If you can hold steadily to the point which you have reached during the past few months, if you can begin to utilize the second ray soul force which you have at last succeeded in contacting and if you can stabilize the work accomplished within yourself, you will find yourself entering upon a period of fruitful service. [585]

I would call to your attention some words out of an instruction I earlier gave you wherein I pointed out the necessity for you to seek stabilization within a second ray center. How does this stabilization come? Through steady identification with the desired vibration. One of the main uses of group work is the effect of group vibration upon the individual's vibration. It tones it down when necessary, stimulates it and facilitates its emergence in cases such as yours. Where the soul ray is on a particular line, it is peculiarly valuable for the personality to subject itself to group vibration and contact wherein the pressure exerted and the vibration contacted will be the same as the hidden or emerging soul ray.

What is it that, up to date, has prevented your sincere desire to serve from coming to fruition? My brother, you have as yet done no service that will carry over into the future because it has been done at the sacrifice of yourself, that has involved the sacrifice of your time, your personal interests, and your personal desires, based upon your personal qualities. You have looked on at the service of others and wondered why and how they chose to serve in the various ways they did; you have suggested service to others and have at times made it possible for them to serve; you have talked to groups on service and yet with no results, adequate to the force expended. Why has this been so? Because all the time you were not giving of yourself in love, but only of that which was exterior to yourself. And why, my brother (to continue with the questions) has this been so? Wherein lies your difficulty - a difficulty you can now face because you have established a soul rapport and the light and love of the soul are pouring in on you. [586]

This must end, my brother. Out of the many possible lines of activity which lie open before you, will you choose two and adhere to them even when the novelty palls and you hanker to traverse new fields? Forget not that the Hierarchy stands. So stand also and give your time to two fields of service in which you choose to cooperate. Let one of them be a second ray group [587] with which you choose to cast your lot and let the other be in the outer world where some humanitarian effort claims your attention. Give, if you can, sixty per cent of your time to the group effort, for that is where you belong; waste not time in deciding which group it shall be. I refer here - when mentioning these percentages - to the time, strength and interest which you make available. I refer not to the time that is taken up by your home interests, obligations and duties. Give, then, the remaining forty per cent of your time to the outer activity in the world.

Your first ray personality does two things to you: It isolates you in your own mind from your associates and you need to learn the necessity for identification with those who are your co-workers. That means not only identification with the group objective or identification with the major principles of the group but it means also identification with the successes, the failures, the difficulties and the problems. This is not, therefore, the cooperation of the outsider who comes in to help, but the cooperation of one who is so closely associated with the problems and with those who are handling them that there is no sense of being apart, no critical reaction and no superior observation.

Your first ray personality, plus your first ray mind, evokes in you a love of power and a desire for that pleasurable sensation which comes from speech which evokes acquiescence. This serves to place you "in the seat of the superior person," as the Chinese call it. You will usually find, my brother, that it is easy to gather around you many little people, of relatively futile accomplishment (from the angle of world service) but that the finer minds have no time for such acquiescence; they proceed upon their way, leaving you to follow after and to catch up with them eventually. This tendency is, however, rapidly ending in you and in joyful association (colored by your love, glorified by the group successes and learning from mistakes) you will walk in the future with your brothers in the Way.

I would like to point out two things also: First, your sixth ray astral body - sensitive, finely organized and motivated by high aspiration - is swept into dramatic, over-emphasized action very frequently because it reacts to the violent impact of your first ray personality and mind. Let this end. Train your emotions, [588] to respond to your second ray soul and for a period at least eliminate the mind from astral control. Can you do this? If you can, you will balance and round out your nature, for the dominating factors will then be:

1. The soul, working through the astral body and controlling your heart light.
2. The personality, working through the mind and controlling all group relations, making them intelligent and presenting to the soul and heart the service of a mind and brain, attuned to the loving, intelligent impulses of the group life.

As regards the work I would have you do, my suggestion is that you concentrate upon the work of the Full Moon Approaches. For you, the time of each full moon is one of real importance; if you prepare yourself for it as you should and as you can, you will produce in yourself certain definite results of which you will become gradually aware.