Beloved hearts, how do we begin? How do we begin to maintain that God-control that allows for the rhythm of God to restore the balance before the human reaction—out of fear or anger or that teetering/tottering off balance?

Beloved hearts, the components are there in the dictations, the decree book, the Keepers of the Flame lessons. But, as it always is, the more vast the compendium of knowledge, the greater the requirement of the teacher to organize. Thus, I point to the Count-to-Nine Decree. <4>The “Count-to-Nine” given in the full fire of your heart enables you to regain the command of your auric forcefield that has been impinged upon, pressed upon, penetrated, invaded.

Thus, understand: sometimes when you suddenly feel a disturbance—you are taken aback, you have a shock or a sudden reaction to the actions of injustice of another—one of the reasons you momentarily lose your balance is because the normal flow of the aura has been disturbed, as though you would suddenly agitate the waters.

Now, your aura is your sanctuary, and it is the sanctity of your God flame. Thus, before answering the demands of the carnal mind—the questioning, the praying for favors, or whatever—reestablish yourself. Speak quietly, softly, and slowly. For in this way you will not engage into yourself the anger, the impetuosity, the upsetness of anyone around you.

You speak as I am speaking now: from the heart—from the seat of the heart, the point of the Buddha. You speak loud enough, in the sense of being strong and firm, so that the breath and the voice are not sinking like a shrinking violet of fear. You speak strong enough and firm enough and peaceful enough and powerful enough so that God may use your voice to still your own aura and the agitation or the fear or the excitement of another. <5>

Be the calm presence in a vortex of calamity and activity, beloved hearts, and learn the way of the power, the immense power of peace itself. Thus, beloved ones, you ought to know by heart the Count-to-Nine Decree. You ought to realize that in a situation of upsetness it is necessary to take some deep breaths. For in the presence of anxiety, the heart begins to palpitate and people begin to breathe in a short-breath manner, thus adding to the absence of control.

You take a deep breath, you release it, you go to the heart, and you give no instantaneous answers, yes or no—no instantaneous reactions or solutions—but quietly turn within. There are many ways of handling this. If someone is ferocious like a mad dog, you may say, “Wait one minute, please. I shall return momentarily.” [applause]

You see, beloved ones, the tests are flying full and sure. We want you to experience the sense of mastery, of dominion, the enormous pleasure of having finished a day and dealt with that force, that driving force of irritation, and conquered and risen above every foible of the senses directed against your heart.

They would steal your life. They would take the flow of love between us. They would break the bond by any form of anger or outrage. And they will steal from you your sense of worthiness, your sense of the mantle of being the disciple of Sanat Kumara. When they can destroy your dignity and you begin to feel like a moth, then you will also behave like one. And till you regain your self-identity, I must pause and wait again, wondering just how long you will flit around the bulb of these serpent ones who have beguiled you into their auras momentarily.

Thus, beloved hearts, the soft answer turneth away wrath. <6>If someone is speaking to you in a loud and high-pitched manner, adjust the tone and answer with the God-command. Answer with helpfulness. Try to solve the problem. Try to show the best side of things. Provide emergency care when it is needed. Keep your wits about you. And don’t enter the vortex of another’s anxiety, else you will become confused.

Remember that anything that seeks to taunt you from the seat of the Buddha in the secret chamber of the heart must be noted as the enemy—not the person necessarily, for it is often a loved one, but the force attempting to use that one. Thus, it is your challenge to liberate that one as well as yourself from the human nonsense of the moment.

May you pass every test!

Unless you center in the heart, which is the central sun of your being, you may find yourself tumbling on the periphery of the aura, which touches the world consciousness. That point, that outer circle of the aura, should always be a very intense blue—a blue fire of protection, which is also outside the tube of light. Now you visualize the violet flame in the very center of the tube of light.

But I would make the point that when you are bristling with blue flame this often antagonizes others because it is so powerful and brings out the worst in them. Thus, the better part of wisdom is to wear the kid glove—that is, to put another layer of violet flame outside the blue to be a calming effect, to consume that which may rub against the aura or come at you. And if it break through the violet flame, then you have the blue-flame wall, then you have the power of the tube of light. And if diplomacy does not work, there is always the strength of the shield of Archangel Michael!

In the still and sweetness of the Light, I AM come.

Often it is a matter of stance. How do you hold yourself? Are you in readiness for the next delivery of God or thrust of the sinister force, or are you, as they say these days, “laid-back”? If you slouch, if you are laid-back, wide open, lounging around—the TV set is on, the ads are bombarding their rock beat, the cat is meowing, the dog is barking, the children are screaming, the phone is ringing—how do you expect, then, to keep your cool? It is a setup, but you have allowed it.

Now, you can maintain your calm in the midst of these things but not with a laid-back attitude, for any moment the potatoes on the stove will burn and everyone will be in an argument and, if you don’t watch out, yourself included. And then what have we accomplished?—a lost hour for Saint Germain and the vital work of Helios and Vesta; your own sense, “I will never become a good chela. I will never master my life.”

But, beloved ones, it’s a matter of one, two, three, four, five—a few simple requirements: Do not allow the family to be bombarded from all directions. Do not allow all these things to be taking place at once. Strive for communion with the heart. Feed the cat, put out the dog, turn off the TV set, make sure all is safe on the stove, and enjoy that circle of communion with God-determination that each member of your family or household or friends shall have the opportunity, by your loving presence, to express something very important from the heart.

Now we come to the point of education, the education of your soul and, by your example, the education of others. There is unseemly conversation that quickly can accelerate into argument. Avoid, then, that which is controversial when you already know you disagree on a point.

Why continue the argument? Each one having a right to his own opinion, let us discuss another avenue. For by another avenue, an approach to God or to art or to science, we may come to a point of agreement. Not as compromise but as agreement do we build the kingdom of God. Thus, we find the fundamental points of agreement and build on these.

Whenever there is agreement in a principle of God, a nucleus is formed—a bond of love. And that bond of love actually begins to consume the area of disagreement and error which may be in the mind of your friend or may be in your own mind, for we ourselves must see our own misconceptions, n’est-ce pas?

Perhaps you have noticed on a number of occasions that by your words and actions you may have caused some great grief and burden. You may have brought in the dark clouds through negativity, pessimism, criticism, barking and clamoring and having your way. And on another occasion, by doing what you know so well how to do, everyone has come away feeling good, feeling satisfied, feeling equally loved and equally important, and enjoying supremely a soul-satisfying evening or experience together. Thus, you see, the carnal mind takes pride in itself, in its ability to control and hurt and put down and best another, and to rise and puff up as the puffing up of the snake.

Yes, you can do these things, but I admonish you to choose not to do them—to not attempt to be the most important person in the room or the one who wins all the arguments or makes all the brilliant points. Far better to go within the heart, send love to each one, and encourage by your conversation some precious point of wisdom or expression to be forthcoming from another because you make it easy, you provide a point of relaxation and warmth. And someone who perhaps has had a much harder life than you, who has been silenced perhaps by great darkness through loved ones, can finally feel at home and free to speak without being criticized.

Beloved ones, assume that those who come to you are injured and maimed and scarred, for they are. They have been in many battles of life. If you find them ornery or thick-skinned, this is a defense mechanism they have set up for a very deep hurt. Heal the hurt, not in such an obvious manner as self-proclaiming oneself as the healer—“Now I am going to do this for you, now I am going to do that for you”—but simply do it in the quietness of your heart. Learn to pray for people and not to prey upon them. [applause]

It is true, beloved ones. Much of the hurt, much of the cruelty expressed in the world today is the means of the individual wrapping up again and again that old wound, that sharpness. And thus, it becomes a very important point of the Law to apply to Almighty God for the healing of one’s soul of the need to be aggressive toward any part of life.

You see, mortals have these needs, humans may have them; for both are without the divine spark. But the sons and daughters of God, the children of the Light have no need to partake in the world’s fare of psychology, just as you do not partake of the food that is served in some quarters. You have long ago transcended the need for that type of intake.

Much of the cause of your failure of many tests is that you have not stopped to rid yourself of the human habit to express that aggravation, that arrogance—all coming from the need of the carnal mind to assert itself. It is not real! It has no power to dominate your personality! I speak directly to you, and all of you know whereof I speak! And I tell you: the promise of your ascension will never be compromised by me, but it can be compromised by your free will!

You must listen to me. There is a need to change by the will of the heart, by a heart that loves enough to change because others are still suffering from a dishonest expression that you periodically give vent to—dishonest because it does not praise God in the individual, it does not rejoice in his overcoming but still retains that defiance that will put down another.

Beloved hearts, I will stand, and I will stand for eternity, to champion your soul’s path of victory and the ascension. Many of you who find yourselves in a precarious situation through your dalliance with the carnal mind may this day shed it in this heart and in my heart. For my heart is great enough, as the heart of God, to consume it all.

My heart this day is a cosmic incinerator, if you will, and it can consume if you let go. But remember, it is not a one-time event. You may decide to stop smoking now and put it into my heart, and the record will be consumed. Twenty-four hours from now you will meet the world momentum for which you have had a weakness and you will have to say:

   Thus, may you pass every test.

Understand the law I reveal to you. Sin can only be committed in a finite consciousness or in the finiteness of time and space. The moment sin is conceived, the conceiver of the sin is no longer a part of eternity.

Thus, when Archangel Michael cast out the fallen ones out of heaven, he was ratifying the law of their own being which they set in motion by the spirit of pride: “I will become as God. I will not worship the living Christ but I will be worshiped!” This was their vow. Instantaneously, they lost the protection of the circle of the One. Thus, in casting them out, Archangel Michael and his legions were the instantaneous representatives of cosmic law.

Each and every time you begin to conceive of sin, an act of sin, you lose the protection of the entire Spirit of the Great White Brotherhood. And you need to know when you stray from the Law of Truth. And it is because the thought and the feeling is enslaving that Jesus said to Judas, “That which thou doest, do quickly” <7>—let the consciousness of sin become the act of sin so that you may repudiate it and repent and be saved.

Now, we of the Great White Brotherhood do not recommend that you indulge the fantasies of the sinful sense, but rather that you realize that the bird of prey of sin may come and lodge in your aura and you may entertain it as a delicious idea for weeks and years and never free yourself from the desire to engage in this or that. And now and again that desire becomes so impelling that you fulfill it and commit the sin and see no dire consequence thereof. And you do it again and again, not realizing that you are binding yourself with cords of limitation—limitation that one day becomes old age, disease, and death.

Let not the absence of the hand of God instantaneously upon you when you err give you the idea that the law of karma is not irrevocable, for I tell you, it is. And we have all bound ourselves by that law, and we have all liberated ourselves by the same law. And that law is just! And may the just men made perfect by love <8>use the law wisely to their advantage, which advantage ought to be the liberation of the light of the heart which will insure you great gain in all octaves.

And therefore, let us quell the subtle vibration of ambition which you do not recognize and, therefore, I admonish the messenger to point out to you one by one. For ambition in itself is a hideous monster, tricking you all the way to trust the human consciousness instead of to get God first and, in getting him, to find a cornucopia of treasure and wisdom and light and abundance and divine love ever flowing.

Beloved ones, if you remove yourselves from time and space and always find the center of the cross, you will dwell forevermore in the house of the Lord, the secret chamber of the heart, the sacred heart of Jesus, whose heart I have made my own, imploring that Christ and therefore intensifying the purple fiery heart in his honor.

In that heart there is no desire for hashish, there is no desire for heroin. But if you stray from that heart and you have had a long habit, you may identify once again with the outer man or woman and the desiring and find yourself in the turbulent waters, sinking beneath the waves, crying out for the hand of Christ who will always extend to you that hand until you are safe and sound again in the Heart of Infinity.

You see, beloved ones, all desires of the human that you may have in this world can be surrendered. And when they are surrendered, the divine desiring of God comes into your life. For every human desire there is a divine desire that is legitimate, that is fulfilling, that will give to you whatever you thought you might get through human desiring but truly could never have or keep and much, much more. But it takes courage.

Thus, if you would retain the desire to control others (which is very prevalent in the human race), the desire to have those things that are not ordained and on and on, but you desire to give up those desires that make you sick and uncomfortable, you will be walking a tightrope of the human consciousness, trying to take the best of it and to leave the worst and yet not really willing to forsake the totality of it or the whole ball of wax, as we have said. It is a precarious position and I can only admonish, for you have free will.

Every experience in life can be transmuted and transcended to become a divine experience—though physical, though actual, though down-to-earth, though a part of what that truly golden-age consciousness can be. Thus, it is not wrong to desire happiness, to desire the family of God, to desire your own fulfillment or education or God-success. Truly, no thing will God withhold from you when you use legitimate means of arriving at the goal.

Fear is what binds you to the alternative path and method. Thus, I say, drop those fears! Let God show you how happy you can be in the fullness of his love—how you can have these things in the highest sense, glorify his name, pass that human consciousness through the flame, and still retain an individuality which is happy, joyous, hard-working, ever-learning, striving, and a joy to be with because you will be the one who unlocks the mysteries for others. The mystery of happiness itself written all over your face can be divined by those who meet you by watching how you live.

Cease, then, cease from toying with the idea of unreality! Cease from the idea that you have ever been enslaved. The slaves of death must live in a consciousness of death! Now let us remove the octave of the consciousness of death. Let us remove that plane. If it ceases to be, will you cease to be?