🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 24 🌹
🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀
✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj
CHAPTER 3 - THE FIRST RULE
🌻 KILL OUT AMBITION - 3 🌻
96. C.W.L. – Ambition in the undeveloped man shows itself as the desire, let us say, to gain wealth so that he may satisfy his craving for physical luxury and bodily enjoyment. Later on, when he develops intellect, he becomes ambitious for power.
Even when a man has transcended the ambition for power and the prizes of this world, and is working selflessly for the benefit of humanity, there still remains very often the ambition to see the result of his work.
97. Many people are devoting their time quite willingly and quite earnestly to doing good work, but they like others to know it, and to say what good and useful people they are. That also is ambition; mild certainly as compared to some other kinds, but still it is personal, and anything that is personal stands in the way of the disciple.
The lower self has to be eliminated entirely. It is hard to do it because the roots are very deep, and when they are torn out the man is left bleeding, and feeling as though all the heart were gone out of him.
98. When we have got rid of the desire to see the result of our work, we still have the desire for recognition in a higher form. We still, perhaps, are ambitious for love; we want to be popular. It is well and good for a man to be popular, to draw the love of his fellows, because that very fact is an additional power in his hands. It enables him to do more than he otherwise could, also it surrounds him with a pleasant atmosphere which makes all sorts of work easier.
But to desire that in the sense of being ambitious for it is also a thing which we must avoid. We may rightly be happy if love comes our way; that is well and good – it is good karma; but if it does not, we must not be ambitious for it. We cannot seize upon a person and say: “You shall love me, you shall appreciate me.” If his feelings run that way he will; if not he cannot, and to pretend would be worse than all.
99. We have to rise above all these stages of ambition which are still found in the ordinary world. We must give for the joy of giving, whether it be work, or substance, or love or devotion; whatever it is we must give freely and heartily, and never think of any return; that is the only real love, not the sort of love which is always saying:
“How much does so-and-so love me?” The real attitude should be: “What can I do to pour myself out at the feet of the one whom I love? Of what service can I be? What can I do for him?” That is the only feeling that is worthy of so grand a title. All that we know perfectly well, but we must put it into practice. It seems to be difficult, sometimes, to do that, because there is still a remnant of the lower self to be removed.
100. For the ordinary man – maybe even for the one who is approaching the Path – I think it would perhaps be well to qualify this rule to some extent, and say: “Kill out the lower ambitions.” It is not advisable to set before the man, who is just beginning, a standard of conduct which he can only hope to reach after many years of effort.
If a man has worldly ambitions he cannot be expected at once to drop them all and have nothing to fill their place; that would be scarcely possible for him, and it is even doubtful whether so sudden a change would be good for him.
He must first transmute his ambitions. Let him, if he will, at first desire knowledge earnestly, desire to make advance in occultism and progress in unselfishness; let him desire to draw near to the Master, to be chosen as a pupil.
Continues...
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07 Nov 2020
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