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The Soul is always there but he has to use prayer, meditation, and moral self-discipline to become aware of it. He should pray for its Grace, meditate on its presence and reality, and purify his thoughts and emotions by disciplining them. To turn away from human desires is hard. So to speed the process, the Soul puts him through agonizing ordeals, tragic bereavements, or great losses. Only after a deep melancholy falls on the mind and a thorough disgust for the unsatisfactoriness of earthly life settles on the heart, does he really yearn for the Soul. This is the mystic death. Only after it comes the second birth.

-- Notebooks Category 2: Overview of Practices Involved > Chapter 2 : The Measure of Progress > # 115