MY BROTHER:

There are several things which I seek to say to you today and several suggestions which I seek to make. From a work and life of much outer usefulness, you pass now for the remainder of your life to one of intense, interior application. Your work will be increasingly subjective, and this in no way [211] will mitigate your usefulness which should increase as the years go by. Later, I will indicate to you some work which can with advantage - prove of usefulness to your fellowmen but the time is not yet.

You, as well as two other disciples in my group, are starting to work with me at this time with a most definite end in view. You are all of you very individual, and you have for years stood alone. To work as a unit along your chosen line of service has been your task. For all such souls, it is a problem to be faced when the time comes for their identities to be merged in a group soul and their personal isolation is thereby infringed and negated.

With you, however, this isolation is not the result of any separate tendency of the lower mind, for that is offset in you by your deep seated love of the Masters and of humanity. It is the result of the essential loneliness which has beset your path, as it does the path of all disciples, and the development of that instinctive reticence which is an aspect of the necessary equipment of all who are struggling towards the Portal of Initiation. The vow of silence which all disciples take must still be kept, but the power to share knowledge, experience and the gains of illumination must at the same time be cultivated; in the light which streams forth from the center of Light, all that concerns the personality and service must stand revealed. All secrets must fade away, yet the revelations which come as one progresses along the Path must be held in the secret chamber of the heart where none may see them but those who share the same secrets. The reticence to be cultivated is that of relation ship with the group of Masters and the Hierarchy, plus the knowledges you share with those who walk shoulder to shoulder with you upon the Way. You withhold also, as dangerous, knowledge which you may have from those who are not yet upon the Path of Discipleship. It is skill in action and in the distribution of information which must be developed. I mention this so that you may know the rightness of your attitude but also in order that you may gather the fact that the present cycle of loneliness is still objectively true but subjectively ended. Do you understand what I mean, my brother?

You have two handicaps and they must be considered. One [212] is your physical condition and the other is your emotional polarization. This latter condition is largely responsible for the first one, as you yourself know. As you learn to shift the force of your soul from below the diaphragm to the higher centers (which is the problem of all disciples in training) your physical condition will be alleviated. One of the first things, therefore, which you will have to do is to close the solar plexus center to the entrance of forces from the astral plane, and open it to the entrance of forces from soul levels, via the head center. You must learn to function also more powerfully from the center between the eyebrows, the ajna center.

The heart center and the solar plexus center are the two centers which are the most developed in you; next comes the throat center. How shall we bring about the change from the solar plexus center to the ajna center? Through right meditation, my brother, and right breathing. I will ask you, therefore, for the next few months to follow the suggested routine below for a few minutes - fifteen at least - each day. This need not interfere with any meditation which you may choose to do, provided that you see to it that you preserve always a point of focus in the head. All your work with me - at any rate for the present - must be done in the head. There must the consciousness be held steady. I would suggest that you work as follows:

1. Start your meditation work by imagining (great is the power of the creative imagination) that you are consciously carrying the forces, entering the solar plexus center, to the ajna center.

1. Inhale as you count six and imagine as you do so that you are gathering up the force of the solar plexus center (through an act of inhalation) to the head. Picture it as rising there - up the spinal column.
2. Then, as you count eight, think of those forces from the astral plane as being lost and merged in an ocean of intelligent love. On their way up the spine, they have been blended with the active force of the awakening heart center.
3. Then exhale for six counts and as you do so realize that these forces are pouring out through the center [213] between the eyebrows on to the world of men. The center between the eyebrows is that of the integrated, dedicated, threefold personality. Therefore, you have:
   
   Inhalation - 6 counts - Gather the forces up to the head.
   Interlude - 8 counts - Forces blended and fused.
   Exhalation - 6 counts - Blessing the world.
   Interlude - 8 counts - Realization of work done.
   
   Later we might increase these counts but this suffices for the present and for the beginner who may read your instructions. This will aid in the closing of the solar plexus center and in stabilizing the emotional body; incidentally it should improve your general physical condition.

2. Then, holding the consciousness steady in the head, at the close of the final interlude, say the following invocation:

"May the energy of the divine Self inspire me and the light of the soul direct. May I be led from darkness to Light, from the unreal to the Real, from death to Immortality."

3. Then, still holding the consciousness in the head and visualizing a sphere of deep electric blue, vivid and living, say the following words, endeavoring to realize their significance as you say them:

"I stand in spiritual Being and, as a soul, I serve.
"I stand within the Light, and as the light shines throughout my form, I radiate that light.
"I stand within the love of God, and as that love streams through and from the heart, I magnetize the ones I seek to aid."

4. Ponder then for five minutes on the spiritual significance of the following four words: Stability, Serenity, Strength, [214] Service, taking one each week for a month; for the space of six months build them into your very nature, thus aiding the work of closing the solar plexus and transmuting its force.