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Discipleship in the New Age II - Personal Instructions to Disciples - W.D.S.
To W. D. S. August 1940 BROTHER OF MINE: A strenuous winter's work lies ahead of all disciples who are engaged in our service which is, as you have ever been told, pre-eminently the service of humanity. This service is intensively preoccupying us at this time and only in group formation can it be adequately handled. In spite of this, for some reason, my brother, you stand peculiarly alone. As I realize this, I find myself wondering in what manner I can bring you to a knowledge of this situation in your life, for you need to change conditions so that you can become an integral part of the group life. When I say group, I mean neither your immediate circle of co-workers nor the group of my disciples who are recipients of these instructions. I mean the entire group of serving disciples who are at work in the world and are the hope of the world at this time. Of your desire to serve, of your inherent determination to serve and of the honesty of your dedication there is no possible doubt. Two factors which almost defy definition contribute to the fact that esoterically you stand alone, spiritually repulsing contact from the inner side of daily living (and consequently on the outer side also). It is not your willingness to cooperate, for that is proven; it is not your effort to understand, for that is evident; it is not intrinsically anything which you do which surrounds you as a wall, for that is really not the trouble. It is the fact that you yourself - as a personality - have for too long placed yourself in the very center of your picture and also because your first ray personality militates against your identifying yourself with the world of relativity in which you find yourself. Your personality is always in your way. It is never forgotten and conditions everything you do and say. The realization of this is not evident in your mind because all the time you yourself are the most real factor in the situation and yet - as you would yourself teach people - that personality attitude is the [620] great deceiver and essentially illusion. This condition of personality emphasis gives to other people whom you contact a sense of insincerity and thus evokes from them a reaction that leaves you alone. This in its turn evokes a response from your personality which is in the nature of self-defense, plus an effort to force cooperation, a willingness to go the way that the majority go, to do the expedient thing and also to attempt to prove to yourself and to others that you are what you know yourself to be and that they are not right in their reaction to you. Having pointed this out to you, is anything really clearer in your consciousness? I doubt it, for words - requiring as they do right interpretation - can mislead as much as they can help. I might however put it this way. Your second ray soul and your second ray mind are stepped down in expression to such an extent that they are expressions of personality love and a loving manifestation (apparently, though not in fact) of a mental attitude. With these you delude yourself and make a wrong impression on others for there is no real expression of truth in any of this. There is also no soul strength in your expression of life but only the determination of the personality and this you misinterpret as strength. This shows itself in various ways, according to the type of person with you at any given time and does not demonstrate the steady force of the soul, centered in spiritual being and illumined by soul light, being dedicated to group work and not to personality aspiration and personality ambition. What then can you do? I would remind you that one of the things which it is the task of the Master to demonstrate to his disciple is the particular "blind spot" in his life which it is the purpose of the soul to illumine and bring into the light of his consciousness, thus dispelling the darkness and the blindness. This is done by stimulation and suggestion. The stimulation you have been subjected to for years and it has had its dual effect in stimulating the personality to a measured (but inadequate) response to the soul and also by stimulating the personality tendencies to fuller expression. These tendencies, when evoked, registered and recognized for what they are and so handled rightly can then be [621] eliminated. The task however becomes more difficult as progress on the Path is made, for the subtler qualities and weaknesses emerge and are not so easily detected as are the cruder forms of personality reaction. I would suggest, therefore, that you study the weaknesses of your position in connection with your fellow-workers and your group brothers and so discover the cause of your "aloneness" by registering daily your effect upon people. That means that you study them and not yourself. Do you evoke in your friends and associates a good and happy response or the reverse? Do they show a disposition to seek you out and spend much time in your company? Do they tell you their difficulties in happy discussion and seek your sympathy? How will you discover and be able to answer these questions? That is for you to find out. I can but indicate, for truths accepted on the statement of others are of no real service save as signposts on the way and are not often convincing. It is that which you know for yourself, which is self-ascertained and which is found out through pain, failure, suffering and hurt pride which will bring you to liberation and the end of your (as yet) largely unrealized loneliness. Let the strength of your personality and of your emotional nature (which is today building around you an isolating barrier) be transmuted into that loving understanding which comes because its possessor is identified with others and not so much with himself. He does not take the attitude: "I am identified with others" and so watch to see if he is, being at the same time focused on himself and his reactions and so seeking to achieve identification because he wants to end isolation because it is wrong, and he seeks to be happier in his work and so in his consciousness. He says to himself instead: "What is my brother feeling and thinking?" and he does this because he is more interested in the happiness of his brother than in his own feelings or thought and so forgets himself in ascertaining the situation in order to aid, stimulate and love with wisdom. These, my brother, are the platitudes of the spiritual experience and these are the platitudinous truths of which you need to make experimental use, thus turning them into the ascertained facts of your daily experience and expression. More I cannot say to you at this [622] critical time. There is much that you can do in the work if you will face yourself by forgetting yourself; if you will be strong by rendering the personality weak; if you learn to love by not caring whether you evoke love or not. Such are the occult paradoxes which you must resolve and which - when resolved - will greatly increase your effectiveness in service. If you care to talk to A.A.B. who is an older disciple than you are, you might find it suggestive and useful. But A.A.B. begs me not to suggest this and adds that she knows that a hint from me is worth more than a multitude of words from her or from anyone else. She will not speak of this matter to you or even make an opening for this discussion; but if you speak to her and seek light upon my words, she will do what she can.
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