And the body acts. When they are brought together, greatness begins to be revealed in the world. Your Ancient Home begins to be experienced here. A life has come alive. A mind becomes illuminated. A body is able to express and to communicate a greater and more pervasive reality. This is what you are working towards and for. And this is why your work in the world today is important. – The Pillar of Work, Living The Way of Knowledge

The essence of this is not understanding as much as it is experience. Our minds are not capable of grasping realities this big. Science will never get there.

So it’s happening at a different level within you. But a certain amount of understanding is necessary to bring your mind into balance in relationship with Knowledge within you. And your life has to become available to respond because while we were waiting for this calling, we went out and built whole lives: families, relationships, commitments, careers. And then something happens, not in our time frame, but on some other kind of time frame that’s coordinated out into the universe beyond what we can even imagine.

So in the end it is all about Knowledge and whether it can come forth—this deeper Intelligence within us—far beyond the notions of intuition.

When you begin, in the Revelation, it speaks of Knowledge as a gift from the Creator. God has given you Knowledge to guide you, protect you and to lead you to a greater fulfillment in the world. But as you proceed in this Revelation, you start to hear a different explanation, the explanation that this Knowledge is who you really are—the you before you came into the world and the you that will be you after you leave this place.

The calling forth Knowledge is not merely to give you a gift from God, but actually to restore you to end the division of your soul, for the Separation from God also is a Separation from your deeper nature.

So through Steps to Knowledge and the Revelation, we are engaged in a process of reuniting our worldly self with the immortal eternal Self that lives within us, that holds the key to our existence here—why we came, who sent us, what we’re here to know and to do and to accomplish, things our minds cannot figure out, try as you may. I know you’ve tried. This has to emerge within you.

Think of Knowledge now as our connection to a Greater Reality, both beyond the physical universe and within it. We’re part of this Greater Reality. And though that seems incongruous with our individual mundane life, it’s there nonetheless. If you were to lose this, really, or if humanity were to lose this collectively, spirituality would die in this world, and with that would come all notions of freedom, self-expression, personal meaning and destiny. The light would go out. At least in this life, it would go out.

So God is calling for Knowledge to arise within us, to emerge within us, being the foundation of who we are. For only that foundation can see with clear eyes and hear with clear ears, can use the body as an instrument of communication and discernment, can use the mind as a navigator for navigating a complex and changing world. For in the true hierarchy of your Being, the body serves the mind, and the mind serves the Spirit, or Knowledge.

When that alignment can be established, you become a complete person. You begin to function the way you were designed to function originally, instead of becoming a product of society, not distorted by life in the world.

Here I want to emphasize that Knowledge is not belief. Belief is of the personal mind and is subject to all the forces of persuasion and manipulation in the world. But belief is important in maintaining your connection to Knowledge when you’re not experiencing it, which will be most of the time. Here belief plays an important role. It also plays an important role in organizing your thinking, giving your mind direction, giving coherence to your experience and so forth. But never think that belief is the same as Knowledge or should substitute for Knowledge.

When you become fixated in belief, you look at the world only to validate belief. You look at the world to validate yourself. You actually cannot see the world very well at all. Your belief becomes like a fortress that you defend blindly, even from Knowledge within yourself, because you’ve identified with it so completely to the point where who I am is what I believe. Is the world not a great example of this?

Here the mind turns to stone, becomes unresponsive, inflexible, as if concrete has hardened and can no longer be malleable and shaped appropriately. This is how people become lost to Knowledge. So the New Message is constantly comparing Knowledge and belief.

And then we have the difficulty of decisions. Everything we see around us is the product of decisions. Your life is a product of innumerable decisions: your decisions, other people’s decisions for you. What informs those decisions? If the life we live is the product of countless decisions by countless numbers of people, wouldn’t the quality of life be determined by what informs those decisions? I mean good decisions lead to bad outcomes all the time.

So then you have the situation when people are free, they usually imitate each other because they don’t know how to make decisions that are authentic and guided by the deeper power within them.

So facing this new world reality that we’re facing now, millions of people will have to make untold number of decisions about what they see, what they know, what they’ll do, if they’ll prepare or not, and what will inform these decisions.

Clearly, we can make the decision not to see things. Everyone has done that. We can make a decision not to feel what we really feel. Everyone has done that. We can make the decision to make something look good that isn’t really good. We’ve all done that. We can make a decision not to make a decision when a decision is needed. We’ve all done that.

So we’re very experienced in the things that I’m talking about. We’re really good at this, okay? So congratulations! You have succeeded in living in Separation, for what it’s worth.

But now we’re turning a great corner and the signs of Heaven are being given. And the signs of the world are demonstrating the great need, the great time of change that is approaching.

And Knowledge is so hard to understand, idealize and conceptualize! I think of it like a force of attraction, almost like a gravitational force. The New Message calls it like the ocean. You know when you look at the ocean from the shoreline or from the side of a boat or a ship, it’s turbulent. I mean it doesn’t look like it has any kind of sense to it at all. It’s extremely random looking, unless you’re down in the Roaring Forties of the Southern Hemisphere with hundred foot waves. But we don’t go there. We poddle around in little waves.

But the reality of the ocean is that the great currents are moving the ocean with great consistency and deliberation, governed by celestial forces and internal forces of the Earth—forces that we can’t account for.

So like this, you have a force in your life that you can respond to and follow, but cannot really fully understand. Not yet. Understanding is not the prerequisite. And indeed, you follow Knowledge, then you understand Knowledge. Let Knowledge determine your decisions. You follow that, Knowledge becomes a stronger reality within you. There’s no playing it safe where you have to know exactly how it’s going to turn out, because that’s not life. Life is a series of decisions that must be made, or are not made, to determine the outcome.

So I’d like to share a little of my experience of Knowledge. I’ve been dealing with this Mystery for almost (how far back should I say?) well, over 40 years. And, of course, I had big ideas about it at the beginning because that’s what the mind does; it tries to have big ideas to show that it’s involved in the process, not to be left behind or not to look dumb. So as a result, great metaphysical systems are established to try to define something we actually know nothing about. It’s okay.

For me, Knowledge is like a river of intention that lives within me. It doesn’t talk to me all day. It’s not interested in my endless questioning of it. It will not respond to the idea of “Let’s take this to Knowledge, see what Knowledge says.” No, that is not a valid question. It’s not even an honest question.

So Knowledge is kind of a pervasive force, and it arises from time to time powerfully. And sometimes it gives you signals or messages, particularly in determining if you should do something or not, or engage in a behavior, or even a line of thinking until such time as you can train yourself how to guide your mind. Because that’s what a teacher does.

A teacher doesn’t become the indispensable tool of the student. A teacher becomes a vehicle through which the student learns to teach themselves. So what I might say to you that might be corrective, at some point you’ll be saying these things to yourself. And you will make the correction. That’s a good sign.

So this is really an individual journey that we travel together. The requirements are the same, but the journey itself is somewhat unique. The situations are unique. Living in Separation creates that uniqueness to a great extent.

One of the things I’ve learned to do is do a lot of inner listening, not to get answers, but just to stay tuned. Knowledge will not give you explanations. It will move you or hold you back. And generally at the beginning, it mostly holds you back from giving your life away to people, places and things prematurely before you really know what you’re doing here. We’ve all done that.

So the feelings of restraint that you may have felt in anticipation of doing something are very important. That restraint is not like just fear. It’s feeling like someone is trying to hold you back. Something inside does not want to go where you want to go.

Have you ever picked up a baby that didn’t want to be picked up and they’re like three times as heavy as the baby who wants to be picked up? So the baby in you doesn’t want to go there and so it becomes a big weight. And then you start telling yourself, “Well, I should do this. What’s wrong with me that I won’t do this? Isn’t it the right thing to do?” and all the kinds of things that we’ve been taught to explain away our own experience.

So given that, what I’ve learned is Knowledge is our deepest experience. It’s the ground floor of our being. It’s the ground floor of our experience. But it’s not restless and wandering in the world. It’s moving. It’s attempting to move us with it, both internally and externally.

So ultimately Knowledge is about movement. It’s about what you do, what you serve and why you serve. In the end, that’s all that matters. Because our minds are filled with so many other objectives in life, it can take quite a while to sort this out, get down to the bottom line. What is the bottom line?

To know yourself apart from this means nothing. You can account for your behavior, your tendencies, your weaknesses, your strengths, your talents, but all that is potential to be either used meaningfully or not.

Can I have a Steps to Knowledge? Is there one handy over there? Ah, is there one here? Thank you.

Steps to Knowledge prepares us for this at the beginning [in an] interesting way. This is between Steps 9 and 10, where it asks: “Why am I doing this anyway?” It’s pretty reasonable to ask.

“Very good question,” it says.

“Why are you doing this anyway? Why are you asking such questions? Why do you seek for greater things? Why are you exerting the effort? These questions are inevitable. We anticipate them. Why are you doing this? You are doing this because it is essential. If you wish to live anything greater than a purely superficial and unstable life, you must penetrate deeper and not be confident based only upon weak assumptions and hopeful expectations. There is a greater gift awaiting you, but you must prepare yourself mentally, emotionally and physically. Without Knowledge, you are unaware of your purpose. You are unaware of your origin and your destiny, and you will pass through this life as if it were a troubled dream and no more.

Pretty chilling. Pretty honest.

Our experience of Knowledge changes as we proceed, and we work with certain kinds of assumptions, and that’s fine. We work with a certain orientation, and that’s fine. But as we go up this mountain, we see more and know more. As we take these Steps, Knowledge becomes stronger within us. And then, we come to a threshold, what the New Message calls a gate.

A gate is like you come to a place where now you have to make some kind of big decision, usually about relationships, but it can be about work and health and other things. And you kind of stop because that seems like it could be really hard, the decision. Actually a decision is not hard, but it seems hard at that moment. So these are like gates.

And if you can pass through these gates after stalling out for some time or going around in circles or trying to find a detour—no detours, so there’s the gate—something begins to shift within you. This force become stronger, this sense of conscience. Let’s use the word conscience, not social conscience—not like you have to open the door for this lady. I’m talking about the innate sense of what is correct and not correct within yourself and within your environment and relationships.

This sense of conscience gets stronger, not so easy to deny it or forget about it. It’s going along for the ride now and it’s now in the back seat, like God is in the back seat telling you how to drive. You don’t get to sit in the back seat and have God drive. Oh, no. No. You drive; God rides.

And God keeps you in that driver seat. And through our association together, I intend to keep you in that driver seat as much as I can. But sometimes, you know, you need something, you need to be given something or shown something, and that’s understandable. It’s important.

I’ve learned that Knowledge leaves you alone with things. And if there’s already things you know you need to do, maybe they are practical things: lose weight, eat better, don’t say those things, don’t associate with those people, change your job, get out of town. If you know things like this—does anybody here know things?—and you’re not acting on it, why would you think that Knowledge is going to give you something else to do? Because you probably won’t do that either.

So now you have two failures instead of one. So Knowledge is waiting for you while you’re waiting for Knowledge. “Where’s Knowledge?” [taps his foot, looks around] Well, Knowledge is with you, but where are you? “I don’t know where I am.”

And you find out, you know, when you begin Steps—at least it was my experience (I know I’m not the only one with this)—you go a whole day and you have no idea where you’ve been with yourself. You don’t have any idea of where…you’ve been experiencing for the last six hours.

So Steps to Knowledge gives you an hourly practice to try to keep track of yourself as you’re being out in this wild world because otherwise you don’t have a clue of where you are and you’re not aware of danger. You’re not aware of what might happen next because you don’t see it coming.

The deer in the field are watching. The birds in the air are watching. But human beings somehow seem to be the least intelligent creatures on the planet because they keep walking into disasters, or they don’t realize a threat or a danger when it’s near them or coming towards them.

So when the tsunami hits the beach of the island nation, all the animals head to higher ground, and the people go out and wonder why the ocean is receding so far out and the children are sent out to collect shells. (This is real by the way.) The elephants break their chains. The people stand in amazement. And then there’s a big wave way out there that starts to build. And they stand there in amazement until that wave is at their doorstep. And then they die.

Can we know what we’re looking at?

So one of Knowledge’s first purposes is to keep you safe so you don’t destroy your health or your life or your opportunities for the future, which means it’s holding you back, or trying to. But there are countering forces, such as the biological need to reproduce and the powers of romance, which are highly supported by the culture for economic reasons, and your insecurity about being alone or not having an answer for your life.

So to keep you out of trouble is the first task of Knowledge. It doesn’t mean it’s always successful because we’re in the driver’s seat, remember? And we don’t hear that thing in the back seat. Well, maybe we do, but, “Damn, I’m gonna do what I wanna do.” Right? Right! Good! [from room: “Don’t tell me how to drive.”] “Don’t tell me how to drive.”

So we’re going to do a little exercise now, together. And I’m going to invite everyone who’s watching from afar to join us in this, and everyone in the other room. And we’re going to do this together. It’s just going to take a few minutes. And this is a very good exercise to do at home.

I want you now to close your eyes for a few minutes. Take three really deep big, big breaths.

Now I want you to ask your mind to recall a time when you experienced this Knowledge—some hard decision or turning point or sudden event where you were faced with something and you had to respond or choose.

Recall a time you experienced this Knowledge, this inner directive, this pervasive feeling, this unusual idea coming into your mind, however it may have manifested for you.

Recall what happened. Recall your experience. And recall what you chose to do at that time. And feel the feeling that you felt then, engaged with this sense that came to you or the confusion that surrounded you at that moment.

Good. Now I want you to choose another experience where you feel that you experienced Knowledge facing a decision or an event, a predicament, an opportunity, a threat—anything. Recall what happened. Recall how you felt at the time. Recall the experience of what you might call Knowledge. And then recall what you chose to do as a result.

Feel the feelings of that time, of that situation.

Feel how it feels at this moment to recall these things to whatever degree you could recall them in the moment.

Okay, we’re going to come back into the room now and I ask you to remember whatever it was you experienced. And again this is a great exercise to do at home, and you can do it much more pervasively going through every stage of your life.

And I’ll tell you why this is important and then we’ll have an open floor. If you can recall experiences, even if they were very hard or painful, it can give you the indicators you need to know about how to face what comes next.

Any good therapist is going to want to take you back into your experience beyond the sphere of your ideas. They may want to know your ideas about the experience, but they want to take you into the experience because that’s where the truth of the situation can become more evident. But of course, people run from their experience and hide from their experience and only want to experience certain things that are pleasurable or consoling or reassuring.

But Knowledge is functioning at the level of your experience. Though it can send ideas into your mind, its ground of being is in your experience because that is a deeper level of consciousness than your mind. Your mind interprets and can create its own experience. That’s true. But the experience that’s elemental in the course of your life, what really mattered in the course of your life, are key experiences. And what you knew and how you responded to those experiences at the time are very crucial for you to understand how Knowledge speaks to you.

You could be very visually oriented. You could be very physically oriented; you respond to physical sensations. You could be very idea based where ideas come into your mind. You could be auditory. I’m very auditory; this is perfect for my role. So I listen for things.

In fact, when I began to have my encounters was when I was working with blind children who, despite severe handicaps for some of them, were able to tell who you were by the sound of you walking on a deep carpet because they relied so intensely on their listening. I was very impressed by that.

So we have to know our nature enough through our own experience to see how Knowledge is likely to communicate with us. And we can pray and ask for certain things, and sometimes that is effective. And sometimes Knowledge will remain silent, mainly because you probably aren’t ready for the answer that it would really give you. Either emotionally or circumstantially, you’re just not ready for that.

By the way, you can know things that you really aren’t prepared to know right now, like if your marriage is gonna work or if you are silently building a serious disease process within your body. This is pretty important stuff.

So these are things that Knowledge can respond to if you are ready. But some things are withheld because you’re really not ready and you just…it would be too stabilizing for you. Knowledge wants to keep you in the saddle in life, not knock you off the horse.

So to know how Knowledge speaks to you in your own experience is very important. And your past is the best reference point you have if you’re willing to go back and really examine the things that really mattered in your life: the turning points, the critical decisions. Whether you chose wisely or not, it’s very important because you need to know why you would choose unwisely right now.

What would prevent you from seeing clearly? The keys to that are in your past—sometimes in other people who behave in similar ways to you or do similar things that you did. Sometimes their demonstration can call these things forward.

But your own past holds so much wisdom for you. But people want to just keep heading out, right? “Look ahead. Don’t look back. Looking back is painful. I don’t wanna look back.” I’m asking you to look back.

You have to know where you’ve been to know where you are. And your journey also indicates direction. Even though you’ve meandered all over the place, wandering in the universe, there’s some kind of direction to your life, right? It’s like a river flowing through the valleys. Okay, it has direction, but it’s not moving in a straight line. Neither is your life. So this well of experience that you carry within you, called your past, can be a real friend to you now.

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