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Unto You Who, Following Him, Would Be Initiated from the Beginning of the Law of the One unto the Ending of the Mystery of Life: Welcome to the Disciplines of Our Retreat
To embark on the Path toward Mastery, Achievement, victory and the Ascension is an initiatic process. "Whom God loveth He chasteneth" (Hebrews 12:6). The few in ages past have walked through the Gates, whose narrow markings may not be too comfortable to those overstuffed with the vanities of the world.
It has been said, and well said, that no man can serve two masters. (Matthew 6:24; Luke 16:13) Again and again We perceive a wanton disregard for Spiritual Law by those who consider themselves to be Initiates upon the path. Why do men choose to ignore the Spiritual Laws which gave birth to the Universe and feel that they with impunity can completely escape from the Law, whereas their neighbors must come under the hammer thereof?
There is a dual mission involved in attainment. It is to be mindful of the Great Realms of Deity, Hierarchy and the Friends of God, as well as the octaves of delusion. Here vain men compete in the market places for earthly prizes while the sands of time slip through their fingers, moment by moment, and eventuate in lost opportunities, many times never regained during their allotted span.
Now We come to the stern business of accepting those who have desired and asked for a dossier on the Ascension that will give them the victorious patterns, stern though they may he, by which they may win their Wings of Light and attain to the stature of the Immortals. We are well aware of the fact that individuals, whose chief motivation is but an idle curiosity mingled with pseudo intellectualism and carnal sophistication, will, as dilettantes do, garble the most precious Concepts and gingerly pick over those Pearls of Great Price which come to them as Opportunity and are cast aside as that which "I already know."
Many desire to assess the spiritual stature of others, yet they have no median lines or markings upon the fabric of self which indicate that attainment by which they might at least suppose they could make a reasonable assessment. Imagination is their measuring stick, and the conversations of others their guideline. These often feel that they must lean upon the arm of flesh and cannot tell the Real from the unreal because they yet lack that Holy Experience which they tell themselves they ought to seek.
I feel no need whatsoever to pamper the selfish, the greedy, and the carnal-minded. These have pampered themselves far beyond the fashion of ordinary men, and their dabblings in the realm of the spiritual will become an insult unto their own selves unless they achieve the greatest prize which a chela or seeker for God can have - Humility. It has well been said, "God resisteth the proud but giveth grace unto the humble." (James 4:6; I Peter 5:5)
Therefore, as We begin to reveal to the students those cardinal virtues which are the very Nature of God and are as compass points, indicating the True Path, We trust that souls in bondage to mortal convention will recognize that there is an Octave of Freedom and Light, Mystery, Initiation, and manifest Power which is above and beyond all the idle conceptions of men or the books that have been written on the Masters of Wisdom or the Ascended Masters. Truth, beloved ones, is indeed stranger than fiction, and when men are willing to cast aside the ties which they themselves have made, that have not brought them, no, not in an entire embodiment, the freedom for which they secretly long, they will understand that pride must go, or go before the fall. (Proverbs 16:18)
If pride goes, then the altar is swept clean for the Gifts of Divine Humility. If pride remains, it doth indeed go before the fall of that individual into numerous pitfalls. These pitfalls are subtle, involving the character of the self. In order to outpicture in the world of form the intended God-design, the individual must take up the crude block of rough-hewn stone, cut out without hands, into which he has cast himself and, using the hands of Spiritual Idealism and the model of the Divine Image, he must seek to bring forth that Holy Sculpturing of Identity which is identified with the Christ Reality that, as the Word, went forth from the Universal Heart.
What is the value of reading our Words and meditating upon them? The value and the benefit lie in the acceptance of the charge of Light which We put into the Words and behind them. These Words, then, as glowing coals of Holy Truth from the Altars of God, from the Altars of Initiation, and from Our Temple at Luxor, are Trines of Light intended to stimulate in men the knowledge of the Holy Symbols that reveal a Goal-Quality to Man.
I recall full well when the Master Jesus came to Luxor as a very young man, that He knelt in Holy Innocence before the Hierophant, refusing all honors that were offered Him and asking to be initiated into the first grade of Spiritual Law and Spiritual Mystery. No sense of pride marred his visage - no sense of preeminence or false expectation, albeit He could have well expected the highest honors. He chose to take the low road of Humility, knowing that it was reserved unto the Joy of God to raise Him up.
To raise an individual is a glorious thing when that individual lies prone in Hope, in Faith, and in Charity, awaiting an Act of God to reconsecrate the self to the simple quality of Humility. For there is an act of false pride which manifests as false humility and causes individuals to appear humble, whereas in Reality they reek with pride. This false humility is often manifest in subtle ways and it is a mockery of the Real.
Shun, then, all that is not Real and Virtuous, the thoughts of thine own heart, and mend the thoughts of thy heart if they seem to be trifling with Eternal Purpose. You came forth for one Cause and one Cause alone, and that is to manifest God's Light. No greater purpose has come to anyone and no lesser purpose. While Our Mastery stands as a Rainbow of Promise to unascended men, this Promise can never remain their guiding Light unless they shed human pride.
Quite frankly, many individuals on the Spiritual Path use their contact with Us as a means of attaching importance to their own egos. They but harm Our Cause, for the Awful Majesty of the Divine Light is able to probe men even to the depths of their very bones, and the Flame of Divine Penetration that tests men before their Ascension reveals the very naked recesses which are often unknown to individuals themselves.
I urge upon all, then, that they seek the Banner of Divine Humility. If the Masters and the Divine Presence of men, through the Mediatorship of the Christ, have ever recognized any of the errors of men that have hindered them from becoming that which they long to become, They have recognized their pride. Pride takes many forms and true Humility but one. True Humility must be worn eternally. It is not a garment you place upon you for a moment, for a day or year, or when passing a test. It is an undergarment with which God Himself is clothed, and unless it surround thee, thy hopes of attainment are slim indeed.
In My present series of discourses on the Ascension, I AM determined to give in this dossier some of the disciplines which I measure according to your capacity to receive and your present need. Rest assured of this, all who will accept this Teaching and bind It upon themselves as an act to do, an act of Divine Grace, will benefit immeasurably from It and from all that I AM about to release as receptive hearts, like open flowers, become Chalices of God's Hope renewed in Man.
Forward into the Light, I say unto ye all!