Two years ago, I wrote a post in this space called “I Wish to Venture Forth.”

It is short, so I take the liberty of repeating it here in full. But I will follow it with new consciousness gained during the interim.

I wish to venture forth to explore what Steps to Knowledge offers me. Step 41 was a crucial milestone for me in affirming and acknowledging the power of God. This Step calls for not being afraid of the power of God, and not only should I not be afraid, I “must venture forth to explore what is most natural.”

The day I reached this Step, my attention kept being drawn to a poem by Robert Frost called The Road Not Taken, the last lines of which I found very significant.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

To me Robert Frost’s poem is very ambiguous. I like to think the last sentence means that he made the right choice. But does it? He was ambivalent at first, he wondered if he might regret his choice, since both roads looked equally inviting and who knows where the other one might have led. He would never know, so he took a leap of faith.

So it was with me. I made a choice over twenty years ago, I ventured forth on an uncharted journey, and it has indeed made all the difference.

This is why the poem so resonated with me when I did this Step.

After stating that I must venture forth, it goes on to imply that if I do, it will be “like breaking new ground and coming home all at once.”

And it has.

I Continue to Venture Forth

Today I am living the full benefits of that choice I made over twenty years ago and am seeing how serendipitous it was to take that leap of faith and follow the road less traveled.

First, it brought me to the New Message from God in general and Steps to Knowledge in particular.

Second, it brought me to the fulfillment of my dream, a dream that began as an echo of recognition and has since blossomed in full.

Yesterday I reached Step 349 “I Am Happy That I Can Finally Serve The Truth” for the second time.

I wrote in my journal:

“Everything you have truly wanted is being given to you now.”

This is my experience today. I am constantly thinking this, realizing that recurring thoughts, wishes, dreams are now becoming a reality. This particularly applies to what I am currently experiencing in my country home.

To me this is verification of the truth as I continue to venture forth.

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.

I am dedicated to practicing Steps to Knowledge as they are presented, not changing or adjusting the lessons to meet my tastes and expectations. But I hasten to add that they are in no way rigid and rigorous, they are flowing and flexible.

This is the conclusion I come to in Step 42, another review of the past week of practice.

Now some attentive reader may say, hey, aren’t you jumping the gun? What about Step 41. I am not afraid of the power of God? Very good, but in truth I have not skipped this Step, I have shared on it previously in this space. That was before I cottoned on to the fact that it might be better to write about my Steps practice methodically, beginning at Step 1. In my Step 41 post “I Wish To Venture Forth,” I shared a poem by Robert Frost called The Road Not Taken, which I interpreted as a leap of faith, a choice made on the spur of the moment. Again, something flowing and flexible.

Flowing and flexible

Step 42. Review says that I need only follow the curriculum to receive its true rewards. I need only follow, in faith and in true expectation. And in so doing, one of the things I will develop is self-worth.

I zoned in on this, since it is something I struggle with, and wrote in my notes:

• Self-worth…. This is a tough one because for me it seems so easy for a feeling of self-worth to develop into arrogance, and whenever that happens I am brought back to earth with a thud. The self-worth it talks about here though has a different quality that I want to cultivate—valuing myself enough to feel I am worthy of the great gifts of Knowledge–hmmm, there seems to be something in that. And again, looking at things without judgment is certainly an attribute to be cultivated.I want to take what is being offered and use it for my Higher Good and, since I am part of the whole, for the Higher Good of the rest of humanity. I humbly wish to follow in faith and in true expectation, and receive the true rewards.

Again, I find it so refreshing that Steps acknowledges that I might have difficulty, but not to worry, I just need to recognize the problems and attempt to correct them. Again, I am to look without judgment and see what has been offered, what I have done and what I can possibly do to deepen my practice. Now I do not believe you can get much more flowing and flexible than that.

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.

This is the sixth post in a series of seven posts regarding Step 49 of Steps to Knowledge.  In Step 49, I’ve been told to review my practice and experience of the first 48 Steps.  I am sharing what I wrote when I actually did the Step 49 review, and adding commentary as needed.

Step 36 – My life is a mystery to explore – “I remember thinking the phrase ‘going spelunking in my soul.'” I waited from early 2011 to June 2013 to write that phrase in a blog post.  Part of this step was taking the focus off of life as a result to be judged.

Step 37 – There is a way to Knowledge – “I wrote down this Step in this book,  I seem to think that I need to get high to get to Knowledge.” I wrote down 23 different practices, some of which are about development of character, some of which are about alteration of consciousness.

Step 38 – God knows the way to Knowledge – “I did the Step.  Sometime around this day I got there were Christians who found the way to Knowledge, like Joan of Arc.”  I’ve written two posts about Joan of Arc so far.  I will probably write more in the future.

Step 39 – The power of God is with me – “I did the step, recalling the hymn ‘Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise.'”  This Christian hymn, written in 1876 to a Welsh melody, talks about God dwelling in inaccessible light.  It talks about God being “unresting, unhasting, and silent as light.”  This hymn had a similar vibration to me as the bit in the next step about the great stillness of God.

Step 40 – Today I will feel the power of God – “I commented on this Step.”  The post about tomato aspic is the commentary I wrote down.

Step 41 – I am not afraid of the power of God – “I commented on this Step.”  In that commentary, among other things, I wrote “The separation is insane, and to maintain it, I must spin a hurtful insane mud world around myself.”  Spinning a mud world around myself is a line from a Robert Bly translation of a Kabir poem.

Step 42 – Review – “I commented on this review.”  In that commentary, I wrote “Another thing I haven’t written down until now is that I’m very briefly scanning through the Steps I’ve done so far, in getting to the Step I’m going to do on a particular day.  That seems to help.”

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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.

The mystery of God.

There was a time when I felt very ambivalent about the word “God.” However, Steps to Knowledge often refers to God, and the New Message from God is the source. Shouldn’t this have raised my hackles and if not sent me running from the room, at least made me want to retreat, quietly closing the door behind me?

Perhaps, but I did neither, instead I stayed in the room and decided to examine my ambivalence. What do I have against the word “God?” And I decided it was because I associate it with religion. But I don’t consider myself a religious person, I don’t go to church, and I don’t read the Bible, although there was a time in my life when I did go to church and there was a time in my life when I did read the Bible. I like the Bible, if the word “like” is appropriate in this context, I find it a source of infinite wisdom. I did not particularly like going to church though. It just never felt right, its walls were too confining.

Then I found that if I substituted the word “God” for “Higher Power,” my ambivalence lessened. In a forest grove with its majesty, air and light, I felt the closer presence of a Higher Power, so I substituted church for the forest and embraced the power I felt there.

The mystery of God.

And by the time I embarked on Steps to Knowledge, I was ready to acknowledge that “you find God in a pure impulse, in a timeless moment of recognition, in the desire to act beyond the sphere of your own personal interests and motives, in the recognition of another, in the motive to give, in the inexplicable experience of affinity. These are translatable. This is God in action. For you, this is God.”

Step 38 says that God knows the way to Knowledge, Step 39 reminds me that the power of God is with me, Step 40 tells me to feel the power of God today, and Step 41 asks me to affirm that I am not afraid of the power of God. With these tools in my arsenal and additionally armed with the affirmation “the power of God represents the mystery of [my] life” (Step 39), all ambivalence flew out the window for good.

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.

Can God be known by a human being?  The God of the Bible seems to not only say “Yes!” but to describe it as a thing to be pursued.  The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah declared

This is what the Lord says:

“Let not the wise boast of their wisdom
or the strong boast of their strength
or the rich boast of their riches,
but let the one who boasts boast about this:
that they have the understanding to know me,
that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness,
justice and righteousness on earth,
for in these I delight,”
declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 9:23-24, New International Version)

Jesus, in what some call his “high priestly prayer,” declared

Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. (John 17:3)

Albert Einstein declared “I am not interested in this phenomenon or that phenomenon, I want to know God’s thoughts – the rest are mere details.”

In my undergraduate days, the book Knowing God by J. I. Packer generated a great deal of reading, study and reflection.

Step 43 of Steps to Knowledge confirms all of the above, and adds a new idea, that not only is it possible to know God, not only is it desirable to know God, it is my will as well.

“Your will is to know God. That is your true will. Any other desire or motivation is to escape this, which represents your will. It is your will that has become fearful to you.You are afraid of what you know and most deeply feel.This leads you to find refuge in other things that do not represent you, and in this you lose your identity and attempt to construct an identity that is related to those things which you have sought for escape. In isolation you are miserable, but in relationship happiness is regained.”

For me, this step feels similar to Step 41, particularly the part about how we malign what we love to fortify separation.

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.