A Call to Deep Personal Prayer
This is first in a series of reflections of learning to pray in the context of Carmelite Spirituality.ITeresa’s Fundamental Insight
I have read Teresa of Avila’s classic, The Interior Castle, many times. I have paid a bit more attention to the third, fourth and fifth dwelling places. They seemed more relevant to teaching people how to pray with the practical and pastoral approach that has been the context of most of my life.The first dwelling places has always been a bit of puzzle to me. In retrospect, this section did not connect with my expectation of how to begin to pray. In my most recent reading, the light came on. I can see that I just missed the message almost completely.
Let me try to explain this. Recently, I wrote a book on Carmelite Spirituality, Continuing the Pilgrimage to God. I used two basic questions to help penetrate the clear purpose of the spiritual journey: where are we going and how do we get there?
In my latest reading of the first dwelling places, I saw there is a more fundamental question that Teresa addresses very astutely. That question is: “who am I?”
In Teresa’s classic, the symbol of the castle is really addressing the human person. She says all the dwelling places are stepping stones to the center where the King resides. In fact, she is saying our spiritual journey is to our own deepest center where God dwells in the most profound recesses of our heart. For Teresa, any answer to the “who am I?” question will have to deal with this basic reality. As human beings, we are divinely rooted and divinely destined. We are made to be one with God. This is the basis of our dignity and calling.
Teressa is saying that all human reality is wrapped up in a common destiny, union with God. Whether it be the Pope or a peasant a Muslim or Evangelical, doctor or patient, all humankind shares a common purpose and goal, to be one with God. If we understand this universal call, we can approach all of life and death with a singular clarity. This is where we are going and how we get there makes much more sense. This singular insight is foundational to the self-knowledge that Teresa highlights in the first dwelling places.
The basis of this deeper awareness of “who am I?” is a growing consciousness of our journey to God at the center. All else distracts and distorts our effort to seek our true vocation. Seeking to be one with God opens a way of light and truth. Any other path misdirects us to darkness and crippling enslavement. We are made in the image of God and, as temples of the Holy Spirit, our purpose is to live in a way that clarifies and encourages this extraordinary goal: to be one with God. This is the answer to the most fundamental question: “who am I?”
The Interior Castle is a description of the clear and beautiful calling of every human being. In contrast, everything about the world and the lure of the flesh and the power of the ego is pulling us away from God. Here the message is that we are the center. In this deception, the goal of life is seen as the enhancement of our importance and with the summons to indulge ourselves and to secure our control. People are spending billions of dollars to define us as consumers with endless needs. In this scheme, true happiness and security will be accomplished in proportion to the grandiosity of our possessions and indulgence. As one bumper sticker states, “Whoever has the most toys at the end wins.”
This process of enhancing ourselves with privilege, prestige, power and possessions creates a false self. We encounter seemingly endless dead-end roads where true happiness becomes ever more elusive. On the other hand, when the false self is in dominance, the relentless power of our mortality has the last word creating ever-expanding levels of frustration.
Teresa’s insight in the first dwelling places centers on the challenge and importance of self-knowledge. True self-knowledge will slowly lead us to grasp that we are made to be one with God. Likewise, we will learn that God is the divine lover, a gift beyond our wildest dreams. This wonderous message is grasped only slowly and painfully because the passage to self-knowledge is possible only as we cast off the useless baggage of a consumer society and the ego’s deceiving agenda. Teresa has this to say about the liberating potential of self-knowledge: Oh, but if it is in the room of self-knowledge! How necessary this room is – see that you understand me – even for those who the Lord has brought to the very dwelling places where he abides. For never, however exalted the soul may be, is anything else fitting for it...For humility, like the bee making honey in the beehive, is always at work. Without it everything goes wrong. (IC.1.8)
Terresa continues saying that the clearest and most direct avenue to learn the truth about ourselves is to ponder the grandeur and beauty of God. In the contrast, we can see our lowliness and the magnitude of our brokenness. The reality of being a creature in the presence of a Creator who knows no limit in love for us helps us to accept both our sinfulness and the boundless mercy of God.
This path of self-knowledge slowly takes the emphasis off of us and begins the process of recognizing God at the center. This is the work of a lifetime but the all-important initial steps are in the first dwelling places.
In this transition from the false self to the true self, rooted in ever maturing self-knowledge, we begin to accept the call to see ourselves awash in God’s mercy and love. The God of the Gospels is truly described as the Hound of Heaven, a God seeking us always in mercy and love.
Teresa draws us into this truly life-giving question, “Who am I?” The initial glimmer of the transcendent leaks into one’s heart. It may be a good book or movie, the witness of an authentic person but more likely it is a personal crisis or loss. Now we realize that in some way there is more to life. As simple as this observation seems, it holds the power to begin the destruction of the self-centered and enclosed world that attempted to exclude God. The true spiritual warfare has begun.
At this critical juncture, we discover the true context of prayer. Prayer is the key to move beyond the grasp of all that is directing us so forcefully away from God. The path of freedom and true life is guided by self-knowledge and prayer. God is calling us to the center of our heart, our deepest truth, where true love has always been our only destiny.
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