MY BROTHER AND MY FRIEND:

(For such you have been for many lives, e'en if your present physical brain registers not the fact.) The past year has been a hard one for you, as it has necessarily been for all who are sensitive and whose physical bodies are ill-equipped to stand the modern pressure or to carry the inner, spiritual force available. It has been particularly hard for you also to establish the inner link with your fellow disciples and this you have realized and it has troubled you. The difficulty is due to the fact that your polarization is essentially that of the man devoted to the Hierarchy and whose link is established with that Hierarchy. Your orientation - esoterically speaking - is towards Shamballa.

I use that phrase because it connotes something definitely intelligible to you. I seek not to be more explicit, for you will comprehend the significance of what I say. You serve and love your fellowmen because we, the teachers on the inner side also serve and love them; your approach to humanity and to your co-disciples is via those whom you serve upon "the Lighted Way of the Lord of Life."

You work with human beings and you seek to integrate into this group of mine because I, whom you know and love, have asked you so to do. This is of assistance to you but there must be for you a still greater achievement. As you realize the status of your soul, you must come to the understanding that you serve with us and not simply because you are asked to serve. Give to your group brothers of that great gift of love which is so fundamentally yours but which is as yet only in process of finding full expression. Your problem is summed up in the word which I earlier gave you. I told you that you were shifting egoically from the sixth Ray of Devotion on to the second Ray of Love-Wisdom - the ray whereon I myself am found. Your first ray personality gives you power with men and this power you know you possess, and you have endeavored to use it wisely. Your sixth ray soul-polarization has served to enhance [216] the dynamic one-pointedness of your first ray force. Now that condition is beginning to change and during this transition period you suffer much. But you have the task of making this transition and of embodying the love-wisdom force before the close of this life and, my brother, it is one requirement that you can fulfil. You can also guard yourself from too much suffering over others and over general life conditions and in this wise detachment your first ray energy can aid.

From the angle of the mind, this soul activity and change of focus will force your idealistic tendencies to find expression in teaching. Idealism is the major gift of the sixth ray force. Teaching is an expression of second ray energy. This combination of idealism and of teaching is for you the way.

From the angle of the emotional body, this transition marks a vital change from personal to impersonal work. This capacity to be impersonal has been greatly developed in you by your first ray lower nature which renders you easily impersonal - if you so choose. But for you the lesson of all disciples must be learned which is to be impersonally personal. That is not easy of attainment. An attached detachment is for you the goal. It is in order to aid you in learning this lesson that you have been placed in my group of disciples, which can (for the time at least) provide the "playground" for your soul. To love your co-disciples, impersonally to identify yourself with the subjective life of the group and to work in rhythm with them is somewhat difficult for you, but most valuable. I ask you to attempt it, my brother, and to pursue this objective in spite of all personality objections. In a few years' time, you will better understand my plans for you.

From the angle of the etheric body, this soul transition or refocusing of energies from the soul plane will produce the transfer of energies, gathered up and poured through the central clearing-house of the solar plexus center - through that midway station between the higher and the lower centers - to the head and heart. This will be carried forward as you seek to live more consciously in the soul realm and to be more definitely oriented - as a soul - to the world. This will in no way change your outer activities but will surely produce a deepened relation to your fellowmen. Increasingly will you see them in us and us [217] in them. Ponder on these ideas for I seek to see you working with even more effectiveness and liberation.

I have already indicated to you your responsibility to my group of disciples and your function in my group. The power through which this particular group will integrate must come through you. Each of my disciples has something to give to the group as a whole... I tell you again that the force which expresses itself in loving, magnetic, coherent energy must pour to all of this group through you; upon this task I ask you to meditate.