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Discipleship in the New Age I - Personal Instructions to Disciples - R.R.R.
October 1937 I wonder, brother of mine, if you have ever really grasped the truth that the sense of being at the center of the stage in your life is a first ray characteristic? In your case, it is dominantly a personality trait, for second ray people are not prone to this dramatic egocentric attitude. When, therefore, your second ray soul really dominates, that sense which now controls (the sense of being always at the center, the focal point of interest) will begin definitely to fade out. The above statement will indicate to you what you have to do, for - at the present time - your life, your thoughts, your work and service, and your relations to others are all built around yourself. Never, my brother, for a single second do you really disappear from the picture, even in what you regard as your highest spiritual moments. You are still a personality working, and not a soul working, for your theory outstrips your performance. Hence your really profound unhappiness and disappointment. What shall be done? How can you change all this? Of what use is it for me to point out to you a condition unless I, at the same time, point out the remedy or the way of release? And, at the same time, can I tell you anything you do not know? Is there any aspect of the truth in connection with yourself of which you remain as yet unaware? All that I can say is that, for you, release must come through the substitution of the Plan for your plans, of human need for your need, and of the Work for your task. Ponder on that word Substitution. At present, it is your plans, and not the Plan; it is your needs - financial and physical, emotional and mental - and not the needs of the New Group of World Servers; it is your [658] work and what you have to do and not the expectant daily meeting of the needs of others. Those who come to you, you see in the light of your own personality, and in terms of their reactions to you. You see them not as souls or as our agents. This, my brother, must change and can change, if you so desire. A study of your personality rays may serve to throw light upon your problem. You are needed in the work and have much to give. You have strength and can strengthen others when your own strength is deflected away from yourself and your dramatic sense of self-pity. You have great wisdom and can use it, once you lose sight of yourself as a teacher. You do not suffer from an inferiority complex, as that much misused word is oft employed, nor are you the victim of a defeatist complex. To believe so at times and to comfort yourself with the idea is only a form of self-illusion and a way of escape from the responsibility of bringing about right interior attitudes. Your physical condition, your likes and dislikes and your emotional reactions and your own ideas loom so large that your wise, loving, intelligent soul has a hard task to make its presence felt. There is almost a chance that your sense of drama and of self-pity will cause you to lose the significance of the lesson I am seeking to give you. Is this not so? When you can realize that in these days of human crisis (when the call has gone out to all disciples and aspirants to rally to the helping of mankind) that none of these personality things matter and that a lot of them will fade out when your preoccupations are of a higher standard of values, then your work will take on fresh life, and your service will become a dynamic, magnetic, focal point of spiritual force which at present I know you realize it is not. Your mental body is on the fourth ray of Harmony through Conflict, and not on the first ray as you have sometimes believed. Had it been on the first ray, it would have dominated your astral body and your personality would have been of a very different caliber. But it is of the fourth ray type. This means that harmony appeals to you and the bringing together of opposites into an intelligent unity. But it is a harmony interpreted in terms of emotion; to this fact I would call your attention. You must ponder on harmony as the mind understands it, and remember that only those succeed in resolving discord [659] into harmony who themselves work from a stable center of adjustment. Your astral body is definitely sixth ray and hence predisposes you to Piscean attitudes, emotional idées fixes, violent astral storms, great devotions which call your emotional reactions into play on matters and subjects which, in this day of world suffering and crisis, do not warrant attention and constitute an easy tuning-in on glamor and illusion. Your physical body is first ray in type and this gives your first ray personality an easy line of least resistance, for the predominating color of your brain cells at this time (if I may speak symbolically) is first ray. Think this out carefully. You should, however, feel encouraged as you study your ray combinations, because second ray energy definitely predominates, 2.4.6, and though the first ray characteristics are strong and powerful, they are not complicated by any of the subsidiary attributes, such as 3.5.7. It is not so difficult for you, therefore, to tune in on the Love-Wisdom line of energy in manifestation. It is your line of least resistance. Your problem is the linking up of this triangle of force (2.4.6) so that there is free interplay and circulation of energy. Thus will your soul assume control. I have stated in the above few words both your problem and its solution. I would remind you, nevertheless, that it is a soul problem and not a personality problem. If you approach this problem from the angle of the personality, you will not succeed in solving it for your personality will become the center of the triangle, whereas there should be no center, but you should be living in the experience of humanity as a whole at all times. I am going to ask you to study for six months the words "a trained indifference" and each morning to do the Review on Indifference, prior to assuming the duties of the day. For you, indifference holds the key to release - release from personality control and reactions, release from self-pity, release from physical and emotional limitations. Your problem is not to get rid of difficulties but simply to be indifferent as to whether they exist or not. Have I given you a "hard saying," brother of mine? If I have, the reaction to hardness is on your side and not mine, I only seek to help you and to release you to fuller and more [660] joyful service, to a self-forgetfulness which eventuates in the power to identify yourself with others, and, therefore, to a life of loving service which will obliterate the strenuous ways of the past.
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