MY BROTHER:

May I start my instruction to you at this time by quoting to you some familiar words: "In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength." Have you ever noticed the occult significance of these words? Quietness refers to the necessary condition of the astral or emotional body, and confidence, which is the outward expression of an inward faith, describes that of the mind. In quoting to you these words I have given you the working rules which should govern your personality life during the next few months. Quietness leads to a right reflection in the quiet pool of the emotional life and this in the light of the soul. Confidence is the expression of the personality faith in the fact of the soul and of the Plan. "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." These desired realities, when reflected in the emotional nature, evoke aspiration and develop faith.

The focus of your soul is in the brain and that is why (when you came into incarnation) you built a first ray physical body - which is an unusual thing to do. The energy of your personality ray is focused in the astral body. Your problem is to swing the mind nature into greater activity without (at the same time) developing criticism - a thing from which you are at this time relatively free though you are not free from certain unrecognized jealousies. You are free because the lower concrete mind, even if of good caliber, is subordinated in your case to intuition and to feeling. Your task is to gather personality and soul energy into the mind and - losing nothing of your present intuitive ability and power to feel and love - to work from the place of mental power. If you can do this, then your intuition will take due form and the power which flows through you will transmute feeling into understanding.

Before, therefore, you meditate each day, I will ask you to practice the ability to withdraw into the mind. You usually get focused too high in the region of buddhic realization (which is the exercise of the intuitive faculty) or you are focused too low, in the realm of astral perception. I do not here refer to astral vision or psychism but to responsiveness to feeling. [340]

You must learn to see the mind as a center of pure light. You must rid your consciousness of any thought of the mind as intellect and must learn to see it as simply a powerful reflector of the light of the soul, transmitting soul wisdom into the world of men. When you have found this center of light, which is, the mind, there take your stand in the very center of the sphere and from that point proceed with the rest of the work which you are doing with my group, after duly linking up soul and brain.