LIGHT ON THE PATH - 29 : KILL OUT AMBITION - 8

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 29 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 3 - THE FIRST RULE

🌻  KILL OUT AMBITION - 8  🌻

121. Cynical people might remark that the true artist in that sense is unknown, but that is not so. I have had a great deal to do with artistic circles both in England and in France, and though there is much jealousy and want of generous appreciation among artists in general, yet I also surely have known more than one artist who did live and work for the love of his art and not for gain. Because he so worked, he often threw away many obvious chances of worldly advancement, thinking that to take advantage of them would involve disloyalty to his art.

A man who is willing to do that for the sake of his art has already made some progress on the way to getting rid of the lower self. There may be a higher form of selfish ambition at the back of it, but at least he has gone a long way in eradicating the mere lower self when he has lost the ambition for worldly wealth and success.

122. There is a stage at which the occultist has quite conquered all desires connected with the personality, has risen above all the ordinary ambitions of men, but still has ambition for his separate individuality or ego, and is thinking generally of its progress instead of the good he can do to others. So it may well be that an artist who did altogether sacrifice the thought of self, even though he knew nothing about occultism, might have his feet more firmly planted on the right road than such an occultist.

123. The same principle applies to the other two seemingly simple rules. Linger over them, and do not let yourself be easily deceived by your own heart.

124. The Master here refers to Rules 2 and 3, which we shall deal with in the next chapter. These tell us to kill out desire of life and of comfort. He warns us to be cautious with regard to all three, for the mind is extraordinarily, even quite diabolically, clever at making excuses for us, at finding all kinds of reasons for doing what we want to do.

We may not think of ourselves as particularly clever or intellectual, but if we look back over the excuses we have invented for doing things we have wanted to do, we usually have to admit that we have shown amazing capacity in that direction.

125. For now, at the threshold, a mistake can be corrected. But carry it on with you and it will grow and come to fruition, or else you must suffer bitterly in its destruction.

126. C.W.L. – This is the end of the Master Hilarion’s long note to Rule 1. The more a man advances on the path of occult development, the deeper he will bury any fault which has not yet been eradicated.

Suppose it be selfishness, the greatest and most common of all faults, because it lies at the root of so many others. He may have got rid of all its outer evidences, and may imagine himself to be entirely free from it, and yet the fault itself may still be unconquered. The further he goes on the Path the more deeply it will be hidden.

In the meantime he is gradually raising the strength of the vibrations of his vehicles so that all his qualities, whether bad or good, must be greatly intensified. If there is an evil quality the existence of which may be quite hidden, both from the man himself and his friends, it will be growing stronger and stronger, and inevitably some time it must break through and show itself.

Then just because he has made considerable advance it will produce a much more serious disaster than would have been the case at an earlier stage, and he certainly will suffer a good deal in its destruction.

Continues...
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14 Nov 2020