Is that all there is?

The Second Dwelling Places 

The second dwelling places bring a new awakening. Many struggles accompany this enlightenment. The individual begins to answer the question, “Is that all there is?” The results are both frightening and enticing. As the new awareness of God’s call begins to penetrate the consciousness, numerous problems surface. In the end, there is a need for change, a call to moral conversion. The second dwelling places story highlights the conflict between the old and the new, grace and sin, pleasure and sacrifice.

The person has begun to pray with some consistency. This awakens a desire for a more trustworthy experience of life. This brings some difficult choices. As God’s goodness, mercy and love become more clear, so too, the call to let go of old ways. Worldly attachments and pleasures with their spirit of vanity and malice are not compatible to spiritual progress.

“Since they are getting closer to where His Majesty dwells, He is a very good neighbor. His mercy and goodness are so bountiful; whereas we are occupied in our pastimes, business affairs, pleasures, and worldly buying and selling and still falling into sin and rising again.” (IC II1.2)

Right at the beginning, Teresa points out that the failure to avoid occasions of sin produces the uncertainty and ambiguity that play a dominant role in the second dwelling places.

Unlike the first dwelling places where the individual is almost deaf and mute in spiritual things, the person traveling in the second dwelling places can hear God’s voice even in the midst of the seemingly endless noise in a culture of indulgence that abhors silence. The manifestation of God’s mercy penetrates the cluttered mind and heart. However, the message most often demands sacrifice. Teresa observes astutely,

“Thus I say, hearing his voice is a greater trial than not hearing it.” (IC II.2.1) There is always a price to pay when God draws closer in one’s awareness.

God speaks in the second dwelling places in many ways. First of all, the powerful witness of good persons touches the heart. Then there are praiseworthy religious experiences particularly good homilies. Movies, books and other social media experiences inspire the heart from time to time. Life always has enough trials and difficulties that open one to a need for God. Finally, prayer constantly has the possibility of uncovering the divine.

In the area of prayer, the word of God, especially in the scriptures, becomes a source of light and comfort. It also surfaces the need to change. As prayer progresses, a relationship with Jesus steadily becomes more imperative for the searching individual.

At this time of progress in prayer, the devil becomes more active. He makes the good old times of worldly pleasures and indulgence seems better than ever. On the other hand, the experience of our sense of mortality exposes the vanity of so much of the heart’s yearning. In this conflict, so representative of the second dwelling places, the heart cries out, “Not yet Lord, a little later!” The battle is on. This is the clear expression of the heart’s ambiguity in the second dwelling places. A resounding “Yes!” is followed by a more resounding, “Perhaps a little later, Lord!”

Teresa observes, “But O my God, how the whole world’s habit of getting involved in vanities vitiates everything!” (IC.1.5)

In this great struggle of the second dwelling places, the basic human brokenness is exposed: sin and grace, weeds and wheat, beauty and darkness. Mark’s words in 7:21-22 describe the dark side: “Evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, idolatry, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly.” Paul’s words in Galatians 5:22 portray the way of light: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control.”

In this grand battle of light and darkness that emerges in the second dwelling places, Teresa says there is no greater weapon than the cross. (IC.6) The Carmelite mystic means that we need to keep our eyes on the crucified Christ. We need to measure the passionate and boundless love of Calvary against our pettiness and resistance to this love. Our life, in constant pursuit of comfort, stands in harsh contrast to Jesus on the cross.

Here again, this leads Teresa to emphasize self-knowledge in relation to this great love revealed in our merciful Savior.

“Well now, it is foolish to think that we will enter into heaven without entering into ourselves, coming to know ourselves, reflecting on our misery and what we owe God and begging him often for mercy.” (IC II.1.11)
Teresa stresses that our prayer at this early stage must avoid selfishness. We need not look for consolations. The focus must be doing God’s will. This is what authentic prayer demands.

“Don’t think in what concerns perfection there is some mystery or things unknown, or still to be understood, for in perfect conformity to God’s will lies all our good.” (IC.8)

God has a plan for us. It is God’s will for our happiness. It is better than any of the countless plans we create in seeking happiness. God’s plan, that is God’s will, is an invitation into love that opens to total freedom and joy forever. Teresa never tires of pointing out that all else is absolutely inconsequential outside of God’s will that calls us to love and life everlasting.

In response to the struggles that dominate the second dwelling places, Teresa’s continual refrain is perseverance. “Nor should you become disconsolate if you don’t respond at once to the Lord. His Majesty knows well how to wait many days and years, especially when he sees perseverance and good desires. This perseverance is most necessary here. One always gains much through perseverance.” (IC II.3)
This perseverance leads to moral conversion. The attachments and addictions of an unrestrained lifestyle demand attention. The passage to freedom requires the choice of true values over personal satisfaction. Patterns of a lifetime need to give way in this personal upheaval that is conversion. Prayer and service open the way for God’s grace. Bad friends have to go and wise counselors need to be pursued. In the commitment to these changes, the person achieves a sense of moral stability that is the fruit of perseverance. Without this basic choice of goodness over evil, grace over sin, the only movement is backward to the chaos outside the castle. This choice of God over the creature is the way forward to the third dwelling places.

The story of the prodigal son offers a final insight into the experience of the second dwelling places. The son learned the hard way that a life of unrestrained pleasure ends in the desperation of “feeding the pigs.” He came up empty. He finally saw the total futility of his choice of the good life. This often is the experience of the second dwelling places.

The impoverished son develops a narrative for the long suffering father. He will accept his fault and become a servant. He is a gambling on the mercy or naiveté of the father. He miscalculated again, just as in his departure to the big city. He failed to see the magnitude of the father’s love and mercy. This awakening is also characteristic of the second dwelling places.

This message of divine mercy and love grows in clarity and beauty in each of the succeeding dwelling places in The Interior Castle.