Expanding Your Steps Practice - Marshall Vian Summers

Expanding Your Steps Practice February 3, 2000 By Marshall Vian Summers This is a special message to all students of the Greater Community Way— those who are studying the Steps to Knowledge. Recently I realized that in practicing Steps , , that I may have been been missing one of of the most important important elements of all. And this element is actually not written in the Steps that are given in Steps to Knowledge. This missing element really has to do with what Knowledge has been teaching us all along and the important lessons that we have learned through often difficult and painful experiences— lessons which are meant to guide and protect us, to show us what we need to do and what we must not do in order to take a safe journey through the world. The steps in Steps to Knowledge are meant to build a foundation where the relationship relationship with our mind and the relationship with the deeper mind called Knowledge, the mind and the intelligence of Spirit, come together and become united and work in a fully cooperative manner manner so that we are able to bring a greater awareness into our daily experience and to avoid those dangers and pitfalls into which so many other people fall. Even at this point, each one of us, each one of you, has learned so much, has gained so much insight. But the question is: Do you have this insight? Are you aware of it each day? Can you call upon it in the moment as it is needed? We have been given the gifts of Knowledge in so many ways 1

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through our own life experience thus far. But do we know what these gifts are? Can we rely upon them each day to guide and to protect us? So I began to realize that the missing element in our Steps practice isn’t what is written in the step itself. It’s our forgetfulness to keep in the forefront of our mind the gifts that Knowledge has given us already. And the practice of those gifts, g ifts, or the implementation of those things that we have learned—those guidelines, if you will—are critical to enable us to move forward and to really advance. That’s what makes the steps in Steps really come alive because because it is building on to Knowledge , each step, really something that we’ve already learned—it’s cumulative. You know, the discovery of Knowledge, the awakening to Knowledge, is not a singular event that will occur at some distant point in our future after we’ve diligently practiced for years. The revelation that Knowledge is with us and represents our True Self and purpose in the world is something that occurs incrementally each day. It’s said beautifully in Wisdom II , in the chapter on Spiritual Spiritual Practice: “The “The rewards rewards are what one one discovers along the way. It is not like reaching a pot of gold where the entire reward is given at the end of the journey.” In the reclamation of Knowledge, which is the discovery of purpose in life, all of the rewards are given along the way. Well, if the rewards are given along the way, did we really receive them? Do we really know what they are? To bring Knowledge into our experience, we must keep these gifts in our awareness. awareness. This then fulfills our learning experiences. If we cannot keep them in our mind, if we do not remember them, if they are something something we only think of now and then, well, then, the learning experience has not really happened, and the gifts have not been received. Now if you are a person who has a good memory, and you’ve been able to honestly assess some of your important and challenging life experiences, you will probably come to realize that you really don’t want to repeat some of these experiences. You’ll realize that, yes, they gave you something valuable, but they were difficult, and they were costly in terms of your time, your energy and even money. Then you’ll come to feel, probably, that “No, I don’t think I really want to go through that again.” 2


Well, the only guarantee that you will not have to go through that again is that you have captured the gift that that experience gave you. You have captured it, and it is with you now every day. Then your Steps practice, the practice in Steps to Knowledge that you are doing on any given day, has a foundation upon which to build, and that foundation is known and recognized. This then fulfills the building of a Greater Community awareness that we are taking a step each day to build a foundation of Knowledge and Wisdom that we have been slowly accumulating. This process becomes accelerated once we realize that we need to bring these gifts, this learning, into the forefront forefront of our mind. And so today in my talk, I’d like to give you some suggestions on how you can do that, to bring a greater dimension into your Steps practice, to expand that practice, to include things that you’ve already experienced in life, things that you need to know, even today. The goal here is to create a set of personal guidelines that are built upon the gifts of Knowledge. My realization of this missing element really came about when I began to assemble my own personal guidelines for practice. These guidelines were not merely about practicing the step in Steps to Knowledge. They were more about bringing into practice the things that I have learned and realized through important experiences in my life. And these things are as relevant today as they were years ago. The fact that I captured them—I actually captured them in my own journaling—enabled me to preserve them, and then later to assemble into a set of guidelines. Now, these are my personal set of guidelines; they are not yours. The important thing for you to do is to build your own. The first step then is to become aware of the key things that you have learned in your life, particularly in recent years. And I’d like to give you some examples or cues that can help you to do this. I should preface what I’m about to say by telling you that guidelines are not meant to limit you or restrict you. If you view them like that, then you really do not yet recognize their importance. Personal guidelines are really really to build wisdom and inner authority. They’re to sensitize you to the mental environment, each mental environment that you are in, in the course of each day. These guidelines are to safeguard you and prevent you from having to relearn painful and difficult lessons, especially in relationships. The guidelines also begin to open you to greater realizations about your deeper nature and the greater purpose for your being here. 3


So let me now give you some ideas that can help you to begin to build your own personal guidelines for practice. I’m going to start with some very, very simple things, things that we’ve all had to deal with at one time or another. Let’s take, for example, food. Now you may be a person who can eat anything without difficulty, but most people who are becoming sensitive to their own physical state begin to realize that there are foods that are very nutritious and helpful, and there are those that are not. And perhaps as you grow older, you begin to feel the effects more poignantly of the kinds of foods that really don’t work for you, that your body cannot really assimilate effectively or that require a lot of energy to digest. Instead of my giving you guidelines about what to eat, which I will not do, I want you to look at your own experience because this, though a very simple example, can have a big impact upon you. Are there any guidelines that can help you around food? Guidelines of what not to eat? Are there certain foods to really steer clear of? An example of also developing awareness about food is that when you go to a restaurant, look at the menu and ask within yourself: Which of these items should I order? Now you can be even more thorough and begin this questioning with asking: Should I order anything from this menu? That really is the best first question. Second question: What should I order here? Not what looks good, not what looks like it would be a delight to your palate, but really, “What is the right thing for me to order here?” And that becomes a guideline. So when you go to restaurants, you go down the menu and you ask yourself, “Is there anything I should order here?” Now that’s a very simple guideline, and if you’re a person who is very sensitive to food or has food allergies and things like this, it is very important. A moment of pleasure in eating followed by hours of discomfort is hardly a beneficial experience, experience, and yet we repeat repeat these kinds of experiences over and over and over again. So food can be a part of your personal guidelines. Do you have any personal guidelines around food? And I recommend here that you keep this very simple, maybe just one or two or three things that you need to remember each day regarding regarding what you eat and even when you eat. For instance, I have a guideline that I do not eat food after eight o’clock in the evening. I sleep better and feel better when I follow that guideline. So what I eat and when I eat are very important. 4


Let’s move on to other examples. And certainly when we look at your activities during the day, which encompasses a lot of different things, there are important important things to keep in mind. The key thing here is that you know where you are, that you’re sensitive to the environment that you are in, that you know what you’re doing and who you are with. Now this sounds so obvious, but most people are not aware of where they are, who they are with, or what’s going on because they are caught up in their own internal agenda. Becoming aware of where you are is very important. This is a practice in discerning the mental environment. You could have a guideline that says, “I will practice and discern each and every mental environment environment that I am in, and make sure I am in the right place.” Now that’s very important in terms of your well-being. And the mental environment environment is discerned through feeling: How does it feel to be in this place? Now if that place happens to be your office at work, then you’re going to have to either give up your job if it doesn’t feel right or make changes in that environment as far as you can to enhance it to make it a positive, nurturing environment environment for you. This environmental environmental awareness is so important to well-being, and yet very few people practice it. So a practice again can be knowing which environment environment you’re in, and knowing if that is the right place for you to be in. And if you have to be there, and it does not feel good being there, what can you do to enhance it? This is developing a daily sensitivity to the mental environment. environment. Also, perhaps you found that there are certain places you should not go, certain movies you should not see. Perhaps you shouldn’t see movies at all. The Teachers recommend that for serious students of Knowledge, seeing movies is not helpful because it imprints the mind with powerful and emotional images, making it more difficult to practice stillness and discernment, making it more difficult to become sensitive to yourself and to what’s around you. So this can be one of your guidelines that has to do with movies. Another guideline can have to do with media. Should you really be reading the newspaper or watching the evening news? You have to answer that question yourself. This is a question for Knowledge. 5


Remember, in developing a Greater Community awareness and understanding, you have to protect this emerging awareness, this awareness of Knowledge and community and deeper relationship. These things are not honored in the world. And for you to cultivate them in your own life, you must build a place for them, and you must protect them and safeguard them. It’s like the teeny seedling requires a lot of protection in order to grow. And yet if it can be allowed to grow, in the future it will become a great great tree that can provide provide shade for others. But at the the outset, it’s a delicate thing. It’s like an infant, a newborn in the world, not yet able to fend off the powerful forces that exist around them. In your activities, then, it encompasses everything. Do you have any guidelines about the use of money or how you spend money? For instance, before you buy something that’s discretionary, do you ask yourself: “Do I really need to buy this? Is it a good thing for me to buy this?” Or, “Will this really serve me?” This is using discernment in the moment regarding the use of money. Do you have any guidelines about that? Most people have difficulty in saving money, spending money or, in general, using money constructively. Now we come into two very, very important things. In fact, in Wisdom chapter devoted to each each one of them. The The first is Volume II , there is a chapter Discernment, and I’d like to talk about discernment a little bit with you. Discernment, essentially, is knowing what you’re seeing and knowing what you’re experiencing, or in contact with. This, of course, includes knowing where you are and who you are with and what you’re doing. But it can also be applied to very subtle things that you may be experiencing. Discernment is one of the fundamentals fundamentals of developing wisdom—knowing what you’re seeing or knowing what you are experiencing. There are very helpful guidelines in practicing discernment each day. For instance, one of the most difficult areas in practicing discernment is in communications communications with other people, in relating to other people. Steps to Knowledge tells us that the man or woman of Knowledge uses discernment discernment only to determine the presence of Knowledge in a communication or in a relationship, relationship, and that the man or woman of Knowledge looks for Knowledge only. If Knowledge is not present in what someone is saying or is not evident in their behavior, the man or woman of Knowledge moves on. They do not condemn the person or the situation—they situation—they move on. on. 6


Now this is a general theme in the study of Steps , but there are are also other things that have to be discerned. Particularly if you have to work with someone or are in relationship with someone, it’s important to discern their strengths and their weaknesses, to discern the most effective way to work with them, communicate c ommunicate with them, their acute sensitivities, their boundaries, things that that you really really don’t want to trespass trespass as a general general rule. Discernment requires awareness. That means you need to be present to the person and the situation. The ability to be present is based upon the skill in developing stillness, which is a fundamental practice in Steps to Knowledge. If you can stop your own thinking, or disengage from your own thinking, your own preoccupations, preoccupations, and give your attention to something in the moment, you are practicing stillness—with your eyes open, fully awake in the situation. That is necessary for practicing discernment. You must be fully present to the person and the situation. The first thing is to listen for Knowledge. Listen for Knowledge in what someone is saying. Listen for Knowledge within yourself: “Is there something I need to know here?” This is a question you can ask silently within yourself. The key is listening—looking listening—looking and listening, being present. This creates the opportunity for discernment—discerning discernment—discerning other people’s needs, discerning whether you should become involved with them or not. “Should I become involved with this person?” These are all important questions and can be part of your daily guidelines. For instance, a daily guideline could be: In all my communications with people, I’m going to listen for Knowledge. You know, people can be in relationship relationship together for years and never experience Knowledge with each other. Either Knowledge just isn’t there or isn’t evident. Or Knowledge is there, but it was missed. People didn’t see and feel and know it. They missed the cues perhaps. Discernment encompasses encompasses many things. In my own personal guidelines, I have many, many guidelines about discernment—the key areas, the key relationships relationships or activities. The next is discretion. What is discretion? Discretion is really a matter of knowing when to communicate and how to communicate. We talk mindlessly. Listen to people around you. There’s mindless talk. There’s conversations going on continuously, without any real content. This is not 7


how Knowledge communicates. This is how the mind communicates, to reassure reassure itself and to attempt to extend itself outward. In learning The Way of Knowledge, we begin to develop discretion. Discretion is built on the awareness of knowing what to say and when to say it. It is built upon the strength of knowing how to be aware of yourself, how to be in control of your mind and your language, and how to use forbearance. You may want to say something in the moment, but is that the moment? Is that even the person? So a guideline could be, for instance: “When I feel the overwhelming need to say something to someone, I stop myself and I ask, 'Should I really be saying this at this time?''” Mistakes in discretion, just like mistakes in discernment, can be very, very costly. Everything you say represents you, and in many cases, everything you say is permanently recorded recorded in the minds of others. Very difficult to retract a statement once it’s been made. A man or woman of Knowledge takes great care in what they say and great care in knowing who they are speaking to and the appropriateness of the situation, in terms of communicating an idea. A man or woman of Knowledge, as a result, spends more time listening than they do speaking. Even if they feel they want to tell somebody something, often it’s not the right time. Another part of discretion is in being able to let your own awareness grow. If you’ve just had a realization, the first thing that you may want to do is go out and tell your closest friends all about “what happened to me last night”. But the teaching in Greater Community Wisdom and Knowledge tells us that usually we should not do that, that we should let that awareness grow and begin to develop a relationship with it before we give it away to other people because often when we give it away to other people, it becomes dissipated and lost. This too then is a practice in discretion. Guidelines about discretion are very important. As an example, for an advancing student of Knowledge, it’s not wise to present your personal opinions, except in really rare situations. The reason for this is that you want to open yourself to a greater understanding in the situation rather than simply espousing your views, whenever that becomes stimulated in you. 8


Here instead of giving your personal opinion about politics or social issues, for example, you can simply say: “I don’t have a comment on that at this time.” Perhaps that may seem awkward in a conversation, but you are maintaining discretion, discretion, and in a way it makes you more mysterious and more interesting to other people. People give away and dissipate their greater realizations realizations so frequently it becomes almost almost an automatic automatic behavior. behavior. But for the student student of Knowledge, this must be arrested. Look and see then what kind of guideline you can use in terms of developing discretion—maintaining discretion—maintaining your own thoughts; not being compelled to share them with other people out of a sense of insecurity; letting insights grow within you; giving them time to evolve and to become something bigger, rather than simply spending them away in the moment. It requires forbearance and self-control self-control to do this because our mind wants to give away, to get rid of its realizations—it doesn’t want to keep them because keeping a realization realization requires requires you then to become become responsive responsive to it and to grow and to change. All great realizations are the seeds of inner change, but if we communicate them to other people right away, well, we’ve dug up the seed and thrown it away before it’s even had a chance to sprout within us. People who have great insights have maintained a relationship with that insight over a long period of time and have only communicate c ommunicated d it to other people under certain circumstances and perhaps usually only with certain people. Indiscretion in people is a sure sign that they are lacking selfawareness and do not value their insights, in fact, that they are actually afraid of them. Take Take note of this in your observations of others, and look at how you communicate mindlessly, when in fact you should be silent and listening instead. A Guideline in practicing discernment is: “I will learn to be aware of when I’m communicating to people and ask myself, “Should I really be saying this at this moment?” That’s incredibly powerful powerful to do that. That is establishing inner authority right there. You You are not going to be driven by immediate need or insecurity. You are going to control within yourself the flow and the development of ideas.

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Now discretion doesn’t mean you never communicate. It simply means you communicate wisely. And this, in nearly every case, requires waiting. I as a teacher, for example, often know many things about people who become students of of this work, but I may have have to wait years to communicate with them, waiting for the right moment, waiting for the time when they really want to know, when the moment is fertile for them to have their own realization. You too have to develop this discretion if you are going to be an effective communicator for Knowledge and a contributor in the world. To go on now, there’s also guidelines about personal well-being. What are the things that you do each day that contribute to your physical and emotional health? For example: an exercise program. Do you have an exercise program? Perhaps you’ve tried to start one; perhaps you have one, but it falls apart, and you have to resurrect it frequently. Is there a daily guideline about physical exercise or about doing other things that are very nurturing to you that enhance well-being—in health, mental health or physical health. You could have a guideline that “I will exercise every day, and I will do one of these several different exercises—every day —even if it’s only for five minutes.” Do something every day. It’s my guideline. Because guidelines are not just good ideas; there’re there’re not just resolutions. They are guidelines. This is what you do every day. And you maintain this awareness, and you establish this authority. Perhaps you do art or music every day for well-being, even if it’s just a little tiny bit, or gardening— any kind of activity that creates a no mind experience within you, that gives you a reprieve from the relentless exercise of your mind or problemsolving, shifts you into a different modality. What is your guideline regarding this? Another guideline that I would recommend recommend is a guideline about recording insights. I record insights. I take a pencil and pad everywhere I go. I record what I call floaters , little ideas that trickle trickle into the mind from from Knowledge. More often than not, these floaters are valuable. They are little seed ideas. And I record them, and then I permanently record record them on my computer. And then when I review them, perhaps at a later time, I am able to look and see, yes, is this a seed idea here? Is this something I should really spend time with or develop? 10


This is how you capture the communications from from Knowledge. Buckminster Fuller said once that genius is the ability to capture an idea within seven seconds. If you don’t capture that idea—write it down, record it—it’s gone. You’ll forget it. Maybe it won’t come around again for another five years. Maybe it will never return. Some people carry these little pocket digital recorders; they’re wonderful. And as you go through the day, if there is something you realize you have to remember, or if you have an insight, one of those little floaters, you capture it the moment. You pull it out of your pocket. And you take yourself aside, and you record that thought or that idea. And then as soon as you can, you put it in some kind of permanent area. So, for instance, I have a guideline about recording insights. Perhaps you’d like to practice silence one day a month. It’s very helpful to do that in terms of developing stillness and inner awareness. But in order for that to become a reality, it has to become a guideline, or it will be simply something you tell yourself periodically, and it will never come into a regular practice. So what do we do with all these guidelines? guidelines? First, we have to assemble assemble them, and one of the ways that you can do that is to assemble them according to the Four Pillars of your life: the Four Pillars being the Pillar of Relationship , the Pillar of Work , the Pillar of Health and the Pillar of your Spiritual Awakening or Advancement. The Pillar of Relationship: what are all the guidelines about being in relationship? relationship? Here we have practice in discretion, practice in discernment, practice in knowing where you are, where you should go, places not to go, situations not to be in. Because who we’re with and what we do with them determines in a large part the quality of our life. What are your guidelines regarding that? What have you learned—not just good ideas—not just the things you think you should do, but what are the things you really learned? For instance, I really learned some years ago that I should not follow passion impulses with someone until I really get to know who they are. Well, I paid a very high price for that bit of learning, that gift of Knowledge. How are you going to keep that in your awareness each day? If it’s forgotten, you may have to learn it again. And that’s expensive learning. 11


The Pillar of Work: What do you need to do to enhance your environment at work, or to enhance your communications with others, to practice discretion and discernment at work, or to organize your activities, or to bring Knowledge into your your awareness awareness during your workday? Guidelines about Health become obvious: food, exercise, well-being activities, things to avoid. Your Spiritual Practice: What enhances your spiritual practice? What helps you get into an inner knowing, a quiet state? So you can organize your personal guidelines within the context of your Four Pillars, so each Pillar has a set of guidelines, or you can simply just list your guidelines. Some guidelines like discretion and discernment carry over into all the Pillars. Once you’ve assembled this, you need to look at this list and say, “What is critically important here?” here?” because you don’t want ideas in here here that really don’t carry a lot of weight. You want the things that are really important, the things that you must remember. “What must I remember each day in order to maintain my well-being, in order to build this awareness of Knowledge, which is so fundamental to my life?” And once you have the key guidelines, you want to make a list of them. You can print them up on your computer, or you can write them out, and you want to practice becoming aware of them and implementing them each day. You can begin in the morning reading your guidelines with your morning practice, your morning Steps to Knowledge practice. And at the end of the day, you can review your guidelines to see how you did that day: Did I keep this awareness awareness when I went to work or did I forget everything? Did I remember remember discretion when when I was speaking to this person or did I just unconsciously talk? You know, there are some people you get around and you really forget yourself. They have an influence on you, or you defer to them in some way, and you really lose yourself around them. So as you read your guidelines in the morning and review them in the evening, you’re y ou’re able to see if you kept them with you through the day. And you are able to see situations where you did use them and situations where you did not use 12


them. This develops an awareness, so when the next day comes around, you remember what happened yesterday, and today you’re going to keep that awareness in your you r mind, and you’re not going to forget. to forget. Developing these personal guidelines is so important because it confirms what Knowledge has been giving you. It honors the gifts of your own experience; it is the foundation for developing wisdom. The guidelines are really an aid to memory, and they also sort out the really important things from all the other things we think we should do that can hound us and overshadow us. Because, in essence, there are only a few things we really need to remember, but we really need to remember them. We need to remember what Knowledge has given us. We need to remember to use that Knowledge every day. And we need to be open to what Knowledge can give us today, and to capture that, and to record it, and to keep it so it can help shape our awareness and give us a truly beneficial structure upon which to organize our activities, to determine our inner will and to give us the ultimate opportunity to express the grace, the beauty and the power of Knowledge. The Roman statesman Seneca once said: “No man ever became wise by chance.” There is no chance here. This is a matter for your selfdetermination. This is your inner authority expressing itself in the most constructive way possible. This way, the gifts of Knowledge become the foundation of your life and provide you the guidance and the protection that you need today and tomorrow. I send many blessings from the Teachers to you. May the Presence of the Teachers be with you. Nasi Novare Coram.

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Expanding Your Steps Practice - Marshall Vian Summers

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