This is the final post in a series of seven posts regarding Step 49 of Steps to Knowledge. In this step, I am reviewing my practice and experience of the first 48 steps.  I am sharing what I wrote when I actually did this step, with additional commentary as needed.

Step 43 – My will is to know God – “My will is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.  My will is to represent God.  My will is to realize God.  My will is to will the will of God.  Even when I’m distracted my will comes back.”  I was improvising on the first question and answer of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, ‘the chief end of man is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.”

Step 44 – I wish to know my own strength – “Find my strength to find my strength.  Bring forth my strength.  Create my strength.”  A student of Steps to Knowledge in Qinghai Province, China, commented, “It’s like the bird learning to fly. The information, the instinct, is in the genetic blueprint, but the bird still has to learn to fly. The bird doesn’t just jump out of the nest and soar into majestic flight at the first go. It might flop, stagger, waver, or fall, but the learning will take place as the bird exercises this ability which it technically doesn’t have yet, but will have.”  The bird has to find flying.  I have to find my strength.

Step 45 – Alone I can do nothing – “I have been very unkind to my little, limited self.”  I have expected it to create its purpose, meaning and directions, which are all jobs above its pay grade.

Step 46 – I must be small to be great – “I will work successfully within my limited context”  I’m recalling that after Swedish poet and avid pianist Tomas Transtromer suffered a stroke disrupting his right side, Ulf Grahn composed a series of left-hand piano pieces for Transtromer to play.  That’s an instance of working successfully within a limited context.

Step 47 – Why do I need Teachers? – “After Steps 46 and 47, wallowing in my limitations, it was no big stretch to think I need a Teacher.”

Step 48 – True instruction is available to me – “Love myself to approach Knowledge, and I will love myself more.  I recalled Step 44 here, bootstrap loader.”  As my colleague said, “The information, the instinct, is in the genetic blueprint [unalterable read-only memory], but the bird still has to learn to fly.”  Knowledge contains certain qualities, but I still have to bring them forth to access them.

How do I attain Knowledge?  How do I get to Carnegie Hall?  “Practice, practice, practice”

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.

Every computer uses an operating system, like Windows, or Unix, or Linux, or Mac OS.  An operating system is important because it decides what computer resources (processor, memory, disk space) will be used by what program at what time.  Who decides what resources the operating system gets?  When the computer is turned on, a small program stored in read-only memory (memory that persists even when the computer is turned off), tells the computer to load the operating system from the hard drive into memory.  Why is this small program put in read-only memory?  So that it can’t be altered, like information on the hard drive.  How does the computer know to go to that small program in read-only memory?  The creator of the computer wired it up that way.  Because the small program in read-only memory is much smaller than the entire operating system, this practice came to be known as “bootstrapping,” later shortened to “booting,” as in “pulling one’s self up by one’s bootstraps”

I was thinking about mentioning this when I wrote about Step 44 in Steps to Knowledge.  There was a sentence which said “You seek your strength, and you use it to find your strength.”  That seemed (and still seems) to be self-referential to me.  It also seems a little self-referential at first glance that an operating system should load itself.  But on closer examination, the loading takes place because the computer is following the instructions in read-only memory, which it only “knew” to do because its creator designed it that way.

There was another idea like this in Step 48, “True instruction is available to me.”  The step said “You must love yourself to become a student of Knowledge and continually love yourself to proceed.”  Step 18 said that if I came into the proximity of Knowledge, I would become more whole, more consistent, more honest, more devoted, more concentrated, more self-disciplined, more compassionate and more self-loving.  It’s as if I had to find a tiny smidgen of Knowledge, or some of its qualities, within myself to start a virtuous cycle of approaching Knowledge, and obtaining the qualities which would allow me to approach further.

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.