Step Seventy-Four

The Crystal Cave by John Peter

Step 74. Peace Abides With Me Today.

Today peace abides with you. Abide with peace and receive its blessings. Come to peace with all that troubles you. Come with your heavy burden. Come not seeking answers. Come not seeking understanding. Come seeking its blessings. Peace cannot intervene into a life of conflict, but you can enter into a life of peace. You come to peace, which is waiting for you, and in this your burdens will be released.

In your two long practice periods today, practice, in stillness, receiving peace. Allow yourself to have this gift, and if any thought comes to dissuade you, remind yourself of your great worth—the worth of your Knowledge and the worth of your self. Know now that you are willing to learn from your errors and that you need not identify with them but use them only as a valuable resource for your development, for such they can become for you.

Practice, then, receiving. Open a little further today. Set all things aside that preoccupy you for later consideration if necessary. Peace abides with you today. Today abide with peace.

Practice 74: Two 30-minute practice periods.

Here you will find the entire book free for download http://stepstoknowledge.com/

Here you will find pointers for getting started if this is your first encounter with this practice: Taking the Steps to Knowledge.

February 15, 2013 Round One: I do feel a greater peace today and accept that peace abides with me. It is right there at my fingertips if I am only willing to receive and accept it. I associate this peace with freedom, the freedom Marshall talked about in a video I was just watching called The Blessings of Your Life when he said, 'I pray because I want you to be free, and freedom is not free, you have to earn it, you have to want it.'  I can identify with this—the gifts I seek—peace, freedom, Knowledge—will not just fall into my lap, they will only come through consistent effort, dedication, and determination.

September 25, 2014 Round Two: This time, I was rather edgy and distracted, to tell you the truth, although even on such days I still feel an inner peace. I did not go with Sasha to pick sea buckthorn and plums at a friend’s dacha, although I felt he could use the help. I have deadlines approaching though and needed to work. However, I ended up doing other things. Putting away more books after our redecorating, writing a post in Russian at Mystery of Ascension, and finally creating a Russian New Message page on Facebook. I started to do that weeks ago and never finished. I wonder why I decided to finish it today? I wanted somewhere to promote my Russian post at Mystery of Ascension for one, and just decided to go for it. I am not sure I did it right, I am not good at trying to be seen. I have some ambivalence about being seen. Maybe something will come of it though.

Is this an opportunity to remind myself of my great worth, of the worth of my Knowledge and the worth of myself? I can do that if I see this worth as something not connected personally with me, something more expansive that I do not take credit for. My worth can only be collective, when I feel I am working with everyone else reclaiming Knowledge and taking Steps to Knowledge. My worth comes from the Greater Community.

When I did the second practice, I felt myself sink into a crystal cave, it was bright and luminous and I repeated that peace abides with me. When the mind is buzzing and cluttered, there is no room for peace. I need to make room for peace and emptiness in my mind in order to know the truth.

I watched and listened again to the video “The Blessing of Your Life” – very powerful. 

September 9, 2018 Round Three: This is just what I need today - to come to peace with no questions or needing to understand, just come to peace and abide with it, open myself to its blessings, allow my errors to teach me, but not identify with them, for I am greater than this. This is in sync with the thoughts I was having yesterday. I was thinking again about the exchange I had with Ursula in Moscow and what she told me. Feelings of hurt began to surface again, thinking that I have provided her with a home all these years when really she is an adult now and should be fending for herself and paying her own way, yet she does not want to help me now with the plot. So there’s gratitude for you! But then I remember that I did put my drinking and Sasha first for many years, I was happy for the girls to go back to the US with Wally, mainly because I thought it would be best for them, but also because I felt the freedom it would give me to drink. Also Wally and I had that agreement when we divorced - that I would not interfere with anything he wanted for the girls. So this attitude toward me from Ursula is sort of my just deserts. And there is no point in confronting Ursula about it because I see the bigger picture and I am above all that, I have greater worth and dignity now, I don’t need to belittle myself by being petty. I see I may have been in error and I am allowing my errors to teach me. Ursula may be in error, but I will allow her errors to teach her, if she ever gets to that level of understanding. I will not rub it in her face now but hope she comes around to seeing things differently later. But maybe not. Maybe she is right and I am wrong. Maybe I need to come to a new level of understanding.

I did the full 30 minutes meditation from 4.45-5.15. I tried to do the second meditation a couple of times, but did not do the full 30 minutes. It was a stressful day, since Sasha and I argued in the morning about the “housing situation.” “The housing situation has always ruined things for Muscovites” - Bulgakov. I kept reminding myself that peace abides with me and to come to peace. No more was said. Sasha and I came to peace. I will just not react anymore. I wish I would remember not to react in the heat of the moment. I wish I would just let it roll over me and drop away.