The trip through the seven dwelling places is a description of the experience of God. It all begins when the individual realizes there is more to life. This can be triggered in many ways: a personal crisis, the power of the personal witness of an individual of deep integrity, an enlightening sermon, a movie or book, or frustration with the continuing dead-ends in the miss-guided quest for happiness. In our day, surely the coronavirus fits well into this list. In the end, each is an expression of our mortality.
Teresa sets the stage for the journey with the image of the castle. In reality, she is talking about the human person. The path is to God at the center, the ultimate destiny of all.
Prayer, in its most simple form, opens the door to the Castle. This is the beginning of human interiority, the launching of a conscious spiritual life. Teresa presents the main message of her treatise as an intimate connection between true spiritual growth and the development of deep personal prayer.
The seven dwelling places are like a set of spheres within a sphere. Each globe contains a variety of experiences. Each dwelling places is unique. Teresa describes the movement from one sphere to another. It is not a linear passage straight ahead. There is much backward and forward movement in and between each set of dwelling places. This includes apparent movement to the next dwelling places and then falling back when the effort and cooperation with God is not consistent.
The first three dwelling places are shorter but they hold propound wisdom for both the individual and the community. These dwelling places share one common component. They accentuate the effort of the individual. The first is marked by the almost hidden glimmer of the transcendent. The second involves the moral conversion. In the third, there is real growth. Prayer has become a regular practice in one’s life. This produces order and discipline. However, the apparent success is a delusion. The basic selfishness is still operating but with a new cover. There is a dominant sense that one has arrived, accompanied by a dangerous urge to settle down. The flagrant selfishness of the first two levels may have gone underground, but it eventually emerges, often in the problematical guise of a distorted spirituality.
The movement to the fourth dwelling places is the “contemplative switch”. Self-knowledge has been growing from the beginning. Now there is greater clarity of the depth of selfishness that lies within. In a grand irony, Teresa states that when we grasp the gravity of our personal brokenness and sin, it is then that we truly see the glory of God.
“We shall never completely know ourselves if we don’t strive to know God. By gazing at his grandeur, we get in touch with our own lowliness, by looking at his purity, we shall see our own filth; by pondering his humility, we shall see how far we are from being humble.” (IC 1.9) In this exchange of the vision of human depravity for God’s majesty, Teresa sets forth a vision of Christian life. We are urged inward and onward in a growing intimate relationship with Christ. This relationship is based on a deep yearning for salvation flowing from greater self-knowledge leading to humility. Christ is seen as the way forward in the ultimate expression of mercy in his cross and resurrection. There is only one goal available in one’s faithfulness to Christ: union with God who is waiting in the final dwelling place.
The fifth and sixth dwelling places hold the experience of the final purification. These dwelling places receive the most extensive treatment from Teresa. They are actually two thirds of the material in the text. They are, in many ways, her very special gift to the wisdom of Christian spirituality.
In the end, the pilgrimage to the center produces a switch in emphasis from us as the center, to God as the center. Teresa’s gift is her description in great detail how this refocusing from self to God takes place in contemplation. Teresa makes it clear that not only is God available to all, but that this is the passionate desire of God. She shows that seeking contemplation and mysticism are part of the normal Christian vocation. The fact that they are not understood to be normal is a distortion. She proclaims that it is time to refocus. It is time to regain God’s true desire for all to be one.
