Course XIII - Teaching 15: Difficulties in Persevering Meditation

Despite recommendations of their Spiritual Directors, certain Sons are not constant in their practical exercises of meditation. Laying aside indolence, which is a common cause of this carelessness, there are other motives leading to abandon the exercise.
In the beginning, Sons count on an inner power non-transmuted, and they lose it because of uncontrolled passions. But always a rest of power remains and manifests itself as nervous energy, which wears away mind and body and exhausts the nervous system. It is expressed by a usual excitation, so usual that seems to be normal.
In meditation, this excitation is the first obstacle to overcome. Sometimes meditation is a colored expression of this state, and on other occasions this power is sufficiently powerful to break a habit, since it is necessary to spend it through physical and material discharge.
Meditation reinforces the power by subliming it, and sometimes this becomes almost intolerable to a nervous system used to the pseudo-alleviation of a continuous expense. It is as if one had pins in the body or mind. The mind is not calmed down and concentration seems almost impossible. One starts thinking we are wasting time, and as justification, we qualify all inner prayer and ascetic practices as ineffective; one denies what we cannot achieve or is beyond a comprehension weakened by inner unbalance and lack of mental control. Then one tries to escape by means of a direct action, by spending violently an energy lost in the void of a sterile work. Few souls have clear and free discernment; generally, chemical-physiological causes determine changes of ideals.
Sometimes one abandons the exercise of meditation when a considerable part of the mystical path has been traveled, at the point of quiet prayer or because of spiritual dryness.
Never stop practicing the exercise of meditation, because it is the only efficient support on which you count when sensible illusions fall away. And when one abandons it, it is more difficult to return to it, much more than our efforts to create first the habit.