a. The problems arising from the awakened heart center of the disciple are perhaps the commonest and frequently some of the most difficult to handle. These problems are based on living relationships and the interplay of the energy of love with the forces of desire. In the early stages, this inflowing love-force establishes personality contacts which veer between the stages of wild devotion and utmost hate on the part of the person affected by the disciple's energy. This produces constant turmoil in the disciple's life, until he has become adjusted to the effects of his energy distribution, and also frequent disruption of relationships and frequent reconciliations. When the disciple is of sufficient importance to become the organizing center of a group, or is in a position to begin to form, esoterically, his own ashram (prior to taking some of the major initiations), [124] then the difficulty can be very real and most disturbing. There is, however, little that can be done by the disciple, except to attempt to regulate the outgoing energy of love. The problem remains fundamentally that of the one affected; the adjustments, as I have remarked above, have to be made from the other side, with the disciple standing ready to cooperate at the first indication of a willingness to recognize relationship and intention to cooperate in group service. This is a point which both parties - the disciple and the person reacting to his influence - need to consider. The disciple stands ready; the responsive party usually withdraws or approaches according to the urge of his soul or of his personality - probably the latter in the early stages. Eventually, however, he stands with the disciple in full cooperative understanding, and the trying time of difficulty is ended.

There are also difficulties and problems of a more subtle nature arising from the same cause, but not localized in certain definite human relationships. A disciple serves; he writes and speaks; his words and influence permeate into the masses of men, arousing them to activity of some kind - often good and spiritual, sometimes evil, antagonistic and dangerous. He has therefore to deal not only with his own reactions to the work he is doing, but also, in a general and specific sense, to deal with the masses whom he is beginning to affect. This is not an easy thing to do, particularly for an inexperienced worker with the Plan. He fluctuates between the mental plane, where he normally [125] attempts to function, and the astral plane, where the masses of men are focused, and this brings him into the realm of glamor and consequent danger. He goes out in consciousness towards those he seeks to help, but it is sometimes as a soul (and then he frequently over-stimulates his hearers), and sometimes as a personality (and then he feeds and enhances their personality reactions).

As time goes on he learns - through the difficulties brought about by the necessary heart approach - to stand firm at the center, sending forth the note, giving his message, distributing directed love energy, and influencing those around him, but he remains impersonal, a directing agency only and an understanding soul. This impersonality (which can be defined as a withdrawing of personality energy) produces its own problems, as all disciples well know; there is nothing, however, that they can do about it but wait for time to lead the other person forward into clear understanding of the significance and esoteric meaning of right human relations. The problem of workers with individuals and with groups is basically connected with the energy of the heart and with the vivifying force of its embodied life. In connection with this problem and its reactions upon the disciple, certain definite physical difficulties are apt to occur, and with these I will shortly deal.

It should also be pointed out that difficulties of rhythm are apt to occur, and problems connected with the cyclic life of the disciple. The heart and the blood are esoterically related, and symbolically define the pulsating life of the soul which demonstrates upon the physical plane in the outgoing and the withdrawing dual life of discipleship, each phase of which presents its own problems. Once a disciple has mastered the rhythm of his outer and inner life, and has organized his reactions so that he extracts the utmost meaning from them but is not conditioned by them, he then [126] enters upon the relatively simple life of the initiate. Does that phrase astonish you? You need to remember that the initiate has freed himself, after the second initiation, from the complexities of emotional and astral control. Glamor can no longer overpower him. He can stand with steadfastness in spite of all that he may do and feel. He realizes that the cyclic condition is related to the pairs of opposites and is part of the life manifestation of existence itself. In the process of learning this, he passes through great difficulties. He, as a soul, subjects himself to a life of outgoing, of magnetic influence and of extroversion. He may follow this immediately with a life of withdrawal, of apparent lack of interest in his relationships and environment, and with an intense introspective, introverted expression. Between these two extremes he may flounder distressingly - sometimes for many lives - until he learns to fuse and blend the two expressions. Then the dual life of the accepted disciple, in its various grades and stages, becomes clear to him; he knows what he is doing. Constantly and systematically, both outgoing and withdrawing, serving in the world and living the life of reflection, play their useful part.