Self-Forgetfulness

This is a letter from a Master to a student of meditation, wishing to be a more effective World Server.

April 1937

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.

You are in a place of wide possibility for service. Your opportunity to make a real impact upon the consciousness of those around you is far above the average. The need of the world today has never been so great, nor the responsibility resting upon those who are treading the Path of Discipleship so deep, real and urgent. We need all who are working upon this Path and who are aspiring towards release. We need those who are seeking close contact with their souls and with Us Who are seeking to guide the race today. We need cooperators of dedication and selflessness as never before in the history of the race. Situated as you are now in a key position and meeting people of every nation, your opportunity to fire other lives, to hand the torch of living love to others, and to send people forth as agents of the light to their own countries and spheres of influence can be great. Its extent depends upon your willingness to make certain changes and adjustments within yourself and to reorient yourself. These changes are simple, but are of so wide-reaching a nature and are so drastic in their scope that I ask myself if you are sufficiently aware of the world need to sacrifice your potent personality—in all sincerity and loving willingness—to that need. Are you?

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 centre 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.

Do I sound harsh, my brother? I am not feeling so. What I am endeavouring to do is based on a knowledge of you as a Soul, and an appreciation of what you—as a soul—could do. You are gifted, wise and powerful, but all this is relatively negated because you cannot step out of the centre of your own picture and off your own stage, and be simply a self-forgetting channel of love and light. This, however, you are not. You are struggling furiously to be such a channel, but you are so preoccupied with your struggle and are so aware that you are struggling that the reality for which you thus struggle is oft forgotten. It is lost to sight in the dramatic picture you have of yourself as a tortured disciple, with phenomenal difficulties in your life.

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 decentralise 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 realised this, my brother? I think not.

We need you in our work. You are, as I have already pointed out, in a position of responsibility. The place where you find yourself is, for you, the place of revelation and illumination. It is also the place where your best service can at present be rendered. Your problem is not at all subtle or obscure. This makes it easier, therefore, to grasp, to solve and to handle. It is simply the problem of self-forgetfulness. When you have forced yourself out of your picture, and have learnt to be silent as to yourself and what you think, and feel and do, my brother, the richness of the contribution you will have to give will be so great that your field of service and your power to cooperate with the Hierarchy will be greatly expanded. You are needed. You are needed where you are. Will you make the necessary adjustments in cooperation with me in what I seek to do to bring about your release?

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 realise 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 humour, 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.

Your meditation can, for the next three months, follow the lines indicated below. During these months, you can follow this suggestion and then resume your meditation as last outlined by me for the remaining three months.

MEDITATION OUTLINE

1. Achieve comfort, alignment and control. These I need not elaborate to you. You know.
2. Sound the O.M. as the soul, breathing it out in benediction upon the personality.
3. Sound the O.M. as the personality, responding to the soul.
4. Sound the O.M. as the synthesis of personality and soul.
5. Then, relaxing, deal each day of the week with the following seven questions:

Sunday – Did I work as a soul in my service yesterday, or as a personality? Was my interest in myself, as a server? Or was I engrossed with the need of those I served?

Monday – In helping others, or in speaking with anybody, did I speak (yesterday as I served) about myself at all?

Tuesday – What was the general tenor of my thoughts during the day—the work I had to do, other people or myself?

Wednesday – What was the centre of my life yesterday—the soul whose nature is impersonal love, or the personality whose nature (at my point in evolution) is that of the “one at the centre,” the dramatic self, expressing consistently the lower nature?

Thursday – How often did I refer to myself yesterday, either in pity, or as an illustration, or to evoke interest?

Friday – What was my major preoccupation yesterday? Was I happy? Why? Was I unhappy? Why? Was I dramatic? Why?

Saturday – What effect did I have on people? Why did I have it? Did I speak of myself to them?

6. Then, humbly, gratefully and happily, make the following affirmations:

a. I press forward towards the goal of fuller service; I am the soul, whose nature is light and love and selflessness.

b. I orient my mind towards the light, and in that light, I see the soul. I am the Plan, and am at-one with all that breathes.

c. I purify my astral life and know myself to be nothing but a channel for the love of God. And, in this potent body of the lower self, naught can exist which blocks the outgoing love of God to all I meet.

d. I stand erect through love and strength divine. I manifest the nature of a Son of God. Thus can I salvage those who suffer on the way of life, and lift the little ones.

Can you adjust yourself to this indicated need, my brother? Is your love of the work and of your group brothers adequate to enable you to face your problem? I believe that it is, and you know and must realise that, in love, I stand by, and will not fail you if you need me, and if you call. More than this I cannot say.

(From Discipleship in the New Age, Vol. 1, p. 652-657)