Striving Together

The ini­ti­ate knows, because he works.

The entire story of evo­lu­tion lies in these words. Bud­dha said, “By your own hands and feet.” (St.) Paul encour­ages us to, “Work out your own sal­va­tion.” Plato said, “Know thy­self.” These Teach­ers, pos­sess­ing great sen­si­tiv­ity,  were not utter­ing idle or thought­less words.

The laws of evo­lu­tion require that a per­son only gains knowl­edge through exper­i­men­ta­tion and expe­ri­ence. “The dis­ci­ple always works in the dark, par­tic­u­larly at the early stages of his unfold­ment, fol­low­ing a deep and hid­den instinct toward right activity.”

If more par­ents under­stood this essen­tial instinct in their chil­dren, imag­ine how much more joy­ful the learn­ing expe­ri­ence would be? Instead of instill­ing fear and anx­i­ety, they would rec­og­nize those first baby steps as striv­ing and fol­low­ing a deep instinct toward right activ­ity.

Imag­ine if our schools cre­ated cul­tural study halls instead of deten­tion rooms; imag­ine if soci­ety cul­ti­vated the “sci­ence of becom­ing” instead of wor­ship­ing the mate­r­ial world.

“By the hard and per­sis­tent per­for­mance of duty, under the pres­sure of his con­science at first, under the impulse of his awak­en­ing soul and under the influ­ence of his Mas­ter, he (the aspi­rant) moves for­ward from dark­ness to light; he dis­cov­ers that obe­di­ence to his spir­i­tual instincts leads him inevitably into the realm of knowl­edge, and that knowl­edge — when acquired — is trans­formed even­tu­ally into wis­dom. He then becomes a Mas­ter and no longer lives in the dark.

“Aspi­rants usu­ally bit­terly resent the many cycles of dark­ness through which they seem to go; they com­plain of the dif­fi­culty of work­ing in the dark and of see­ing no light any­where; they for­get the abil­ity to work in the dark or light is all one inher­ent capac­ity. The rea­son for this is that the soul knows noth­ing but being, and light and dark are — to the soul — one and the same. Above every­thing else, knowl­edge comes through con­scious exper­i­ment, and where there is no exper­i­men­tal activ­ity no expe­ri­ence can be gained. Knowl­edge is the reward of both these fac­tors — a knowl­edge which is not the­o­ret­i­cal but which is proven, fac­tual, and the intel­li­gent result of hard work; it is also the result of fre­quent dis­tress (rightly han­dled) and of spir­i­tual anticipation.”

Many aspi­rants con­fuse per­sonal or pro­fes­sional hard­ship with spir­i­tual defi­ciency. “If only I had a bet­ter atti­tude.” “Quit your stink­ing’ thinkin’ ” “I should just med­i­tate more.”

There is sim­ply no short cut to tack­ling your lower nature unless you face obsta­cles on your path. If peo­ple only knew that it is at the edge of the abyss, that help comes.

To be effec­tive in the world and of use to the spir­i­tual Hier­ar­chy we must have prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence and learn the mean­ing of both suc­cess and fail­ure and the knowl­edge which is gained.

“Knowl­edge comes at first through the strug­gle to move for­ward into greater and clearer light; then it comes as the aspi­rant (seek­ing soul expres­sion) learns to for­get him­self in the need of oth­ers as they demand what­ever light and knowl­edge he may pos­sess; wis­dom takes the place of knowl­edge when, in the trans­mut­ing fires of strug­gle, pain and hard work, the aspi­rant trans­forms him­self into the work­ing dis­ci­ple and is grad­u­ally absorbed into the ranks of the Hierarchy.”

Source: Dis­ci­ple­ship in the New Age, Vol. II, Alice A. Bai­ley, Lucis Trust, pp. 393–395.

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Tagged as: Spiritual Hierarchy, Striving