A Really Different Experience
Part One
The contemplative switch takes place. In the fourth dwelling places God reveals a new presence and action in the spiritual journey. This is a transition, a stepping stone, to a much deeper and richer and transforming encounter with God. While it is more about the coming attractions, the present experience is quite spectacular yet very different than any previous expectations.
The Interior Castle with its seven dwelling places is simply a way of explaining how we experience God at the different stages on the journey to the center. It is the center where God resides. It is the center where we encounter our true selves. Self-knowledge, surrender, humility and love grow in each of the seven intervals. In the fourth dwelling places God takes on a more active role in this transforming experience. God’s love is a beacon. It lights up unrecognized brokenness and self-absorption that had been hidden. This active role by God is contemplation.
We must prepare for the fourth dwelling places with a long period of faithfulness to prayer and a committed life. Our daily prayers, rosaries, novenas, meditations, lectio divina and spiritual reading are all stepping stones toward spiritual growth. In the end, however, the fourth dwelling places is where our genuine efforts come face to face with their limits. Now, God’s intervention is the only way forward. Only the free gift of God will draw us into contemplation which is the foundation of al the remaining dwelling places.
Like all the experiences of the Castle journey, the events of the fourth dwelling places have a clear goal: self-discovery that energizes the path to union with God. This new action continues the gradual withdrawal from selfishness. It energizes our pursuit of God who dwells within us at the center. This transformation is the fruit of contemplative prayer. When this happens our life dramatically changes for the better.
The actions of the first three dwelling places are never free of the ego’s inescapable influence. Letting go and letting God becomes significantly more real in the fourth dwelling places. A growing awareness delivers us from being small-minded and thin-skinned along with many other personal shortcomings. On the contrary, a peace opens us up to submission and acceptance on an unprecedented level. We experience a new freedom in the Lord.
Something Truly Different
Teresa explains this dramatic change of the fourth dwelling places as contemplation, the action of God. She uses the comparison and contrast between two words: “contentos” and “gustos” In English they are “consolations” and “spiritual delights.”
“Well now. In speaking about what I said I’d mention here concerning the difference in prayer between consolations and spiritual delights, the term “consolations,” I think, can be given to those experiences we ourselves acquire through our own meditation and petitions to the Lord, those that proceed from our own nature – although God in the end does have a hand in them; for it must be understood, in whatever I say, that without Him we can do nothing. But the “consolations” arise from the virtuous work itself that we perform, and it seems that we have earned them through our own effort and are rightly consoled for having engaged in such deeds. (IC 4.1.4)
Consolations are natural and often helpful but, in the end, not necessary for spiritual progress. In the spiritual journey, they begin in human nature and often lead to God.
Spiritual delights are quite different. Here the experience comes directly from God. This is a totally new encounter on the spiritual journey. This action results in movement toward the center that draws us into God’s desires. The spiritual delights always begin in God and end in our transformation. They lead to a prayer of quiet.
Long after speaking of “spiritual delights” and the prayer of quiet, Teresa makes an important correction in the third and final chapter on the fourth dwelling places. She says the prayer of recollection usually comes before the prayer of quiet. This is important because, this, then, is the prayer that transitions the individual into the authentic experience of contemplation.
Teresa describes the prayer of recollection as a process of getting all the faculties to be quieted down. This allows a concentrated presence to Christ within. There is a loving gaze centering on Christ. It is like a turtle withdrawing within for the single purpose of eliminating all distractions. In this prayer of recollection, the emphasis is on loving rather than thinking about Jesus. In the description in this text, Teresa sees the prayer as contemplation, only accomplished with the special help of God. It is the first step on the journey of contemplation ultimately leading to union with God.
