I am pleased to report that I have completed Steps to Knowledge for the second time. Steps to Knowledge is the book of spiritual practice of the New Message from God. By “completed,” I mean I practiced each of the 365 steps in order. By “practiced,” I mean I read the step, followed the practice instructions without expecting a particular result. I started in April of 2014, and finished in August of 2017.

I might be a little more ready to help

I feel that someone reading this is thinking “Are you supposed to do one step a day, and thus finish in a year?” That’s right. “But Douglas, you took three years and four months to do this.” I did indeed. I had two long periods of inactivity during this time which added up to almost a year. I was engaging with the material in a different way, just not practicing the steps as directed. Sometimes events interrupted my practice. Sometimes my own ambivalence interrupted my practice..

I might be a little more ready to help. Marshall Vian Summers, who received Steps to Knowledge in 1989, said “You cannot exhaust this.” I certainly didn’t exhaust Steps to Knowledge. I practiced Steps to Knowledge for the first time between April of 2010 and April of 2014. During this time, I felt I wasn’t really supposed to think very much about the references a step made to an earlier step. There were enough challenging things to consider in each step that I felt I needed to focus on the step right in front of me. But the second time through, it seemed to me as if Steps to Knowledge was presenting an idea to me multiple times. Each time it revisited an idea, offered the idea in a slightly stronger form. Steps to Knowledge took me through multiple stages and octaves of development. An idea wasn’t just an idea in itself, but the top of the stack of progressively stronger iterations of that idea.

I might be a little more ready to help. I wasn’t exactly sure how to consider myself when I began practicing Steps to Knowledge for the second time. Didn’t I have a certain degree of experience? After a little while I became reconciled with the idea of being a beginning student in a higher octave, and being content to be so. I am content to be a beginning student in the Steps to Knowledge Continuation Training and what else comes next.

I might be a little more ready to help. People have expected a lot from me in my life, and I have disappointed them a lot of the time. Steps to Knowledge removed a great deal of suffering from this disappointment in a number of ways. Steps to Knowledge encourages me being in the present moment instead of being in my judgments. Steps to Knowledge gives me an alternative, empowering frame in which to put the events of my life. Steps to Knowledge encourages me to work toward my greater purpose, the demonstration of the fragrance of Knowledge. This “fragrance” is happiness, completeness, cheerful participation, doing what is necessary, demonstrating essential relationships.

I might be a little more ready to help. I have great gratitude for many people who helped me in one way or another to get to this point. Sometimes they were kindly and encouraging, sometimes they were challenging. I couldn’t have done it without them. Any accomplishment is a group effort.

I might be a little more ready to help. Perhaps you’ve never heard of Steps to Knowledge. I wish it was better known in the world. I wrote this to briefly describe what it offers and requires. If you’re practicing Steps to Knowledge for the first time, and you’re wondering whether you should do Steps a second time, please receive my encouragement to do so. I believe it will be good for you, your world, and the world.

This song by Jon Anderson and Vangelis is ringing and singing inside me as I think of this.

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.