What is this man? What is his reasonability? What is his thinking—this creature, your brother. There is nothing more worthy of his being than the right direction and his following it; being employed, moving, doing and carrying out his thoughts, since upon this depends his usefulness to God, to his brother, and to the public which he serves. Man, the creation of God, through his own present and future may benefit his own place in the next life. In all these aspects, he is concerned.
The consideration of this has often obliged us to lament unhappily about the condition of those [in the world]—the unhappiness of mankind. But, after all, that is what we are here for—to turn this unhappiness, through its transmutation and the transmutator, into being the knowledge of God, the Christos, and our blessed Master. Through the great mixture and confusion of thought, sometimes we are hardly able to make a right thing out of the material judgment of man. But through our work we are attempting to bring further the real Light of the Christos—that beacon Light that cuts through the fog of confusion and the intemperate zeal of some people in the outer world to do the wrong thing.
It is difficult at times to bring ourselves to think of those [wrapped up in that outer world] as brothers also—God’s children. Of our brother who is next to us, whom also is in the Order, this is not so difficult because we see him at prayers. We see him in the morning at Communion. We know he has faults, and of course we see our own in him. To this also we attribute the imperfect knowledge that we have of things and the slow progress we feel we are making in attaining a better level of consciousness.
Like the children of Israel who were 40 years upon their journey from Egypt to Canaan, which might have been performed in less than one year, sometimes we feel as if we were doing the 40 years. But, in reality, it is but a few days comparatively speaking.
Clearly, therefore, we see that we must clear our heads and rally every once in a while in managing our thoughts rightly. We will have saved time, saved our efforts, saved our brother’s feelings.
We will see and do those things which we are instructed to do to give us better judgment, better understanding. We will free our mind of the confusion, and make our faculties stronger, more steady and steadfast…