Course III - Teaching 11: Idealization during Meditation

The idealization of the ego produces a kind of inner splitting and is sometimes expressed by the exercises of the Sons.
The real need of the soul is not something that you choose arbitrarily, but what irresistibly arises within.
You may observe in exercises of meditation how easily one creates a fictitious spiritual personality. In the beginning all is eagerness to die in the surrender, to confess imperfection, and to aim at virtue and Renunciation. But when the time deemed sufficient to attain a spiritual standing is over, there is a subconscious defense against an apparent stagnation revealed by a false standing.
Now while looking at your own soul you do not see it such as it is, and you go on with a fictitious image of yourself. The true inner gist is again taken to deeper layers, so that later you need another spiritual birth to take a step forward.
When the exercise of meditation expresses the true need of the soul, usually it is very rich in sensible states and produces great emotional swifts. But this is impossible with the routine of the exercise, since once the inner critical points are exposed, not only it is not recommendable but also it is impossible to fall again sensibly and continuously on them. Then one has to practice a true technique of meditation.
While the souls remain in purgative stages they cannot achieve an impersonal technique in their meditation. Even though they attain the perfect technique in developing the exercise, they do not master the very exercise as technique because still they do not attain impersonality in the exercise.
In purgative stages, spiritual life is a movement between pairs of opposites; transposition of affections, sublimation of passions and especially an eagerness to measure the progress according to sensible evidences.
Bad trends become some sort of personal enemies, and virtues also become personal goods to attain.
The soul is too much embedded in his own development and its concern it too much its own concern so as to have a sufficiently objective vision of itself and its states. Its efforts, more than a technique, are sensible swifts around itself and every sensible swift around oneself creates an ideal personal image that is a true obstacle to the inner liberation. Usually this ideal image becomes so strong that forms the personality through which an individual being is known and expressed. This ideal image must quickly disintegrate, and you achieve this by great inner sincerity and deep humility, which is the only mean to attain deep self-knowledge.