When a student of Steps to Knowledge gets to step 8, she might be thinking “Ok, I get the point.  Knowledge is a big deal.  They’ve called it a Big Deal by speaking of it in three distinct Uncommonly Capitalized terms in two of the seven steps I’ve taken already (Step 1 and Step 2).  They said the point of the first six steps was to hammer home the ideas that Knowledge is something different than what I think or want or believe, and that it is something of which I am in need.  Fine.  What do I do to get it?”

To me, it’s as if step 8, “I will be still today,” answers that question “Glad you asked, friend, glad you asked!”  There are various techniques in the world for stilling the wanderings of the mind, for rescuing the lambkins of one’s thoughts, lost in the wilderness of restlessness.  One of them is introduced in this step.

Some people say “Thus-and-such technique of attaining stillness is surely the greatest technique ever devised!”  Others say “On the contrary, this alternative technique of stilling one’s mind I am using must surely become the technique used by all mankind!”  Kabir says “Don’t get hung up on any particular technique, but instead focus on one’s motivation.”

O, FRIEND!  hope for him whilst you live, know whilst you live, understand whilst you live, for in life deliverance abides.
If your bonds be not broken whilst living, what hope of deliverance in death?
It is but an empty dream, that the soul shall have union with Him because it has passed from the body;
If He is found now, He is found then
If not, we do but go to dwell in the City of Death.
If you have union now, you shall have it hereafter.
Bathe in the truth, know the true Guru, have faith in the true Name!
Kabir says “It is the Spirit of the quest which helps; I am the slave of this Spirit of the quest.”

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