St. Teresa of Avila on Reaching the Seventh Dwelling Place

Spiritual Life, Summer 2006 by Zundel, Alan F

2. She believed that knowledge of such favors would lead people to give praise to God.17

3. She had had bad experiences with spiritual directors when discussing her own experiences and wanted to give advice and counsel to others in her situation.18

4. She wanted to better equip religious for dealing with those in their midst who seem to be having such experiences.19

Her advice on these matters certainly would be important for those who either do experience them or have to deal with others who do, but in my view the emphasis on them in The Interior Castle has the unfortunate effect of overshadowing other aspects of the book that are even more important. In the next few sections I would like to discuss three such elements of the book, all of them relevant for moving successfully through the last few dwelling places to the final destination: (1) that contemplative prayer is not just for a spiritual elite, (2) Teresa's general advice for progressing through the last few dwelling places, and (3) the role of trials and suffering in preparing the soul for union with God.

Contemplative Prayer Is Not Just for an Elite

The fourth dwelling place in Teresa's discussion represents an important turning point in the spiritual journey, the dawning of a more inward, contemplative form of prayer. St. John of the Cross has a classic passage on the signs that a person is ready to move from a style of prayer relying on thoughts and images to one that is more inward and quiet:

The first is the realization that one cannot make discursive meditation or receive satisfaction from it as before. Dryness is now the outcome of fixing the senses on subjects that formerly provided satisfaction.

The second sign is an awareness of a disinclination to fix the imagination or sense faculties on other particular objects, exterior or interior. I am not affirming that the imagination will cease to come and go-even in deep recollection it usually wanders freely-but that the person does not want to fix it purposely on extraneous things.

The third and surest sign is that a person likes to remain alone in loving awareness of God, without particular considerations, in interior peace and quiet and repose.

To leave safely the state of meditation and sense and enter that of contemplation and spirit, spiritual persons must observe within themselves at least these three signs together.20

John, in the following text, corroborates the "gentle drawing inward" that Teresa compares to a summons from a shepherd's whistle and the need to surrender the operations of the intellect and the senses:

Actually, at the beginning of this state the loving knowledge is almost unnoticeable. There are two reasons for this: First, the loving knowledge initially is likely to be extremely subtle and delicate, almost imperceptible; second, a person who is habituated to the exercise of meditation, which is wholly sensible, hardly perceives or feels this new insensible, purely spiritual experience. This is especially so when through failure to understand it one does not permit oneself to rest in it but strives after the other, more sensory experience.