Course IX - Teaching 10: Spiritual Exercises

Through the spiritual exercises of Cafh, the soul is prepared to achieve the technique of asceticism and mystique.
Through these spiritual exercises as a whole and through this technique, physical body, psychological powers and mind forces get used to guide themselves subconsciously and super-consciously toward the proposed end: the Union with God.
Certain spiritual exercises are common to all Sons of Cafh and properly recorded in the Method. From the house of the Son to his way of making his travel, everything follows certain rhythm and mode to get from all the highest performance, and eventually through acts that are not separate but as a whole, they form an indispensable good habit to achieve this technique that shall guide the Son toward his soul within.
In the Tables of the Solitary, this does not involve any more just ordinary acts of life, directed toward certain end and made in certain way according to demands, but is a part of his daily time that has to be devoted to their spiritual exercises.
Spiritual reading, recitation of certain hymns and prayers, and meditation, are a duty that shall turn these exercises, which in the beginning are strange, into indispensable habits for the life of a Solitary Son.
The license that the Son has to request continuously from his Superiors to perform certain acts in his life, and his constant control which he is continuously subject to, strengthen any psychic influence and prepare nerves and the whole psychology of the individual to feel certain usual and fast reactions in order to achieve certain inward mystical effects.
As to the Ordained, these spiritual exercises become a continuous daily trial, since the Ordained Sons are integrally and continuously subject to these exercises.
A very severe stability radius, their secluded apartments and rooms, the total control of their acts, even the most insignificant, and their lack of freedom to express oral opinions or opinions by writing, all of these are spiritual exercises of higher character, which by closing the soul in a circle of fire, mercilessly burn any habit resulting of a previous life and only leave the divine habit of the presence of God, that of surrender to the arms of the Divine Mother, and that of a supreme mystical realization. The spiritual exercises are a shame and tie to worldly men. Every aspirant or most of them shall find these exercises fastidious and useless, but the Son that perseveres on the Road discovers day by day their merit, and recognizes their value and importance, since they are the most valuable tools of spiritual perfection.