17
By the Ascended Master Kuthumi
CHELA: Beloved
Master, what is the advantage of belonging to a group of lifestreams dedicated
to spiritual service, when so often the frictions between individuals seem to
hamper personal harmony and peace?
GURU: Blessed chela,
in all spiritual development, the individual must make a voluntary choice,
whether he will use his energies in collective endeavors or to attempt to ascend
the spiritual path alone. The heart (not a sense of duty), must prompt such
voluntary cooperative service. From time immemorial, there has been the conflict
in the human breast between shunning cooperative endeavor in order to find
personal peace, or serving a unified Cause to give the spiritual strength of
united energies for the good of the whole.
The words of the Master Jesus express a Cosmic Truth "Where two or
more are gathered together in My Name (Nature), there am I in the midst of
them." The nature of the communal service will determine its efficacy to the
individual and to the common good. Therefore, individuals who within themselves
have not accepted this type of joint service will benefit little from communal
endeavors and will, oft times, have a disintegrating effect upon the entire
group.
CHELA: Beloved
Master, would you suggest that the individual proceed alone until such time as
he can harmonize with group endeavors?
GURU: Blessed chela,
there is no more wonderful discipline of the lower self than to learn through
participation in communal activities how to harmonize with the purpose of the
group service and the individuals who form a part of such a group. No man knows
his own strength and mastery until it is tested in actually mingling with other
lifestreams, imperfect, as he himself is.
However, as the individual consciousness blends into and becomes
actually a part of the spiritual entity created for the purpose of worship and
service, it is the obligation of each such member to bring to the group activity
as much individual, personal harmony, tolerance, understanding, wisdom,
cooperation, enthusiasm and faith as he can draw forth through his own personal
application and contemplation of the God Presence.
I can but repeat the words of a wise man who walked the Earth: "The
habit and tonsure help but little, but the changing of life and the mortifying
of passions make a person perfectly and truly religious (Christ-like) ."
CHELA: Beloved
Master, is it true that individuals often harmonize with one particular type of
worship and group of associates and find great personal aggravations and
grievances with another?
GURU: Blessed chela,
certainly! The Ray to which a man belongs; the habits of religious worship
through the centuries (built into the etheric body); the race in which he is
born; the background of his present earthly life, all of these are determining
factors in the spiritual rapport among individuals.
CHELA: Beloved
Master, should a man then continue to seek until he finds those with whom he
feels this sense of spiritual rapport or align himself with those whom
circumstance has placed in his path?
GURU: Blessed chela,
it depends upon the sincerity, development and nature of the individual man. The
course of the determined chela is to bring himself into rapport with those with
whom he is given opportunity to serve. The willful individual, seeking always
the "greener grass on the other side (4 the fence" must pursue his search until
he finds that the peace, tranquility, and capacity to work with others
(forgetting self), do not come from the actions and reactions of others, but are
dependent upon his own reaction to internal and external aggravations.
CHELA: Beloved
Master, individuals who find the Presence of God and live in harmony without
belonging to any communal group often seem more at peace than the congregations
of spiritually intended people.
GURU: Blessed chela,
this is true. One reason is that group endeavors draw more concentrated power
and render a greater service to the impersonal life that requires redemption,
purification, and salvation. The individual who offers to become part of such a
magnetizing and radiating center voluntarily offers to take as part of his karma
the reaction caused by moving the "invisible forces" that hinder man's progress.
Each individual is a magnet drawing pure, primal life into the
qualifying center of his own consciousness. Each individual is also a radiating
center, emanating the qualified life so drawn. In unity, there is strength. When
a group of individuals determines to draw more healing power, more protective
radiation, more purifying currents into the atmosphere of Earth, the result of
their cooperative endeavors is of necessity a greater benediction flowing from
their blended energies than could possibly be drawn by one individual. Further,
the Spiritual Hierarchy can more easily and with less expenditure of their
Cosmic essence, nourish a group of individuals gathered together in God's name
than they can when they must seek out each individual worshiper and tunnel
through the lower atmosphere a channel for that benediction. This conservation
of the energy of the Masters is greatly appreciated by us.
CHELA: Beloved
Master, when an individual is not in harmony with a leader or speaker, what
course should he pursue?
GURU: Blessed chela,
he should pursue the course of the generous, compassionate, tolerant follower of
Christ. The leader or speaker has offered, no matter how great his personal
limitations may be, to create a focus of God-aspiring individuals through which
two purposes are served:
First, the individual student is stimulated by the enthusiasm, the
inspiration, the strength and the collective consciousness of those who are of
like intent. The student is also the recipient of all the spiritual energies
magnetized and drawn through the songs, invocations, decrees and visualizations.
Second, the Godhead and the Masters, the Angelic Host and the Devas are provided
with a conductor through which their energies may be transmitted into the mental
and feeling worlds of mankind who are not yet "seeking the place of the Most
High."
Thus, such a leader renders a great service to God and to his
fellowman while attempting, at the same time, to work out his individual karma.
If the teacher waited until he himself was perfected before sharing his
knowledge, enthusiasm, faith and spiritual light with his fellowman, we would
have no representatives in the world of form. As soon as the teacher perfects
himself he ascends into a realm to which he has earned the right of access.
Consider the teacher as a fellow student upon the Path, bless him, pray for him,
love him for his courage to take on the karma of other individuals through such
service and raise the teacher by your love, do not destroy him by your
condemnation (silent or spoken). This is a mortal sin!
CHELA: Beloved,
Master, if an individual desires to serve God, it would seem that he could best
do that by disciplining himself and, in the company of other like-minded men and
women, attempt to perfect himself, at the same time participating in communal
endeavors on behalf of the race.
GURU: Blessed chela,
truly spoken. A long time ago, I wrote a few humble words which I would like to
place before you again for consideration:
"Lord, make me a channel of thy peace,
That where there is hatred - I may bring
love;
That where there is wrong - I may bring
the spirit of forgiveness;
That where there is discord - I may
bring harmony;
That where there is error - I may bring
truth;
That where there is doubt - I may bring
faith;
That where there is despair - I may
bring hope;
That where there are shadows - I may
bring THY light."
St. Francis of
Assisi