May 18th 1970
Outside the temple, in the noisome world, who come near to the sacred portal. And because they are a member of your very own family, for all human souls are children of the one Father.
And they come, as it were, with their troubles, trials, and tribulations, and because some of these little children have never experienced the peace of the inner temple, they know not of its value. They know not of its worth. And although you are at peace therein, you must needs come and open the door when the other comes and knocks. And although you try to help on the one hand and keep the inner peace with the other, oftimes, because of the inevitable pull of the world, you step forth. And this happens when you allow, as we all do, the depressions, and the ignorance and the fear emanating from the minds of these little ones who enter into your own psychic aura, and you feel the pain, and you carry the burden, and for a while you walk, as it were, out in the market place of the world, leaving the little temple behind you. And you listen to the cries and the sounds of the world, and for a time there is a heaviness upon your heart and mind. And then again you will be in the temple, in this place of peace, and the pains and the tribulations of the ageing body will draw you therefrom, because these things have to be contended with. And we understand, and we know.
But before the river meets the sea, as it begins to feel the pull of the mighty ocean, to which it has been wending its way through countless ages, there is always a turbulence, a stirring up. And this is what is happening at this same time. The Spirit knows it is soon to join the great, the whole, the one, the ocean of love itself. And the body is getting older and more difficult to cope with, and the brain cannot think as quickly as in the old days, and things are generally, inevitably, stirred up, more turbulent, more difficult.
But all this is just a sign, all this leads to the casting off, the being separated, the not knowing, all this leads to the joining up, the blending in, the perfect union, the meeting of Spirit with Spirit, the saying good bye to the flesh, and it will all seem as an evening gone, just a memory. But we are grateful, Though and we rejoice because even upon the journey upon the Earth plane, the turbulence, oftimes chaotic, oftimes dark journey of life upon the Earth, you have been able to find the temple not made with hands, and for a little while you have sat in the silence feeling the power and the love of God surging through your being, knowing with absolute confidence that love is real, is alive, is working for you and through you into all the world. And you have searched for the temple. Mary, and all these lonely ones, they too have their private place, their sacred abode...…
This transcript returns to an inward temple already implicit in earlier images of stillness and sanctuary throughout this collection, but names directly the real cost of keeping its door open — knocked on constantly by "troubles, trials, and tribulations" from others who have never found such a peace themselves, and known, therefore, "not of its value." The choice to answer that knocking isn't presented as failure of practice; it's the necessary, ongoing cost of loving people who are themselves still outside.
Its honest admission is that the temple's peace and the world's demands genuinely compete, and the pull outward wins sometimes: absorbing others' fear and depression, carrying real weight for a while "out in the market place," leaving the inner stillness temporarily behind. This isn't treated as spiritual failure so much as the ordinary rhythm of a life that must move between the two — the same tension named plainly in "Spiritual Dryness" a few transcripts back, here given its gentlest and most compassionate framing yet.
Its central image is a river nearing the sea — turbulence increasing, not decreasing, the closer the water comes to the ocean it's been travelling toward all along. Old age, the failing body, the slowing mind, are read through this image as exactly this kind of turbulence: not decline for its own sake, but the visible sign of an approaching, larger joining, "the meeting of Spirit with Spirit." What's promised on the other side isn't loss of what came before but its collapse into simple memory, "as an evening gone" — the whole difficult crossing rendered, once complete, almost weightless in retrospect.