Joy and Strength: Two Qualities Defining the New Group of World Servers
On Strength – Triangles, December 11, 2023
Judit Hegedus
When asked to speak on this topic, I started to think about the different angles of how we can approach the subject, aided by the full title for today’s webinar. My own definition of strength has evolved over time when I started to approach it from a more spiritual perspective. I would like to describe this in the next few minutes and offer a few examples of what strength in the spiritual sense might be, and how we can attain it on a sustainable basis.
The personality-based interpretations of strength can be easily visualized: there is physical strength, emotional strength or endurance, and mental strength or perseverance. Nowadays it is trendy to talk about grit, which can be understood as another form of strength, I think mostly in the mental sense. However with these forms the sources of strength are the forces of the personality, not the energies of the Soul. We have a physical goal, like hiking up a mountain, or we desire a promotion at work and go for it; we make plans and stick to them, overcoming hurdles and managing difficulties to implement our plans in our physical world. At some point though, and this could be many lifetimes for an individual, strength dissipates. The personality, relying on its forces alone, cannot be strong any longer. It’s like we are running on a battery that is all of a sudden empty – there was only a certain amount of battery life and it is now gone. Only by connecting to the Soul can we plug in our personality to the source that will enable real and sustainable strength. This source no longer has a pre-determined number of battery life hours. It is however important to note two things:
- Much can be accomplished with the strength gained from the personality this way while the forces last
- The forces of materialism work with this personality-based strength, and they too can accomplish a lot but never on a sustainable basis
The basis of sustainable strength is the identification with the Soul, not with the personality. Those of us on the spiritual path can count on regular daily meditation, a constant state of highest aspiration for the emotional body, and a life focused on service for and with others as helping tools. These tools keep us plugged to the source.
Strength is spiritual grit and perseverance. It means the ability to carry on according to the Soul’s wishes, regardless of outcomes and circumstances. A useful approach here could be “to remain invested in the process, not the outcome”. Often when we think we follow the Soul, we still have a certain outcome in mind that we would like to achieve. There could be karmic reasons for the outcome. We just don’t have all the information at all times about situations and challenges that arise in our daily lives. The only thing we know for certain is that the best way to manage always is to:
- Implement Soul qualities like love, compassion, wisdom, sharing
- Follow our intuition for decision-making
Strength is the ability to focus on the Real vs. the Unreal. The strength comes from the Soul but is implemented by the integrated personality in the physical world. Strength enables harmlessness and divine indifference since these two are based on right priorities, which are those compatible with the Soul. The rest is there – the Unreal – and it doesn’t bother us that it is there but it is not the focal point of our lives, and it isn’t the main driver of our actions.
Strength is right motivation. It is worth checking our motivation before acting every time – when we don’t take the time, it is easy to get carried away by the calculations of the concrete mind, which could often mean acting out of a point of selfishness. (and we don’t even notice it….) Also, strength is not to be confused with assertiveness, which is a personality trait. Not having time is a particular danger today as the speed of everything is so much greater, and there is so much information overload everywhere, it is often hard to take the time to focus on the Soul amid daily decision making, even for a few minutes. It is interesting to note, and somewhat sinister, that exactly this speeding up causes us to react fast in situations, and this gets us away from the source of Soul energies. This in turn makes us spiritually weaker, and spiritual weakness eventually will manifest itself in physical plane weakness. There is a growing realization of this in the world today, however, and even those not yet conscious of the existence of the Soul demand a slowing down sometimes. Some corporate meetings at Google, for example, start with a moment of silence now; the spread of “mindfulness” can also be interpreted as an attempt to get closer to the Soul and draw strength from it. Humanity is getting to the realization that living with a “forever” source of energy is so much better than with finite battery life. Strength is the will of the Soul.
Strength means knowledge, and the confidence of knowing. It means never losing sight of the Hierarchical Plan; Humanity’s role in it, and our personal responsibility in it, as much as we can grasp it. I would like to emphasize group-consciousness as well: it is through group work that we multiply our individual strength.
I keep coming back to the point that we need to choose the Soul over the personality at all times, over and over again, as a point of mental identification, but also as a practical point of action. But when are we really fully in alignment with the Soul? I would like to offer the following quote that might be helpful: “Sacrifice is really complete conformity to the Will of God” (AAB, Rays and Initiations, Vol5., page 249). When the little Will is merged with the Will of God, we are free and strong.