Course XIV - Teaching 9: Methodized Meditations

This method will be particularly useful for beginners when they enter the way of Meditation, and will facilitate extraordinarily this exercise.
First Meditation.
Subject: The Black Lady.
Effects: Abhorrence.
The practice of this Meditation leads the soul to consider its wrongs and faults, and to abhor them; every perverse act committed by the practitioner becomes a living picture that causes him to suffer and purge his evils. So, if the effect has to be more tangible, you should meditate by remembering certain events, moments and places. Also it is very useful to consider those diseases, financial troubles, humiliations and disappointments suffered as the result of past vices. A Meditation of this kind is generally practiced for one or two weeks.
Louise La Valliere, favorite of Louis XIV of France, replaced in the royal favor by Madame Montespan, retired into the convent of Barefooted Carmelites in Paris, and there she spent the rest of her lifetime, which ended in 1710, in penitence and prayer. She was very old and in her view she believed that her past was forgotten for ever, but one day, crossing the yard of the convent, she saw how a young novice, reclined on the fountain, was drinking water with the hollow of the hand. By this picture Louise recalled like suddenly her former youth and beauty when she would drink water from the fountains, in the park of Versailles, from the hollow of the loving prince’s hand. This image and those events and places that she considered forgotten for ever brought to the old Carmelite a new and living abhorrence of her past life. Terrified, hidden in her cell, she died three days later, refusing all the time to drink just a sip of water as a new atonement of this revived past.
Second Meditation.
Subject: The Abyss.
Effects: Desolation.
A repented soul loses its old personality so much attached to human vanities; then her adored material idol falls to its feet torn to pieces. Sadness, affliction, desolation and the time wasted in vain make her feel alone, very alone and like a strange soul in contact with old habits and costumes, and this desolation moves it further and further away from the old things. This exercise should be practiced on a dark and isolated room, without pleasant things on sight. Also, strolls, talks and entertainment should be avoided during this time.
In spite of being a friar and priest, Luther was not fully sure of being on the path to eternal salvation. An infinite sadness pervaded his soul in hours of prayer, his physical forces were quickly lesser and lesser, he disappeared more and more and finally even did not went out of his cell. But in that desolating loneliness, he undid his old personality that trusted more in dogmas and ceremonies than in true devotion. He understood that just a repented and desolated heart, which knows how to look at the heaven from the abyss of life and to trust in God, was able to come gradually close to Him.
Third Meditation.
Subject: The two Ways.
Effects: Detachment.
Now the practitioner finds pleasure in devoting his senses to spiritual things while he moves his senses away from material things. He is like a wayfarer who is tired and from a distance looks at the goal that he wants to reach and, as he comes near, becomes more and more detached from memories and habits to which he was so much tied. In this exercise you should take considerable time, one month or two. During it, the practitioner has to do long lonely strolls, to read exemplary biographies and to visit temples and holy places.
Mejnour refused to talk to Glyndon about his initiation desires; in the beginning, since the arrival of the Englishman to the lonely castle among mountains, the initiate wanted gradually to habituate the disciple to loneliness and to be detached from his past and his habits. He just permitted the company of the disciple during his long excursions, and that Nature should awake in him the sense of life and of his future spiritual vocation.
Fourth Meditation.
Subject: The Standard
Effects: Choice.
The soul has purged its past and now turns to loving exercises during this Meditation; since the soul has been called to the spiritual life, he chooses its particular vocation within. For the soul, material things are unimportant and its only concern is to fulfill its spiritual vocation and the will of the Divine Mother. For two to three months the soul must be devoted to this exercise, detached from everything and from all; during this period, some persons remain entirely hidden from the world.
Henri Dunant (b. Geneva, past century) after his stay for business in Solferino, 1859, before the sight of horrors, riots and suffering of the wounded, was unable to live in peace and desisted from business. Then this banker, forgetting his personal and financial concerns, remains absorbed, like in a dream; his only vocation is written with fiery letters in his soul. It is a dream, a vision, an obsession, an intense eagerness for making the suffering more bearable in those wounded of war and for leading all the world, friends and enemies, to respect the wounded, and this way he became the founder of the International Red Cross.
Fifth Meditation.
Subject: The Temple of Gold.
Effects: Consolation.
The internal sensitive effects continuously comfort the soul. During this exercise, love is so intense that the soul strives to communicate its happiness to all the humanity; it is as if it were returning transformed to the world. Contemplation of Nature, beauty of human ideals and efforts of the souls to reach God fill it with intense rejoice. The soul beautifies all that is material by means of the material force, and even finds consolation in work, help and good done to the neighbor. This exercise takes several months.
Chaitanya (b. 1485, d. 1553), the great lover of Krishna, feels the flames of the Divine Love and cannot stop. He goes out of this loneliness and runs to preach the Divine Love through the roads of Bengal. He sings, shouts, proclaims and invites all to the feast of the Loved One.
Sixth Meditation.
Subject: The Veil of Ahehia.
Effects: Bliss.
The soul is flooded by torrents of pleasure, and the chest is filled in Meditation and even out of it with an unknown supreme love; past struggles and the time of trial seem derisory.
Casianus, father of the Western monks, states, says the true prayer is immense love for God for the sake of Him, not expecting any reward and with concern for struggles, suffering or events that the disciple may undergo. All these things are insignificant for him and totally unimportant in comparison with the Divine Love.
Seventh Meditation.
Subject: Resurrection of Hes.
Effects: Rapture.
The soul reaches during this exercise a total communication of its sensibility with the Divine sensibility.
Marguerite Marie Alacoque was visited in a vision by Jesus who asked her heart. When Marguerite did so, He put it into His Holy heart, and she saw how her own heart was consumed in the flames of the Divine Love. Later Jesus returned it purified and like a burning flame, and this way the Divine Union remained sealed between the two.