We're now at the climax of the Sun's powers in the Northern Hemisphere. As the Earth tilts towards the Sun, so the days grow longer and the strength of the Sun's rays increase.
But now, after the Solstice and marking St. John's Tide (June 24th), we experience the beginning of the second major cycle that makes up the Earth's year: the breathing in which takes place from St.John's Day (celebrated as Midsummer throughout Europe and Russia) until Christmas.
The two festivals are perfectly balanced. The Earth's year comprises one complete breathing cycle. From Christmas Eve until St. John's Tide the Earth breathes out all she has received from the furthest reaches of the Universe. Then, six months later, the Earth once more begins to breathe in, culminating in the Feast of Christmas.
St. John's Tide is the feast day of John the Baptist, who said "He must increase, and I must decrease". He, of course, is Christ, the Head of Conscious Humanity, whom we may approach through our Essence, through Real I.
It was always explained in groups that St. John the Baptist represents the highest level of the Personality, someone who has seen and understood the purpose of the spiritual life, and whose deepest wish is to practice what he has learned, and to inspire others to do the same.
The skillful I's in Personality are of use only when they serve Essence, however. There is no point in serving the Personality for its own sake, as this only leads to deeper enmeshment in Life; and Life, as we all know, leads nowhere but stays on its own level.
When Personality serves Essence, however, we are structured aright in our inner lives. Essence which has matured through spiritual work knows and understands what must be done in each situation. It is Personality which gives the individual the power to respond with appropriate actions at the right time. This is right ordering of the two.
To take an example from my own life, I trained as both a teacher and a writer, because my Essence and Personality enjoyed these activities and I wanted to learn to do both of them as well as I could.
When I began to understand the Work, and was eventually authorized to teach it, those Personality I's which had studied and practised how to teach and how to write really came into their own. They now serve my Essence, which loves the Work and longs to help others to understand it.
When I teach and when I write I'm in my Essence. Of course, there are many other activities which also stem from the needs and desires of Essence: listening to beautiful music, especially Eastern Orthodox and Western sacred liturgical music, and the great composers of the Renaissance; when I'm painting; when I'm outdoors, surrounded by nature, in the countryside or at the seashore, or simply gardening in our long back yard; reading poetry, especially Christian and Sufi poems; and many, many more.
Most of them, however, don't require any special skills to carry them out. But teaching a class or a Work group, or writing - whether it's this blog, a book, or an article for publication - all call for trained skills, which Essence uses to express itself in these activities.
In the same way, people who've made a difference to the world (and I don't mean here the Sacred Messengers, but simply ordinary men and women of good will, living at the level of the Good Householder) have had trained Personality I's which were useful to the impulses that came to them from Higher Centres, from their Essence, perhaps even from Real I.
I'm thinking here of people such as Dr. Martin Luther King, who trained as a preacher and spoke most eloquently to the crowds, and whose commitment to the right action demanded that he be willing to sacrifice his life. His sacrifice, and his words, brought healing and justice to the black people of America who had been cruelly oppressed for more than a hundred years.
Think, too, of Mahatma Gandhi, the lawyer whose words and deeds culminated in ending the British Raj in India, putting an end to centuries of exploitation. He, too, worked with a trained and highly intelligent legal mind, and he also sacrificed his own life for the cause of justice.
Closer to our own time, I think of Nelson Mandela, whose refusal to seek revenge for his imprisonment led to a great breakthrough in human rights in South Africa. Like Dr. King and Gandhi, Mandela was committed to justice and equality, and like them, his own actions brought about a healing of divisions in South Africa so that apartheid was ended and power shared between blacks and whites.
Dr Nicoll and Mrs Pogson used to speak of the great sacrifices made by very young pilots in World War II, who knew they faced probable death and yet gave their lives to fight for the cause of freedom and liberty, and oppose the demonic Nazi regime which threatened the world. Dr Nicoll thought these incredibly brave young men had incarnated for that purpose, and that somewhere deep within they knew this, and remembered their mission. That war was truly a battle of good against evil, and it was not a foregone conclusion that the good would win - at times, it seemed that evil had the upper hand, and it was only through the willing sacrifices made by men such as these, "the Few", that civilization was saved.
All of these men - and there are, of course, many more, including women, who are both known to us and unknown - allowed their Personalities to be used by something higher. They
embodied the principal of the Baptist, by letting their own wishes be subordinated to a higher influence, that of Conscious Humanity, which used these willing "volunteers" to bring about an improvement on the Earth.
Of course, there is no real progress overall in Life, and the most we can hope for is to stave off disaster, to make things a little better here and there, and to work towards becoming more conscious and helping others to do so, so that eventually the level of humanity may rise and a real transformation can occur. But it is not certain that any such breakthrough will ever occur.
As the Talmud says, we may not be able to complete the task, but neither are we free to desist from the effort.
When speaking of these matters, both Mrs Pogson and my own teacher, Mrs Davison, would ask us whether we could be used by something higher. It is a question we should ask ourselves, especially now, when at the Summer Solstice our actions in the world are emphasize.
And if not, what would stand in the way?
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