Course VII - Teaching 10: Grades of Fidelity

A usual definition of fidelity is loyalty, observance of our mutual faith; also it is explained as punctuality and accurateness to achieve a thing.
At the same time, loyalty also means fulfillment of legal demands of fidelity and honor.
From the sense of the words fidelity and loyalty, their general and special meaning and implications in spiritual life emerge with clarity.
At least, one needs an object (let us call it so) to be faithful in order to practice fidelity.
This object, which can be even merely ideal, should have a tangible and concrete manifestation that could be named law, which restricts the reach of the object.
The observance of this law and its accurate fulfillment are in the end a concrete form of fidelity humanly practiced.
In short, we can say fidelity is an attitude within the reach of the present man that is tied by reason and subject to it in order to surrender, stick and even assimilate entirely transcendent concepts and experiences.
Fidelity is a feeling and an intimate attitude of the soul, and you do not obtain it through a simple volitional act; it develops and flourishes on successive chain stages, which one must go across in order to achieve personal fullness.
The first stage deals with an intimate and total acceptance of the demanding object or principle. So, first of all, you need a perfect submission. If you do not achieve it, then always focuses of resistance, rebelliousness and opposition will remain, which would tarnish the surrender of the soul by impeding its liberation.
So, spiritual submission is to break the personal will, for it is surrender to the divine object, submission to a superior, that is to say, the tangible and human object, and obedience and submission to the Regulation, that is, the divine law given to the Son.
It will be impossible to be free of human laws and of their implications if this requirement is broken.
But what occurs to him who achieves it? For him human laws will lose any value and meaning and his life will be ruled just by one law and divine will.
The soul enters a new stage where depends upon experiences and deeds as a whole and upon something else that is different from what commonly restrains men.
His practical spiritual fidelity leads him to a new dependence that is different and divine.
Now he does hear the words of men. His senses aim totally at the injunction of the divine voice that he follows with fidelity.
This loyal and constant practice is adjusting the soul to the divine law, and finally this soul vibrates only in unison with it.
So, the soul experiences the full divine manifestation and attains limits within the reach of men.
When the soul attains these states, and through the act of perfect love, the Son can be like that divinity whom initially he promised fidelity, picking the fruit of virtue practiced and offering perfected.
There is no dissolution in the absolute and eternal principle but certainly it is possible to achieve humanly the experience of eternity and cosmic similarity.
Finally, one should understand this: these grades of fidelity lead the soul to its most glorious realization even in the most human acts of living; it is there where the Son must start practicing them by being strictly subject to the letter, a human expression and mould of the Regulation, without which it will be impossible to perceive its transcendent spiritual sense.