BROTHER OF OLD:

The pressure of the times is very great and yet, at the same time, great need for care prevails. I want first of all to point out to you where your major risk lies and I use the word "risk" with intention. You realize it for yourself, I know, but re-emphasis on my part will not prove unavailing.

Your physical body is very frail and, therefore, you have to handle force and spiritual energy with especial care; where there is a weak and delicate outer shell, the inner subtler bodies can become too dominant; as force flows in, these subtler bodies become more vital. Much force flows through you at this time. Do not infer from this remark that you contact and attract more force than do your co-disciples, for such is not the case. But your physical equipment is of such a nature that it constitutes a real problem.

The consequent influence and potency of the inner bodies - particularly the mental body with its critical faculties - is over-strong [576] in expression upon the physical plane. This, I realize quite well, you yourself know.

One of the problems that faces every Master (teaching a group of disciples such as this) is how to lead them on to the next step when much that he can say to them is simply an emphasizing of what they - as most intelligent aspirants - already know. There is little that I can tell you personally at this time. You have so much knowledge and you do realize that your major problem is the right handling of force.

Perhaps I shall help you the most if I beg you not to handle force so powerfully. Learn to approach yourself and your life problems, your work as a disciple, your relationship with my group of disciples and with all that come your way, with less intensity. You consciously handle yourself so powerfully and with such violence that you are constantly shattering yourself and constantly tearing down the contacts you make, the work you do and the bridges which you establish between yourself and others. This again you know.

Will you understand me, my brother, and believe me when I tell you that, for you, the achievement of an inner stillness is the way out of all your problems? Your intensely active mind which moves from personalities to the Plan, from the New Group of World Servers to the details of everyday life and which is never quiet for one moment from its thought-form-making activities, must learn to rest quietly in the light. It must learn simply to reflect, both in the sense of quiet thought and in the sense of a quiet radiance. Then your thoughts will harmonize and blend; then your plans will be constructive and free from self; then you will become a center of peace and a point of radiant energy which will bring people together and act as a coherent force.

Let, therefore, your effort for the next few months be the attainment of this inner quiet. This will in no way affect or change the goal of your work; it will not negate in any way the methods in which you seek to help my work. It will, however, affect the quality and the rhythm of what you seek to do and save you much time which is at present spent in constant rebuilding.

The only exercise that I give you at this time is as follows: