Category Archives: Journey to the Center of the Mind

The Seventh Tower: The Center of the Mind

Posted on September 26, 2019 by Vajragoni

Over the course of this series on Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle, I have been acquiring and utilizing several resources for my own edification as well as sharing their insights when appropriate. As we now arrive at the Seventh Tower, The Center of the Mind, Mary Frohlich’s The Intersubjectivity of the Mystic: A Study of Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle, offers us some splendid introductory material: read more

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The Sixth Tower: Enraptured!

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Vajragoni

Our spiritual excursion into the Sixth Tower will be marked by graduating from the Illuminative stage into a most extraordinary plunge into the ecstasies of the increasingly Unitive cycle. You see, the soul’s yearning for Absolute Union with the Unborn Lord will now strike a fevering-pitch—passing through great waves of inner mental-torment as well as mind-numbing and heart bursting encounters of a soul enraptured to the point of never desiring anything from any created samsaric realms ever again. All these must be endured before entrance into the Seventh Tower is permitted. This astounding Sixth Tower boasts eleven chapters and is the largest section of Teresa’s Interior Castle, actually covering a third of the work; in essence, it’s mostly autobiographical material indicating Teresa’s own experience of incredible ecstasies lasting between ages forty-three and fifty-seven. Oftentimes those yearning for something similar in their own life will jump to the Sixth Tower to the detriment of the others—so caught-up is one’s own imagination with the fervent hope of finding something of parallel to their own extraordinary spiritual experiences. Hence, this will be the longest blog of the series offering a catalog of all the assorted Transcendent Exposures that one encounters with the mystical flames of divine enrapturement. read more

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The Fifth Tower: The Silkworm

Posted on September 19, 2019 by Vajragoni

By now one can realize that Teresa’s Interior Castle is a treatise on profound Unitive Mysticism. What she has been revealing are the later stages of the interior spiritual life. The final stages correspond to the fifth, sixth and seventh dwelling places. While the Fourth Tower was about a transitional phase from active to passive contemplation, this glorious Fifth Tower designates what Teresa refers to as the beginning of the Divine Union, or Absolute Illumination. According to her, ones task belies any form of adequate human communication for what IT is truly like: read more

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The Fourth Tower: The Shepherd’s Whistle

Posted on September 16, 2019 by Vajragoni

We are now leaving the active purgative-stage in the journey to the illuminative and passive stage. In Essence, the spiritual adept is now discerning how the Unborn Spirit is taking a more prominent role in the soul’s development. read more

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A Taste of Quiet

Posted on September 14, 2019 by Vajragoni

The Fourth Mansion of Teresa’s masterpiece is outstanding and requires a special introductory blog. She writes that “Supernatural experiences begin here.” This is closure of the Purgative Way and the beginning of the Illuminative. It’s also the commencement of the Recollective spirit, or the Prayer of Quiet. This is the transition that occurs between active meditation and infused contemplation. John of the Cross is the spiritual master of infused contemplation while Teresa plays the more dominate hand concerning the prior stage of the Prayer of Quiet. In league with both John and Teresa another notable Spanish-Mystic of the 17th Century is Miguel de Molinos (1628-1697), a true master-teacher of the Prayer of Quiet (quietud).  Misunderstood and unjustly condemned in his time-frame, this spiritual father of what was to become a movement called Quietism: read more

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The Third Tower: There is no Security in this Life

Posted on September 10, 2019 by Vajragoni

Undeceive yourself, blessed soul; in this practice all the works that are not governed by true zeal and born of pure love and a purged spirit are clothed in vanity, self-love, and spiritual ambition. (Miguel de Molinos: The Spiritual Guide) read more

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The Second Tower: Conformity of the Will

Posted on September 8, 2019 by Vajragoni

TREATS OF THE GREAT IMPORTANCE OF PERSEVERANCE IN ORDER TO ENTER
THE LAST MANSIONS, AND OF THE FIERCE WAR THE DEVIL WAGES AGAINST
US. HOW ESSENTIAL IT IS TO TAKE THE RIGHT PATH FROM THE VERY COMMENCEMENT OF OUR JOURNEY. A METHOD OF ACTION WHICH HAS PROVED VERY EFFICACIOUS read more

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The First Tower: Self-gnosis

Posted on September 5, 2019 by Vajragoni

*Please be advised that we are utilizing two different translations of The Interior Castle: The edition by Benedict Zimmerman, and the edition by Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. and Otilio Rodriguez, O.C.D. (O.C.D. =Order of Discalced Carmelites). read more

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Creepy Crawlies

Posted on September 3, 2019 by Vajragoni

Before reaching the First Tower, or Teresa’s First Mansion, some more preliminary observations are in order. Towers 1-3 manifests the Active phase of Recollection, while Towers 4-7 constitute the Passive Phase of Recollection. Also 1-3 establishes what is known as the Purgative Phase of the spiritual journey, likened unto what John of the Cross would classify as the Dark Night of the Senses; 4-5 presents the Illuminative Stage, wherein the adept enters into a more supernal-realization of what still needs to be shredded (Dark Night of the Spirit) in order for union with the Absolute to occur; Towers 6-7 represent the Unitive Phase, or Absolute Coitus with the Unborn Mind. Throughout all of this, the self must continue ever-onward towards its goal of Absolute Recollection—Recognition of its self AS Self. read more

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Journey to the Center of the Mind

Posted on September 1, 2019 by Vajragoni

In October of 2015 work was commenced on a series that described in meticulous detail the process of Right Contemplation as enunciated in the writings of John of the Cross, by and large a spiritual journey through an active purification of the senses and resolving in a passive transfiguration of the spirit, or more specifically  infused contemplation that also had a direct bearing on Union with the Unborn Mind. This present work is a sister-series if you will, one that compliments John of the Cross and his Dark Night of the Soul, and that is Teresa of Avila’s renowned work, The Interior Castle. Teresa’s approach also bespeaks of an infusion of the spirit with the divine, but her primary focus is on that Recollection of the spirit’s hidden majesty in the Unborn: Active Recollection and Passive Recollection. Before we proceed further, it needs to be avowed that her own spiritual development rests on the shoulders of a spiritual predecessor, the 16th century Franciscan Mystic: Francisco de Osuna (1497-1541 read more

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