Before talking about the Seven Rays and you, the rainbow of individuality that they create, let’s put one more thing in place. People are comprised of five parts: the physical body, emotional body, mental body or mind, the personality or ego, and the soul.

Seemingly, then, a human being is quite complex. Yet, knowing this five-fold model (physical, emotional, mental, personality, soul) gives one an illumining tool for understanding oneself and anyone else. We can begin to observe our parts in action and see how each part naturally functions. The way for one person’s mind to express is natural for him. His daughter’s mind might work differently from him or her sister’s. Visuals might be an important tool for one person’s comprehension, another might need methodical explanation, yet another understands the gist right away and is bored with the rest of the explanation. People’s parts work differently. And ease usually happens when there is common functioning, such as two minds that process data similarly or two sets of emotions that feel things in a similar way.

Each of these traits or qualities are expressions of the Rays. So we will find that a mental body conditioned by a certain ray energy functions in a methodical linear fashion, while a mental body qualified by another ray is tangential and hamstrung by linearity. As a result, observing our natural tendencies can be quite revealing. All too often we just move with those tendencies and live the unconscious consequences. However, using the discovery process of the Seven Rays and Esoteric Psychology can not only be revealing but rewarding and empowering.

The Seven Rays are:

1. Will and Power
2. Love/Wisdom
3. Creative Active Intelligence
4. Harmony through Conflict
5. Concrete Knowledge and Science
6. Idealism and Devotion
7. Order, Organization, and Magic

Having learned the Rays, we often blame them for our faults or personal tendencies. One might say, “I can’t help being direct (therefore rude) because I have a 1^st ray personality.” Another person might rationalize her tangential long windedness as the by-product of a 3^rd ray mind. And one more person might know that his tendency for pleasing compromises his sense of right or wrong, yet that is his 2^nd ray at work.

How would each of us be if we fully lived the rays that are seeking expression? A hawk does not think about being a sparrow or a rabbit; it fully lives its hawk-ness. What if we understood that the Creator gave us these particular ray qualities in their specific combination so that we would express them?

• The First Ray would move directly and help others find their inner directedness. This would lead to freedom (not license) in all regards.
• The Second Ray would love unconditionally, without attachment, agenda, personal need, or gain. This would illumine the same (attachments, agendas, personalization) and we would release ourselves from them.
• The Third Ray would articulate in word or inventive action the seeming complexities of all that is known, and translate them into formulations of Truth.
• The Fourth Ray would relate to all as unique and independent; yet do so understanding the underlying dependence of one and ALL.
• The Fifth Ray would reveal the deepest mysteries of Life through exploration and discovery. The single piece of data would reveal the mystery of ONE.
• The Sixth Ray’s buoyant manner would uplift. Undaunted by difficulty, devotion having become conviction, the Sixth Ray would inspire a new vision and lead us toward it.
• The Seventh Ray would magically transform, redesign, or bring divine order to any situation. Habit would be seen as stagnation; and routine nothing more than repetition. Alchemy would be known as the moment by moment dynamic interplay of Life itself.

Each person is a rainbow or tapestry of Rays. Our uniqueness, then, is our divine mandate: to express fully our energetic Self-expression, not primarily our faults and failings. To be all that one can be is to live our Rays in the purest ways that one can. It is to stretch into how the Creator uses the Seven Rays to create the perfect beauty of everything.

• on-location talk and visual presentation, The Seven Rays of Life, at the Theosophical Society in Arlington, MA on Friday, February 24 at 7 p.m. ET. It is open to the public.
• on-location experiential weekend workshop at Harmony Center, Medfield, MA on April 21/22, Discover the Seven Rays
• Hope to see some of you at both!