One of the outstanding characteristics of the pledged disciple is that he learns to stand steady and unmoving no matter what may be happening to him or around him. Much is happening to disciples these days for they bear the brunt of the world's cataclysm. You may perhaps find this an astonishing statement but I would ask you to remember that they meet the prevalent conditions on all three planes simultaneously and are at the same time endeavoring to live as souls. The accuracy of my statement is, therefore, apparent if you will ponder for a few minutes on the implications. There is appalling suffering everywhere. Physically and emotionally, people throughout the world are handling the maximum of pain. The accepted disciple, however, is suffering also mentally and to this must be added his capacity to identify himself with the whole; his trained imagination also presents special difficulty for he can include possibilities which others may not envisage, and his sweep or grasp of the plan is presumably greater; he is also endeavoring to apply his knowledge of this plan to the immediate environing [644] situation and is strenuously attempting to understand and at the same time to interpret to others, no matter what he may be undergoing in his own personal life.

The second crisis is the crisis of expression. This usually comes towards the later years of a disciple's life. It concerns his stabilized life tendency and puts to the test all that he believes and for which he has stood and fought throughout his life experience. It is ever a hard and bitter test, going to the very roots of his life, and for those in preparation for initiation it is peculiarly acute. The conditions of the test may apparently seem no worse than the tests and difficulties which assault other people but, as I have pointed out above, they have to be met on all planes at once. Soul energy is ever involved thereby and this intensifies the response of each individual body in the lower man and also the personality as a whole, the integrated man. The stage of responsiveness which every disciple has achieved in relation to his environment, [645] his associates and his service greatly aggravates his difficulties. I am explaining this somewhat in detail as I am anxious to have you comprehend the nature of your problem and so be able to handle it with increased poise, understanding and triumph. Behind you lies a crisis of opportunity; you met it well. Today you face your crisis of expression and you will come through; true triumph is dependent upon specific achievement upon the inner planes and upon wresting the true values out of any situation, and of these values based upon the physical plane are by far the least important.

I would like to point out that in these three contacts you have the three aspects of divine expression appearing - from [646] the angle of stimulation and of vitalizing power - and so three types of power are made available. Beginning with the lowest contact, your group brothers, you have the intelligent activity and consequent stimulation upon the physical plane of your contact with them; through your soul contact, the love aspect of divinity can be made manifest in you; and through your hierarchical contact, the will of God can pour into you. Thus all the three aspects of the divine nature can pour into you and meet with response from the three aspects of your lower manifested expression; thus you can become subservient to the divine. Ponder on this and seek to establish these contacts firmly and upon sound non-emotional lines.

You have a particularly interesting group of life forces or energies conditioning you, interesting because of the specific combination. The saving grace of your life expression has been your second ray astral body because the combination of a first ray soul, a fifth ray personality and a third ray physical expression might have resulted in a hard, concrete materialistic person. These rays are the ones which have produced what is called the Prussian type of mind. Incidentally, this ray combination produced your karmic relationships in this life. Fortunately for you, your past immediate incarnation as a personality was overwhelmingly second ray and of this you brought over a second ray astral nature and a fourth ray mental equipment. Hence the balancing in two directions and hence also the general trend of your life conditioning.

Therefore, your major need is to strengthen and preserve the three contacts which form the background of your spiritual [647] life: your soul, your relation with me and your connection with your group brothers. By so doing, the sense of universality and of an expanded consciousness will grow and deepen and enable you to achieve that sense of proportion which will reveal the little self as an integral part of the great Self or Whole. By this statement I refer not only to your relation between the soul and the personality but to your relation - as a living entity - to the greater whole of which Humanity and the Hierarchy are integral parts. I would suggest, therefore, a line of thought or of meditation which will deepen and strengthen these attitudes. To this end I am going to suggest five points of recollection for you each day:

1. On awakening in the morning, before rising.
2. At noon.
3. At sunset, whatever hour that may be.
4. On retiring at night.
5. At the time of the group meditation, whenever you may decide to do it.

This work carried forward as a definite exercise will produce in you a deepened available strength and poise. It will only take a few seconds at each point or stated time, but those seconds will serve as points of crisis and of inpouring strength.