Derived from A Geography of Consciousness by William Arkle (1974) - Chapter Six "Problems" pages 108-114
1. The difficulties of improving and increasing our level of consciousness are so many and so great that we cannot achieve this alone.
2. Therefore help and guidance are necessary; and will always be made available.
3. But we must use our own initiative if evolution of consciousness is to occur - because the process depends upon building our true-self (our soul) through experience.
4. When we express the strong resolution and desire to understand and enter-into the deeper meanings of life - then some agency will put us into touch with a suitable group to assist the process.
(By agency is meant a supernatural personal purposive entity - such as an angelic being or the Holy Ghost.)
5. Making contact with a suitable group may be regarded as destiny, or just random luck - but that doesn't matter either way.
6. Then we come to see the beginnings of the next step.
7. We must take the next step ourselves from our innermost and most-fundamental being; because what we are building is our own directive ability.
8. When we have taken that step, help will be given as needed - this may appear as serendipity, personal miracles, lucky breaks...
9. As a rule, active external help is restricted to situations for which we are not fully responsible, where we cannot cope or understand, or are unprepared or incapable.
10. External help therefore reinforces the primary goal - reinforces our will - it does not take over from it.
11. When we are on the path towards self-knowledge and higher consciousness, we will never be truly alone nor without supervision.
But supervision may allow us to 'burn our fingers', if this is a lesson we need to learn and this is the only or best way of learning it. For example, pride often needs painful experiences to expose and tame it.
12. As progress is made, our true-self and our short-comings, errors, and lapses become more obvious to us. Our self-evaluations become more accurate. For instance, the personality - often, mistakenly, prized and developed - is shown to be merely a means to an end.
