The Happy Medium saw the light by the Black Thing overcoming it.
There are several ways to take notes when listeing to a speech and some methods might be more effective for your way of learning than others.
However, there are some actions to make this process faster that pretty much work for everyone.
The best way to write notes is to stay focused on important things and only write these important things down. If it's about a subject that you understand enough, you can go as far as only writing keywords, as these will help you, as reminders for whole ideas, later when reading the notes.
Answer:
The effect it had was that he was sick of moving around so much.
I cant see a god ordained thing!