Remembrance: Recognizing the Unimaginable.
On Day 14 of the 2017 Steps Vigil commemorating the 28th anniversary of the reception of Steps to Knowledge, Marshall shares some profound wisdom, taking the opportunity that this gathering affords to draw us further into the mystery and teaching of Steps to Knowledge.
He begins speaking at the 56.40 minute mark.
“So this evening I thought it would be good to spend a little time with this beautiful passage from Steps to Knowledge. Step 281. Above All Else I Seek Knowledge
“Above all else seek that which will serve everything through you. In this, your need and the remedy for your life will become simple, and you will be able to proceed in certainty and patience, becoming a consistent student of Knowledge. Day by day you are reclaiming your True Self. Day by day you are escaping all else that seeks to pull you into the darkness of confusion. Day by day that which is unreal begins to disintegrate and that which is genuine begins to emerge.”
“I would like to spend a little time with this teaching, with you. It seems that great truth requires great wisdom–to know how it is to be understood, how and when and where it should be applied, where it should not be applied. Who should it be involved with and who should it not be involved with. If you are inexperienced in this wisdom, it is very easy to make mistakes, with a great truth like this.
“And so, in my admiration and support for your studenthood, I want to give you things along the way, clarification, correction, warnings that can help you understand and approach these great truths and adopt them in such a way that they can begin to work through you naturally within your own life. This particular teaching has hidden requirements. And Steps to Knowledge reveals these requirements through its study.
“You seek Knowledge, but Knowledge seeks to work through you. Through the vehicle of your life, the vehicle of your mind, using the tools and the wisdom you have gained thus far and the wisdom you will need to gain, relying upon your consistency and dedication. Relying upon you to become simple enough that you can do these things. That you are the same person every day, in all situations. That you are not here today and gone tomorrow. That you not become lost to yourself for long periods of time.
“Because the New Message tells us that Knowledge is knowing what to do, but wisdom is knowing how to do it, when to do it, where to do it and with whom to do it. Much of our training in The Way of Knowledge is really about cultivating this wisdom, this restraint, this discernment, discretion. Or, if that doesn’t take place, then you will make assumptions about what this means and try to live those assumptions. Which will really not be at all what this means. Or you will assume a kind of attitude and way of being in life that really is not authentic, or isn’t able to deal with changing circumstances or different situations.
“Perhaps you will become very pious and have a pious attitude towards all things. But that’s not really real. Knowledge needs for you to do what Knowledge needs for you to do. To be humble in this situation, but perhaps to be assertive in this situation. To hold yourself back with these people, but to bring yourself forth with these other people. To deliver this message to this person, but not to that person or those people. Or wait for this person to arrive to deliver the message, for it has nothing to do with the people with whom you’re engaged with now. This [is the] ability to wait, to hold wisdom, to keep it within yourself, without trying to make it relevant to yourself or to the things that you see around you. You’re just holding it there, waiting for the moment when it’s going to be really needed.
“It’s like the surgeon who maybe performs certain kinds of surgeries on a regular basis, but also has to know how to do rare kinds of procedures. I remember speaking to an emergency room doctor, who said, every time I go to work I have to remind myself how to do a caesarian section, because there will come a time when I will have to do that. Skills at the ready, skills in abeyance.
“So all these things take time. You seek Knowledge, which is entirely correct, but to be a vehicle for Knowledge, you must be free. You must know where you’ve been, I keep saying this, because you’ve already gained wisdom, hard-won wisdom, yes? Think about that–the wisdom I have gained, what I have really learned that was really important. And it was hard learning.
“If you forget that wisdom, you don’t have it, you can’t use it, and you may have to learn it again. Knowing where you have been is knowing what you have learned, knowing the mistakes you have made and the wisdom you have gained from that. For you will gain much more wisdom from making mistakes than you will from making successful decisions, overall.
“So when I read things like this that really move me, I wonder, I concern myself, will people take the time to learn how to experience this? How to hold this? How to carry this? Because in my experience, Knowledge uses everything that it can use in us. Knowledge even uses our mistakes as a method of teaching.
“My life has been an example of something that I want to teach. You have to be a person who can assume many different modes of behavior appropriate to the situation. You have to know where you are, where your mind is, what’s going on around you, which means you are really free of being so concerned with yourself.
“If that which you seek will serve everything through you, then you must be the vehicle that can make that possible. And that is the training, that’s the refinement, that’s the determination, that’s the objectivity. Everything that the New Message teaches us in how to be in the world is relevant to what I am saying to you right here.
“Let the Presence with you, but you have to be with the Presence. The person who does not prepare will misuse the Revelation. They will assume it’s a belief, an attitude, and a certain advantageous way of being. But it won’t be natural, it won’t be real, and it will be inappropriate.
“So one of the things I always look for in students is the ability to wait and to hold things without altering them or trying to understand them beyond what’s possible. And then, in time, you become a person with depth, and a deep ballast, and you carry that with you. Nasi Novare Coram
Remembrance: A Call to Recognize the Unimaginable
The Remembrance
“So the Messenger calls those to gather with him at certain times, so that he can impart the Presence and the Remembrance, and so that you, who are so called, can recognize that you are not alone and that relationships of true meaning are there, not just in one person only, but all around you, as you gather in the Circle of the Messenger. This is all part of the Remembrance, you see.”
“Let’s just take a moment and let’s be with this together.
“How can you remember something that is unimaginable at this level of reality? At this level of reality, nothing eternal can be considered. Our mind lives in time, our social worldly mind, created in time and space, it can only relate to time and space. So how can you remember something that’s beyond time and space? Unless that memory already lives within you. And what can recall that to you but a gift from where you have come from and to what you will return to. A gift that not only represents something, but moves through you like a deep current.
“To be with the Revelation that has been sent into the world in its purest form.
“To be amongst those who are the first to respond, blessed be they.
“To recite that which was known before, but has been forgotten.
“And to reclaim that which lives within you now, which was unknown before.
“The vehicle for Heaven must have a certain degree of remembrance here. It cannot be complete, for you could not be in the world with that. For Heaven is unimaginable here, just like being in the world is unimaginable looking from there. Only those who can bridge these two realities, the Great Assembly, can be in both worlds at once.
“But for us [there is] a certain amount of remembrance, which is not an image, for where we have come from is not a landscape in that way, but a deep feeling of relationship, being known, being directed, the Great Coordination.
“And what can enable us to remember but being a part of that Great Coordination as we become able to recognize it, to abide with it, to serve it. Somehow then our fear of death begins to fade away, and being in the world is but a very long day of being on the job. Happy to go home at the end of that long day, where things are much better.
“Steps to Knowledge teaches you how to remember, by being with Knowledge, by reciting its teaching for the world. By hearing your own voice reciting it, as if you were proclaiming it to the world.
“We are gathering then, we have this great opportunity to begin to recover what must be recovered, to recognize what must be recognized, to remember that we have not been forgotten, and that our mission and our preparation stretches out before us. May the Presence be with us, Nasi Novare Coram.”
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