Course XLVI - Teaching 16: Spiritual Synthesis of the Ordination

To be an Ordained Son is:
To gain nothing.
To have nothing.
To be nothing.
The Vow of Ordination is not the practice of Silence and Fidelity, or of Obedience, in particular, or any other Vow of Virtue: it is the perfection of these Vows, or rather, of their physical, mental and spiritual integrity.
Renunciation is not a detachment from this or that, or an especial practice of such or such virtue, but to be free of one’s life, of one’s way of thinking and of one’s separate individuality as one ego and another ego.
Ordination is a total liberation in regard to all things, internal and external, past and future, and human and superhuman.
An Ordained Son does not want anything and does not aim at anything; he stays just in Her and She is Eternity.
An Ordained cannot gain anything more because he staked all before jumping on the great void of love that the Divine Mother is; and what he gains by means of his efforts is not enough to pay his past karmic debts.
He has made all his works, tasks and efforts; even his intellectual works and his mental ability do not belong to him, since he surrendered it to the Divine Mother; even the purest affections of his heart, since just by reaching the most intimate poverty of heart he can remain in peace in the Love of Her; and the Ordained Son even offered beforehand all his rights: now he does not posses any right since he does not want anything and does not need anything: he possesses only rights, holy rights that permit him to remain in peace in love; rights that are a burden to men, but the unique gain of those who renounced to all; duties of continuous sacrifice without a truce; duties of assistance to mankind; duties to work for the sake of work; rights of holy duties; duties to die continuously, daily, beforehand and mystically.
Renunciation is to be nothing at the end.
To be nothing is to break bonds of separateness, to scatter shadows of illusion and to stay always in the Heart of the Eternal Mother.
Up to that time, the soul fears always that nature, reason and changes may lead him to go out of himself again, but even this danger disappears when one is nothing, since what “is” will not stop being what “is”.
Ordained Sons: keep always written before you these words:
To gain nothing.
To possess nothing.
To be nothing.