The Orienting Force

By John Paul Younes

The Sixth Ray is one-pointed devotion to an ideal. When this emotional energy possesses an individual, it grips him. Strong desires flood through him. Attachments fuse into iron bonds. And the potential for militant, fanatical violence lingers, ever present.

For this individual, the Sixth Ray is a schema: the way in which that individual structures the world. Contemporary clinical psychology regards a schema as determining much of an individual’s affect and behavior. So, for example, if an individual interprets all his experiences by how successfully he adheres to an ideal, his thinking may be dominated by the schema, “If anything opposes the well-being or attainment of my ideal, including any personal desires I may have, they are to be fought and crushed by any means necessary.”

Consequently, his life becomes extreme: he reacts to all situations in terms of adherence to an ideal. This includes situations that may have nothing to do with his dream, vision, or faith. Devotion blinds him. The ideal becomes Truth for the idealist, simply because it is his ideal. And so, if the ideal is lost, the idealist despairs.

Depression is composed of cognitive distortions: altered views of self or reality (Beck, 1979). Clearly, then, a depressed Sixth Ray individual is prey to devotion-based cognitive distortions. In the case of Sixth Ray depression, each distortion is colored by the emotionally idealistic schema, and can be traced back to it.

Cognitive distortions manifest painful affective states and maladaptive behaviors. Of course, this varies from personality to personality, and is dependent upon other potential factors such as heritability, psychosocial functioning, comorbid alcohol or substance abuse, etc. Nevertheless, it is the maladaptive schema that shapes and determines the cognitive distortions and, subsequently, the depression.

Hence, when the Sixth Ray is depressed, its extremism may distort into a cognitive distortion defined by clinical psychology as “absolutistic thinking.” Absolutistic, dichotomous thinking is the tendency to define all experiences in one of two opposite categories (Beck, 1979). For a Sixth Ray, then, absolutistic thinking would split experience into categories such as: angel and devil, genius and fool, joy and hopelessness. Furthermore, the depressed Sixth Ray, like any depressive, would attribute all extreme negative categorizations to himself and all extreme positive categorizations to others.

Absolutistic thinking, when colored by a Sixth Ray schema, would be thoughts like: “She is so alluring, and I am so disgusting,” or, “I am a total failure at anything I attempt, so I should never try anything ever again.” The affect following such thoughts might be feelings of helplessness and anxiety. It follows that the maladaptive behavior might be immobility (e.g., staying in bed all day long).

Of course, there are other forms of cognitive distortions; for example, depressed individuals often engage in what contemporary clinical psychology calls “fortune-telling.” Fortune-telling often reveals negative estimations of the future. For a depressed Sixth Ray, then, fortune-telling would appear as a negative vision of an idealized future, in addition to a negative appraisal of the self as caretaker of that ideal: “I am not dedicated, loyal, or focused enough to ever achieve my goal, so I must be worthless.”

Undoubtedly, Sixth Ray cognitive distortions need correct form: they need order, structure, ritual, and organization. In short, Sixth Ray depression needs to be reinvented by Seventh Ray ceremonial living. One method to accomplish this transition is by scheduling simple activities every day on an hour-by-hour basis. Because they are simple activities, they are easily accomplished. Soon, lived experience contradicts absolutistic thinking. The accomplishment of daily tasks aimed towards the attainment of an ideal provides concrete evidence of the individual’s competence and functioning. Where physical inactivity was associated with an increase in self-debasement before, now organized activity may diminish depressive ruminations and possibly improve moods and self-image.

This method of ceremonial living serves to contradict the cognitive distortion that: “I am a total failure at anything I attempt, so I should never try anything ever again.” This absolutistic thought might now be refined to: “Sometimes I have the power to affect things around me.” At the very least, the individual will begin to sense that he is adequate at performing certain tasks related to his goal or purpose, and he will have a record with which to assess his growing functional capacities. He might also realize which structured activities bring him feelings of pleasure, and use this when planning his next goal. He may find and join forces with other like-minded individuals to form a group. Crystallized hopelessness that surrounds an idealized future may then begin to break, allowing the vision to synthesize, little by little, with the present.

Seventh Ray organization may also be called upon to more directly restructure Sixth Ray distortions. Many Sixth Rays believe that the factor determining their self-worth lies outside them. This is a consequence of attaching self-worth to an ideal or its accomplishment. The happiness of a Sixth Ray becomes contingent on external factors—for example, whether or not others desire or approve of him. As a result, he believes that a sense of self-acceptance and self-worth can only be achieved indirectly—through some outside ideal or through others.

The Seventh Ray would set order to these thoughts. The depressed Sixth Ray believes, “Anyone would despair if they failed to win their dream!” The Seventh Ray builder of new thought-forms would reply, “No one would feel failure unless he is asking that dream to hold him up.” Dependence on the conquest of an ideal is a form of trying to accept oneself through the attainment of something outside. “If I achieve that ideal, I’m worthy, but if I don’t, I’m worthless.” When someone truly accepts himself, he will not be depressed if he does not achieve something extrinsic. Instead, there are a number of other ways to respond to such a situation: 1) Perhaps I need to refine what it is that I dream, 2) I might not have thought about another path to take to the ideal, 3) I accept and love myself no matter what happens.

The Seventh Ray is thus “The Orienting Force.”

1. Cognitive Therapy of Depression, Aaron T. Beck. 1979.