Course XV - Teaching 7: Consequences

As the last step of the exercise, Consequences have a double purpose in the technical formation of the exercise.
As we said, along with the spiritual process developed in depths of the soul, the student should become self-conscious of the process, that is, he should acquire knowledge of his inner development and of the result achieved through exercise of prayer and application of the teaching to his own life.
The first purpose of this step of meditation is to know the effect that the exercise has produced in the soul by summing up what he has achieved through meditation.
The second purpose is to affirm again in the soul the suggestive power of this exercise by stating repeatedly and emphatically, with inner certainty, that you have reached and achieved the effect you were looking for.
Precisely in the frame of this double purpose of the step, we recommend: first, what the exercise has revealed must be reduced to the understanding of the meditator. And meditation makes the soul know and understand aspects and states never known.
Many meditators have deemed to be exempt of defects, passions or vicious inclination, but after successive meditations have found that the Black Lady is enthroned as the queen and lady within, even presiding over aspects that they believed good and worthy. In this step of his meditation, the meditator is aware of what he has discovered through the exercise within. So, for instance, if in meditation on the Two Ways he discovers his grade of attachment to things that never called his attention, because they never came to the surface of his consciousness, but that were charmingly sleeping within, he shall sum up this discovery by expressing that he could understand to what extent he was tied to such or such things.
Second, the meditator has to see what happened in the world of his sensations.
Certain people have renounced to the possibility of reaching states of elevation and spiritual bliss. Nothing sublime affected their sleeping emotionality. But meditation has revealed to them marvelous sources of spiritual plenitude, and true, never-dreamt glimpses of Divine Union.
As the meditator states that he achieved the effect of his quest, he has laid the basis for the real and total achievement of this purpose.
Entering the path is beginning of Divine Union; the first achievement in the effect that one seeks in meditation is the beginning of its definitive conquest.
Also consequences must be clear, short, certain and with no argumentation.
Clarity and concision permit a clear knowledge of what one has achieved and a conclusive affirmation of what one has perceived.
Certainty is indispensable and must be expressed to fix in the soul the respective conquest. As to absence of argumentation, this can be easily explained taking into account that any argumentation in this step is a rational meditation disconnected from the exercise performed; also, a long argumentation affects the effect and dilutes it with words and images.
Resume as such, not as a step in the exercise of Meditation, as its name indicates, sums up every step of the exercise with precision and very few words.
Its object is mainly didactic, since it just gives to the soul an element for the memory through few conclusive terms; so the meditator can remember during the day those words pervaded by the vibration of the exercise and by the sense of realization contained in them.