The Return to True Relationship

You can only practice. You can only be a student. So what do you practice? And what are you a student of? And who, then, is your teacher who is teaching you in your studenthood?

The purpose of Steps is also to prepare us for the Greater Community because it represents the work of God in the universe, which is very far beyond any worldly, theological understanding, but is in some ways extremely simple, though deep.

So Steps to Knowledge in the New Message, in part, is here to prepare us for the Greater Community because more than anything else, that will determine our future and our destiny. So the plan is very big, but we can understand our part of it.

For me, Steps to Knowledge is the most mysterious of all the books of Revelation. And probably in some ways, it’s the most important book because it is infused with the power of journey and mission and movement. If you can stay with it, it really takes you somewhere. And those things that really aren’t a part of you begin to fall away, kind of taking you to your essential nature and design for being here.

Once I’m gone, there will be nothing added to the New Message. So you should all know that, that the Seal will close behind me according to the Revelation. So as much that I can give you to prepare the pathway, to answer the questions and to provide warning and wisdom regarding all the mistakes that could be made with this, which could be many, that’s very important to leave as little as possible that other people will fill in for their own designs, purposes.

I think the [Angelic] Assembly has learned a lot about bringing revelation into this world, and that’s one of the reasons Steps was given first. It was not constructed later by well meaning, though perhaps not well guided, individuals. So should anything happen to me, you have the pathway. You might not have the understanding, but you would have the pathway. And the pathway would be from the Source and not something that was created as a means of study by people who did not know me, by people who had different levels of awareness and understanding.

So Jesus didn’t have a book, but Muhammed got a book. But in all cases, the book was created after their passing. And that creates lots of problems and dangers. So first, there had to be the pathway; it had to be a book. 

Before Steps to Knowledge Inner Guidance Training, I would receive the curriculum for it. It was always just totally experimental, probably more about my training than it was about what happened for the participants. But it did prepare me for how The Way of Knowledge should be taught, which is more about taking things away than adding things, a process of reduction than addition.

But it requires the power of Heaven to really make the difference, you see. That’s what sets this apart from everything. Steps to Knowledge, beyond its simple words, given so that Steps could be easily translated with the fewest possible problems, has amazing power in it. So for those of you who are doing Steps for the second time or a third time, you’ll notice that when you return to it, that you’re seeing it differently, or you’re…it’s yielding more to you as your capacity grows. You appreciate it more. You need it more. So it’s a wondrous thing.

I was the first student of Steps. Soon after receiving it, I began to study. It took me…I did it every day for 15 months, and have done it several times since. And it was definitely different than anything I had ever experienced before. Now we’re fortunate to have it. And now it’s out in the world getting translated so it can live there because the Teaching is always more important than the teacher, if the Teaching is real. 

Steps to Knowledge is here to serve people a thousand years from now, living under very, very different circumstances.

The fact that Steps to Knowledge can speak beyond the borders, cultures, religions, nationalities, attests to its universal nature. 

So it’s a Great Coordination going on. Though we may only see a tiny part of it, it is important to recognize that and feel that. It’s like it’s not just you stumbling along trying to learn; it’s like something really big that is stirring and moving in the world and from beyond the world. It’s a Great Coordination. So perhaps, in time, as you progress further, you can look back at your own life and have a sense of coordination there, that you had to reach a rendezvous before you became unreachable.

From room: That’s the miracle.

MVS: Like a speck on the ocean, adrift…

So the first respondents to the Revelation will have a lot to do with its safety and purity going forward. So while the truth in it will resonate with the truth in many other teachings and traditions, the New Message itself can carry you where you need to go.

You can study Steps at many different levels. You can take this thing much further than is just apparent by reading what’s on one page so…and to take yourself to task to reform your life because if your life is unreformed, you cannot move forward and you will not be of greater service to others.

Steps needs to be lived and not just attempted. And it is the Will of Heaven, so not to be dealt with lightly in that regard.

But I understand that when people begin this preparation and pathway, their relationship with it will change over time. Everybody begins, or most people begin, with wanting to use it as a resource for themself personally, that it’s there to serve them. And if they can go far enough, they’ll see that they’re really there to serve it. But that represents a real shift internally about how you regard yourself and what your reference point is within yourself.

The journey out of Separation changes how we look at everything and the meaning of things and the usefulness or the uselessness of things. So how you regard your mind, how you regard your body, how you regard your circumstances goes through tremendous shifts, a set of changes here as you journey out of the fog of confusion, or as what the Teaching sometimes refers to as “the jungle.”

The greater truths are waiting, waiting for you to be ready to recognize them and embrace them because before that, I mean, if your aim is to try to make Separation work and that’s still your primary investment, then anything that looks like a reconnection to your Source looks somehow threatening to your plans, goals and intention.

So what I and Steps need is for you to recognize your relationship with the Revelation and what you’re really here to do to assist it and support it, and your relationship with me, which means it brings you into a real relationship with me and with it. And it puts your studenthood on a whole different platform.

Now you’re studying to get ready to do what you came here to do and not merely to add on to the spiritual fascination and high experiences and things like that that are allurements along the way but don’t represent the real goal and purpose of why you’re being called.

The New Message makes it very clear that you can’t just surrender yourself to God. “My God, just take care of my affairs for me. Just, God, show me everything I need to know. God…” You can’t abdicate your responsibility. You have to do the work. You have to make the changes. You have to face the consequences of those changes—the uncertainties, the risks, perhaps sacrifices of those changes. You have to become the worthy vehicle for a greater Power to move through you.

There are just so many corrections that are presented here, so many, so many important things that open the door, open the pathway for people.

Patricia, in your presentation opening night, kind of talked about the lift-off, of the rocket lifting off. And in order to launch a rocket, you have to know the coordinates. There has to be a launch window, which means there’s an opportunity to get your vehicle where it’s supposed to go so it doesn’t miss its target by several tens of millions of miles and it doesn’t blow up and it doesn’t go where you don’t want it to go.

So in order to coordinate the Revelation, this is a launch window. This is an opportunity that it needs. It’s not about what you need. It’s what it needs to succeed and to have an impact in the world. So that’s a great coordination of both situations here on the ground in the world, the readiness of certain people. I’m sure the coordination is beyond what I could describe or even aware of as to when and where and how and who.

But I think the takeaway message is you’re part of something greater, and you need to really support that. You need to support your community. You need to support the Revelation in any way you can because it’s giving you life. And it’s creating promise for the world, a world of diminishing promise.

So don’t avoid the pressure. The pressure is good. The pressure gives you power. The pressure keeps you afloat. The pressure keeps you from sinking into self-pity or your old distractions or any behaviors that might create unworthiness. The pressure is energy. 

But it’s not just energy because it’s responsibility.