Course XXII - Teaching 15: Preparatory Monologue for Meditation

A man that seeks God can become, by his own freewill, a machine automatically moved by the apparent purpose of achieving this end. It is sufficient for him to replace his first love with routine –love that someday will make him realize the sacrament of his first Vow. And routine inexorably occurs when this man starts considering as an end the fulfillment of all demands made by his asceticism, and forgets that all those demands are nothing more than means aiming at making him gradually approach the sacred ideal.
A routine searcher for God, or rather, a pseudo-searcher for God can be detected by his lack of enthusiasm or lack of fervor. He may assume mechanically and punctually all those attitudes that, in his opinion, are helpful in the quest; he may pray on time, or read pious books for so many minutes; and in similar daily situations he may recite certain religious verse, or observe fast and mortification; in short, he may follow all spiritual exercises. But as he forgot for what he makes all this, eventually his main concern is to perform them quite well, but paying attention only to their respective external forms.
Later he may strengthen his will, and his mind may be an almost perfect machine, fit for concentration any time he wishes. But in fact he is unconscious of the highest and transcendental goal, and the fruit of powerful and increased personal values will only feed his selfishness. That is to say, he will be quite far away from God than the initial day when he trod on the Path for the first time.
Not to act from force of habit, or rather, to keep in sight the Divine Mother’s holy presence, the Son must constantly and fervently update, in the intimate Silence of his heart, the sacred promise of his Vow of Fidelity.
A mother buys a toy for his child to cheer him up and not because she likes it. The Son offers the Divine Mother his renunciation, sacrifice and attachments not because he likes this, but simply because his fervent wish is to show her his love and how he takes her constantly in his heart.
Upon this fact, the Son never fears to act mechanically and routinely. He can gradually develop his asceticism by using many spiritual exercises that Cafh is teaching him, and even the variety of these exercises excludes any eventual routine.
For example, consider the exercise of meditation. Seven subjects to develop in discursive, affective and sensitive form, every one with variations (i. e., passive, active and stimulating active) and now also certain preparatory monologues that are greatly fit for all possible states of the soul of the meditator, impede weariness and give the Son a lot of different means to try without boredom those eventual contacts with the Divine Mother.