The activity of a Director of a group is something like the activity of the heart to the body. The people in the Western world do not understand fully the inner obligation that a lifestream takes upon itself when it offers to draw individuals together in the name of the Master and that through their nature faith, confidence, selflessness, wisdom, strength, tenacity, love, obedience will be the life blood of the students; and in turn for that the waste matter, the karma, the dissentions of the students becomes the gift to the leader, just as the artery pouring forth its life blood furnishes energy to the members of the body and draws back through the veins the waste matter. So is one who is placed as the heart of a sanctuary or group, obligated to draw forth enough Light to feed and encourage and sustain the student body, and to dissolve the waste matter which returns. The balance that is required in one that is to proceed beyond the small activities, in which he is engaged today, into the larger activities of the future, cannot be stressed too much. 

You must give what you receive 

A Group Director comes into this activity, or any activity of the Ascended Masters for one of many reasons. The motive which has prompted such a step will determine to a large extent the efficacy of the endeavor, the permanence of his work and his usefulness to us. I speak to you as I would if we sat before a fire in lovely lounging chairs one to another, for I have no opportunity to speak privately to you except this. I speak not in a mandatory or arbitrary manner but in a manner to convey to you something of the knowledge of the Law, which you in turn I hope will convey to others. It is not enough to be an absorber; it is not enough to relax in the radiation, you must give what you receive in order to receive greater light and greater life. 

The Group Director and the Orchestra Leader 

A Group Director, in order to be in perfect balance, might be likened to the director of a symphony orchestra. He has within his consciousness a magnificent piece or composition which he desires his orchestra to play. He has a great number of varied talents before him, he tries to choose the best, but there is always a limit to the best of any man. He has a certain amount of personality to handle of more than one individual, and all of these he must join together in a harmonious way. Why? To please himself and get that feeling of power that comes from uniting a group of men in one accord, rather than use the men to send out that music as a great blessing? If the Director's motive is prompted by a desire to express vanity, to express a power complex, to express any human sense of self-aggrandizement, such a one will sooner or later fall by the wayside. There is only one type of Director and Leader who will last and that is one who makes his vow to God, and his service to all life! Go alone and examine your hearts and find out why you are at this place on the path. You may find the answer to a great many of the conflicts within your soul! 

Now this symphony orchestra leader, if he is oblivious to his orchestra and too intent on his theme of music, he is going to miss a great deal! The violins are liable to get ahead, the wind instruments behind, and chaos ensues. If he is so interested in watching the individuals in his orchestra to see if they are wearied by the constant moving of the bow in playing the violin, or if he forgets the theme, or the feeling of the Master composer, he will still have chaos. If he is interested only in the audience and what an imposing figure he makes, and thinks nothing of the composition or the orchestra, he will not last long. You have the one-pointed individual concentrating only on service, and you have the individual concentrating entirely on the group. 

There is a Master present in the Group 

If you had inner sight, you would know there is a Master or an Angel present in the group, and you would see what is coming out of the energy of your group and thus understand better how to proceed to get something we can use. You would avoid the colors of resentment, rebellion, exhaustion, depletion, and what is worse than the colors are the pictures that rise in the atmosphere from the soul who comes in with the fire of enthusiasm and goes out with the fire of a different color: 

The average person today who is interested in the Ascended Masters has obligations besides the obligation to the group. In the future, this will not be the case of the chosen heart center, who will be given freedom to rest the body and prepare for the power of decrees. The average student has an unyielding load to carry; his own karma, the obligation of making a living; his love of the light, and I could go on indefinitely. He brings that all in with him to the class. Some day in the new temples when we get to it, one of the things we will do, is to separate the chairs a little distance, because one's aura extends considerable distance in even the most lethargic person, and in that aura is a lot! The cares that beset the day, the worries of the mind and heart, the family affairs, the annoyances, resentments, confusions and depression that aura comes in even in the best because anyone who comes, at least makes the effort to come to a place where the Masters are endeavoring to promote the work. Let us understand that if they take their tired feet and walk the steps to the group meeting, the Light in their heart is trying to get free; and they bring a load of creation, not only their own but they bring everything that they pass, if they are not positive when they left home! 

The Right Preparation 

It has been suggested that people prepare for the group BEFORE they leave home, not only in physical cleanliness, but in mental peace, emotional stability and etheric purity. And may I say here, that many an ascetic man who obeyed the law of abstinence, who mortified the body and died in a hair shirt, but who did NOT perform the mortification of the feelings and mental body, has not risen as high as one more lax in fleshly things but more strict in the sublimation of the soul! 

Think it through! In the first place, you don't take your physical body with you, you take your soul. Many a man in a monastery, many a woman in a convent, performing certain abstinences and mortifications of the physical body, filled with bitterness, spiritual pride and arrogance of the soul, when that body is laid down in death, the soul, which was all that was left to go before the Karmic Board is worse than if they had lived a jolly life and gone home in a soul in which there was some semblance of tolerance and peace! There is a balance, in the law. Moral and ethical obedience to the fleshly law of right living are good, and are to be commended IF they make faith in the soul, endurance in the consciousness, and purity in the nature; but if they build up frustrations and cause scars on the soul, better they had never been done! 

Blaze the Violet Fire through Yourselves 

We start with the purification of the individual auras, trying to get out the coffee pots, the dollar signs, the desk drawers that overflow, the typewriters, the angry bosses, the disgruntled husbands and wives, bills, people - it sounds funny - but if  you do not use the Violet Fire that is what we have to work with! USE THAT VIOLET FIRE!!! Blaze it through yourself first, for you know you have coffee pots and tea pots and bills in your world, most of you; tight shoes and various other things. You know those are forms! Very, very powerful forms! When you touch the energy of the sanctuary or room, and then get the Violet Fire going to purify it as best you can in a happy, joyous radiation. Let us not concentrate on these pictures; I want you to concentrate on the Light, but I want you to know what you are dealing with. When you come in and stand before a seeming stone wall, which sometimes is the case, it is just a solidification of people’s auras and their troubles. They can't help it - they are smothered. If it were not for God, Lord Michael and the Powers of Light, there wouldn't even be a Spark! I am amazed myself that mankind even make the endeavor to try and understand the Law. 

Specialize on Something 

When you are in the Ray on the platform (the Leader) means that you have more energy, more power, more enthusiasm, more endurance than your symphony, which is a point that is well worth pondering! Therefore, you will "outrun" them every time! You have made your application so you can never expect your symphony to be quite that which you have developed, any more than I would expect you to be the consciousness that I am. Specialize your activity! Specialize on something that needs doing. When you purify the elementals, if you could see the billions that go purified and free, you would realize something of the opportunity that is yours in opening the door of that sublimation. 

Specialize if you can on something; on some great Master, some great current need, or that which your group is particularly interested in. Then remember, the mind or outer consciousness of the average man cannot stay with any one thing even five minutes. Change your activity at least every fifteen minutes in your average group; let them participate, let them use their physical bodies for a time; then let them rest and use the mind, then let them use the feelings. You are supposed to be doing what the body elemental does for your baby form, getting all of the body used through activity of the muscles. Suppose the body elemental used only one hand and left the other atrophied; you would have a cripple. The body elemental has the infant stretch, cry and kick and all of the body muscles are developed equally. 

Balanced activity is required 

As a Director, you are responsible for the physical, emotional, etheric and mental development of your people. You will be interested in one facet of that endeavor more than another because you represent a particular Ray; you will be enthusiastic on that and rather inclined to let the others go by, which of course is a mistake. 

Balanced activity in service brings Freedom! If you keep your people too long on a visualization, their minds will go back to those conditions which they brought in from the street. The mind is heavy. It is better to have one good point put into fertile soil and nourished by the decree pattern and your songs, than a thousand points which leave a person weary so that the consciousness tries to escape the concentration, and the person goes back into his own aura and begins to remember his own affairs. 

How long should the Class last? 

This is very important! You take a group of people and blaze the Flame through them and you charge your specialized activities, and if you are wise you will have them cooperate by telling them what you are going to do so you can hold the pattern, then give them something to take home - some definite pattern to take home which will benefit them and their world. Don't let them go back into that shell! To the average man an hour's work is considered a great spiritual achievement, two hour's work is considered super, so for the average man I would not attempt to hold the class more than two hours at the very most. What happens if you do is that after the climax of your radiation - the punch - of your delivery, the vitality of your class work is an anti-climax and it slumps into lethargy and the individual goes back into his cocoon and begins to think in his own world. He hopes the class will soon be over and becomes body conscious and emits the most terrific color of vermillion and red, and then the leader has that to handle. Many a good man or woman, who has taken the obligation of handling the karma of the group, has within his own body the resentment of all the work he had hoped to do! 

The Group is a reflection of the Director 

This Law is so practical. You have to get the ultimate out of your group, and you never will if you are not convinced yourself; if you are not enthusiastic, if you are not POSITIVE, if you are not desirous of giving your best. When you HAVE gotten the ultimate, THEN CLOSE ON THE HIGH NOTE like we do! Let the people take the Light home. Remember, your group will be a reflection of yourself! If you are fiery and positive and filled with faith, courage and power, your group will reflect that. So, take a good look at yourself in the privacy of your own room and say, "Do I dare to duplicate myself in the souls of trusting men." If not, there is the power of Holy Amethyst and therefore no reason for depression or despair. The Power of the Violet Fire will make of you something that mankind wants to duplicate in this world of form. 

I spent a great deal of time in Italy as well as in France. I used to watch the men press the grape until its essence came forth and that essence became for them valued wine but the pulp was thrown aside! Let us not be like that Every individual from whom we get an ounce of energy, a portion of the substance of the physical world, let us not be like those men and women and take the essence and throw  the pulp aside, but LET US LOVE THAT LIFE that gives us of itself! Let us be the loving Brotherhood of Angels, elementals and men! This is my word to you, whom I have loved enough to speak to as an equal, not as Master to pupil! 

The greatest word in any language is FRIEND 

I love you; love you enough to show you ways and means of greater efficacy in your service. A friend is one who comes, and if solicited will offer what wisdom, what strength, what physical substance, what emotional light he has in behalf of his fellowman. That is what I do! The greatest word in all the English language or of Sanskrit or any language over the Earth is FRIEND! Yet it is taken too lightly. I AM YOUR FRIEND OF FREEDOM, and you are mine, and together we shall make of this Earth a Freedom Star: