Course XV - Teaching 6: Purposes

Emotionality is led to a high point of vibration during the Sensitive Picture. If the practitioner stops the exercise, emotionality returns immediately to its early state, and nothing occurs in the soul. So, the success in meditation shall depend upon the use of the emotional exaltation attained.
By purposes we mean to make steady decisions and keep in the soul that sensation that the soul has sought and achieved. So, emotionality remains at the disposal of the purposes and does not return to its original state without certain change in its nature. It shall never be again the former emotionality, for sensation has led it to a culminating state and its affirmation has subjugated and put it at the disposal of the spiritual elevation.
Usually many practitioners are reluctant to pass from those beautiful emotional states achieved in the sensitive picture to state purposes; this is a mental work that demands to leave the sensitive state. But here the will must steadily intervene so that this state does not last unnecessarily and the soul is ready to fuse the sensation experienced with the mental nature of the purpose to achieve.
Purposes should be clear, concise, sensible and achievable.
They should be clear, since only this way they can produce an intended effect in the soul; any confusion in them would spoil the exercise, with this result: fruitless efforts.
They should be concise, since observations and recapitulations are out of question; these are summed up in the state achieved in the Sensitive Picture.
On the other hand, a concise purpose prevents the enthusiasm put in its service from being widely diluted, and on the contrary, leads to load this enthusiasm intensively.
They should be sensible, namely, humanly and immediately applicable, devoid of eccentricity and fantasy, and entirely real to the soul. If an evil of the soul was, for instance, the habit of smoking, you should not try to exterminate any factory and plantation of tobacco, which are so negative for health of mankind in general, but you should intend to abhor intensively a weakness of your soul, fostered and led by the Black Lady, who does not permit you to overcome this negative habit.
Here also we should warn against excessive talking, which dilutes the power of the purpose or multiplies purposes, resulting in such a number that meditator is unable to recall.
You should begin by posing purposes related to an immediate and possible achievement. You should not intend great battles, and your purposes should be to defend yourself or to attack the enemy in the first opportunity given in your own soul; and you may leave for the end your formulation of a purpose of general kind. So, in relation to the example above-mentioned, one can say your purpose should be to fight against that enemy as soon as temptation shows up in the soul, and to abhor it through the smell of the smoke, through the sight of a cigarette or through its eventual taste in your palate; you may leave for the end the general purpose of abhorring the Black Lady, or of running after a total purification.
Purposes should be posed emphatically; they are not a mere mental elaboration; they are not mere thoughts, but thoughts driven by a fervent feeling achieved in the Sensitive Picture. Then, emphasis consists in amalgamating these two elements; otherwise, mere purposes enunciated become absolutely unproductive.
To prevent the enthusiastic purpose from being diluted, one should not pose many purposes; one must pose few purposes containing those conditions above-mentioned.
The state of the soul after posing the purposes is neither that of relaxation nor of the individual after ending his work; on the contrary, this emphasis linking sensation and purpose still should keep the individual fervent by the fire of meditation, since the exercise technically will finish just with the next step.