BROTHER OF MINE:

You stand today at a critical moment in your inner life and on the threshold of great opportunity. Upon the progress made during the next two years will depend whether you enter into a life of widely expressed usefulness, or whether you simply continue into the future as you are now, leaving to another life the lesson which you need and which you can learn now.

These are days when the unit either counts for very little and simply has a normal collective value in the presence of the pressure in the world and the current turmoil, or else he can count for a very great deal.

At present you count for very little when measured up against the world need, but you could count for much. You make very little impact upon the public consciousness in spite of your opportunities, and your natural equipment. But you could be one of the most useful of the world disciples in your particular grade and sphere of service, if you so chose.

Everything in you is however short circuited and your light and radiance, therefore, is of the personality and not of the soul; your power to stir others and to move them forward is futile. Its truth is apparent to me all the time, and if you will consider the implications of my words, you will also see their justice. It is yourself as the worker, yourself as the one who is handling situations and dealing with people, yourself as the dramatic center of all that happens around you, yourself as the one who talks and teaches and writes, yourself as the one who yearns and struggles and is tortured and misunderstood and faced with constant crisis (of no moment whatsoever in the larger picture) which is the preoccupation of your mind. You are the one who is being happy and unhappy, who is anxious or not anxious, who is acting wisely or learning frightfully drastic lessons - everything short circuited and arrested by yourself and, therefore, no clear radiant light, unimpaired by the clouds of self, the little self, and unimpeded by the reflections of the personality.

But your difficulties and problems are not phenomenal, my brother. There is nothing dramatic about your experience and it is far less trying and difficult than is the experience of many. This is the message which I have for you. Your life is cleared for service, for you are free to serve, and the opportunity so to serve is given to you. You have gifts of mind, and brain and heart above the average - bound up in your personality, to be sure, but there for release and for use. They can be employed to give you much influence and the power to lift others. Your physical liabilities are of no importance, because they have no real physical basis; they are related to the emotional nature, and are expressive of the inner storms in which you so constantly live. Once you have decided to decentralize yourself and cease poisoning your body with the astral activity which sweeps you so constantly, your physical difficulties will gradually disappear.

You have a gift for words in speech and writing, which is rare and valuable, and you have a sincerity of purpose that evokes my admiration, and upon which I am depending at this time. It is, however, largely used in portraying yourself to the people around you. You are the theme of all you say. Had you realized this, my brother? I think not.

This problem must be handled through meditation and through constant daily observation. It must be dealt with through right thought; the first thing to be done is for you to discover yourself, and realize the impression you make on people. You must find out and decide for yourself whether my analysis is justified, and whether truth lies behind what I have written. Thus you can be helped to enter upon a voyage of discovery about yourself which (if you handle it with humor, detachment and sincerity) will end by enabling you to enter upon a closer relationship with the Hierarchy and pass into a higher state upon the Path of Discipleship. I do not mention this as in any way constituting a reward, but as indicating a possibility which will greatly enrich your service.