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Discipleship in the New Age I - Personal Instructions to Disciples - L.T.S-K.
December 1942 MY BROTHER: Life has been difficult for you since you have again sought to work in connection with my plans. Things have not worked out as you anticipated and you are full of inner distress, questioning [619] and bewilderment. This was inevitable; you entered into this renewed group relationship with the same big ideas which have ever been your downfall in life and this, in spite of the very definite warning your true friends gave you, out of affection and knowledge of you. You had to find that the picture you had, both of yourself as a worker and of the work to be done, was distorted by "wisps of glamor," and that your wishful thinking and idealistic imaginings of yourself had to be revised. Such a process is far from easy and I have done nothing to make it easier. I would have you note that. The work needs men of consecration and devotion who are pledged to unwavering service - the service of the little things - and you could give much; but you cannot give it until you have completely changed your estimate of yourself. In the past you have succumbed to glamors of various kinds: Glamor about me, the Master, and about the Hierarchy and your relation to that Hierarchy; glamor about certain world disciples and your relation to them; glamor about the magnitude of the work; glamor about a certain sad little aspirant; glamor about your scientific capacity which held you away from my work for years; glamor about money; glamor about people. Today your glamor is centered around yourself and is concentrated upon what you think you are and can accomplish, upon the soundness of your judgment, and the extent of your devotion. That, my brother, is good, for when that is disrupted and dissipated and completely broken up, you will be free to find your place in the work. This has been duly recognized by your brothers. They have known of your karmic relation to the work and have had no wish to change the situation. Nor have I. But you cannot continue to work under the liability of the present strain, and under the pressure of a deep spiritual discontent and a sense of thwarted and frustrated aspiration. There can be no free inflow of spiritual strength, of wisdom and light, and of material resources when there is such a condition as now exists in your consciousness and which also, inevitably, involves your fellow workers. Dreams and reality must coincide; you are glimmered by a dream of service. We who serve the Hierarchy and humanity, [620] especially today, know the intense difficulty of service in present world conditions, and the disillusionment of much of it; we know that service frequently runs contrary to much that one would like to see accomplished and to much that has been planned by servers; we know that service means endless disappointment, ceaseless struggle, hard knocks, apparent unaccountable failure - and all because as yet the spiritual strength of humanity is not commensurate to the material pull. Some day a point of balance will be reached, bringing - needless to say - its own dangers but bringing also a steady growth towards beauty, goodness and wisdom; some day the fight of the material aspect against the spiritual will prove futile and the power of the spirit will dominate; but the time is not immediate, even if it is not far off. The battle today is oft a losing one. Think, my brother, of the ages of hierarchical struggle and the slow, slow growth which the Masters have been forced to watch and foster, the failures they have had to note and the stupidities of some of their best workers. Withdraw yourself from your pictures and dreams, my brother, and work with no illusions and with no time for consideration of magnificent possibilities. This is the most difficult moment in human history and its darkest hour. Be thankful you have got a vision but waste not time in pondering it. The reality of the vision is. The work of clearing the way for its materializing is the present task of all disciples. In the dust and chaos and wreckage, the vision disappears from sight though the fact of its existence persists. None of you may perhaps see that vision again, but you have seen it. When, however, it is a fact upon the physical plane, it will be so because you and many others worked down in the inferno of today. NOTE: This brother was, as you will have noted above, asked to resign. For some years, he was not actively working in the Ashram. His acceptance of the discipline and his steadfast faith, in spite of continued recurrent glamors, brought about his reinstatement eventually and he is now an active part of the group. [621]
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