St. Teresa of Jesus believes that it is of the highest importance for the soul to know itself. She says: “Would it not be a sign of great ignorance, my daughters, if a person were asked who he was, and could not say, and had no idea who his father or his mother was, or from what country he came? Though that is great stupidity, our own is incomparably greater if we make no attempt to discover what we are, and only know that we are living in these bodies.” Life, Peers, Ch. 1 p. 80.
She states that this self-knowledge must never be neglected because we would suffer terrible trials because we do not understand ourselves. We would not so effectually advance towards God without knowing the structure of the soul, its possibilities, its deficiencies, the laws that regulate its activities.
In the sixth mansion of Interior Castle, she came to the understanding that our Lord dearly loves the virtue of humility because God is Sovereign Truth and to be humble is to walk in truth for it is absolutely true to say that we have no good thing in ourselves but only misery and nothingness, and anyone who fails to understand this is walking in falsehood. He who best understands it is most pleasing to Sovereign Truth because he is walking in truth. She also states in the Interior Castle, first mansion, “However high a state the soul may have attained, self- knowledge is incumbent upon it, and this it will never be able to neglect even should it so desire.” Therefore, she states, “However sublime your contemplation may be, take care both to begin and end every period of prayer with self-examination.”
Object of the Knowledge of Self
All that is quoted so far shows that St. Teresa wants to know herself only in order to attain to God more surely. It is almost exclusively in the light of God that she is going to ask for the necessary bread of self-knowledge. God must be at the same time the end and the beginning of the knowledge of self.
Psychological Knowledge
She discovers that imagination or thoughts are not the same as understanding. She wondered why the understanding was more timid in the soul than thoughts which seemed to be numerous. She explains the distinction between the two as exterior and interior, between sense and spirit. She states: “Just as we cannot stop the movement of the heavens, revolving as they do with such speed, so we cannot restrain our thought. And then we send all the faculties of the soul after it, thinking we are lost, and have misused the time that we are spending in the presence of God. Yet the soul may perhaps be wholly united with Him in the Mansions very near His presence, while thought remains in the outskirts of the castle, suffering the assaults of a thousand wild and venomous creatures…”  She concludes that “it is not good for us to be disturbed by our thoughts or to worry about them in the slightest…”
 
Spiritual Knowledge
It is only under the light of God that we can explore the triple domain of the spiritual knowledge of self.

1. What we are before God

God is the friend of order and of truth, says St. Teresa. Order and Truth require that our relations with God be based on what He is and what we are. God is the infinite Being, our Creator. We are finite beings, His creatures who depend in everything on Him. Now and always God will be God; and man, even divinized by grace, will still remain a finite creature. Reason gives us a glimmering light on the abyss of the Infinite; faith enlightens us more fully. The gifts of the Holy Ghost give a certain experience of it. Our Lord asked St. Catherine of Siena, “Do you know, my daughter, who you are and who I am? He proceeded to tell her – “You are she who is not; and I am He who is.” When St. Teresa discovered this, she stated that she wished kings might have such knowledge, in order that they might better learn the value of human things and discover their duty in the perspective of the Infinite. She realizes that no one could be humble before God as Christ was, nor even as the Virgin Mary, because no one can measure as they did the abyss of the infinite that separates man from his Creator. But Jesus and Mary were of a perfect purity. We are sinners. We have used our liberty to refuse to obey God on whom we depend absolutely every instant of our existence. To have sinned remains a fact that shows the perversity of our nature.
 
Thus the double knowledge of the all of God and the nothingness of man is fundamental for the spiritual life. It creates in the soul a profound humility that nothing can disturb; it places the soul in an attitude of truth which attracts all the gifts of God. This knowledge also helped St. Teresa to have a profound respect for the greatness of God.
2. Supernatural riches
Now we look at the supernatural riches that are made available to this soul of nothingness. All souls are called to be perfect as its heavenly Father is perfect. St. Teresa says that the soul’s capacity is much greater than we can realize. She wishes now to talk about the sublime dignity and beauty of the soul – “the palace occupied by the King”. She says the soul is “a castle made of a single diamond or of a very clear crystal.” The Christian ought to know his dignity. He ought not to be ignorant of the value of the many special graces he has received. In the Way of Perfection, we find St. Teresa stating: “If God gives a soul such pledges, it is a sign that He has great things in store for it. It will be its own fault if it does not make great progress.”  Truth moves us to gratitude towards God and urges us to be faithful to graces received.
3. Evil tendencies
St. Teresa now brings us to the reality that there are forces which work against us and the graces which God wants us to have. We cannot disregard the venomous poisons which are all around us because they constitute one of the most important objects of the knowledge of self. Man discovers in himself concupiscence, the disordinate strivings of the senses; pride of mind and of the will, or the lusting of these two powers for self-independence. St. John of the Cross points out certain effects of these evil tendencies, especially the privative one of eliminating God and God’s action wherever they prevail: “For it is the same thing if a bird be held by a slender cord or by a stout one; since, even if it be slender, the bird will be as well held as though it were stout, for so long as it breaks it not and flies not away.” St. John also tells us in detail how these unruly desires cause torment, fatigue, weariness, blindness and weakness in the soul.
 
How to acquire knowledge of self?
It is the light of God that discovers to her what she is, the value of the supernatural riches and the harmfulness of evil inclinations. Therefore: It is the light of God that the soul learns to know itself. St. Teresa asks the soul not to seek to know itself by analyzing itself directly, but to search itself under the light of God. She says in the first mansions of the Interior Castle: “As I see it, we shall never succeed in knowing ourselves unless we seek to know God, let us think of His greatness and then come back to our own baseness; by looking at His purity we shall see our foulness; by meditation upon His humility, we shall see how far we are from being humble. She says that we must be careful not to focus too much on ourselves and its failures. We must not have a false humility to make us very uneasy about the gravity of our past sins. This would be an avenue for Satan to make us melancholy or sad. She says that we must never take our eyes off of Christ.

We must add here that even though Our Lady was perfect, the Church gives her to us as our perfect model. She never took her eyes off of Christ. Mary had perfect humility which never disturbs or troubles the soul. It is accompanied with peace, joy and tranquility. We have the Sacraments to find Jesus and ask His pardon and beg Him through the prayers and intercession of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel for the graces we need to grow in holiness. We want to live in imitation of her. We want to love Jesus above all thing and to depend on Him for the graces we need to reach perfect union with Him.
 
St. Teresa only wanted to know herself to serve God better and to attain to Him who is the friend of order and of truth. May we never give up the fight for Truth and may we always seek the Truth – truth to know that God is a loving Father who wants us all to depend on Him like a little child. Truth to know that this little child has faults and failings that can only be healed by God Himself through our yes to His grace.  May we seek to do His Will so that we can grow closer to Him each and every day for all eternity
 
PS – The St. Louis DeMontfort – To Jesus Through Mary Consecration has a 33 day
Preparation in which the second week is devoted to “Knowledge of Self”. As Carmelites, we are asked in the Old Rule to follow this teaching which is to seek Christ with the help of Mary. It is the surest, fastest way to acquire perfection which we are all called to.
May Our Lady of Mt. Carmel pray for us and lead us to Her Son Jesus Christ!!

As the Moors were invading Spain in the 1500's, Teresa of Jesus as a child,  went off towards the country with her brother Rodrigo in the hope that there they would have their heads cut off. Her uncle went out to seek them and brought them back to their anxious parents. She explained, “I went because I want to see God, and to see Him we must die.” As she grew up at home, she built little hermitages in the orchard. She finally enters the Carmel and God reveals His presence to Teresa in fleeting graces of union. This only increases her desire for God. She writes:
“Remember how St. Augustine tells us about his seeking God in many places and eventually finding Him within himself. Do you suppose it is of little importance that a soul which is often distracted should come to understand this truth and to find that, in order to speak to its Eternal Father and to take its delight in Him, it has no need to go to Heaven…We need no wings to go in search of Him but have only to find a place where we can be alone and look upon Him present within us.” (Taken from her Life)
The whole of Teresian spirituality is in this movement towards God Who is present in the soul, seeking to be united perfectly with Him.
These are the essential elements:

1. The presence of God in the soul. This is its fundamental truth.

God is in the center, in the seventh Mansions. He is the great reality of the castle; He is its whole adornment. He is the sun that shines upon it, whose warming rays enable it to produce the fruit of good works. The soul is made for God. It is nothing else than the “paradise” of God. God truly dwells there; of this, St. Teresa is certain. God is present in the just soul according to two modes that complete one another and that we call “active presence of immensity” and “objective presence”.
Active Presence of Immensity
On a natural level, God created all things and by a continual act sustains His creatures in order to maintain it in existence.
The participation of the divine nature which is grace, is the highest work wrought by the presence of immensity. God is then present substantially in the soul of the just to whom He gives both natural being and the supernatural life of grace. He sustains us, but not as a mother sustains and carries her child in her arms; He penetrates us and envelops us. God is the soul of our soul, the life of our life, the great reality in which we are, as it were, immersed; He penetrates all that we have and all that we are by His active presence and His vivifying power; “In Him we live and move and have our being.” Acts 17:28
Objective Presence
By the presence of immensity, God reveals His presence and His nature by His works. To the soul that has become His child by grace, God opens up His intimate life, His life in a Trinity, and has the soul enter to share in it like a true child. To these new relations created by grace there corresponds a new mode of divine presence that we shall call “objective presence”; because in this, God is embraced directly as the object of our knowing and our love. “If any one love me,…my Father will love him and we will come to him and will make our abode with him.” John 14:23
 
Localization of the Objective Presence in the Center of the Soul
The presence of God is localized in the most profound part of the soul, in the center, the room or palace occupied by the King. It is at the center of the castle that the soul will properly experience the active presence of God, the sanctifier. It is in the center that it will go to find Him and to be united perfectly with Him.

1. The progressive interiorization of the soul. This expresses its movement.

Once God is discovered to be in the depth of the soul, all its desire will be directed to Him there. The movement towards God will be a progressive interiorization leading to the meeting with Him, the embrace and union in darkness, while awaiting the vision of heaven. Each stage in the interiorization will be a “mansion” that will mark a progress in union. God is Love and is ever tending to give Himself – He seeks conquest so that He may give Himself more fully to the conquered. His love is always active in the soul in which He dwells. The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. God’s love engenders and gives; supernatural charity in the soul is engendered and rises towards its source (God) God’s love is paternal; our love is filial. “For whoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” Rom. 8:14
Thus the reign of God is established in the soul; the transforming union is effected by the invading of grace which progressively conquers, transforms and subjects the soul to God within. By freeing itself of the senses and its own egoistic tendencies, by obeying lights and motions that are more and more spiritual and interior, the soul deepens within until it belongs completely to Him who resides in its finest point. Such is the spiritual life and its movement.

1. Profound union with God. This is its end.

Divine union, the term of the spiritual life, differs according to souls. Its degrees are almost indefinite in number, from that of the infant that dies immediately after baptism on up to the ineffable union of the Blessed Virgin with Her God, on the day of Her Blessed Assumption. St. Therese of the Child Jesus said, “I only will what He wills; it is what He does that I love. Perfection consists in doing His will.” (Letter to Celine 1893)
St. Teresa in her Interior Castle states: “The desire of glorifying God completes this submission. These souls have now an equally strong desire to serve Him and to sing His praises, and to help some soul if they can. So what they desire now is not merely not to die but to live for a great many years and to suffer the severest trials, if by so doing they can become the means whereby the Lord is praised, even in the smallest things.” This union answers to the dearest desires of God Himself. God-Love needs to give Himself and finds His joy in this, a joy according to the measure of His giving. In all creation, God can give nothing more perfect than grace, so that the creature can participate in His nature. Hence, there is no joy for God superior to that which He finds in the diffusion of His grace. What will be God’s joy when He finds a soul that leaves Him entirely free, and in which He can pour out His love in the measure of His desire! The confidences made by our Lord to certain saints indicate this joy of God.
 
 
Conclusion:  This unity, imposed by God on man as his supernatural end, has its value already here on earth. The effective power of the soul in the supernatural world is according to the measure of its unitive charity.  A saint like St. Teresa, who has arrived at spiritual marriage, normally obtains much more from God by one sigh of the soul than do many imperfect souls by long prayers.
 
With St. Teresa, her desire of drawing from the infinite ocean of God’s love as directly as possible and with all the power of her being united herself perfectly with God, lifting up her soul and this gave her spirituality its force and its dynamism, its direction and its end.
 
St. Teresa calls us to accept the condition of giving ourselves completely to Him in order to be transformed by His love and to do His Will.
 
 
 
 
MARY’S WILL
Mary’s life is a great example for us to imitate because She was the only one who fully understood and imitated the strength of the will of Jesus – Her Son. Jesus wished only and completely the will of His Father and therefore so did Mary. Mary’s life is one of strength because She was so united to the Most Blessed Trinity.
We see in Scripture her strength of will throughout the events of Mary’s life. In the presence of the Angel Gabriel, She accepted an almost infinite responsibility on which depended the future of Earth and even of Heaven. For us and in obedience to the Father, She kept silent Her pregnancy from St. Joseph so that it would be in Scripture for us that She conceived of the Holy Spirit. This took tremendous strength of will because She saw the pain and sorrow that St. Joseph was going through and could only offer this to the Father with Her prayers. She did not complain of no room in the inn and the lack of welcome for Jesus at Bethlehem; as well as not being frightened by the perspectives hinted at by the old priest Simeon. She did not protest the orders to flee into Egypt from Herod. She was always docile to the will of the Father in imitation of Her Son.
She needed strength of will to endure the agony of that unexplainable disappearance of the Child Jesus in Jerusalem. For thirty years She was at the side of Her Son, watching Him grow in stature, wisdom, grace and sensed every day that the hour was drawing nearer when He would be a “sign of contradiction” to His people. She willingly endured the sword that would pierce Her own Heart.
She had strength of will to assist at His Passion, to follow Him up to Calvary even though His own Apostles hid in fear. She stood bravely at the foot of the cross to see Him die before Her very eyes. She received Him into Her arms when He was taken down from the cross and personally cleaned His every wound before His burial. Not one complaint, not one bitter feeling against those who did this to Her Son. She never dreamed of escaping this or any of the trials. She did not cry out like Peter, “God forbid! That will never happen.” She embraced the will of the Father for good that would come of all of this suffering. Do we?
There was never a hero or a martyr with the courage of Mary. Her reply to the Angel Gabriel, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to Me according to thy word” expresses Her attitude at every moment of Her life. She lived in perfect imitation of Her Son Who was in perfect union with the Father. The courage of Her Son sustained Her own courage, as did the joy of suffering for Him, and with Him for the glory of the Father and the redemption of all men, who were Her children.
Now a look at our own wills and what we can learn from this lesson. We are weak, capricious and changeable. We are wounded by original sin and by our own actual sins. Things change from moment to moment and therefore we are incapable of perseverance. The wills of Jesus and Mary were determined by the will of God, the Father. If we always turned to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary and asked them for guidance and strength to do the will of the Father; we would be able to achieve constancy of will. Our love for Jesus and Mary and souls would give us the courage to do what it is the Father in Heaven wants of us. The more intimate our union with our Lord and His Mother is, the stronger will our wills be in doing what it is that is right and beneficial.
A resolution for this year may be to spend more time in prayer. Prayer, done well, will help us to imitate Jesus and Mary and therefore please the Father. Our Lady has constantly asked for the rosary. Many promises are given to us through this prayer that takes us through the great Mysteries of the Life of Jesus and Mary. We are guaranteed to grow in grace and knowledge with this daily rosary. If we already pray one – increase it to two. That may take a full 45 minutes to an hour of your day. In imitation of Mary, may we give God our first fruits – not our left-overs. May we choose to love God above all things and make greater time for prayer in order to unite our own will more closely to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
 

 
Venerable Fr. Marie-Eugene's whole life was marked by the powerful influence of the Holy Ghost and Our Lady. He started the Secular Institute, Notre Dame de
Vie in 1932. He died on Easter Monday, March 27, 1967, the very day on which he loved to celebrate the Easter joy of Mary, Mother of Life.
 
Fr. Marie-Eugene, we beg your intercession to ask Our Lady of Mt. Carmel to bless The Traditional Lay Carmelites of Fatima for the glory of God and the
 salvation of souls.

​Every Friday, I will post chapter summaries of his first book which he wrote for the lay people who were in his Secular Institute. This book is called, "I Want to See God". It was written pre-Vatican II but has been put back into print in 1998 and is available on Amazon.
The summary of the first chapter is:
I WANT TO SEE GOD – Chapter 1 Notes
The Book of Mansions
 

1. Historical Circumstances

St. Teresa wrote the Interior Castle or Book of the Mansions in 1577.
She was then 62 years old.
15 years earlier, she had founded the first convent of the reformed
Carmelites, St. Joseph’s in Avila.
10 years earlier – she had extended the reform to the friars.
In 1571 – She was appointed the Prioress of the convent of the Incarnation
Where she had been for 28 years prior to the reform. She met opposition but
re-established regularity and won their hearts. She was freed of this charge in 1574
and returned to founding more foundations.
The non-reformed Spanish Carmelites presented their grievances against the
Teresian Reform to the friars. The chapter declared that the reformed groups must be
treated as rebels; that the reformer, Teresa of Jesus, must stop her foundations and
remain in one convent of her choice.
She chose the convent in Toledo for retirement.
In 1577, the Calced friars took into custody St. John of the Cross.
In 1577-1578, the Carmelite Reform went through hours of agony.
She was asked to write on prayer but felt she could not as she thought she said it all.
With God’s grace, the Interior Castle was written June 2 – Nov. 29, 1577 – six months.
 

1. Composition and Division of the Work

She writes: “I had no idea how to begin to carry out the obligation laid upon me by obedience, a thought occurred to me which I will now set down, in order to have some foundation on which to build. I began to think of the soul as if it were a castle made of a single diamond or of a very clear crystal, in which there are many rooms, just as in Heaven there are many mansions.”
 
Breakdown of the Interior Castle Book (Not in this book but FYI)
 
The First Mansions
 Chapter I. Description of the Castle
 Chapter II. The Human Soul
 
 The Second Mansions
 Chapter I. War
 
 The Third Mansions
Chapter I. Fear of God
 Chapter II. Aridity in Prayer
The Fourth Mansions
Chapter I. Sweetness in Prayer
 Chapter II. Divine Consolations
 Chapter III. Prayer of Quiet
 
The Fifth Mansions
Chapter I. Prayer of Union
Chapter II. Effects of Union
Chapter III. Cause of Union
Chapter IV. Spiritual Espousals
 The Sixth Mansions
Chapter I. Preparation for Spiritual Marriage
Chapter II. The Wound of Love
Chapter III. Locutions
Chapter IV. Raptures
Chapter V. The Flight of the Spirit
Chapter VI. Spiritual Jubilation
Chapter VII. The Humanity of Our Lord
Chapter VIII. Intellectual Visions
Chapter IX. Imaginary Visions
Chapter X. Intellectual Visions Continued
Chapter XI. The Dart of Love
 
The Seventh Mansions
 
Chapter I. God's Presence Chamber
Chapter II. Spiritual Marriage
Chapter III. Its Effects
Chapter IV. Martha and Mary
 
 

1. Value of the Work

 She had met many confessors and theologians since she wrote her Life and this along with her experiences helped to be fruitful in her writing. She had St. John of the Cross for three years as a confessor at the Convent of the Incarnation to which he came at her request. Teresa gave from her grace as mother of souls; John of the Cross used his authority as father and communicated his knowledge as mystical doctor. Their conversations sometimes ended in ecstasy; and it was after a Holy Communion received from the hands of John of the Cross that Teresa was raised to spiritual marriage on Nov. 18, 1572. Since then in the Seventh Mansion, she was in the continual presence of the Holy Trinity. Her gaze could penetrate the light of the mystery of God and there gather new riches. Through spiritual marriage she has become a mother of souls, sharing with others the fruitfulness of her own soul.
It was under the influence of her double grace as spouse of Christ and mother of souls that she gave to Christian literature one of its masterpieces among the treatises on spirituality.