Steps to Knowledge

Description

Steps to Knowledge is the core book of practices for building desire and capacity for Knowledge. It is one of the many Sacred Texts of The New Message from God. It consists of 365 lessons, to be practiced one a day. After practicing Steps twice through, the Steps to Knowledge Continuation Training' is recommended for further practice.

ISBN: 9781884238772

History

Marshall Vian Summers received Steps to Knowledge in a state of revelation during the days and nights of May 26 to June 14, 1989, in the garden level of a small house by a golf course in Albany, New York. It was recorded onto 11 audio cassettes and then transcribed into text. The period of the Steps to Knowledge revelation is celebrated annually since 2010 as the Steps Anniversary.

Steps to Knowledge was nearly the first book received, after seven years of preparation. "In case anything had happened to me."

Steps was originally hand bound on an ironing board, by Marshall Vian Summers, Patricia Summers and their companions. It was later printed professionally for the book trade and is now in its third edition.

Steps to Knowledge has been available online as a PDF at http://www.newmessage.org/pdf/steps-to-knowledge.pdf for no charge since about 2005. It was e-published as a Kindle book in 2011.

Why it Was Received

Our world is at the threshold of emerging into a Greater Community of intelligent life in the universe around us. Therefore, a more universal understanding and perspective on relationships, spirituality and human advancement are needed at this time. Steps to Knowledge is provided for those who show promise of being the primary contributors during the next great period in human history, where humanity begins to encounter other intelligent races from the Greater community. This is the greatest threshold that we have ever faced. Yet from a Great Community perspective, it is clear that humanity is not prepared. This has set the stage for a new spiritual understanding and teaching to be given to the world, for the Creator would not leave us alone and unprepared for our emergence into the Greater Community. Thus, a spiritual preparation of a very unique kind has been given which can enable men and women to gain the power, the compassion and the skill needed to serve a world in transition. To prepare these individuals to find their greater calling in life, Steps to Knowledge and its companion books have been provided as a quide and a resource.

How to Work with Steps

Consider these following recommendations to enable you to receive the maximum benefit from your study of Steps to Knowledge.

• Steps to Knowledge is a complete program of study. Each step takes you higher and closer to your self-discovery. Therefore, plan to go the whole way. If you don't stop, you will advance.
• Though Steps to Knowledge is a self-study program, it is recommended that you find others with whom you can share your practice and experience. This maximizes your opportunity for learning and provides a meaningful basis for new relationships to form.
• Follow the Steps in Steps to Knowledge exactly as they are given. Do not alter the practices in any way. This is very important. You may stay on one lesson for more than a day if you wish, but do not stay on any lesson for too long or you may lose pace with the curriculum.
• Do not skip ahead or alter the sequence to practice lessons that you find to be attractive. Each lesson is designed to take you one step at a time. This provides a safe and successful passage in your approach to Knowledge. Follow and utilize the step for the day. It is perfect for that day.
• Read the lesson both in the morning when you arise and later in the day. You may also read the lesson in the first person, on one of these occasions, if you wish to personalize the message for yourself.
• Steps to Knowledge will teach you how to practice and how to develop effective study habits. At times you may find that staying with the practices will be quite a challenge. Yet remember that Steps will build both your strength and self-awareness through its practices. You are able to do these practices and doing them will harmonize and transform your life.
• Set aside regular practice times each day. Do not let circumstances dictate your availability to practice. Practice is essential for building an environment for Knowledge to emerge. Practice times have been added at the bottom of each step to assist you in integrating the practice for the day.
• Keeping a journal is extremely valuable in tracking your progress and in seeing how each step plays a part in serving you every day. The journal is a powerful tool for self-discovery and will assist you in applying the steps. Keeping a journal also will greatly help you in using the REVIEW practices that occur throughout the curriculum.
• Be patient and allow the steps to work for you. It is amazingly powerful if you follow the sequence of the steps as they are given. This takes time. A great journey is made up of many little steps. Each one is necessary.
• If you miss a day, simply return to practice. Do not condemn yourself (or the program). You need only continue in Steps to receive its full benefit.
• 'Steps to Knowledge is a gift to you from God through The Unseen Ones who serve humanity. It is a gift for you to receive and to give.

Take the Steps to Knowledge

"Let Knowledge be your guide and let the world tell you where it is going and what is emerging on the horizon. Be watchful. Still your mind. Set aside your desires and your constant fear by taking the Steps to Knowledge. Receive the Revelation, the New Message for Humanity. You are blessed to even know of this."

"If Knowledge cannot be brought into your relationships and into your decisions regarding relationships, then Knowledge remains only a potential within you."

"Become dedicated to finding Knowledge and you will find Knowledge. And you will find those relationships that are based upon Knowledge. And those relationships will empower you and enable you to develop the other three pillars of your life."

"Taking the steps to Knowledge ... will teach you how to listen within yourself. They will teach you how to become patient and observant. They will help you to settle down and become less restless. They will relieve you of your anxiety, which drives you constantly in life. They will enable you to experience your deeper feelings and emotions and to forgive those individuals and those circumstances that you feel have wounded you in the past. Now you are learning to listen, and you are listening for the deeper current of your life. Now you are listening to others. This listening is so important because people need to be heard. Even the person ranting at the railway station who seems to be mad and crazy, even they are trying to be heard, and no one will listen to them. They are trying to be heard. And they are trying to be heard because they need recognition—not for who they think they are, not for their ideas, but for who they really are underneath all of that."

"The Steps to Knowledge are provided in the clearest possible terms. They are challenging because you must be engaged. You do not want your mind to be drifting in a fog of confusion and anxiety. You want to bring it into the engagement as strongly as possible. You do not want your preparation for your greater life to be halfhearted or based upon ambivalence or confusion."

"That is why you take the Steps to Knowledge. At some point, you must begin the actual preparation because only here can you develop day by day the strength and the connection you will need to be able to receive correction and directives from the Higher Powers, from the Angelic Assembly. But before they can truly direct you, you must have this strength and this courage. In this, you must prove yourself, you see. You must prove yourself to them and to yourself that you have courage and can be trusted and counted upon to do greater things—things beyond your understanding, things beyond your fears and preferences. This is what it means to live a greater life."

“In the process of taking the Steps to Knowledge, you have wonderful moments of reprieve and recognition, and you have other times when you are really struggling, struggling because you have to choose something other than what you formerly believed in. You see the outcome of a relationship before you begin it, and you have to accept this. You begin to see the truth in things, and that conflicts with what you want from them. You start to see your former goals are not really in keeping with your greater destiny, and you must have the strength to set them aside. You feel called to go to certain places, and you must have the strength and freedom to go to these places. You must break the chain of obligation to certain people and situations that are not part of your greater life. You must have the strength to do this. So Steps to Knowledge is a freedom journey. Despite all the appearances of freedom that we can recognize on the outside, they do not guarantee that inner freedom will exist at all. And when you begin to take the Steps themselves, you begin to see the contrast between what only appears to be free and what is really free. You see it within yourself, and you see it demonstrated everywhere."

"If you are studying Steps to Knowledge in order to have more ideas, new insights or to keep the excitement going and if you continue in the preparation, you will be able to become aware of your motives. At some point, you will come to realize that your motives and the offering of Steps to Knowledge are not the same, so either you must abandon the preparation in order to serve your motives or abandon your motives in order to participate in the preparation. At some point, people reach this juncture and their whole motivation for study has to be completely re-evaluated. The real motivation for studying Steps to Knowledge is mysterious. The real reason you do it is that you must do it. That is Knowledge. Only Knowledge can motivate you to find Knowledge. Other interests— accumulation, acquisition, escape, excitement, love—cannot take you to Knowledge."

Processes

"Tn the study of Steps to Knowledge, there is a process of building a bridge from your thinking mind—from your intellect—which has been so formulated through social conditioning and past experience, to the deeper mind of Knowledge that God has created, that is beyond the reach of social conditioning, that cannot be manipulated or altered by any worldly or other-worldly force."

See also

Steps to Knowledge study group guidelines

Further Study

Downloads

Wisdom from the Greater Community Volume Two, Chapter 34: Walking The Way of Knowledge

Steps to Knowledge Introduction document

Steps to Knowledge document

Print

New Knowledge Library

Amazon

Barnes & Noble