"There are all manner of byways that the soul may take, even entering a roller coaster that goes only down and not up again. There are peoples all over the world today who long for this union of Love with Christ, yet they know not how to break the bread of Life. They do not understand the Word or the Work of the Lord. And in many, many cases, even if they did understand, they would not be prepared for a path of sacrifice.

"They would not be prepared to be called by Jesus or Maitreya to undergo the rigors of undoing the old self, peeling away the layers of snakeskins and finally arriving at the place where one may put on the wedding garment, the bridal veil, one may be received by her Lord.

"To this end Jesus inspired upon the Messenger to teach the way of Saint John of the Cross in the living flame of Love to show that all saints have gone through the trial and the testing of feeling worthless, feeling rejected by that Lord and by that Christ but often imagining that that rejection or injustice or put-down has come from this or that person.

"But, beloved, when you bring yourself nearer and nearer to the living flame of Love, that Flame, because it is Love, because it is the Holy Spirit, because it is the intense fire of a ruby itself, must show you those things which must needs be corrected, transmuted, refined, balanced, resolved ere you may enter in.

"You can think of the living flame of Love as the doorkeeper who loves you so much that the Flame itself will not allow the door to be opened until you are fully prepared, thus sparing you the rejection by the Lord Christ. The living flame of Love will lick away at your wounds. And if you enter into the Flame and into the wounds, you will know the Refiner’s fire, you will know the sting from which the little child cries out when knees are scraped and must be dressed."

"I AM Chananda of The Great White Brotherhood of The Indian Council; and I extend to you the passions of eternity, the understanding that it is wise to be moved by the Divine Sea and to find nestling within the heart of being, even within the heart of the great shell, the beauty and iridescence of the pearl of great price—your contact with God, your contact with your true Self.

" . . . Beloved ones, there are those who have passed the initiation called the obscure night, or the dark night of the soul. These understand that even if God cared nothing for them, they still must kindle within themselves, within and upon the altar of being, the flame of love for Him and for others. For only then can God be born within them. When they are willing to forsake, to relinquish even the thought of someone’s concern for themselves, in the brightness and illumination that God must be born as the Christ-spark upon the heart’s altar in the darkest night, the beautiful Light appears. Each must be God-born and God-ordained.

"Will you understand the meaning of that bubbling fountain of joy that the world feels as a part of the via dolorosa—'My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?'—as the impassioned plea of one passing through the dark night of the soul portrayed in the writings of Saint John of the Cross? Our Brotherhood desires to strip mankind of the concept of self-attention, of self-fear, of self-doubt. Man who says, 'I cannot do it, I cannot!' must learn to say 'I can by God’s grace to do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me!' And the full fashion and measure of the Law is the extension of infinite love into the domain of each individual, lifting that individual and casting him not down into the depths of his own well of despair. Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.

"But can man see himself as God? Nay, through the sea of selfhood man drowns and is no more. For self-love will not truly bring you emancipation, or the bounty of freedom, or the strength for the years ahead. But God’s love will. Drawing with a power of infinite magnetism into the very fibers of the soul, the strength of eternity does flow . . . O beloved ones, above all I urge upon you then this night that you shed the skin, the horrible snakeskin, of discouragement and cast it to the wind! Consume it in the violet transmuting flame if you are able, and denude yourself of everything that is not joy and hope and peace.

"For born out of joy and hope and peace and out of the Spirit Most Holy comes the sense of man’s real identity—the fashion of cosmic times that bypasses all of the cycles of men’s lives that have gone on before and produces the miracle of cosmic devotion within the crucible of mankind’s experience, leading him at last into those holy and cosmic passions out of which is born a Christ in the garden of Gethsemane—able, then, to extend his hands, and even facing the very extinction of his life from a momentary standpoint to cry out 'Not my will, but Thine be done! O my Father, if it be Thy will, let this cup pass from me!'"

"And thus I commend you to the teaching of the Messengers on the path of Saint John of the Cross, on the Living Flame of Love that explains the alchemical marriage.

"For it is not as though you were not once tethered to the living Word, but it is now that you must reconsecrate your life to that marriage unto God. For once the full fusion is attained, beloved, it cannot be lost. But you have been at that point—almost in the hour of the consummation with the Bridegroom, the living Word. And yet, the holding of the balance for that event was too much and the fallen ones sent the most clever of impostors of the Cosmic Christ Lord Maitreya.

"And [the initiation of the alchemical marriage] once again swept aside, it has meant for you cycle after cycle—the waiting again of two thousand years or five thousand years or ten thousand years when the cosmic cycles would once again bring you face-to-face with the initiation of Lord Maitreya."

"As you know from the writings of Saint John of the Cross, the soul’s approach to the Inner Christ is a painful process of desiring acceptance and yet hearing the word, 'Not yet, not yet.' Blessed ones, be not the soul who fears to try again and again to receive the love of her Lord. Your Lord loves you and the closer you come to this sealing oneness, the more you will see of yourself that cannot enter in to the Holy of holies.

"But your soul does pant after the living God. And the soul reaches the moment where no other desire fulfilled can equate with being received by the Lord. In that moment, beloved, there is an aloneness and a loneliness that is indescribable, for no one else can experience [with you] the mourning of the soul who is separated from her God yet almost entering in. That is why it does require special counsellors, special ministering servants to counsel those who may become, in moments, despondent; for they are so very near to that alchemical marriage and yet not quite.

"Beloved ones, until the Divine Husband, the Bridegroom, has finally stretched forth the hand to say, 'O soul, enter,' one is in a state of fear that one has been rejected, one is not acceptable, one is not clean enough, one has not measured up to that level. In a human sense of the word, many have experienced the rejection of a human lover or the friend or the parent to the ultimate sadness and agony. Beloved, this prepares one for the rounds and the many rounds one must make until finally the Bridegroom steps forth with outstretched arms to receive the waiting bride.

"You are indeed the waiting brides of Sanat Kumara. The full sealing cannot come in a day, but this is your self-sealing day. This is the day you determine that when your Bridegroom proposes to you, your mind is made up. You will accept. You will accept."

" . . . as Saint John of the Cross did deliver the Word, there must be the preparation for that entering in to that oneness. And that preparation is sometimes the very lonely road of karma, the painful aloneness that you experience inside, sometimes when you are with those even closest to you who have no perception whatsoever of the inner agony or ecstasy, the depths and heights that you can reach on your quest for God.

"Therefore, beloved, take seriously your path. And take that path with joy. But remember, every day is the last day for someone and the bell does toll for someone. Therefore every day determine that you shall be glued to God, that you shall be in the center of God and that the God in you that descends that day shall be for the casting out of some element of anti-God that must go on that specific day according to cosmic timetables."

"And you must be free from these toxins of ancient times and be willing to see yourself in need
of total reformation. And that reformation is called “conversion,” and it is the turning around of your being and it is the acceleration of the atoms until they throw off so much darkness that you pass through the dark night of the soul and the Dark Night of the Spirit and all seems darkness to you.

"And in that very hour you must remember the word and the teaching of Saint John of the Cross, Saint Teresa of Avila. Yes, beloved, they are come again unto you. And you must hear your ministers and hear the word of your preachers and know that those who have borne the Light in your defense and have championed your cause in past ages do come again and they themselves have moved against all infamy and calumny and gossip against their lifestreams.
And that is a part of the purging of the earth.

"And if the saints do not stand in the earth, beloved, how will the little ones who are the shorn lambs stand in the earth? If the saints do not rise, beloved, into a higher calling, how will any survive 'so great salvation?' We ask it, beloved."

The Violet Flame Does Wash You Clean—
Does Make All Things New

"Why has the world not taken to this path and teaching? I will tell you. It takes patience. It takes hard work. And it is not for those who say, 'Jesus, I have piped your tune now for three or ten years and I have not got what I wanted. And therefore, I am going out to do it my way.'

"Well, do you think, beloved, it is so easy to enter into the kingdom of God, to make your ascension? Do you see people ascending here and there on the hillsides of the world or in the streets of the cities? You do not see them because of the paltry, fragmented religion they are given, because they are not given the flame of the Holy Spirit—the flame of the Holy Spirit that is the sacred fire, the white fire that then releases the violet flame for the ransmutation of the cause, effect, record and memory of sin, layers of sin, centuries of sin of many past embodiments.

"So, beloved, do not be unrealistic about the Path. The Path brings [its] greatest rewards when you come up out of the mud puddle and are covered, and the violet flame does wash you clean. Now begins the hard work of delving deep into the unconscious, delving into the records and calling for that violet flame, even when you are dry as dry can be and it seems as though nothing is coming to you and you do not feel the flame, you do not feel the fire.

"And why is it, beloved? Because God has loved you so much, I have loved you so much that I am allowing a certain portion of your karma to descend. And while it descends upon you, you are in the dark night of the soul and perhaps the Dark Night of the Spirit, being tested by the Cosmic Christ and tested by Satan. And then you say, 'Where is God? Where is God? I cannot see out from this dark place where I am.'"

Footnote:

Dark night of the soul and Dark Night of the Spirit. In the ascent to perfection, the soul passes through what Saint John of the Cross describes as the "dark night." The first dark night is experienced as one encounters the return of his own personal karma-the human creation that almost completely obliterates for a time the light of the Holy Christ Self and the I am Presence. This "dark night of the soul" is in preparation for the Dark Night of the Spirit, which involves the supreme test of Christhood faced by Jesus on the cross when he cried out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ In this initiation, the soul is completely cut off from the I AM Presence and heavenly hierarchy and must pass through the crucifixion and the resurrection, sustained solely by the light garnered in one’s own sacred heart, while holding the balance for planetary karma.