MY BROTHER:

During the next six months we must decide whether you are able to cope with this planned work or not. If at the end of this next period of study it is apparent that you should not do any of the work then - for the sake of group integrity and the purposed undertaking of healing - it will be necessary for you to drop out. Karmatically, you have a relation to me and to this group of aspirants; sensitively you are adequate to the task; aspirationally, you desire to do it. Wherein then lies the difficulty? What causes the over-intensification of the glandular system?

The answer lies in three factors, which I will put frankly before you, leaving you to accept or reject my suggestions as may seem best to you.

First (and above everything else) an intense attitude to life. You live always at a point of tension. Such points of tension come, and should come, to all disciples for it is at such critical moments that the real growth appears and true decisions are made, but you are always at such a point and never know when to relax. Even when amusing yourself, you are tense; when resting, you are tenser still. You could learn relaxation if you so desired, but this you do not really seek to do, and the question is whether you would practice relaxation even if you knew how to do so.

Thirdly, you take many things in life far too seriously, such as the work of this group. You think about these things too intently, and you handle the group work, your daily life, and your home problems, plus all your life interests, with too heavy a hand. There are two things which every disciple must some day learn, my brother. One is to cultivate the ability to "sit light in the saddle" (to use an old proverbial injunction) and the other is to develop a sense of humor, a real (not forced) capacity to laugh at oneself and with the world. This is one of the compensations which comes to those who can succeed in working in the light upon the mental plane. When you can do this, the constant tension under which you labor will adjust itself.

You have oft made the remark that you know so little, that you have been forced ahead too fast, and that you have no background of acquired knowledge. But you have been many years in touch with my work and - in spite of all you may think to the contrary - you have the mental ability and the leisure (if you organized your daily life aright) to read and study. But this is a hard thing for you to do, is it not? But, brother of old, the way of the disciple is never an easy one. The tension from which you suffer could have been very largely offset by a quieter life of reading, gentle thought, organized activities, silence and the refusal to take on non-essentials (those things which other people can do just as well as you can) or the ability to see things not done.

I have written thus in frankness, because I seek to release you from your present condition to fuller service, to better health, and truer happiness. I seek to see you a quiet center of spiritual force. I would like to see you rearrange your life in such a manner that you can demonstrate that leisured calm through which strength can flow from you to those you love and to those you contact. Can you take enough leisure to grasp at least the purpose of these injunctions? Can you endeavor to profit by them?

Another source of your trouble is to be found in your sixth ray astral body (the ray of idealistic, fanatical devotion) for it produces a real lack of balance, an undue attention to details of process, and of devotion to those details from the emotional satisfaction which comes from this attention; this brings about a failure to understand the larger issues and an inability to move gently on the Way. This your first ray mental nature can offset if you will give it a chance and live more in your mind and less in your feelings and emotional reactions. Your third ray physical body inclines you to great physical activity (such as rapid movement and rapid speech) ; it keeps you working at something all the time and often at something quite unproductive of good results, and not proportionate to the labor expended.

I would ask you to do some meditation each day regularly with a planned lack of intensity carried almost to the point of lack of interest. Just follow the form and look not for results. They will follow automatically e'en if you realize them not. Study what I say to you and meet the group requirements.