“Where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.”  Matthew 18:20.    This past week during prayer group the truth of this verse was most evident.  Our group usually has 4-5 women who show up every Friday at 8 am.  We either discuss a book,  pray the Rosary or Chaplet of Divine Mercy or discuss a reflection for the day.  Only two of us were available this week but we agreed to meet anyway.  The funny thing is that we never agreed on what we would do, so we both showed up with something to discuss.  I don’t think either of us were “married” to the idea that we had to discuss what we prepared.  I think we were both open to let the Spirit lead and boy did it ever!

My prayer “partner” this week shared a book she was reading on the topic of St. Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castles.  We had just enough time to discuss the intro to the book which summarized St. Teresa’s take on the 7 Castles of the soul.  All I can say is WOW!  I immediately came home and ordered the book for my kindle and also dusted off some CDs on the topic which I had purchased during a retreat I attended several years ago.   God is good!  We sat for an hour dissecting each paragraph of the intro and I think we both walked away with a deeper understanding of what St. Teresa was getting at.

After reading about one particular “castle” of the soul, I got the sense that St. Teresa was describing one’s ability to live in constant awareness.  This reminded me of something I read in another book about living in the moment and developing a sense of awareness.  The book described awareness as the ability to look at something without judgment and thereby see it much clearer.  For example:  if you look at a tree without thinking about its color, height, type, etc. – the tree itself becomes clearer in your vision, it seems closer. It’s beauty literally jumps out at you.

I continued to ponder my  group discussion throughout the day, especially the idea of awareness.   I realized the same rule of non-judgment we are urged to apply to inanimate objects also applies to people.  If we look at people without judgment, they too can become much clearer.  What does that mean?  We see them for what they really are – children of God, souls on a journey.  When our ability to see them becomes clearer, they become more beautiful in our sight.  When they become more beautiful in our sight, our capacity to love them increases.   We grow closer to them and to God and we journey deeper into the interior castle.

St. Teresa of Avila is a Catholic saint but her book on the interior castles is not just for Catholics.  It’s focus is on the growth and transformation of the soul and not on Catholic theology.  I highly recommend this book to everyone but especially to those who truly believe they’ve “arrived.”   Upon reading this book you will soon learn you are not where you thought you were in terms of your spirituality and your relationship to God.

Of course, my God never lets a day go by without providing some spiritual reading that coincides with what I am currently meditating on.  Once again, here is what I got this morning from Richard Rohr’s website:

I believe that God gives us our soul- our deepest identity, our True Self, our unique blueprint – already at our very conception.  Our unique little bit of heaven is installed by the Manufacturer at its beginning!  We are given a span of years to discover it, to choose it, and to live our own unique destiny to the full.  The discovery of our own soul is frankly what we are here for.

Your soul is who you are in God and who God is in you.  We do not “make” or “create” our souls.  We only awaken them, allow them, and live out of their deepest messages.  Normally, we need to unlearn a lot of false messages – given by family, religion, and culture – in order to get back to that foundational life which is “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). Yes, transformation is often more about unlearning than learning, which is why the religious traditions call it “conversion” or “repentance.”

As a young friar, I remember being very confused about Jesus beginning his preaching with the word “change” (Mark 1:15, Matthew 3:2). What was I supposed to change from?  I was a good Catholic, a Franciscan, soon to be a priest, and trying to keep my vows.  I assumed he meant it for other “bad” people.  But those roles and identities were still all “forms,” not necessarily the substance of my soul.  I hope you get the point.  The false self is all the more delusional the more it appears to be “good.”

Saint Teresa’s description of the final castle sounds like what Rohr describes as “our unique  little bit of heaven.” Are we willing to work on dying (to self) to get there?  Isn’t that what we are here for?  Step inside!  God bless you!