Course XIII - Teaching 3: The Divine Goal

Discipline, method of life and practice of prayer exercises are quite important to the Son. It is indispensable to count on elements defined and properly known, which may become efficient outer asceticism and inner asceticism.
But this alone is insufficient to souls; souls demand something more. They aim at reaching plenitude achieved by close contact with the Divine Mother. This plenitude cannot be easily achieved. Many Sons find that a clear discernment about their vocation is their main obstacle.
Man is prisoner of multiple desires, and a changing will is not the fittest one to achieve perfection. Certain Sons understand what Renunciation is, but at the same time fear it. In this opposite passions there is a germ of dissatisfaction and lack of realization. Even though perhaps they are unable to define exactly what their vocational Renunciation demands, they know that, in order to realize it, must be free of everything that so far became both good and food for the illusion of living as well.
It is all right for Sons to know, be conscious, and realize that vocation is Renunciation; and that if vocation has not been achieved, it is by lack of courage, or by fear, but not by lack of chances. One should not feed illusions.
Renunciation is only one. But it has to adjust itself to environment, time and specific needs of the souls.
The Son wants to renounce, but at the same time knows and does not know how to do so. He does not know, because Renunciation itself is something impossible to learn, understand and possess. One is Renunciation; and if one is not Renunciation, Renunciation always is something unattainable and apparently moving away from us as we come closer.
If Renunciation is an entirely Divine state, one can possess it gradually by substantial and defined human means.
Inner peace cannot be attained after overcoming every obstacle, but it is the fruit of having used our whole being, without reserve, continuously, in order to achieve perfection. Peace cannot exist while there are multiple desires and opposite thoughts.
Because in the world inner life is almost unknown, actions are much important for us, but thoughts, fantasies and illusions of the mind and heart remain free and wild. Renunciation efforts should be absorbed by the whole being, not only by a part of it. So we must know the power of our temperament, habits, natural trends and ascetic exercises of the spiritual method. But these exercises can be effective if and when one has a clear idea about successive goals to reach, and also about the only and permanent goal presiding the whole spiritual life in the Son. If Renunciation were a positive goal with certain realization, there would not be any difficulty. What the souls want is also to have both substantial goal and substantial means as well to achieve that goal.
Renunciation is not an ideal goal but a real, but because it is integral, goes beyond definable limits of objective means and ends. It is as if one remained with nothing when we try to grab something else.
Renunciation can bring confusion because is limitless. If Renunciation is to forsake everything and possess nothing, it can lead easily to deny everything and do nothing. So we should be quite careful when we preach and explain it, and over all, we should have very clear concepts.
One travels through the road by stages, and each stage marks a quite defined goal to reach. It is relative goal –which should be transcended by renouncing not only to its possession and also to goods coming from it–but this fact does not deny its immediate goal. It is only a mean, but an indispensable mean to realization.
The case if that if relative goals are substantial, Renunciation, the final good is not so. Souls use to measure everything in terms of efforts and results and are somewhat disoriented when cannot to fix its course within certain line knows and gifted with visible progresses, so usually they lose courage and stop their efforts. Renunciation does not offer immediate and brilliant goods to satisfy their eagerness for possession, and even does not permit them the illusion of a possessive good, or even the illusion of a spiritual good.
The Renunciation Road, even though this Road is for all, can be traveled through only by those who are able to sustain it with the ideal force of supernatural vocation of divine love and actual yearning for liberty.
Few courageous souls know how to persist without any human and ideal support and without the incentive of imagination and future. Their forces scatter continuously and they never acquire the divine power to dissolve those forces as a compound, in order to leave them as simple presence of the soul in the Divine Mother.
Of course, Renunciation is a goal for the souls, but since it is a divine goal, it is a non-goal for human understanding. It is reversibility; divine state is a human non-state; divine wisdom is non-knowing; divine conquest is human loss. Freedom seems to be bondage, and defeat by time seems to be submission to inexorable routine.