(vol. 2, #15, published by The White Lodge, copyright 1980) "Divine love always has met and always will meet every human need, but we must be the instruments of the fulfilling of that need. If we can pass the initiations of love under the Buddha, we can master the world and all that is in it. But love is not an easy path, and the way of love is often the most painful way, the way of the crucifixion. However, John the Beloved has told us, 'Without the crucifixion there can be no resurrection, no ascension.' What is love? There is much misunderstanding abroad today and many perversions of the flame of love. So many people ask, 'How can I really learn to love?' Lord Chamuel, Archangel of the Love Ray, answers: 'The nature of love, beloved ones, it seems is misunderstood by many upon earth. Love of the finite self is not divine love unless the divine will be joyously embraced. To adore cosmic purpose is to love. To adore human purpose, when that purpose is set apart from the divine, is to presuppose that the will of man and the mastery of man exceeds the will and mastery of God. The higher order is always the best able, by the expanse of its vision and purpose, to see just what is best for child-man. The planet Earth in its present warlike state is still far from manifesting the ecstacy of the divine will and divine love. Wedded still to the sluggish ideas that conform to barbarism, men seldom express the beautiful purposes which the science of this age could well herald. 'Let men cognize that it is in the strata of human thought and feeling that the battle for divine reality must be waged and won. The schoolrooms of earth are intended to be places of divine harmony, but it is necessary that the children of God upon earth should understand that they have a very real responsibility to endure all things on behalf of the light and to overcome. Men must show forth the victorious sense of a valiant love. It is not enough to submit to the world order and its patterns. Where necessary, the disciple must break those patterns and make men aware, by a forthrightness of attitude without hatred or despair, that their course of action is contrary to harmony and pure reason.' The flame of love is so powerful and yet so delicate, so charged with the creative fires of the Godhead, that it is the flame most needed and yet most compromised on Terra. Love, only love, is the key to the healing of mankind, to the delivery of the teachings, to the manifestation of the masters. Love is the creative energy whereby the masters will become physical and tangible. Love is the energy whereby you will ascend. Love is what you need in order to have the sense of responsibility to balance that karma when it is very distateful to do so--to perform that duty when you'd rather do something else. Actually, the whole teaching of the ascended masters pivots on the point of love and cannot manifest and cannot be transferred into this plane unless we have love. The ascended masters are the ones who best exemplify this concept to us. They are ones who have lived on earth as we have, who have had to face the same difficult trials of daily life as we do, have striven against the demands and density of a physical body, the necessity of having to make a living and all the many problems with which we are struggling today. However, they know that there is a way out because they have been able to master time and space, have accelerated their consciousness and reunited with the God flame. They are now free from the round of rebirth and do not continue to reincarnate in a flesh and blood form--hence the term ascended masters. You may well ask, 'Then why should they come back and bother with us?' Well, this is the meaning of love. It is the meaning of the great masters who have come to earth. It is that, in overcoming, they cannot bear to simply leave their brothers and sisters without an understanding of the Path. So the ascended masters are the benevolent ones, the compassionate ones, who remain hovering with this sphere, this planetary home, to show us the way out. At all costs, then, you also must make the sacrifice to master love, and the important reason is that there are many millions following after you in the chain of hierarchy who will not make it unless you do. It is as though you were one of a team of mountain climbers scaling the peaks in the Himalayas, all tied together by one rope. If your foot falters on the path, the rope slackens and those behind you may fall to their death on the rocks below. If you can't master love, it's hopeless that the rest of mankind will master it because it's too slippery, its perversions are too deceptive, and they just don't know how to meet the tests without the teaching. That's the mission that must keep singing in your heart, burning in your heart--through pain, through travail, through the storm, through the night, through the terror, through whatever comes your way--you have to win this test because millions are going to ride on the mantle of your attainment; and they will not make it without you. That's love in itself--that understanding is the supreme selflessness. And you will never again fall prey to the lie, 'Well, it doesn't matter if I fail this test. It's only me that is concerned.' It is never only you! There are many facets to the flame of love as well as many perversions of this quality of God. There is selfless love--the way of the saints and martyrs, of those who truly take joy in the giving of themselves to others. There is the love that is given in marriage--the love of husband and wife as well as the love of father and mother for their children as they outpicture the divine family of the Aquarian age. True love can be expressed by teachers as they try to guide these little ones in the path of divine illumination and also by those who teach men the truths of God as explained by the Christ and the Buddha through the teachings of the ascended masters. There must also be a true love of Self--a feeling of Self-worth, a knowledge that we are really sons and daughters of God, not miserable sinners groveling at the feet of a God whom we fear to approach. Too often we fall prey to the projections of the fallen ones that we are unworthy and that there is no use to try because we will fail anyway. It is too easy to accept their death wish or their will-to-fail consciousness which usually results in self-condemnation. Charity, the divine twin flame of Archangel Chamuel, says: 'I AM Charity, and Charity does begin at home. It begins when you first listen to the voice of God and realize that he is within your very own soul. It begins when you realize that his voice does not command so much as it implores you to receive the gift, the best gift that life could possibly give. Charity begins when you understand that the way to receive this gift is to express it everywhere to each man, each woman, and each child whom you meet and to each thought that comes to you--even the tempting thoughts from the Tempter that would pervert the law of the Lord thy God and tell you that you should live by bread alone. 'Men have applied themselves to religious studies for years; they have prayed unto God either as a remote possibility or as a remote reality, without ever understanding the nearness of the Deity to themselves. They have not seen that as they begin to express him in a minor way, he can and ultimately shall fill them, flood them, seal them, and complete them in the perfection of his plan. 'It is not enough that Charity be in the universe or in the world. It must also be in you. Christ must be formed in you, the Divine Image must be traced there by the hand of God. Invite him, then. Call him forth, even in the moments of temptation and trial. In the moments of struggle, surrender yourself to him. So shall he surrender himself to you. 'Out of this pact of cosmic Charity, the fullness of the man of God appears--an Elijah, a John the Baptist, a Christ, a Buddha, a soul swimming in a sea of light that understands that the whole vast globe of light, all of nature, all of the heart and the field of consciousness belongs to him as unto God. 'God surrenders to you the universe as you surrender to him the minutest part of yourself, for you are indeed a son of God. As the centurion of old beholding Christ upon the cross said, 'Truly this man was the Son of God,' so as you accept this truth and as you draw nigh to this love, God will draw nigh to you. 'We are watching with the all-seeing eye of cosmic charity as each one of you, with new determination, sets sail for the cosmic haven of surrender, of fulfillment, of purpose in action as God within you unites with God within all.' There is one very important action of love that unfortunately is seldom understood by mankind. This is the action of the chastening. Several ascended masters have given us instruction on this aspect of the love flame. It's hard to train ourselves to think that any adversity that could be brought to people could be an action of God's love. And most people just don't accept it. They just cannot equate love with human suffering. It's just like the unwise parent who fails to discipline the child because he wants to keep the child happy. He doesn't have the foresight to see that a temporary suffering through discipline is going to ultimately manifest in the highest expression of the child's creativity. The parent who understands that is expressing true love. And obviously God is the true parent and he anticipates that, through suffering, people can bring out the highest that is in their nature. Archangel/Archeia Chamuel and Charity have asked the question: 'Will you receive the chastisement of the Law even as you receive the tenderness of the Mother's caress? Some would take the gentle touch, but they are nowhere to be found when the lightning of the love comes forth to strip from them that pride of person which will not allow the Father/Mother God to be represented in life. If you invoke love, then stand willing and ready to receive the two-edged sword of love. 'Poets have spoken of the pain of love. The pain of love is the chastisement. It is an energy of absolute adoration whereby the fire of God, adoring the soul in the state of becoming whole, sends forth a presence and a light that is the rebuke to all energies that have gone out of the way. And instantaneously they are called back into alignment, and this is the sharpness of the blade of the sword. It is the rushing and the movement of your very own energies which now must give way to the greater light of love. 'Only the love of God can release the chastisement; therefore only those who are loved are chastised. The fear, then, is not of love but the fear is to be neglected, to be cast aside, to be unwanted because one does not feel the firm hand of the Creator nudging, nudging the soul back to the center of the Path.' Mighty Cosmos gave us a dictation on July 4, 1975, at Mt. Shasta in which he said: 'On this anniversary of the birth of a nation, I have been assigned by God to give the chastisement of love. This is the Fourth of July spanking I give to America--you are not ready for cosmic light. Therefore, grow up! Look up! And take your immortal destiny!...I AM Cosmos! Anytime, anywhere you feel the need of a spanking, just call me and call my secret rays, and I will come. And you will see how the Lord loves those whom he chastises. For those who have not the chastisement are not worthy of the attention of the Eye of God. They are outside the circumference of their own self-awareness. Consider yourself privileged, then, that the hand of Alpha and Omega has sent me to bear witness unto the truth this day!' Serapis Bey, Chohan of the fourth ray of Purity and the Ascension, explains the same concept to us through his momentum of the ascension flame. He says, 'Hearts afire with truth, if you would be truth, if you would convey truth, if you would convey the flow of light, of healing from the Presence as above, so below--remember that the tree must be pruned and that the chastening of the law is the action of God's love. You ought to look with utter compassion upon those parts of life who have none to chasten them, who are allowed to roam the world free and in rebellion and to perform all manner of atrocities against the Divine Image. These indeed are to be pitied. For does not anyone love them enough to chasten them? 'I say to you, if you are chastened, know that you are loved. And if you would be free of the chastening, then I say, be free of the chastening as well as of the love, for the two go hand in hand. And when you feel the absence of the discipline of the law, I say it is time to feel the air and say, "Where did love go? Out the window, I know." And so you can't have one without the other. And if you would be love to mankind, I say, be love in the fullness of purity and know that I AM the glow of that fire.'