You have been through deep waters during the past year, and the lesson of decentralization is hard to learn - particularly for you, after years of self-centered life. In order to aid you in this task and to teach you that you are not the focal point of your small world, you have had to learn to walk alone. To you, it seems hard but can you not grasp the thought that the loving care and constant consideration of those connected with you, or with any person, can emphasize unwittingly your selfishness and make it hard to free yourself from the enveloping net of sensuous life - the life which lays its emphasis upon material possessions? You stand alone now and like it not. Yes, for the first time in this incarnation your soul has made what I have called "the effort to call you to the horizontal life." It is now a possibility to you, whereas hitherto you have had the vertical [570] life of spiritual aspiration and the self-centered life of personal comfort. The way of considered unselfishness lies open to you - a way you never yet have gone. By that I mean, my brother, that you have never served with a completely sacrificial spirit. You have done kind things and made small sacrifices but you have never yet served as a soul - possessing nothing and asking nothing for the separated self. This is your lesson in the coming year - the lesson of a life given to service, to distribution, to outgoing, to self-forgetting, to the life of full surrender, of discipline and of relinquishment.

You have much to give, my brother and my friend. You have a deep and vital knowledge of spiritual and esoteric truth and can, therefore, serve upon the mental plane. You have a growing love and understanding and a devotion that has carried you through to the very portal of life itself. You can, therefore, serve. You have served with efficiency upon the [571] astral plane. You have also much to give upon the physical plane when you have mastered the science of detachment, and the discipline of relinquishment. This I have told you before, but your perspective remains as yet distorted. But you are on your way to achievement and spiritual success, and for that you should raise your heart with thankfulness.

NOTE: The perspective of this disciple apparently still remains distorted. She is not actively working in the Ashram. She still is an aspirant and fails to take that decisive step which transforms an aspirant into a disciple.