In this teaching from the 2019 Steps to Knowledge vigil, Marshall discusses how spirituality is more about movement in life than having high spiritual experiences. Marshall expresses how following an invisible light, the mystery of your life, and taking the steps to move your life in a true direction represents a real test of faith and trust.
This is about movement. It’s not about realization. Realization doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t lead to movement. It’s a moment when you felt something big, saw something big. Maybe it felt glorious, heavenly. But if it doesn’t lead to movement, it’s a blip. That’s it—blip and gone.
So this is not about having transcendent spiritual experiences. It’s not about going into magnificent, elevated states. Meanwhile, your life is a mess. You have no purpose. You have no certainty. Relationships are vague and confused. Your health has been forgotten and neglected. And you’re trying to have magnificent experiences. Something’s not right here.
The New Message is taking us and preparing us to go into the world, not out of it.
Every one of us is afraid of the world at some level, okay? And we may want to go into it, but only if we can secure ourselves there. But we’re talking about going into the world guided by an invisible light, which is going to take us where we wouldn’t take ourselves normally. So it’s a real test of faith and trust. It is to move us into our destined state of service in a dynamically changing world. And that means that the state of service is predetermined. But how that’s going to work or where it’s going to end up is not because the world is always changing. And there’s no assurance that you’re actually going to make that sacred rendezvous, or find or take those certain steps because you can stall or fall away at any moment.
So Knowledge is not going to give you big things at the outset because you’re not trustworthy enough, you’re not reliable enough and you haven’t proven yourself to be able to carry things forward. So if you can’t do that in little things, Knowledge is not going to give you bigger things. If you can’t do the things you already know you need to do, listen to yourself. “Boy, I know I need to do this.” That’s in everybody’s experience. “I know I need to do this.” Self-talk. You should write it down. You should look at it at the beginning of every week and work on that. If you can’t do what you already know to do, how’s Knowledge is going to give you something bigger to do?
So it’s a lot of development of us just to be able to come into relationship with this bigger power.
