Left to my own devices, I don’t just see things.  The seeing of something for me is the blastoff point for a sequence of thoughts moving through my network of associations with quite a few twists and turns.  This inner dialogue of preferences, aversions, judgements and assumptions is a hindrance to looking at things objectively.

A new practice is introduced in step 19 of Steps to Knowledge.  The practice is to take a mundane object, and look at it.  Just look at it.  Just look at it without trying to come to any conclusions, without trying to make any inferences from what is seen.  Spend 15 minutes in as pure observation as possible.  Do that on two separate occasions.

There was a time when I took my children ice skating at a nearby hockey arena.  I happened to find a hockey puck there, which I kept for no particular reason.  I don’t play hockey, none of my children play hockey, and I don’t follow hockey very closely.  I’m telling you this to tell you the object I selected for the first just-look-at-it exercise was the hockey puck.  This hockey puck had a number of scratches on it, and I noticed that I tried to imagine how the puck got the scratches in the first place.  That wasn’t observation.

The other mundane object I selected was a metal serving spoon.  The observation was a little tricky, because there were objects reflected in the spoon, which I saw as I looked at the spoon.  If I observed other objects reflected in the spoon, was I still observing the spoon?  Perhaps I was observing the spoon’s reflectivity.  I recall being not entirely clear about this when I did the exercise.

What did I come away with?  Just looking at something is loving that thing.  Everything in nature (including myself) will reveal its secrets to me if I look at it without trying to impose my thoughts and wishes on it.

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Welcome to Mystery of Ascension! We are students and advocates of the the New Message from God. We are members of a worldwide community. We seek to assist the world in successfully navigating difficult times ahead. We seek to assist the world in successfully emerging into a greater community of intelligent life. You will also find some poetry. Find out more about us here. Contact us here.

Any student of Steps to Knowledge is going to make a significant investment of time, effort and trust.  By the time a student gets to step 18, she has already made a certain investment.  What will be the return on the investment?  Steps to Knowledge has been somewhat terse up to this point, but in step 18, there is some elaboration:

To come into the proximity of Knowledge means that you become more and more like Knowledge itself—more whole, more consistent, more honest, more devoted, more
concentrated, more self-disciplined, more compassionate and more self-loving. All of these qualities are developed as you approach that which is the source of these qualities.

On one hand, step 18 is only 5% of the way into Steps to Knowledge.  On the other hand, I take comfort in what I am told will happen as I go forward.  It’s like having a travel brochure describing the terrain and climate of a place to which I am traveling.

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Welcome to Mystery of Ascension! We are students and advocates of the the New Message from God. We are members of a worldwide community. We seek to assist the world in successfully navigating difficult times ahead. We seek to assist the world in successfully emerging into a greater community of intelligent life. You will also find some poetry. Find out more about us here. Contact us here.

Should the truth feel like anything?  If so, why should the truth feel like anything?  If not, why not?  You may have heard that different people have different “learning styles,” (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc.)  I am clearly a visual learner.  I know this because when I recall something I read, I recall the part of page it was on when I read it.  Visual learning is great for some things (like spelling, for instance), and not so great for other things (like auto repair or downhill skiing).  But when it comes to the truth, it’s not good enough to rely only on your dominant learning style.  It’s necessary to have the witness of what you feel as well.  Step 18 of Steps to Knowledge declares “Truth is something you will feel with your entire body, with your entire being.”

I’m writing to confess my bewilderment with the practice instruction for this step.  I was asked to give my full attention to feeling the truth arising within myself.  At the time, the very instruction seemed non-well-formed, gobbledygoop.  I normally don’t think of myself as giving attention to feeling something or not feeling something.  Left to my own devices, I usually just feel what I feel or don’t feel what I don’t feel.  Am I being asked to feel something in my mind’s feelings, in the same way I often see things in my mind’s eye?  Am I being asked to tune into a certain vibration of feelings, as if I had an internal radio dial? There was some recognition of this in the instructions, as it said “…do not be discouraged if it is difficult at first.”

I was also instructed to pursue my true goal in life during the day.  I think the point of that instruction was to demonstrate that I didn’t have a clue as to what my true goal in life was, and that whatever I thought my true goal in life was, was only a body of preferences and aversions.

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Welcome to Mystery of Ascension! We are students and advocates of the the New Message from God. We are members of a worldwide community. We seek to assist the world in successfully navigating difficult times ahead. We seek to assist the world in successfully emerging into a greater community of intelligent life. You will also find some poetry. Find out more about us here. Contact us here.