The glamor of an extreme sensitivity is your major handicap, my brother, and definitely limits your usefulness. The solar plexus is wide open to all impressions. But you, as a soul, are quite indifferent and - as a soul - you suffer not at all. Of this I believe you are conscious. Spring free, [460] therefore, upon the physical plane from all psychic impressions, via the solar plexus, and seek instead to register only those impressions and contacts which concern your service and deal with man's next definite step forward. Watch this process with care in your life. Your extreme psychic sensitivity and impressionability (of a very high order, I must admit, but nevertheless of a personality nature) must be overcome by a paralleling extreme spiritual sensitivity. This again I think you realize, and you know also that this spiritual tendency is accompanied in you by a corresponding powerful, physical and mental inertia. The potency of your astral activity depletes the other two points of the personality triangle. Your spiritual knowledge is so real that you will apprehend my meaning without further extended elucidation.

You are, my brother, upon the path of the Christ, and in preparation for treading this path of aiding and salvaging humanity, you have to learn (through intense feeling) the futility of emotion and feeling as a means of salvaging your brothers. You need to acquire that divine indifference which leaves the soul free to serve - untrammeled by personality reactions, for that is what all solar plexus conditions basically are.

Above, I gave you one important hint or imparted fact, as the case may be, when I said that the "potency of your astral activity depletes the other two points of the personality triangle." Your problem this life has been the same as that of A.A.B. - the transfer of energy from the solar plexus to the heart. The first stage of that process is, esoterically speaking, the discovery of how potent is the astral polarization of all your personality forces; the entire focus of your life is upon the highest level of the astral plane. This in your case (not in that of A.A.B.) has led to the withdrawal of energy from the physical body (the etheric body), leading to physical debility and fatigue and also to a pronounced inability to "ground" yourself upon the physical plane. It has also brought about a considerable depletion or enervation of the Will aspect. I refer here specifically to the will aspect as it produces physical plane expression of directed soul activity as the intelligence (focused in the mind) must condition it. I do not refer to [461] the will in the sense of any fluctuation of your spiritual aspiration or failure to progress undeviatingly towards your goal. But it must surely be apparent to you that if the focus of all your energies inherent in the personality life and also those inpouring from the soul is the astral body, then there must certainly be a condition of attrition or of semistarvation of the etheric body (determining the physical condition) and also of the mental body. This militates against the full manifestation of a very fine mental equipment. I am putting the problem quite clearly to you, because you are a tried and trusty disciple. Before you can take the initiation for which you are being prepared, there must be a change of life focus and a transfer of energy from the astral body into the mental body, and consequently from the solar plexus to the heart.

I wish also to give you a personal meditation which will, I believe, prove useful. It is more in the nature of an exercise and its results are based upon your ability to focus yourself in the soul consciousness and to hold that position undeviatingly. It is dependent also upon the power of sustained imagination which you may possess and is a good exercise in constructive creative work. It is also rendered more effective if aided by the will and as your mental body is on the first ray and as this work is largely the steady withdrawal of [462] energy to the mental body, you should find it relatively easy and possible to get the desired results.

1. Focus yourself in the head. Sound the OM as the soul and believe that contact has been made between soul-mind-brain.
2. Then see yourself as focused esoterically upon the mental plane and (from the angle of the soul) exoterically in the brain.
3. Then inhale deeply, drawing the breath up from the solar plexus in the spine and seeing that upward moving breath carrying the solar plexus energy up the spine into the head, after passing it through the heart. Believe that this takes place.
4. In the interlude between inhalation and exhalation dedicate the energy thus withdrawn by the soul, believing in its consequent and subsequent transmutation. (I would remind you that transmutation is the changing of one vibration and one vibratory activity into another and higher one.)
5. During exhalation - in which the breath is carried on the OM sounded inaudibly - breathe the solar plexus energy, now focused in the head, to the throat center. This should produce increased creative output for humanity.

6. In the following interlude, after exhalation, go over in your mind (pictorially) as a sort of recapitulation, what you have done.

This exercise, coupled to the group meditation, will (as you will have undoubtedly noted) produce in the long run the linking up of the three centers above the diaphragm - the heart, the head and the throat. The exercise just given [463] must be done before the group meditation as it is the nature of a clearing exercise. If done properly, it will hasten the results of the group meditation for it will clear the solar plexus of undesirable emotional force and leave "room for reception," as the process is sometimes technically called. True love will then take the place of emotion, and compassion will be substituted for pity; understanding will take the place of apprehension of suffering.

Disciples are apt often to think that the injunction to identify themselves with other people must involve complete identification with all their experiences, moods and reactions. It does not. It should not. It involves identification (through the intuition) with underlying soul purpose and a consequent ability to interpret and explain the present. Ponder on this, my beloved brother.