Marshall Vian Summers speaks about the development of skills that utilize the mind to respond to the world and face conflict, being in the world in the new way. Recorded on March 16th, 2019 in Boulder, Colorado.
Transcript: So we’re in the process now of learning skills. And I’m much more interested in this because without these skills, you just will not be able to do the things the New Message is asking you to do.
You know when we practice inner listening, it’s not to get things: “An answer. I need an answer.” Or to have an insight: “I had an insight!” I don’t think insights are worth very much actually, and I’ll talk a little bit about that later.
We practice the great practices to develop skills to reemploy the mind to develop new neural pathways of how the mind is going to function: a new way of responding to other people, responding to conflict, responding to beauty, responding to degradation. We’re building skills to be able to be in the world in a new way. And we’re doing this in such a way that we become immortal beings in the world to be of service, rather than being in the world with some vague notion of our own that we have a greater life somewhere, somehow, above and beyond this existence.
Instead of being trapped by the world, we are being fed by Heaven.
So our practice now is skill building. And I want you to really think about that. This is not a reward system where every time you practice you get a reward. Every time you do a trick, you get a cookie. Good boy.
No. We’re practicing to become strong and competent. There’s no emphasis on mastery here. The emphasis is on competence and functionality. In fact, the New Message says there are no masters living in the world. Mastery is beyond anything that can be achieved here. So let’s take that out of the picture. Anyone who claims to be a master or appears to be a master is still a student in the world.
So many things have to be taken out of the picture for the way to become clear, you see? Things that people fixate upon or think are very, very important have to be relieved because we’re losing energy to all these things. It’s like the vessel has all kinds of little leaks in it. They’ve got to be plugged up or it can’t hold anything.
So that’s why the journey—much of the journey—is about undoing, about creating openness, space, freeing up energy and allowing your mind to be reshaped and guided by Knowledge.
