The important thing is not to think too much, and so to do whatever best awakens your love.
Saint Teresa of Avila
Awakens Your Love
Topic: Spiritual Growth & Practice
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.
Saint Teresa of Ávila, born Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada (28 March 1515 – 4 October 1582), was an influential Spanish mystic, Roman Catholic saint, and a central figure of the Counter-Reformation. Best known for her deep theological insights, she authored several important works that reflect her devotion to a life of contemplative prayer. Known for her mystical experiences, Teresa embraced the spiritual path as a Carmelite nun, where she found the essence of her vocation. Her understanding of contemplative life through mental prayer has had an enduring impact on Christian spirituality, even transcending the confines of her own religious tradition.
In addition to her spiritual contributions, Saint Teresa is remembered for her significant role in reforming the Carmelite Order of her era. Her reformative efforts were a response to a perceived laxity in her order, focusing on the renewal of commitment to solitude and poverty. Along with Saint John of the Cross, she initiated a movement that resulted in the establishment of the Discalced Carmelites, an order that emphasized austerity and the contemplative life. Notably, this significant institutional development occurred posthumously, with neither Teresa nor John alive when the Carmelite Order ultimately separated into two distinct branches.
The Interior Castle
of Avila, St. Teresa. The Interior Castle. Translated by Mirabai Starr, New York, Riverhead Books, 2003 [Saint Teresa of Avila].
Saint Teresa of Avila
Theme: Spiritual Growth
About This Saint Teresa of Avila Quotation [Commentary]
Saint Teresa of Avila’s guidance to “do whatever best awakens your love” emphasizes that spiritual growth is more about heartfelt devotion than mental complexity. In advising not to “think too much,” Teresa encourages a release from overanalyzing the spiritual path, pointing to love as the core driver of growth. She suggests that deepening one’s connection with the Divine is not about endless thought but about openness to actions that foster genuine love. This shift from intellect to the heart invites seekers to approach their faith with simplicity and sincerity.
Teresa’s words also offer a compassionate view on human imperfection in spiritual growth. Acknowledging that missteps are inevitable, she reassures us that “God will draw out the good even from your fall.” This perspective encourages resilience and a steady commitment to the path despite setbacks. For Teresa, spiritual growth includes embracing one’s limitations with humility, trusting that each stumble serves a purpose. Her words remind us that every experience, even struggles, can foster a closer relationship with the Divine.
Finally, Teresa’s teaching strikes a balance between active striving and trustful yielding. By advising us to “walk your path with integrity” and focus on what stirs love within, she underscores a love-centered spirituality where our inner heart takes precedence over our thinking mind. This approach to faith, guided by love and trust in the Divine, kindles a transformative relationship with God. In her wisdom, Teresa encourages a journey marked by intention and acceptance, where love, more than intellect, becomes the pathway to divine union.
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…”
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.]
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