Course XXII - Teaching 12: Other Stimulating Affective Meditations II

We should remind that the purpose of the affective stimulating meditation exercise is to produce a true shock in the soul, like that of a drowsy man who shakes the head to clear it at once.
In fact, if differs from exercises of ordinary active meditation more in relation to tone than to form. As you know, according to its active qualification, the individual being looks for an effect with these exercises, and his will strives for it, as much for fixing the attention, all his attention, on the objective in question, in order to be entirely ready for the sensation desired.
In active but stimulating meditations, all this is absolutely relevant, but we should add to it something else. This “something” is: the tone and dramatic quality of the voice, and the fervor of the imaginative picture, built with vivid images reverently described; all this for preparing and expressing intensely those sensations where one uses emotional and exalted analogies.
You may feel that this attitude is hypocritical, forced and superficial. But do not forget that one is trying to have an exercise under control, and that the Son’s sincerity and true offering depend only upon his joyful readiness for going daily or even more often than not to the sacred appointment and being gradually fitter for entering the true state of meditation. And this state does not have any falseness or hypocrisy, because the latter cannot exist in the divine dialogue of the soul with the Divine Mother.
This Teaching and its example of meditation where you are in quest for an effect of Consolation, is an exact example of how the soul can raise sorrow to a category which fosters its own redemption. In fact, through an imaginative picture with dark hues, and through the vision of the Cross and Christ’s bleeding wounds, the Son finds, by identification with that Divine Suffering Being, this Consolation: he knows that, by imitating Him, he will be able to offer silently the sorrows of his daily living on the Mount Calvary, and to be at the same time an example and support for other souls.
Because, may be greater consolation than to find that the human sorrow makes sense and, furthermore, if this sense is identified with the example of Jesus by making us participate in the sacred act of Redeeming the world?