Mirabei Starr about St. Teresa’s Interior Castle [Commentary]

In her vision of the soul as an interior castle, Teresa identifies seven stations of the journey to divine union, using the analogy of seven primary dwellings within the palace. The outer spaces represent the beginning of our journey home. The light of the Divine is dim at first, and her [Her/His] voice is faint. But both the radiance and the God song increase in clarity and volume the closer we come to the center.

The early stations are concerned with discipline and humility. Here we intentionally cultivate self-knowledge. We engage in contemplative prayer as a way to be closer to the Beloved. We may not always see her or feel her in the dark. It’s like sleeping next to someone at night, Teresa tells us. You don’t need visual or tactile evidence to know she is there. In fact, it would be crazy to believe she is gone just because you don’t see her. Listen for the sound of her breath. Take comfort in her proximity.

As the journey unfolds it builds momentum. We have met the one we love. We have fallen head over heels. Our love has been reciprocated. The wedding date is set. Now we can’t wait to consummate. We defy convention and take the most direct path to union, even if that route does not appear on any map. Who has patience for maps? We dispense with all suggestions and plunge into the wild. We turn inward.

Contemplative life is a tapestry of intention and surrender, of reaching out and letting go, of stillness and exhilaration, form and formlessness. It is devotional and non-dual. It is grounded in our connection with the Earth and our interconnectedness with all beings. And it is about moments of rapture in the face of the most ordinary phenomena, in which our particular embodied experience gives way to an undifferentiated melding with All That Is. This is the dance of masculine and feminine, which call each other from the core of our soul DNA, demanding reunification and wholeness.”

—Mirabai Starr. Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics. Boulder, Colorado, Sounds True, 2019.

A variation of this Teresa of Avila quote is given as an epigraph in Mirabai Starr’s book, Wild Mercy—Chapter 1, Turning Inward: Cultivating Contemplative Life,

“The important thing is not to think much, but to love much, and so to do whatever best awakens you to love.”

—Mirabai Starr [Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics. Boulder, Colorado, Sounds True, 2019] p.17.

Mirabei Starr: “For Teresa, merging with God meant turning inward and following the fragrance of love all the way to the center of her own being, where the Beloved dwelled. It’s from here that he called to her and from here he welcomed her home. She found traces of this presence everywhere she went. This is the trajectory Teresa so masterfully describes in her guide to spiritual development, the Interior Castle…”

“If you want to make progress on the path and ascend to the places you have longed for, the important thing is not to think too much, and so to do whatever best awakens your love. If you fall sometimes, do not lose heart. Keep striving to walk your path with integrity. God will draw out the good even from your fall.”

—Teresa of Avila [The Interior Castle. Translated by Mirabai Starr, New York, Riverhead Books, 2003].

Passage From St. Teresa’s Interior Castle [Excerpt]

“Let [the soul] try, without forcing itself or causing any turmoil, to put a stop to all discursive reasoning, yet not to suspend the understanding, nor to cease from all thought, though it is well for it to remember that it is in God’s presence and Who this God is. If feeling this should lead it into a state of absorption, well and good; but it should not try to understand what this state is, because that is a gift bestowed upon the will. The will, then, should be left to enjoy it, and should not labor except for uttering a few loving words, for although in such a case one may not be striving to cease from thought, such cessation often comes, though for a very short time.”

—Teresa of Avila [The Interior Castle. Translated by E. Allison Peers. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., 1990, pp. 89-90. [St. Teresa of Avila, Fourth Mansions, Chapter 3, Paragraph 7.]