Alice Bailey & Djwhal Khul - Discipleship in the New Age I - Personal Instructions

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Discipleship in the New Age I - Personal Instructions to Disciples - K.E.S.

To K. E. S.

August 1935

BROTHER OF OLD:

This method of beginning an instruction is one oft used by me, as you well know. It is necessarily a wide generalization, based on true experience in relationship with each other. Thus, in other lives, I have stood to you in relation of teacher to pupil for some time, and that relation is now to be strengthened upon the physical plane. For long you have sensed my presence, and sensitive people also, who know you well, have likewise sensed it. This you also well know. The contact is now to be more closely established; your instruction on the path will now be more definite and your way more accurately defined. This, too, your friends may sense, and being not free from human error and, walking oft in the vale of illusion, they may be led to see, hear and relate that which is not the case, and which certainly can be ascertained by you at first hand. Use, therefore, discrimination, my brother. That which they have sensed is but my distorted reflection upon the astral plane, for all that is there reflected is not seen correctly. My contact with you must, in the [545] future, be more direct, increasingly self-ascertained, and based upon the linking of your soul with mine upon the mental plane. Ponder on this.

Each expansion of consciousness is preceded by a period of testing in some one of the three bodies, and in some aspect of the lower nature. To this, you have been no exception. For two years now you have been tested, consciously or unconsciously, and this climaxed in the illness of the past summer. This I know you realize. Such tests produce an inner unfoldment which may be more apparent to those who teach you than to yourself. This testing and its results constitute a responsibility, and open up avenues of approach to the central reality of the soul, hitherto not employed.

You are entering now upon a few years of intensified training. For this you must be prepared. Are you willing for a while to submit to what may be suggested by me, and, patiently, willingly and without looking for results, conform to my suggestions? If you do so, you will find changes taking place in your interests and outlook, and will arrive at fresh ways of dealing with life. You will also find repudiations taking place, which will alter the trend of your life interests, and these will be based on a changed attitude of mind and a more positive inner focusing. This process of repudiating constitutes one of the hardest aspects of the disciple's career. You have moved forward upon the Path of Discipleship and must be prepared.

Two things require adjustment in the inner life of your experiencing. First, you must enter into a deeper and more assured soul experiencing. This will involve outer detachments, inner readjustments and the steady development of the ability to stand as a conscious soul in the light. You are not yet used to my method of instruction, as are senior disciples in my group. I only seek to suggest. I give hints in the ancient occult manner, leaving it to you to interpret and to act as seems best to you. I ask for sincerity of purpose on the part of those I teach, and a willingness to act when the next step is illumined. I do not indicate to any of you at any time if there has been right interpretation of my words and suggestions. I seek to train conscious, responsible souls who will duly weigh suggestion and accept and act when the intuition indicates a procedure. [546] You will have to ponder deeply upon my words until the rapport between us is more strongly established upon the mental plane. I point you to positive action in line with clarity of vision could you but see it. Perhaps you promptly will.

Secondly, there are two adjustments in your relationships with people which you would find it wise to make; these would have a releasing effect upon your soul influence, and thus incidentally upon your personality life and environment. I speak not more clearly as the latter lies between you and your soul and is no concern of your co-disciples. The situation exists in the field of relationships and attitudes, and does not involve particularly drastic physical plane activity. If you see not clearly to what I am referring, wait in patience for a while, conform to my suggested technique for you and realization may eventuate as time elapses.

For a year you must proceed with care in your meditation work and for six months (until I next communicate with you) I would have you do no breathing exercises at all. Later, when your physical health is better established, such exercises will serve a useful purpose.

I outline for you below a simple meditation exercise to be duly carried forward. Proceed with it carefully, and use not too great an intensity as yet. It is a meditation which I give at times to my pupils and is called a "Meditation on the Path of the Inner Light." This meditation comes at the close of this relatively brief communication which has for its main objective the intensification of the link already existing between us. This meditation with the general work assigned to my disciples is all I ask of you during the next six months.

Sit erect, but relaxed, and in a position of physical comfort.
Withdraw the consciousness inward in successive stages, using the imagination in so doing. The imagination is a creative activity, producing definite inner changes. Upon this you can depend, for it is one of the forces influencing substance itself. Therefore, withdraw your consciousness:
1. From the physical brain, after definitely centering it there, to the astral body. [547]
2. From the astral body to the mind. Then recognize yourself as being an integrated personality.
3. From the integrated personality to the soul.
As you do this work, endeavor to see the thread of golden light which connects these three bodies, keeping your consciousness steadily in the head, at the center between the eyebrows, the ajna center. This thread, dual in nature like two golden cables intertwined, passes from the heart and head and connects you, as a personality, with the soul.
When you have thus carried it upwards, and seen it aligning and relating all the three aspects of the personality, then pause in your meditation and realize - quietly and silently - that:
1. You are now face to face with your own soul, and standing before the Angel of the Presence, who is yourself.
2. You, the personal self, and the Angel, the divine Self, are one essential Reality, manifesting through three aspects. You are, therefore, a reflection of the Trinity of Deity.
3. There is in reality no separation or duality, no I, or thou, but simply a God in manifestation, whose nature is Light.
Then say:
1. Having pervaded this world of the little, manifested self with one fraction of myself, I remain greater, wider and over-shadowing all my daily living.
  Ponder on this thought for five minutes.
2. I, the manifesting, Self, through the magical power of my nature, revitalize, redeem and reabsorb this fraction, dwelling in the body.
  Ponder on this for five minutes.
Then carry the life and light of the Angel of the Presence back again consciously into the body and know it to be there, illuminating your mind, rendering positive and quiescent your astral nature, and invigorating and stimulating your physical body. Do this definitely and slowly, using the will. [548]
Then send forth the incoming light and love in strength and blessing.
1. To your group brothers.
2. To all in your immediate family and environment whom you seek to aid.
3. To distressed humanity.

As you do this regard yourself as working consciously as a soul and as a tiny representative and channel for the Hierarchy of Masters whom you seek to serve. These can only reach your immediate personal circle and environment through you.

Then say aloud the following invocation:

"May the energy of the divine Self inspire 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."

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