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Discipleship in the New Age II - Personal Instructions to Disciples - I.B.S.
To I. B. S. August 1940 My BROTHER: There is a question concerning the future and your responsibility which is at this time much disturbing your mind. It intrudes powerfully at times into your consciousness. Up till now - after a period of inner wrestling and consequent decision - you have evaded the full facing of the implications and the effect which action may have upon the future. The service of a disciple is frequently affected by his inner worries and defensive suppressions. The free flow of inspiration is halted in the astral body and there stagnates (if I may use so inappropriate a word). He is conscious of the inspiration but is puzzled at the small effect it appears to have upon other people. He wonders constantly where the difficulty lies. Often it lies in an unsolved problem which serves to bewilder the subconscious nature, as the psychologists call it; it may lie in a half-realized inability to work out right relations with people, fretting and gnawing at the lower layers of unformulated thought; it may be found in a state of inner rebellion against life, against people, against the disciple's own decisions, leading thus to a most definite orientation or focus of the entire personality. [545] When the personality ray is the same as the ray of the astral body (as in your case) a most difficult situation is apt to arise, handicapping the service until such time as right inner adjustments are made. In a curious way, you are isolated from many people by the power and focus of your third ray physical body - a thing which you are the last to desire but which is due to the dominance of the first ray element in your nature, for it conditions your soul quality and that expresses itself through the third ray physical nature. Intense focus is, therefore, the continuous theme of your life expression for - as you know - you have the first ray and the sixth ray continuously interrelated in your nature. The offsetting factor is your mind which is governed by the fourth ray. This influence too is frequently found in this seed group, for ten of the group members have the mind as the battle ground of conflict - a conflict which is thus planned in order to produce an eventual harmony. Disciples such as yourselves, therefore, will not find release from conflict through the control of desire, or through evasion or through inhibition. They will find it through the right use of the thought processes and through the mind itself, for it can throw upon the problem the light which shines through it. This will bring right solution and correct understanding. You do wrestle with your problem, my brother, for your sincere desire is to follow the path of spiritual development but you make the astral body your battle ground whereas the whole problem should be elevated to mental levels. Think this out and then carry forward right action in two directions: on the mental plane for guidance and down to the physical plane for demonstration. You will know to what problem or problems I refer. None of your group brothers will understand to what particular condition I now make allusion. It is a problem which you must handle in isolation and when handled, it will open for you a perfect floodgate of relationships and opportunities. Your aim should therefore be the intensification of the illumination of the mind so that the searchlight of the mind can be turned upon the fogs and difficulties of the astral body. Of one thing we who are watching the disciples of the [546] world today are convinced, and that is that you are a sincere and intelligent devotee; intelligence and devotion go hand in hand in the accepted disciple, balancing each other and then producing a definite focus of power. For all of you this is an incarnation wherein the life focus becomes either irrevocably oriented toward the soul, as must be the case with newly accepted disciples, or powerfully expanded and inclusive as in the case of older disciples. In your case, the achievement of a definite focus is now essential. In the manifestation of souls in time and space, there come lives wherein - at times - a soul problem (as the personality embraces it) becomes a dominant theme and the whole incarnation (with definite points of intensive crisis) is given to the understanding of the problem and its solution. In the orientation of your life towards the soul, the keynote of renunciation is wisely clear but you need to see to it that even renunciation is not over-emphasized and that its conditioning power is not applied to that for which there is no call, because such renunciation would constitute an error. I am giving you, therefore, a personal meditation. I too must have this in mind reminding you that renunciation itself can be a glamor and a sixth ray idealist is prone to over-express. I shall not give you what you would call a real meditation. That which will aid you the most at this time is a visualization exercise on Light. Sit quietly and relax. Deal not with problems but during the period of this exercise endeavor simply to be a point of focused vision, with the eye of the mind directed towards the soul. When your focus seems adequate then see (by the power of the creative imagination) a distant peak or pyramid and on its summit there shines a clear pure light of great intensity. With that light you seek to identify yourself, to merge within and thus to avail yourself of its illumination in order that in it the lesser light may shine. You say, after some minutes of careful identification: [547] "Dim light am I and yet the pure light shines. Not distant is that light but daily, hourly drawing nearer. The light that is my little self must disappear within the greater Light. So with that Light, that all-pervading, all-consuming Light, I blend and merge. I can no longer see the two - the greater Self, the little self, the pilgrim and the way, for only one is seen - the greater lighted Whole." Picture the fusion of the light of the personality and the light of the Soul and see that light focused in the personality upon the astral plane. Then produce stabilization of the light appropriated by the sounding of the OM. Seek not to use the light directly for the clarification of problems, teaching or ideas. That will take place automatically once the light is focused; it must inevitably bring release and knowledge. Seek simply to visualize the process, knowing that "as a man thinketh so is he." Then forget about the acquiring of the light and endeavor to manifest that which exists as the result of your own effort. Light is within you. Seek not for immediate instantaneous solution of your problems. Look not, my brother, for results. Remember ever that as you continue faithfully with the indicated exercise, the results are sure or I would not waste your time or mine in giving you this work to do. Regularly and without anxiety do as you are told. The results will in due time manifest.
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