Foundation-Building: A Vital Practice
During Day 8 of the 2017 Steps Vigil, Marshall shared some important direction regarding foundation-building and building the Four Pillars of our life.
Marshall begins speaking at the 51:29 mark in the video.
“This evening I would like to provide some direction that I think will be important for all people who have found the New Message and will find the New Message in the future. The New Message is here to give us strength, clarity, power and determination. Things that we need right now, today, and we have always needed, but especially things we will need in the future, that will be far more uncertain and perhaps more unstable than it is today. It is this beautiful love to prepare us for being in the world in a new way. Part of this love is to teach us how to be stable and to encourage stability.
“In fact, part of the work of Knowledge within us, the deeper intelligence within us, is to give us stability. It is so easy for us to be impacted by the world, to be taken off course by outside influences or our own influences. Something has to be in us that brings us in the true direction of our life and is able to keep bringing us back. For like planes in the air and ships at sea, we tend to go off course. And yet there is this deeper anchor within us. And once we begin to feel it and know it and trust it, it acts as a tremendous stabilizing force.
“This Knowledge, which helps to preserve us and guide us in these early years and early stages, will later yield to the world, if we can prepare, greater gifts, greater wisdom, greater strength, where it is truly needed, where we are destined to provide these things. But to do this we have to build a strong foundation. And the New Message emphasizes this foundation-building throughout the study of Steps to Knowledge, for example, and throughout its many, many teachings on many subjects.
“So emphasizing this stability then becomes very important, and emphasizing the presence of Knowledge becomes very important. Because religion and spirituality without this deep anchoring of Knowledge tends to become delusional, tends to disorient people from reality. They will seek escape there, or they seek self-importance there, or they just seek to have a different kind of world than the world their senses report. But Knowledge is here to keep us on track. And it does this as a relentless force within us to keep us aiming in the right direction.
“Of course my concern here, as the New Message gives you strength and power and vision, gives you encouragement to honor your deeper experience, to make wise decisions, my concern is that people will become ungrounded, will lose this grounding, this center line, this deep anchoring. It is so easy for people to use a teaching like this for their own edification, instead of allowing it to be the real training it is to prepare us for a new life.
“So I feel I must emphasis this foundation-building for all those who are studying the New Message and particularly for those who really seek to have a new life and have recognized the promise of a new life that the New Message offers. Here, to build a new foundation for a new life is quite a task. And I respect anyone who can undertake this, for it is not easy. And many people will shy away from this. Many people will doubt this and question this, seeking to be comfortable in the day and secure it with what little they have already.
“But there is something in us that wants to aim us higher, to go deeper, to go further. And it is that part of you that I speak to today. For all those who are responding to the New Message, I am calling you higher up this mountain. I am calling you to a greater clarity, stability and service. And like climbing a mountain, it is not simply a pastime, or an easy stroll, or something you do in an afternoon. It becomes a great task. And it begins to employ all your true strengths and abilities and enables you to leave behind the confusion of the lowlands below, the fog of confusion, the fog of doubt, the ambivalence, and all the persuasions that attend this.
“For Knowledge is trying to take you somewhere in life, not just to a state of mind, but actually somewhere in the world, to engage with certain people in a certain way and, along this journey, to build the core strength, clarity and sense of service that are innate to who you really are.
“This requires that you build a stable foundation as you proceed. And of course many people come to the New Message who don’t really have this foundation. Or perhaps they have a foundation, but it is built on unhealthy relationships, their association with people who do not really understand them, or cannot really support them, particularly in a great calling such as this. So the New Message emphasizes what we call the Four Pillars – The Pillar of Work and Providership, the Pillar of Relationships, the Pillar of Health and the Pillar of Spiritual Development.
“Like the four legs of a table, these pillars uphold your life and uphold the real life you seek to build now as you go forward. At any given time, your life is only as strong as the strongest pillars and as weak as the weakest pillars. When you begin to attend to building these pillars in your life, each involving a different kind of approach, which the New Message emphasizes, you find that you do not have time to become eccentric, or to give yourself to one thing only, predominantly, or to lose yourself in side journeys or romances, because you have four pillars to build. And this work you do here is here to replace the errant thinking and haphazard life you have had before, for here you are being truly employed. And there is a lot of work to do, and there’s lots of tools to use.
“So the pillar of work is very significant. First of all, you have to have a pillar of stable work and with that to build some financial foundation. You cannot live for the moment only, for that is not intelligent, You are here to prepare for the future, as well as to experience the moment. The future you seek to have has to have a stable foundation of work, financial stability, and so forth. It is part of your task to build this as you go forward.
“You have to have a health pillar that can sustain you and keep you stable–mental health, emotional health and physical health. All of which require attention and care and effort to build these things, building a foundation for a greater life.
“In your pillar of relationships, you have to find the right people to be with, who have a natural resonance with you and who understand that you are seeking something greater in life that is not well understood in the world or supported there. This means you cannot really afford to be with people who do not have this understanding of you, who would work against it, work against you. Aside from taking care of your children and raising them into adulthood and, under certain circumstances, taking care of an elderly or infirm parent, you have to choose your relationships very carefully here and often have to leave those that cannot abide with you or journey with you. Because a new life is not a sweetener to make your old life palatable and more tolerable. It is a new life. And God seeks to give you a new life.
“In the pillar of spiritual development, you need a consistent practice, to use the Steps of Knowledge, to learn to utilize the great practices. You take advantage of the directives, the many directives that the New Message provides, to help you in all manner of things, all the while building this stability. So that in time you become one person with one orientation, the same person in all situations. A person who is not easily persuaded by strong people around you, or frightening events, or group thinking. A person who can see clearly and who can abide with uncertainty. And this enables you in time to rise above the fog, the mental fog that engulfs so many people in the world today, rich or poor. There is no clarity there, you cannot see clearly there, nothing is evident there, living in that fog. So you build a way out of it. And God provides the ladder for you to build your way out of it.
“And that is the beauty of Steps to Knowledge that we celebrate here in this Vigil. It is not merely a promise, it is a gift of preparation, a gift that has the power of heaven within it, a gift that cannot be exhausted for it is far too deep for you to do that.
“When I speak of being stable, I am not speaking of being perfect. Perfection is not necessary, only functionality. What is important here is to be steady, responsible and resilient. Steady, responsible and resilient. Become a strong person, carrying a deep love, a person who is on a mission, a person who must engage with the mundane, daily, but who is connected to something far greater. Without this foundation, you will not be ready to take on greater work, you will be struggling with your weak pillars. You will be falling back into confusion. Yes, you have clarity, but you won’t have it enough to really give you forward motion. And you could so easily stall or fail or feel hopeless in the face of big decisions that need to be made in your life, when in fact Knowledge is there to guide you at every turn.
“This way is not easy because we have to learn to think differently, see with clear eyes and look at all things from a greater vantage point, which we cultivate over time. With this stable foundation-building, Heaven can rely upon you. Responsibility can come to you because that must accompany power.
“All these things I am sharing with you this evening have been such a hallmark of my own development as the Messenger. Years of preparation, abiding with great uncertainty about what I was doing, where I was going and what it would ultimately mean. Long periods of time without counsel and guidance, having to build slowly and carefully, never abandoning what I was here to do. Doubting myself, certainly, at times, doubting other people at times, but knowing that I must continue. Having to prove myself to those who sent me that I could been entrusted with something as great as a New Message for the world.
“Your gifts will not be so demanding, perhaps, not so great, your preparation will be far shorter than mine. But the reality of preparation is still the same, the emphasis is still the same, the journey is still the same. You begin to discover the core of your strength, you begin to align with it increasingly, daily, as much as you can. And when you forget, you come back, and when you lose heart, you return. When you fall into self-doubt, or follow the persuasion of others that lead you to doubt yourself, you come back to your practice. When life disappoints you, you look ahead.
“Many of your questions will remain unanswered for a time. The important thing is that you can make this journey, take these steps, get up this mountain. And as you do so you become more stable, more powerful, more consistent and reliable. This is what heaven needs for you. This is what I encourage always. And I pray that you will take this to heart and carry this forward, into your life beyond my time and the times to come. For you will need to be a source of strength and inspiration for others who have not had the gift of preparation that you have been blessed to have. May this blessing be with you, may it live within you, and may it make you strong, wise and compassionate. Nasi Novare Coram.”
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