MY BROTHER AND MY FELLOW WORKER:

For all disciples, in the truest and the most significant sense, the past few months have constituted an intense period of trial, of testing and of suffering. From this you have naturally not been exempt. Let not this, however, sadden you and do not ponder too deeply upon your reactions to all that has happened. That you could weaken under it or that you could in any way relinquish your fiery aspiration has in no way caused me anxiety. Of this, there is no fear. But that the strain could become so heavy that all your powers would be given simply to standing steady and that you would have no strength to live joyously - that is a point which I have definitely considered.

There is no cause whatever for discouragement. Today, in this hour of world stress and need, we are looking for disciples who can live joyously and with no concern as to their individual capacity to measure up to opportunity. We look for those who are caused no bewilderment or anxiety as to their failure to measure up to opportunity or their failure to live up to their own vision of discipleship. Live up to our vision, brother of [218] old, and know that time is of no moment and that the soul grows and expands its flower of life as it reaches towards the sun. It sends its beauty and aroma forth into the world of souls and hence into the world of men.

One hint only would I give you at this time. Your one-pointed devotion is known and the powerful vibration of your aspiration is realized. Let devotion now be transmuted into an all-embracing love to all beings, so that that love can enfold within its radiation the seen and the unseen, the known and the unknown, the loved and that which needs loving. Such is the attitude of consciousness which radiates from the Lord of Life.

Watch your physical strength somewhat and live not at so high a tension. Relax a little during the coming months and foster those lighter moments of relaxation which give to your soul opportunity to attend to its own affairs upon its own high level. Then it can return in greater force and with a more potent vibration to its habitation - the threefold personality. This the disciple is apt to forget in the intensity of his longing for soul contact, for illumination and realization and for conscious contact with his Master. That contact, remember, when once established upon the Path of Discipleship, is never broken. Stand, therefore, upon this belief and relax and play at times.