I tell you a little secret: It was because he was unattractive that I chose him. No one had ever loved him enough, and so he needed help more than others. Those who are loved are already helped by that love. As the Beautiful Being says, “Do you get my meaning, daughter of earth?” Just now I live to serve mankind through the horrors of this war. Serve also by loving those who least attract your love. So shall you learn the way to the Path where walk the Masters of Compassion. _April 14._ LETTER XXII PEACE PROPAGANDA WERE you shocked and grieved by what I told you of the futile struggle in that intermediate world between the bondage of dense matter and the freedom of purer regions? It is nothing to grieve about; it is nothing but the necessary transition stage. It lasts but a little while, a few days, a few years--what matter, in the endless leisure of eternity? You yourself have passed through it many times. All pass through it in going out to a freer life, though all do not suffer it consciously and lingeringly as my friend did. It is a nightmare, yes; but no nightmare lasts forever. Think of the joy and the freedom beyond! They are worth the boatman’s penny. It is true that I have not told you the most terrible things that are possible in this transition, have not told you the most terrible things that I have seen in my journeys round the battlefields. Those unwritten chapters are not necessary for the book which I dictate to teach brotherhood in place of separation, peace in place of war. Would you know how you may do something to shorten this war, to hasten the coming of peace? Then listen! You can personally hasten the coming of peace! Is the idea startling? When I say “you,” I mean others, too, all those who are weary of war, and of hate, the mother of war. Has anyone injured you in the struggle of life?--for life is a kind of war. Go out in thought to those whose desires have clashed with your desires, those who have hurt you or hated you. Go to them one by one--not several at a time in this exercise, and one by one try to understand them. See yourself with their eyes, feel toward yourself with their hearts. If they still hate you, you may hate yourself at first in sympathy with them. But remaining there in sympathy with them, you will gradually feel their hard thoughts of you change, gradually begin to be friends with yourself through them. This I am advising you to do is not a form of “black magic,” because the object is unselfish. You are making a beginning toward softening the enmities of the world. But I warn you against using this practice to win the regard of anyone whom you love selfishly or with passion, because the reaction would bring about a very undesirable condition of disharmony.