BROTHER OF MINE:

The note of my instruction to you this time can be best summed up in the strong injunction to practice truth at all times. My word to you in my last instruction was to ask you to inculcate in your outer expression upon the physical plane that gracious loving-kindness which first ray disciples ever need to cultivate. This you have attempted to do with marked success. The practice of these qualities will extend your sphere of usefulness for there will be nothing, eventually, in your outer impact upon people to throw them away from you. Instead, you will draw them magnetically to the center wherein the Masters are found.

Now I call your attention to the necessity for that crystalline truthfulness and that precise accuracy which will release you increasingly from the prison of the lower self. People who work as you could work upon the distinctly abstract levels of existence frequently have a difficulty in expressing the precision of truth. They lack, if I may so express it, the capacity to bring through into form and to build the concrete shell which can precisely express the idea. This you also quite markedly lack; you have oft said, have you not, how difficult you find it to clothe in words the ideas you contact and the field of knowledge in which - at high moments - you find yourself. This inability to express spiritual ideas in the right words has necessarily its counterpart in the limitations of your personality. The ecstasy of divine knowledge which you know at times and which fails of right [327] expression in words, finds its inevitable counterpart in the exaggerated detail of daily life when recounted. There is ever the tendency to continue the ecstasy (known on abstract levels) into the concrete life on the physical plane. As it is stepped down, it over-stimulates other and lower aspects of the nature, and, therefore, removes itself further and further from the truth.

During the coming year, brother of old, assume the task of watching with care every statement made and every attitude assumed, so as to negate all tendency to emotional misrepresentation. But be not overwhelmed or discouraged by any discoveries anent your lower nature which you may make. Should you discover lack of precision in relation to those concerns which affect the lower man, remember that this inaccuracy is due to two things: First, to your power to work on abstract levels, involving ecstatic realization. This reacts on the lower man and inclines him to over-emphasize all details, and to exaggerate the usual and the commonplace into the unusual and the rare. Secondly, to your innate humility which induces in you a tendency to reassure yourself constantly that you are on the Way and that all you do is in line with soul purpose. The world of glamor which is the distorted reflection of the world of inspiration (the intuitive buddhic plane) then catches you and the truth, with its clarity of outline and precision of detail, disappears into the mists of illusion. Then all objects and affairs loom too large and appear too important and too interesting. With the majority, the reverse happening is the case and everything dwindles in retrospect and becomes too small. Hence the word "exaggerated" in connection with the watch that I want you to make over all words and descriptions.

This self-imposed attention to true accuracy must be your most rigid discipline during the next year and, when success is achieved, you will find yourself walking in a clearer world and discover that you will have potently increased your power to serve. This inability to produce a true picture of things as they intrinsically are and to portray facts as they really exist, has militated against your power to materialize that which is desired upon the physical plane and has caused you much concern and distress of mind. Your desire to help has been urgent and your [328] capacity to materialize that which is needed has seemed to you inadequate and oft futile. You have ascribed this inability to the fact that probably you have needed to learn patience. But that is not a lesson that you need, brother of mine. Your weak point has been your inability to bring through the vision with accuracy. In order to do this you must learn to practice accuracy of thought and speech daily.

Each Full Moon period, prior to entering into contact with the world of spiritual realities as you have been instructed, check up your progress during the month in this respect, remembering that initial success will take the form of recognition of a hitherto unrecognized verbal inaccuracy. You have so little to do (relatively speaking) in order increasingly to become a purifying flame that I beseech you to do that which is needed.

Let your meditation take the form more and more of contemplation. In order, however, safely to increase the length of time you can spend in contemplation, you must achieve an attitude of gentle unswerving intensity and not develop any further that powerful dynamic intensity which imposes ever a strain upon the brain cells. Your work must lie along two lines: