Category: Meditations

To R.R.R.

May 1939

BROTHER OF MINE:

You may here rightly ask me: In what way do I hinder? I am not ambitious. I do not make trouble of a group kind; I only make trouble for myself. I try to be loving and kind. I work as hard as I think I should. I love the truth and I endeavor to meet requirements.

All of this may be true, my brother, but these statements do not constitute an alibi for what is wrong. The thing that can wreck the building work, which your group is intended to do, is the violence of your reactions and vibrations when you are emotionally upset (and this is of frequent occurrence) and the furious self-assertion whereby you endeavor to justify such violence, and your dramatic self-pity. Unless you can learn to decentralize yourself, and cease this constant self-thought and self-commiseration under all circumstances, and stop visualizing yourself at all times as in the center – yourself as the worker, yourself as the group member, yourself as the sufferer from others’ misunderstandings and mistakes, yourself as of importance – and learn to see yourself as you truly are, you can and do hinder the work and imperil the future constructive work of the group. This you know.

You love no one truly but yourself. If you loved truly and impersonally, you would not cause the pain you do to those who love and believe in your capacity; you would be more magnetic and this on a wider scale, for, as yet, you are only magnetic to those who recognize your personality and love your personality. It is from this lack that your work suffers. Yet it could so easily all be changed, if you learnt that divine indifference which you need – indifference to yourself and to your personality interests, likes and dislikes, indifference to your cares, anxieties and successes. You would then be in a position, really, to sense the importance of the work, the uniqueness of your opportunities at this time, and your really strategic position. But you are too full of fear and of self-interest and so fail to make the needed impact upon those who need your help. They get the impact of your cares and fears and your demand to be liked. Can you change this? I am telling you nothing new. Among the chelas in my Ashram, you are in the position of the naughty, wilful child, for your errors and faults are those of a child and are not adult faults at all. You dream in a child’s dream world.

You must grow up, my brother, for the world needs adult workers at this time and you can meet the need; you can do great and good work; you can make a soul impact upon those around you; you can cease from being a destructive agent and become a constructive worker. But this will only be possible if your likes and dislikes, your personality determinations and affections, your feeling and your physical ailments fade out of the picture and only the world’s need remains and the longing to meet it – as you can. As, I repeat, you can. I and the group need you.

I offer you neither suspension nor the opportunity to resign. I ask you to face the issue and make good. Fight this matter out and fight it out alone. Learn to keep the things which concern yourself to yourself – a thing you have never yet learnt. Do not let your group brothers down by resigning or by a violent explosion – the repercussions of which must hurt and damage. Face life steadily, like an adult who has learnt in the school of wisdom, that the trend of all things is good. Handle life with love as a member of the New Group of World Servers.

NOTE: This disciple is still fighting out the battle but no indication has yet come from the Tibetan that the victory is sufficiently gained to warrant more active work in the Ashram. R. R. R. is still outwardly inactive in relation to the group.

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To P.G.C.

September 1943

BROTHER OF MINE:

It seems to me that so oft I have to say this year to hard-pressed chelas: The way has been difficult. But so it is, and your way in life has been no exception. Great waves of karmic impact have beaten upon our Earth – that little ship adrift in time and space and sailing the great ocean of the cosmos. The Lords of Karma have looked towards our planet. Energy follows thought and that, my brother, is all that karma is – the impact of directed energy upon the Earth, upon the kingdoms in nature, upon man and upon the individual disciple. Much of this karma, especially now, is not individual in purpose, nor is it generated in any way by the individuals affected by it, be it an individual disciple, or an ordinary human being. It is largely incident at this time to the karma of the One in whom we live and move and have our being. It is primarily also in the sphere of Shamballa, and has small relation in the first instance to humanity at all. This means but little to you, I realize. This karma working out in Shamballa has, however, led to the vitalizing of the activities of certain “wilful” men; they have loosed great evil upon the Earth. But this karma will also produce the stimulation of goodwill, and thus lasting good will offset temporary evil. This must not be forgotten.

The problems which have confronted you as an individual, as a disciple and as a member of the New Group of World Servers have been difficult, but you are weathering the storm and your little ship will live through the gale. All is preparatory to an increased output in service – service which will develop normally without undue planning, and which will be accessory to your life task of meeting your home and your healing responsibilities.

This, as I hinted in your six seed thoughts last year, is summed up in the words there found: “Your duty and your goal go hand in hand.” This condition is apt to present more difficulties than a definitely clear-cut distinction. Relationships have to be more carefully adjusted and the time equation most carefully organized and planned. Your second ray nature makes the first possible, your first ray attributes aid in the second. Your major emphasis this year should be the establishing of the most loving “right relations” with all in your immediate environment.

What I am referring to, my brother, is deepening, and this deepening must be consciously carried forward. One of the things which I desire to see in all the members of this group in my Ashram is a process of deepening, carried forward through realization, silence, loving understanding and inner synthesis. That is why it is essential that all of you read and study each other’s papers and instructions, so as to arrive at this depth of insight, vision and source of activity. All the outer relations will then – both of the individual disciple and of the group – be implemented from this inner center, and will therefore be lasting, sound and constructive.

Your particular work in my Ashram is (as well you know) connected with the Network of Light which must be created in the world, and with the furthering of the Triangles of Light… I would ask three of you… to form the inner central triangle, and together and in constant consultation establish some uniformity and continuity of work. Continue with the work you are now doing and in the way you are doing it, but deepen (again that thought) the content of what you give to the people who read the notes you send out.

I feel no need to give you any set meditation. The group meditation, your own reflective work upon your task as a disciple (and this should be intensified), and your subjective meditation upon the Network of Light with your two Triangle members will provide you with adequate focal points for soul emphasis. Here I have given you a definition of meditation given by a Master to a group of disciples. He is not one of the Masters known to you or the outer world, for he only takes into his Ashram those who are in preparation for the third initiation, and then only those who are pledged to undertake certain definite activities for which he trains them. These “focal points of emphasis” are of many differing kinds and should distinguish your type of meditation throughout the coming year. Such focal points are brief, dynamic, potent and emphatic and are only possible when the antahkarana is in process of definite construction, as is the case with your work along this line.

I find little more to say to you, my brother. The reason for this is that we work in a peculiarly close manner at all times and you are very active in the work of my Ashram. You do not require, therefore, to hold lengthy discussions and to receive long instructions from me at various annual points. We talk at times throughout the year, and this again you know. Hence the brevity of this communication.

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To  L. T. S-K.

September 1943

BROTHER OF MINE:

Our association together has existed for many years. It also began many lives ago. You should have advanced to a more intimate stage of discipleship had it not been for your always ready and still persistent response to the unreal, the unnecessary, and to that which comes in between you and the clear, steady enlightened progress upon the Path which should be yours. You will note that I use not the word glamor here. The reason is that it is apparently an entirely meaningless word to you, and I felt that I should emphasize the fact that glamor (as far as you are concerned) means that which sidesteps you from the desired service, that which engrosses your attention and prevents you from concentrating on the realities of life and circumstance, that which places you always at the center of some big scheme as the master-mind making some discovery, as the architect of some building which is intended to house humanity, and that which comes between you and the simple duty of a pledged disciple – for that you unchangeably are.

You have, my brother, a good illustration of what I mean in the two plans which you have evolved during the past six months for world salvage and unity. One of them was supposed to be in response to my request for a paper, but another paper which I asked you to write is still unwritten and that paper was more important than the other. These plans were drawn; time was taken in submitting them to various people, and to what end? There was in them nothing new. The minds and some of the best minds in every country in the world are formulating them. Your plans were simply compilations of familiar suggestions which have already been presented in better form to the public. What end, therefore, did they serve? Only to sidetrack you from the simple duty of today; only to feed that inclination on your part to do something great; only to prevent you from a true and practical cooperation in my plans which you know well and which the disciples in my Ashram are pledged to materialize. It is their group duty, not from the angle of authoritative demand, or in a spirit of blind obedience but because from free choice and identity of purpose (as far as they can realize it) they are in my Ashram; they have willingly responded to my planned intentions and in a spirit of dedication to the good of humanity.

All this indicates to me that you are still prone to slip into the thralldom of the vague vision, the grandiose formulations of something and are negatively responsive to the collective ideas of forward-thinking men, for you do no positive or original thinking of your own. Glamor still holds you.

You might well ask, my brother: Why then keep me in your group? Why not wait until I have learnt better and have dropped this tendency? Because you need the protection of the Ashram and you need – from the center of protection – to learn then to accept the duty of obedience to the ashramic intent and to work under the direction of the loving intentions of those whom you do recognize as more experienced disciples than yourself. You are in my Ashram also from old association and because you earned the reward of this recognition and opportunity by being the first to appreciate the significance of my books and the teaching that they convey, and to aid the effort of A.A.B. For that reason you earned the right to my appreciation and hers, and have had them both. That was the one clear bit of spiritual thinking you have done in this incarnation. Therefore, the Ashram protects you, and your brothers stand around you, and for this brief incarnation you are a liability – but a liability which can, with your cooperation, be changed in your next incarnation into a group asset.

There is consequently no need for the slightest discouragement and I say that with definite purpose and truth. There is only room for the acceptance of facts. What facts, brother of mine? Let me (with my usual frankness) tell you. Let me point out to you what I feel and those who know you best feel should be your attitude for the remainder of this life. If you accept these ideas and cooperate willingly, you will do much to free yourself; if you refuse to see the light, you will but delay the process and continue to exact the protecting care of the Ashram for a longer period. Let me first highlight your career of glamor so as to prove to you, intelligently, the points I seek to make.

I shall not deal with your life, prior to the recognition period which enabled you to render me and the world outstanding service. Your recognition and aid of the work I was doing has released certain energies which will have much to do with the changing of the consciousness of humanity. Remember that the Hierarchy has this service of yours in mind.

There was the glamor of the wonderful discovery you were going to make, covering several years of experimentation and leading nowhere. Why? Because you had neither the training nor the capacity to do the work. It will be better done and in other ways and by better minds than yours. Your equipment was not adequate.

There was the glamor of spiritual power which led some of your group brothers astray for months. There has always been a glamorous response to personalities who have misled and glamored you in the business world and led you into devious and difficult situations, and which forced you, eventually, to recognize that they were not the least what you had thought. What is this but the glamor of personalities? Until you have learnt to see people as they truly are, you cannot do the exoteric work of a disciple.

Then came an interlude. I asked for your resignation from the group, and the door of the inner Ashram closed upon you. That was very good for you and you endeavored in that period to attend to the business of life, watching yourself with care. Then the door of the Ashram reopened and you were readmitted to the group life. For a year all seemed well, but the dual stimulation of the Ashram and the active work in my group proved too much, and glamor again enveloped you.

You started by formulating large schemes for world regeneration and for a super-organization, and yet all that time the work that I wanted done and the outlines of the work as indicated by me, and to which your group brothers and my Ashram are pledged, played no part in your planning. You have been unhappy and bewildered because of the lack of sympathy, yet what would you have your brothers do? Would you have them aid me in helping you to free yourself from wild schemes and planning, or would you have them back you up and strengthen the hold that glamor has upon you?

Here are my suggestions, brother of mine, given in all love and understanding, and with a real appreciation of your sincerity of devotion, your great and beautiful staying-power, your essential humility and your very real need for protection.

• Accept the fact that you need protection, and be grateful.
• Accept the fact that in this life you have neither the mental equipment nor the clear vision to enable you to be a leader, an organizer or a drawer of blueprints for the Hierarchy.
• Accept the fact that you are not young enough to make many basic personality changes, for the sixth ray crystallizes too rapidly.
• Accept the fact that in the performance of your home and business duties and in the effort to bring happiness to those in your environment lies for you the immediate solution of your problem. A simple, humble life of service and of self-forgetfulness will do more to free you than any violent endeavor to understand and combat glamor. You do not yet even comprehend what it is; it can only be overcome by the illumined mind, and there is therefore, for you, nothing else to be done but to strengthen your soul contact by practical spiritual living upon the physical plane, and by a complete refraining from all thought anent the future world, future scientific discoveries, future world orders, and the manner whereby they can be instituted.

The moment your mind becomes preoccupied with the universal aspects of life it is thrown into confusion; its thought-form-making proclivities become violent, and the illumination of the soul is then unable to penetrate. You need to learn to bring that illumination into your personality daily life upon the physical plane. What measure of it you have received has been retained upon the mental plane and dedicated to matters far too big for you in this incarnation and with your present equipment. This has led to a chronic state of glamor. Live practically, sweetly, humbly and lovingly for the remainder of this life, and demonstrate beauty in personality relations. You will thus release your mind from pressures too great for it, and so begin to tread the way of liberation.

Can you do this, my brother? Can you bring spirituality into business and live in the business world as a disciple? If you cannot do this, you will have to learn to do it, because discipleship leaves no aspect of life unlived, and business is an aspect of human living. Can you bring naught but peace, happiness and confidence into your home and into your association at the Headquarters of my work in the world? Can you begin to be one to whom the enquirer can turn for help, knowing that he will get enough practical assistance to enable him to see the next step ahead? You can do and be all these things, my brother. Your task is to demonstrate discipleship in the daily life, and not to duplicate the discipleship of those more advanced than yourself.

Do the group work and meditation as indicated. I assign you no special work. I seek to see you more closely integrated into the group in my Ashram of which you are a part. Have no doubts and questionings. You are a part of my Ashram, and that brings the needed protection, as well as certain risks of over-stimulation. The love and understanding and gratitude of your group brothers stands with warmth around you. I have no need to assure you of my protecting care and constant interest. The years must have proved it to you.

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To D.E.I.

September 1943

MY BROTHER AND MY FRIEND:

Since you entered the cycle beginning with your forty-second year, life has held for you constant change, many and drastic adjustments and much responsibility. To this must be added the turmoil and the chaos of the war. This has made great demands upon your strength and your judgment. You have responded well. You have helped many and have grown in wisdom. You have shouldered responsibility for some phase of the work initiated in my Ashram or by my co-disciple, A.A.B. She is not a member of my Ashram. You have my understanding and her unfailing support.

Inevitably, my brother, this situation which you have had to handle in relation to the work for which you are responsible, in relation to your personal and family life and to the future which lies open before you, has entailed much strain. To these factors must be added another one which is that you are essentially alone. This basic loneliness is due to several things: First, that you are in training for leadership, and leaders have to learn to stand alone, and can ever do so if they love enough. Secondly, the force of circumstance and the need to work off certain karmic relations has increased your daily contacts, and at the same time has left you far more alone than you were six years ago. Thirdly, because the greater can always include the less is a lesson which all leaders in training have to grasp; the reverse, my brother, is not true, and the result is loneliness. Ponder on all this and accept it; stand free and move forward on your chosen path, refusing to be limited by those who cannot go your pace. This again means loneliness. And finally, a need for a more loving understanding at times isolates you from your fellowmen, particularly from your co-workers, and you need to beware of a growing critical spirit.

The lessons of leadership are hard to learn, and with these lessons you will be confronted as the years slip away – if you so wish and can face the music. The music is there and will emerge in full tonal quality once you have resolved the discords and established the theme and the rhythm.

What are the lessons which all true leaders have to learn? It might be of service to you if I put one or two before you – very briefly, so that you can (if truly in earnest to serve your fellowmen, as I believe you are) begin to master them, to understand their need and to apply them to yourself with a view to fuller and more useful service.

The first lesson is the lesson of vision. What are your goals? What is the spiritual incentive which will be and is strong enough to hold you steady to the purpose and true to the objective? No one can formulate the vision for you; it is your own personality problem, and upon the strength of the vision and the beauty of the picture which you paint with your imagination will depend much that you do and become.

The second lesson is the development of a right sense of proportion. This, when truly developed and correctly applied, will enable you to walk humbly on the Way. No true leader can be anything but humble, for he realizes the magnitude of his task; he appreciates the limitations of his contribution (in the light of the vision) and the need for constant self-development and the cultivation of the spirit of steady inner spiritual learning, if he is ever to make his proper contribution. Therefore, keep learning; keep dissatisfied with yourself and your attainment, not in any morbid sense, but so that the principle of growth and of pushing forward and onward may be fostered in you. We help others through our own effort to attain; this means clear thinking, humility and constant adjustment.

The third lesson is the development of the spirit of synthesis. This enables you to include all within the range of your influence and also to be included within the range of influence of those greater than yourself. Thus is the chain of Hierarchy established. You still hold a somewhat isolated position, and this with the best intent in the world; but you need to love more deeply and more understandingly. The hindrance here lies in your personality, which is more wise than loving. Let your soul control your first ray personality more, and many of your present difficulties would disappear.

Another lesson which in reality grows out of the above is the avoidance of the spirit of criticism, for criticism leads to barriers and loss of time. Learn to distinguish the spirit of criticism from the ability to analyze and make practical application of the analysis. Learn to analyze life, circumstances and people from the angle of the work, and not from the angle of your personality point of view; analyze also from the angle of the Ashram, and not from the angle of the executive or the schoolmaster upon the physical plane.

In the six statements which I gave you a year ago were three sentences to which I would call your further and close attention. They are:

    “Let not the doing intervene between the loving.”

    This has much to do with the distribution of time.

    Study the value of the heart at leisure from itself and its problems.

    “Lift up the weak, for you are strong, and strength from many comes to you.”

    This has to do with recognition. Be not entirely occupied with helping, but be willing to be helped.

    Study the value of the imagination in this connection.

    “You move through life with all the power which comes from out my Ashram.”

    This has to do with the handling of energy – and with energy of great potency which will not only invoke the best that is in you but will also evoke the latent seeds of difficulty, which must perforce be removed.

    Study the task of living ever consciously in the Ashram and working from that point of power and peace – going without, yet ever staying within.

I am speaking thus directly to you, my co-worker, because the future holds much of useful service for you, if you continue to be a learner. It takes time, humility and certain recognitions, within yourself, of place and position in the chain of Hierarchy. I cannot too strongly emphasize that to you. Let not the pressures of family life (and no family life is devoid of pressures) and the exigencies of the work plus the activities of an active mind, interfere with the inner learning process which is so essential to all teaching-leaders. That, my brother, is what you can be.

A.A.B. has spoken to me of you from the standpoint of your place in the work of the School. She has not touched upon the personality angles or the need for special developments and growth, for no trained disciple, such as she is, ever interferes with the relation between a Master and his chela. She knows that your relation to me is that. But she has spoken to me about you from the angle of the future. I asked her what she felt was your major need and one that you must meet as you prepare for a larger field of service when she passes over. She made an unexpected reply. She said: “The need for a more fertile imagination.” She is entirely right.

The imagination is a creative faculty. Wherein are you thus creative? Can you picture to yourself by any flight of imagination the task ahead of the Arcane School, for instance, in the postwar world, and your approach to the problem from the angle of what you would like to change or see altered? Changes mean nothing unless they are the result of new vision, for if they emerge out of a criticism of the past and of what has been done, they will prove useless from the angle of the spiritual life, no matter how useful they may be from the angle of the organization.

Have you the perception to realize what an esoteric school essentially has to be? It is not an organized method of meeting world problems, of organizing new orders and ways of living, or of underwriting the efforts of the men and women of goodwill. It goes far deeper than that. All the above are only effects of the esoteric life. Can you imagine your position when – from the teaching angle, the esoteric angle – you may have to be a source of inspiration, and not A.A.B.? From whence will you draw inspiration, and how will you make the world of meaning and the spiritual realities real and provocative to the neophyte?

Can your imagination picture to you your reaction when – because you are the leader – you have to shoulder all the blame for any failure, even when not personally responsible; you have to accept without retaliation the attacks of those you are trying to help, who expect too much from you and who force you to live in the blaze of public opinion; what will you do when your chosen workers fail to understand or prove disloyal or criticize without warrant or pit their ambitions against you, and willfully refuse to see your point of view, and talk about you among other people and whip up resentments against you – resentments which are probably without foundation? These are not the kind of things that your personality easily accepts, and your creative imagination had better begin dealing with these problems so that the emerging principles of conduct may stand clear before you. Have you the inner grace of heart to admit error and weakness or to say that you made a mistake in technique or method or approach, in judgment or in speech, should need arise to heal a breach and in the interests of the work? That has never come easily to you either, my brother. It is a thing, you seldom do.

And having said all this, let me point out your assets and the valuable gifts which you can bring to the work and have for years contributed; they are the qualities which make A.A.B. your loyal friend and ambitious for your progress. You have a recognition of principles which is vital and somewhat rare, and on principles all true work is securely founded. You have a gift of impersonality, as a general rule, which is a great safeguard; and in those times when your personality impulses have controlled, the phase has not been lasting. You have a gift of teaching, clear insight and executive ability and a loving heart when it is sparked into compassion. You have a steadfastness of purpose and an unswerving adherence to duty and dharma and a capacity to shoulder responsibility which has, in the past, and will in the future, prove invaluable to the work required. You have the gift of the written word and an increasing ability to speak, and these are valuable assets indeed when wielded by the soul on behalf of others. You are impulsive, and this at times creates temporary difficulties, but the general trend and tendency of your impulses is right and truly oriented. This is a major asset in your life. You are a pledged and accepted disciple, with the power of your Master’s Ashram behind you and the love of your co-disciples with you.

You have the understanding and loyal affection of A.A.B., and will – from life to life. Against her wishes, I ask you to give her in some small measure what she has so largely given you. At times you fail to grasp the strength of her belief in you. Her health is precarious and she counts much on you. Fail her not, and seek to understand the problems with which she is faced.

You have also my belief and trust, my confidence that you will carry on – learning and living and loving – and again I repeat, on the strength coming from my Ashram you can count, but it reaches you through your soul, and therefore a closer soul contact is increasingly needed by you as the work grows and develops.

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Excerpted from “Discipleship in the New Age I – Personal Instructions to Disciples”

By Alice Bailey and Djwhal Kuhl