There has been much questioning in your mind during the past few months and also much mental discomfort, if I might so express it. There has been, at the same time, a steady adherence to the chosen way and to your group brothers. You are still, however, under the influence of an ancient thought-form, forgetting that one of the tasks of a disciple is to free himself from these holding forms. This thought-form leads you to look, aye, to demand results of a phenomenal nature; it incites you to believe and urges you to demand that your years of devotion, your personality energy and your astral force (a strong combination, [125] my brother!) should be rewarded by a recognition from and a contact with a Member of the Hierarchy. You look for this, not in order to feel any personal satisfaction or prideful reaction but as a justified and right reward of patient effort and true occult obedience.

Yet, my brother, you have had all you asked for if you could but recognize it. You know who I am and surely, therefore, the recognition for which you asked has been accorded you and you are aware of that for which you are being prepared by your soul, by me and through the chosen group work. Yet in all of this, you take no joy nor find any rest. Should you not realize the truth of what I say, I would ask you to reflect awhile and maybe in time illumination will come.

The group work is not easy for you. It is hard for an Englishman to free himself from his national assurances and prejudices, as it is for the nationals of all highly developed countries. But in this work and at your stage of spiritual awareness, the inclusiveness of the life realization should bar out insularity. For this you must strive, and for you the keynote is the conviction that all men are brothers - a thing most easy to say and to hold theoretically but most difficult to express as a living factor in one's life.

We are going to work with frankness henceforth and with freedom, and I - your Master and your friend - will mince no words with you or with any of my group. There is not time, such is the immediate urgency to train workers and it is surely needless with a group such as this.

You will remember that I gave much time to the consideration of the rays which governed the various aspects and vehicles of each of the group members, and I trust that a careful analysis of what I said has enabled each of you to know yourselves and to understand your problems more truly and more fully. Today I seek to indicate the vehicles of force through which the two major rays are predominantly focused, reminding you that the task is to relate two energies and three forces in such a manner that you become, in fact, a divine manifestation. Let me here be precise.

First, your egoic or soul ray focuses itself in and through your fifth ray mental body. This - as I told you in an earlier [126] instruction - has given you your defined mental focus, your critical attitude and your isolation, relatively speaking. It is this combination which has always enabled you to rationalize yourself into a confidence in the rightness of your decisions and into a surety that your particular life choices and your preferred circumstances are correct and justified. This energy and force are reinforced also by the controlling force of your physical body which gives you a third ray brain.

Second, your personality ray is focused in your astral body. The rays - three, five and six - are your controlling factors. This gives you devotion and mental control and it should give you real balance but, unfortunately, it does not, because the mind aspect is unduly emphasized and you are afraid of devotion. Yet it is your devotion, my brother, which has brought you to us and not your mental ability. It is your devotion which has led you steadily all these years and produced your service in the world. To what have you been devoted? This is an important question for you to answer to your soul.

I ask myself anew: How can I convey to this disciple the nature of his problem? I will put it in this form. Your egoic energy, focused in your mind, is at the service of your personality and of the work which you are endeavoring to do in the particular field wherein you are, forcing yourself to remain. It should be the other way round and the personality - with all its unified powers - should be at the service of the soul. All the forces of your lower nature should be at the disposal of the higher Self, working through an illumined mind and sensitive brain. Ponder on this. The energy of the intelligence and two intelligent forces - the soul, the mind and the physical nature - serve your devoted personality. You should reverse this, my brother, and let the intelligent soul control your devoted personality. There lies your problem.

The need of every disciple is ever to develop a closer and more direct alignment between soul and personality and that is, therefore, your problem, even if it seems to you an elementary problem. What you need to do is to focus the energy of your soul in your sixth ray astral body instead of in your mind, so that intelligent love may be your outstanding characteristic. This shift will do certain things for you and in you: [127]

1. t will create a temporary upheaval in your life and, therefore, naturally affect your solar plexus, producing a period of real difficulty.
2. t will transfer the energy of the soul and the force of the mind into the realm of the emotions and of sensitive feeling response, thereby greatly increasing your usefulness but also increasing for you the "dire pain of life itself"; this is a pain with which all disciples must learn to live and from which all disciples must inevitably suffer.
3. t will stimulate your brain cells and swing into activity many hitherto dormant cells, thus making you capable of increased service of a different nature to that with which you are now occupied. It will lead you to enquire if your present field of service is, for you, a legitimate one or - if it is - what must you do to "change the nature of the seed which must therein be sown." You will know to what I refer without my further elaborating.

Such is your problem. How shall we change your egoic focus and, at the same time, fuse more closely your two major rays so that the personality is subordinated to the soul. To aid in this specific meditation must be followed...