This mental unrest (if I may call it so, my brother, without unduly hurting you) is frequently intensified by the fact that your mental body, like your personality, is upon the first ray. The implications, attendant upon this fact, will be immediately apparent to you. Let us look at your problem as it is: First, there must be recognized a crisis in the soul life when the energy is shifting out of a minor ray focus into that of a major ray [581] center. Your personality being on the first ray, is normally and dynamically one-pointed and automatically self-centered; this condition is not eased by the fact that the integrated personality force flows through a first ray mental body. This inevitably produces the accompanying characteristics of an intense centralization (I did not say a selfish one, my brother) and an active assurance, a full fledged ambition (often of an entirely right nature, but occasionally not so right) and a power to analyze and oft to criticize others, their personalities and their tasks. The new vibration to which your soul is leading you (that of expansion and inclusiveness, plus the power to synthesize and to understand) is, in some of its phases, over-powerful for you and its reactions are as yet unorganized by you. It leads you to a definite (and often almost uncontrollable) tendency to identify yourself with every imaginable point of view, to see all around a question though seldom to the heart of it, and to touch momentarily this, that and the other attitude of thought and emotion. These reactions do not stay long enough to enable you to understand truly. You contact people on the periphery of their consciousness, but not often at their heart or their life.

Will you accept this diagnosis, my brother and my friend? You know my keen desire to see you stabilized for the remainder of this life, thus losing no time and definitely achieving constructive results within your group and within the center to which your soul has directed you. These constructive results will reach fruition if you focus your forces within a second ray vibratory center, for this will aid the shift of energies with which your soul is at present engaged. This second ray vibratory center may be my group of disciples, with which you are at present related; it may be any other group, organization or school of thought; it may be objective to you now or simply subjective and unrealized. If your soul is to make the needed shift in this life, it is essential that you focus yourself and remain relatively static within your chosen center for a long time. Otherwise your soul will be forced to postpone the needed shift until the next life. It is interesting, is it not, to see the reason for the happenings within the periphery of one's consciousness, to realize the clear light which is sometimes thrown in this way upon mistakes and know what it is that one has to do. [582]

My brother, let simplicity be your guide and one-pointed love your major objective. Choose a field of service which has its defined limits - for all disciples are limited and cannot cover a planetary range in their thoughts. Then work - mentally and physically - within these limits. The completion of some self-appointed task within the field of karmic limitations and of environment where your destiny has cast you is all that is required of you. What are you accomplishing at this time? There is just a certain span of years ahead of you at the age which you have now reached, and you have a frail body. Let your service lie within the field of contact where you find yourself and reach not out over the entire planet. Is there any greater or more important matter than to fulfil your task and carry it to completion before you pass over to the other side and to do it in the place where you are and with your chosen comrades?

Your astral body is upon the sixth ray and here again lies for you a problem. Upon it I need not enlarge, beyond reminding you that a sixth ray astral body (where a disciple is concerned) predicates intense adherence to a line of thought, [583] to an idea, a group, a person or an attitude or to a preconceived notion. These may be right or wrong but the tendency to adherence is powerfully present and can be a great asset or a major hindrance. In any case - again for a disciple - any idée fixe (beyond that of a right spiritual orientation) can be a deterrent to progress, if fanatically motivated.

I would beg you to apply yourself to the five days of the Full Moon Contact, making the weeks between each full moon simply preparatory to the work to be done on those five days. Will you also take the Rules of the Road (which you will find attached to this instruction) and study them. They have helped many people.