Superior Index Go to the next: Chapter 26
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The condition of human thought frequently involves the most trivial matters. Thus, it is ever so wise to "take no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself";1 for the meaning of living today and thinking today is the key to progress. The now that is the day of salvation recognizes the potential of each day for accomplishment and sees each day as though it were eternity. "This too shall pass" may well be spoken of all darkness and unwanted conditions, but the impetus for building rightly should begin in the present.
Each hour is its own open-ended compartment. It is its own because man has free will, time being his unique opportunity for energy qualification; it is open-ended because the effects of his deeds are far-reaching. Many people expect no accounting for the deeds they do, for their understanding of life is not based on the law of cause and effect. But, regardless of what people think, all theories that seek to explain phenomena without benefit of this law are vain. Wise, therefore, is the man or woman who sees the golden rule as a great personal safeguard.
The criteria for action today among the majority of the people are, unfortunately, their feelings. If they feel like doing something, they do it, without taking into account the responsibility they have for every deed they do as well as for the deeds they do not do. They take pleasure in contemplating no period of accounting, no return of the energies they send out for good and for ill or of those they thoughtlessly waste.
Let them pause to think again; for all unwanted and negative conditions, with few exceptions, have their roots in the deeds that man has already done. The state of the world, of the body, of the mind, of the feelings, of the total manifestation of each person, is the combined effect of many experiences involving deeds, words, thoughts, and the entertainment of ideas from the near and distant past.
Where the freedom of the individual is concerned, each has a golden key forged out of the law of cause and effect that will open the door to his own freedom. When people understand the need to build wisely by thought, by feeling, and by deed, they will guard against the tendency to overreact to situations and people. How many times has Cain slain his brother simply because of over-reaction?
One of the wisest safeguards against human bondage is self-control. But, whereas self-control may prevent bad deeds, the mesmerism of lingering thought can stimulate them; and, whereas self-control may hold back the flow of emotional reactions stemming from wrong thought, for man to be neither hot nor cold2 but lukewarm - holding to a position of neutrality in all things - does not necessarily produce the good karma of right use of life's opportunities.
And so, in addition to not thinking or doing evil, man must think good and do good, that he may use the precious life opportunities God has given him to promote not only his own freedom but also the freedom of others. Oh yes! you have heard this before, for the voice of God has spoken often in divers ways to man. The question is: Has he been obeyed? Have his admonishments been heeded?
I add the impetus of my power as the spokesman for the Karmic Board to a plea for all students of the light to understand what it means to be a well-rounded, vital, functional part of the Great Brotherhood. Moving with the tide of hierarchy's recommendations requires constant contact with us in spirit as well as in the letter issuing forth from the Spirit which, when activated in the heart, head, and hand of man, becomes a rising pathway toward the sun of truth and freedom.
The snares that have destroyed great nations have first taken root in individuals. Either men have failed to be wayshowers, or the way they have shown has not been the way of peace. It is easy for humanity to rationalize their conduct; and cleverness in words and manipulation of ideas becomes a game that long ago prompted Jesus to say, "Woe unto you, ye lawyers!"3
I plead, then, at a time of the year when people are concentrating on the gift of freedom, that you strive to understand it, that you embrace its higher manifestation with an ecstasy of the Spirit, loving God for the freedom that he is. His freedom is not license to do whatever you will. His freedom is the boundless bounty of adoration to a central principle whose core and exterior are both composed of the very essence of truth.
Because nations are made up of peoples and because thus far only the few have directed the many, I urge the many to pause and to reflect upon their own blessed potential. Yes, you have free will, blessed ones; for that which men use from day to day they call free will. But the night of the human will is far spent; and the shroud which the misuse of free will has created has darkened many hearts, bringing seemingly endless pain and making them to cry out, "O Lord, how long?"4
The time is overripe now - if world calamity is to be avoided - for humanity to understand that their pleasures of eating, drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage, of seeking the love and friendship of the world, must be placed in their proper perspective. Then, as staunchness of being and love of higher principle rise out of the morass of human personality, we shall observe the building of men and women who stand for something above the level of mass ignorance.
You cannot just follow the crowd and allow the weed-seeding of the world's thought to take root in your consciousness. You must preserve your God-given individuality and your right to be perfect as your heavenly Father is.5 Through Christ awareness each individual can develop in the garden of his heart an unlimited cosmic potential so magnificent that he can say unto those who follow him, even as Jesus did, "Greater things shall ye do because I go to my Father."6
The hierarchy is building tall towers of consciousness that rise above the human sprawl as a mountain of fortitude and strength. Nevertheless, your own inner qualities and capacities must be developed. It is not enough simply to balance one's karma or to seek to make recompense for past misdeeds; men must fulfill the fiats of destiny, they must regard the love that God used throughout the creative process in its great impersonality as it flows with electrifying consequence into the beautiful chalice of the mind and soul.
Accept no dictum of mediocrity. Accept no inflexible worldform. For it is the limitless attitudes of the Spirit which knit our Brotherhood together, as each one bows to the God in the other and in himself, as each one humbly carries out his assigned tasks, and all join hands to lift the garment of the world. Beloved hearts of light, freedom is a drama, an exercise in the unfoldment of the exciting possibilities of reality that have always existed, but that have unfortunately been opaqued by the miasmas - the mayic patterns - of life.
Spiritual joy and spiritual freedom, exercised toward a fuller potential, are the pivotal points of universal destiny. You abound as freedom abounds. Freedom abounds as you abound. Let nothing daunt your courage, for each hour we raise the curtain higher to behold the cyclic span of infinity.
For the clarity of freedom's light and the ever-constant raising of liberty's torch,