Teresa of Avila
by Aeptha

EXTRACT FROM SUNDAY SERVICE OCTOBER 5, 2003

When I went into meditation and prayer recently I was told to go back to the teachings of Teresa of Avila. Those of you who have been in classes for a while here at Light Haven know that a few years ago we studied the book by Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle. Teresa of Avila was a Carmelite nun. She was born in Spain in 1515. I believe she has been canonized into sainthood by the Church, but she was an amazing woman in so many ways. Her writing is profound and the messages she gave were, I'm sure, as potent then as they are now. For now, her words are very meaningful. She was a profound mystic, and yet she also brought an astounding level of reform into the community. She was, in truth, a political activist because at that time politics and religion were not separated in any sense of the word. She was a woman in a system that still regarded women as being of a lesser stature, including on the level of the soul, and particularly susceptible to demonic influences. She was a woman who had severe health problems throughout her life, and yet she persevered, and not only did she persevere, but she did it in ways that were in the highest sense the reflection of a true adept.

One of the things I was reminded of when I was reading about her life is that she met with a tremendous amount of opposition and competition, not only within the hierarchy of the Church and from her confessor, but also from the sisters within her own order, and yet she persevered. And she persevered in ways that were quite astounding. Quite frankly, my thinking was that I wondered how she got around it. She didn't get around it. She was quite clear that her vows were vows of obedience. And yet here was a woman who clearly had profound and deep contact of the highest nature, and by all accounts went into complete mystical union with the Christ. There are many accounts as well as physical evidence that support the contention that she had an extraordinary nature.

So here she is, having these incredible, profound, mystical experiences, and getting communication from God about the reforms that are needed in her order. I have no doubt that in many cases her extensive writings were probably of a much more dignified and intelligent nature than those of many of the people who were in authority over her, so she could easily have justified disobedience or getting around things. From what I have read about this woman's life she could pretty much have outsmarted all the good old boys in the Church, but she did not do that. One of the edicts that came down was that she was to burn and destroy a transcript that she had created for herself and for the sisters that were under her as prioress, and this was done, but one of the sisters had gifted a copy of this transcript to the Duchess, and that is how it survived. Part of her maturity was that she knew that it wasn't her place to define how the Will of God would manifest, and that obedience was not unlike, in the Eastern system, the obedience to a Guru, which is part of one's discipline, faith and surrender. She was nobody's fool, but she was the highest of adepts, and she did not get caught in her own glamour. Even with that level of contact and with that level of brilliance, she recognized the Church as a vehicle for the expression of Spirit as teacher.

One of my favorite works of hers is The Interior Castle, and I suggest you read it. I have read it several times and every time I'm amazed at how much more I get out of it. In this book she gives a brilliant, profound progression of the movement of the Soul into union with Spirit. One of the things that she spoke of is, "Do not try to hold God within yourself. Try to let God hold you." How many of us do that? What is surrender? She spoke of prayer and the way that prayer is multi-leveled, but that prayer without reflection has no meaning. What she was referring to is not how often we pray, but that we should not repeat prayer by rote without making the connection with those we are praying to. Consider The Lord's Prayer and the power of those words and how we go through a rote expression of this prayer. And yet if you truly reflected on who you are praying to when you say The Lord's Prayer, how could that be anything but an expression of the deepest, most profound nature?

There is an awakening that we are being called to, and it is the awakening of the Mystical Heart. For you see I believe that there are huge hurts, huge pains, huge fears and huge uncertainties in this world, and I think that unconsciously we have responded to that by shutting our hearts, for we do not know how to stand with our hearts open and be with what surrounds us, for we feel vulnerable. And yet to be the adepts that we are, we must be like Teresa of Avila and be willing to be totally exposed.

Teresa speaks of the seven levels in this vast, interior castle with many rooms, as the heart of the Soul. She says that many people never even go into the first room. They are not even aware of their hearts as Souls. She speaks of people that go into this first arena, but their lives are busy. They may say a little prayer here and there, but they don't have time to be too bothered by Spirit.

And she speaks of the second room as being the place where you go when you are more willing to commit some of your time, energy, thoughts, studies, presence, prayers to Spirit, as long as it does not interfere with your life too much. But it is also here that you begin to feel the pull of duality. You read something, or you consider something, and then you have to follow with right action even though it's not convenient, because what you've been reading begins to draw you to the face of your own duality and the experience of your own polarity. So it starts to get a little uncomfortable in that second room.

The experiences you have been called to by your Spirit in the first and second levels have also led you to a place of self-knowledge and self-exploration. You start reflecting on the meaning of your life and this is when you feel called to go into the third room. This is the room where you are faced in many ways with the most painful aspects of your own duality, your own polarity. It is the room where you are confronted with the question, "Do I really want to surrender? Do I really want Spirit?" This room takes great courage because this is the place where those words become feelings. It is a place of great pain because as much as a part of you may say that you truly want to become one with Spirit, it is also the place where, in truth, because you have a level of self-knowledge, you cannot help but acknowledge there is a part that says, "No, no, I don't want that, because whatever that is, I can taste the flavor of it and it scares me. I know myself, how I identify myself, who and what I think I am, and I have a perception of control, of self-righteousness." And it is a painful place, and the pain is gut-wrenching. It is not a place that anyone can take you out of, and it is a place that results in many going back to the second room.

Others though, feel called to move to what Teresa would speak of as the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh rooms or levels, and these are more supernatural and mystical. And so we move into the fourth room, and this is when we begin to have the experience, a little of the flavor of, I am in God and God is in me. But this is also a place where there is uncertainty, and where we wonder if it is all fake and not what we think it is. And it is also here, and to some degree in the third level, where we bargain with Spirit, because we say, "Okay if I'm going to do this, what are you going to do for me? What do I get out of it? I want to define how this is going to look." And this is also where we get seduced by our own glamours and illusions.

And this is the place, by the way, that Teresa of Avila would say to you that obedience is essential, because this is the place where you have had the flavor of Spirit and you are most likely to turn it into a glamour. She used the word humility over and over and over again, and what is humility? Most of us get a little ruffled on that one because it has the same flavor as obedience. It is like you have worked too hard to give all that up. But you see that is not what we are speaking of here. The highest understanding of humility is the identification with Spirit and not with the personality, because it is the personality that wants to tell Spirit what it wants or needs or what its experience is.

But it is in moving into what she refers to as the fifth chamber, the fifth dwelling, that the union is of such a nature that there is no longer any doubt. This is the place where the urge, the intensity and the absolute focus, is complete and total service. I love the image that Teresa uses here. She says that in the fifth level you are focused on making the wax of your being as clean and clear and as palatable as possible, so that as you go into the sixth and seventh levels where God presses the seal upon you, you are totally receptive to the imprint. And it is indeed in the sixth and seventh levels that there is union, and she said that these were a continuum.

She said in the sixth level you are truly aware of the possibilities of union, and she referred to this as the most painful level of all, for you will feel like you are being torn apart, because all the parts of you that are not in union are confronting and agonizing you. She said this is also the place where you need another level of courage, because you have the knowingness that in the seventh level the union is complete. You will no longer be a separate drop of rain, but you are the flowing stream. In the seventh chamber you are no longer a separated heart, you are one heart.

Last night I was reflecting on this and I was reminded of Rudolf Steiner's description of the heart and the four chambers of the heart, and that the fifth chamber is the chamber of the Christ. When the four chambers have achieved balance and harmony then the fifth chamber can come into being. And I was also reflecting on this image that Teresa has given us of these seven levels. I was thinking that some of us never go into our hearts at all, but we wander around the edges. Some of us just go into the first chamber of our hearts, where we sort of love the people who it is convenient to love, if they act right. And perhaps some of us may go into the second chamber of our hearts, where we love those people that are like us. And perhaps we go into the third chamber and that is when we really struggle because we know we should love people more, but we really do not particularly like them. But we struggle with it and it seems almost elusive to us. It is a place of pain and our self-knowledge becomes overwhelming because we are so aware of our own duality and complicity. Perhaps we are able to push through that and we go into the fourth chamber, and there we do mean it when we pray, and we feel the presence, and we pray, "Let there be peace on earth. Let the plan of Love and Light work out, and may it seal the door where evil dwells. Let Light and Love and Power restore the Plan on Earth." And we mean it, and we feel the flow of Spirit. But then we walk outside and it seems to have evaporated like the early morning fog. The flavor of it is still there, but we are not able to sustain it. In the fourth there is the agony of truly connecting, and then the pain of loss when we walk out that door and we cannot sustain that energy.

And so what is the fifth chamber, the chamber of the Christ? In the fifth I know that I can't sustain it. I realize that I am ego, and ego has led me to this place through force of desire and will and attention. But in order to embody the fifth I must know that by myself I am nothing, and mean it. And that goes against everything our Western mind tells us. "How dare you say I am nothing. I have spent 20 years in therapy trying to be something! So don't tell me I'm nothing."

They say that we should reflect upon our death every day, because it is only by reflecting upon our mortality that we can then truly live. At death, the I that I am, the ego, will go. It can be of great service if I choose to let it be of service, but it will go. Do you know, I do not have any idea who my great-grandparents were, what they were like, or what their interests were. And I can tell you something else, in a couple of hundred years or less from now, nobody is going to know about you or me either.

Before Teresa died she gathered her sisters around her and explained to them how meaningless her life had been. I was thinking that this was not something to be talking about on her death bed, and that this is just the underbelly of Catholicism revealing itself. How arrogant on my part! When I was talking to Spirit this morning during my usual 2:30 a.m. wake-up call, what Spirit said to me was that I should stop thinking like a human and start thinking like an adept. For even there at the very end Teresa was trying to teach her sisters. She was not attached to her life having meaning, and she was very clear about that. She knew her life as being meaningful to God, so why would she be concerned? What she had done, she did not do for herself or for her self-identifications. When we feel we need to lead a meaningful life we have an attachment, because then we start to define what that is supposed to look like. But her attitude was, "I am here as a servant to God and let God define the meaning in my life. What I identify with, and what is meaningful here, is through God."

She died hemorrhaging, and it is said that there were unexplained lights and sweet smells that filled the abbey. Even down in the kitchen they could smell the sweetness, and they also saw that one of the salt shakers had an incredible sweet fragrance coming from it, just from her touch. And in her casket they placed a handkerchief with some of her blood on it, and when they later exhumed her remains for canonization, not only were her remains in a pristine state, but the blood on the handkerchief was still fresh. Her blood transformed alchemically and it still had the sweetness, and anyone who smelled or came near the blood felt the presence of the Christ, and by all accounts their lives were irrevocably altered.

In our Pathworking we are being called to move into our hearts. Let me tell you something. In the present and the future we can also affect the past, but it has to be through the heart. Time is not linear, it folds in on itself. In your heart alone you are nothing, but in the One Heart you are all, and that is what we are being called to. So I would ask that you would move deep within yourself.

Use your breath, and I would ask for a special blessing and assistance, if it be in Divine order, from the one we call St. Teresa of Avila. And I call to our elder brother, Yeshua, the Great Initiator. And I would invite you to open your heart and to feel the presence of your sacred heart. Be aware of its beauty, of its fire, and know that it is living Spirit. And take a moment to consider that your heart is not unlike the interior castle, and ask yourself, have you closed yourself out of your own heart? For I will tell you my brothers and sisters, the doors of your heart are open, but have you chosen not to enter?

Enter now into the first chamber, and as you look about, you see it for what it is. It is the place that you might have spent some time, the place of worldly concerns, the place of conditional love. But you had to know this place before you could proceed forward, so judge it not, but go to the doors and fling them open.

And so you go into the second chamber, and this is the place where the light is brighter, and where you can feel more life. The light is still not bright, but it is present here, and there is a feeling of life, small though it may be. And this is the place where you have felt the call of Spirit, and you have come to study and reflect on that. This is the place where you have felt love for your family, for your friends, and even for your community, and there is life here. But as you look about you recognize that even this place is small and is filled with shadows.

And so you move toward a set of doors at the back of the chamber, and by the strength of your focus and your desire you push open these doors and move into an even vaster place, the third chamber. And there is music here and more light, and there is pain here. It is the pain that comes from wanting to love but not being sure how. And for a moment you might even want to turn away because you know if you proceed forward it will never be the same.

It cannot be the same, for to enter into the fourth chamber you will embody the sacred, esoteric understanding of the cardinal cross. Are you prepared to place yourself on, and be this cross? Think well. And there is a sweet fragrance that is coming from this fourth place, this fourth chamber. And there is a greater light here, and we enter and we willingly, freely, embody the four balanced arms, horizontal and vertical, vertical and horizontal. Inri, Natura, Rex, Intiga.

And we are now ready, and we hear the call of the Beloved. And at this call we enter into the fifth chamber, and we are held in the Solar Fire. We are the wick and we are the flame, and we fan that flame with the breath of life, and we call to the Holy Spirit that the flame would burn brighter still. And what we see now, what we know now, is that as we stand in this fifth chamber the doors are open to the first, the doors are open to the second, to the third, and to the fourth, so that all becomes the Solar Fire. There is no separation between the first, second, third, and fourth. The fifth is now all, the Perfected Human, the Sacred Pentagram, for we have activated it. Feel the five that have become one, and as the Solar Flame we rise up. We are tongues of fire and we join now as one fire.

And so the fifth becomes the sixth chamber, for the sixth chamber is all of us. It is all humanity. It is all sentient life. It is all. It is the fire of the planet. It is the fire of the plant. It is the fire of the minerals. It is the fire of the air. It is the fire of the fire.

And now to the Solar Logos. Your cells are one cell in the Body of the Christ, your hearts are one heart, the Heart of the Christ, your minds are one mind, the Mind of the Christ, your wills are one will, the Will of the Christ, and your eyes are one eye, the Eye of the Christ. And in this Chamber of Chambers, in this Holy of Holies, we pray. We pray that we may pray without ceasing. We pray that we may love endlessly. We pray that we may know the One we pray to, that we may join with the One, and that we may no longer be the drop of water, but that we would be the sea, the sea of all life. Let us have the courage and the strength. Let us have the integrity, the humility, and the obedience. Oh Yeshua, let us not forget. Let us not put back the veil over our eyes and the binders on our hearts. Let not our tongues wag in disservice but only sing Thy praise. We are the hope, and we will persevere.

Focus on your breath. Use your breath. Let us say together the Mantram of Unification, and hold this energy of unification.

The sons of men are one and I am one with them.
I seek to love, not hate.
I seek to serve and not exact due service;
I seek to heal, not hurt.
Let pain bring due reward of light and love.
Let the soul control the outer form,
And life, and all events,
And bring to light the Love
Which underlies the happenings of the time.
Let vision come and insight.
Let the future stand revealed.
Let inner union demonstrate and outer cleavages be gone.
Let love prevail.
Let all men love.

The sweetness is so strong, the love is so vast, the beauty is so great, and it never leaves us. I love the statement that St. Teresa made when she said that God is ever near. The problem is that we do not believe it. Believe it, know it, embrace it, live it, choose it over and over and over again. Walk in beauty.