An Introduction to Teresa of Avila’s Seven Mansions
Have you noticed that Teresa of Avila just keeps popping up lately? The Lord invites certain saints to pop up their heads in certain centuries, and make themselves known more intimately, because they have something very specific to teach us in our time. St. Teresa, who lived in the 1400’s, wrote a book called the Seven Mansions, her last work before her death, and this book captures the nature of the soul’s intimacy with the Lord, showing us the practical and mystical path of how to approach Him within our own souls.
It is my intention to give a brief sketch of these mansions here, according to how I imperfectly understand them, to act as a short guide in reading her text, and to bring some clarity to St. Teresa’s words and journey.
The structure of the mansions:
To begin with, Teresa uses two gorgeous visuals to help us understand the structure of our souls, and the dwelling place of the Lord.
Your soul is like two things: one, it is like a crystal, and two, it is like a many-tiered mansion. Putting them together, your soul is like a many-tiered mansion which is made out of crystal.
Imagine holding up a crystal to a lightbulb. That light suddenly shines even brighter - the crystal does not block the light, but it seems as if the crystal glows from it’s inner depths. This is the soul, which really does glow from it’s innermost chamber, because there is were the Lord dwells within each of us, and he is pure Light.
Imagine that the crystal of our soul is one mansion built in a circle, with seven concentric rooms or circles contained within it, and in the very center circle - very center room - there dwells the Lord. Now, imagine that each circular room is not merely a room, but a whole mansion! Each mansion is full of rooms, that light up various aspects of the soul (we’ll get into those aspects later).
This crystal has been hewn by the Lord, and is infinite in size! In fact, it’s almost as if each mansions gets bigger the deeper you go. Each mansion is unique from the other six, and your seven mansions are unique from mine, because your soul and my soul are each unique. The light penetrates from the depths with a radiant brilliance, and the closer we get to it, the less we can resist it’s piercing power.
Quick Detour: Have you watched Dr. Who? This show helped me to imagine the seven mansions, through the imagery of the Tardis. It looks so small on the outside, but we know it’s really bigger on the inside! And the light that glows from the center of the Tardis penetrates and transports the entire interior every time it travels.
As we move deeper and deeper to the very center of our souls, we often go back and revisit the mansions we previously lived in, and sometimes, we even jump ahead to visit a mansion in which we will one day dwell. This is not a stagnant movement forward, but a tide that is moving steadily forward, but sometimes farreaches, and sometimes recedes.
Mansions One Through Three
The first three mansions are a journey which we walk through using our own efforts. Each step in this journey brings us nearer to the Lord, and helps us to cast off and ignore the many temptations in our path.
The First Mansion
Before we enter the soul, we are outside it, and outside the soul, we cannot see the light within, for the crystal is covered by a black cloth, and we are overrun with reptiles who live outside the soul. St. Teresa uses reptiles to represent sin and temptation. The only way we can enter the soul is to become dissatisfied with our lives, and begin to vaguely seek something more. Entering the First Mansion involves the beginning of a conversion away from Mortal Sin, and the entire time you abide in this mansion, this is the action you are taking: a conversion away from mortal sin.
As I said, temptations take the form of reptiles: snakes, lizards, and other creatures slither around your feet in the first mansion. You have little resistance to them at this time, and the doors of this mansion are open to the outer world, so these temptations come in and depart freely, without any difficulty. This is actually a necessary part of your journey, because the Lord is using these created, unsatisfactory temptations to increase the dissatisfaction which first brought you into your soul. He is teaching you that your happiness does not lie in created things.
A Note to Devout Cradle Christians:
You may be thinking right now that you never have abided, and never will abide, in this first mansion, because I thought that too when I first learned about it. Having grown up in a very devout Catholic household, I have never knowingly renounced the Lord. Praise the Lord, I never traveled the direct path of being outside my soul and entering it as if it were a stranger. However, do not, like me, discount the importance of this first mansion. Even if you have never, thanks be to God, embraced the reptiles and dwelt here, the Lord has - and continually is - revealing to you the inadequacies of the world, the flesh, and the devil. This always happens in the first mansion, so we often travel backward to visit it.
The Second Mansion
Once you begin accepting that the world is evil, and desire to live in union with God, you enter and dwell in the second mansion.
Here, you begin to strive to desire God’s will with all of your own will, and to avoid sin and temptation. You begin to hear the voice of God and recognize it in scripture, sermons, books, etc. Those sneaky reptiles are still following you into this mansion, but there are not as many. You want to move forward in the soul, but there are many desires and temptations to turn back. The reptiles are here so that, through your own efforts, you can train yourself to renounce them.
And what are those efforts exactly? I was confused by this second mansion for some time, until a friend pointed out to me that it is the mansion of self-knowledge. While in the first mansion, prayer was occasional or merely vocal, here, you practice meditation in prayer, and learn how to identify where you have fallen short of the person you want to be, and determine to take steps to grow and be better.
What is meditation?
The word meditation really threw me, the first time I learned about this. I thought meditation meant protracted time in prayer with the Lord, simply sitting and contemplating His Presence. Actually, that’s not true. While a soul in the second mansion can do this on occasion, that is because they are visiting the mansions ahead of them, and they cannot pray in contemplation consistently. Rather, meditation means actions like praying the Rosary, thinking about the Lord’s life, and thinking about the state of their own soul.
In this second mansion, the Lord is no longer teaching us to renounce created things, but has begun to call out for us to turn our gaze to Him. He is pursuing us unceasingly.
The Third Mansion
At last, your feelings, desires, and comforts are in the Lord, and not in sin! The third mansion is a place of glory, for you are settling into a dwelling place of frequent communion with Him.
You will still learn the evils of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and your journey of self-knowledge will continue for probably the rest of your life, yet - unless you commit a mortal sin - you will not return to dwell again among such frequent and exhausting temptations of the first and second mansions.
Here, you practice meditation with perseverance, spend hours in prayer, and begin to practice contemplation. You can easily spend hours in adoration, you feel comfort and joy in prayer, and your whole being desires to serve God and others.
There are still reptiles here. Small ones that have followed you this far inside. They are venial sins, and it is for the glory of God, and so that you may earn a higher seat in heaven, that He allows you to continue to struggle with them. Yet, be warned - the greatest temptation here is pride, for you have come far in your spiritual journey, and looking around you, you may see many people who are not so deeply encased in the Lord. You will be tempted to see yourself as above them, to look down on them, and to think to yourself that you could never be like one of them again. Yet, it is this exact temptation which will blind you, and lead you back to the first mansion. Humility above all! You have not even come halfway in your journey to the Lord.
Sadly, most souls stop here, and many even find themselves falling back into the first mansions. St. Teresa says that they become comfortable in their routines and ordered prayer lives. They find the comforts of prayer and active service too sweet to relinquish, and refuse to surrender themselves deeper into the Lord’s love. Do not be like these self-satisfied, frightened souls!
But how do we avoid it? The beautiful religious sister who taught me about these mansions gave me the best advice and spiritual comfort I’ve ever received in my life. She explained that the work of our own hearts ends here. She explained that no additional practices of penance, prayer, or active works can lead us deeper on the journey into our souls. Rather, in order to move forward now, we must practice surrender - in every aspect of our lives.
Like most things worthwhile, this is simple, but it is not easy. Whether in finance, relationships, where we live, where we work, where we pray, or who we trust, we must surrender all to the Lord, and allow Him to radically transform our hearts. If you pride yourself on the merits of your spiritual journey, you have lied to yourself - you can do nothing except through Him who strengthens you. If you want to grow closer to the Lord, then your question must be, consistently, ‘where am I afraid to allow the Lord into my life?’
The Surrender Novena:
Pray this ten times, whenever you begin to fear, worry, or feel self-satisfaction: Oh my Jesus, I surrender myself to you. Take care of everything.
Through surrendering to His care, He will soon move you out of the third mansion, and deeper into your soul.
The Dark Night of the Senses:
St. Teresa points out that during the third mansion, you may begin to feel less and less consolation in prayer. You’re still able to pray, but your comfort in the process diminishes, and you may even stop feeling the presence of the Lord. While this can happen on account of your own fault (because you have grown lax in prayer, or turned to other joys to find happiness), it may also be the Dark Night of the Senses. I will not go into this in detail here. There are nuances, and it is a form of the Dark Night of the Soul, but is not the Dark Night of the Spirit. The Lord allows the Dark Night of the Senses to teach you that prayer is not only connected to emotions and the senses, but is in fact, a separate activity. He is asking you to trust Him deeply, even if you cannot feel Him. To surrender to Him here is to participate in a true and deep faith in the Lord.
I will pause here, for this is a lot of information to take in at once. In the next article, I will lay out the Fourth through Seventh Mansions, and how the Lord draws us as we continue to surrender to Him. (I did not write said article)