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Discipleship in the New Age I - Talks to Disciples - Part V
Increasingly must your inner life be lived upon the mental plane. Steadily and without descent must the attitude of meditation be held - not for a few minutes each morning or at specific moments throughout the day, but constantly, all day long. It infers a constant orientation to life and the handling of life from the angle of the soul. This does not refer to what is so often referred to as "turning one's back upon the world." The disciple faces the world but he faces it from the level of the soul, looking clear-eyed upon the world of human affairs. "In the world, yet not of the world" is the right attitude - expressed for us by the Christ. Increasingly must the normal and powerful life of the emotional, astral, desire and glamorous nature be controlled and rendered quiescent by the life of the soul, functioning through the mind. The emotions which are normally self-centered and personal must be transmuted into the realizations of universality and impersonality; the astral body must become the organ through which the love of the soul can pour; desire must give place to aspiration and that, in its turn, must be merged in the group life and the group good; glamor must give place to reality, and the pure light of the mind must pour into all the dark places of the lower nature. [51] These are the results of mental polarization and are brought about by definite meditation and the cultivation of the meditative attitude. This is not new information for you, but it is something which as yet remains unexpressed practically. If you will ask yourselves the following questions and courageously and truthfully make reply before the bar of your own soul, you will learn much and greatly aid your development: 1. What do you understand by spiritual sensitivity? Have you ever truthfully felt my vibration? Do you respond more rapidly to the quality of a brother's faults than to his divine characteristics? In what way does criticism interfere with true spiritual sensitivity? What do you feel personally hinders your development of this required sensitivity? 2. Define impersonality. Do you know the distinction between the impersonality of the first ray type and true spiritual impersonality? When somebody disagrees with you or you do not like a person's attitude, ideas or proposals, what is the first thing you do? Do you love him? Do you keep silent? Do you discuss him with others? Do you endeavor to put him right? How do you try to do this? If you are impersonal is it the result of training or is it natural to you? Is it simple self-defense? or is it the easiest way to attain peace? or is it a spiritual attainment? 3. I have defined for you the psychic powers. I listed six of them. Please study them and then make a clear, concise statement to yourself as to your own capacity: To demonstrate them. To develop them, outlining your method of so doing. 4. Just how do you feel that you succeed in keeping a mental grip on life? [52] In an emotional stress do you transmute the condition through love? Do you inhibit the display of emotion and why? Do you call in the mind and handle your problems from the mental level? Do you know what glamor is and can you recognize it when it displays itself to you? These questions have a twofold purpose. They will, if you answer them truthfully and face them clearly, lead you to deal with yourself as a group member and so ascertain the measure of your contribution to the group need and to our need of workers. If you will write down and answer these questions and share the replies with your co-disciples, it will give them an opportunity to know each other better.
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