Teresa of Avila: Session 4

Turning to the Mystics with James Finley

Center for Action and Contemplation

Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 10 August 2020

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This is the fourth session that focuses on the mystic, Teresa of Avila. In the tenor of the ancient practice of Lectio Divina, James Finley begins with a passage from the fifth mansion of Teresa’s The Interior Castle, and reflects on the qualitative essence of the spirit of this text, and finishes with a meditative practice. Resources: Turning to the Mystics is a podcast by the Center for Action and Contemplation. To learn more about Jim, visit jamesfinley.org  For the transcript to this podcast, you can find it here. The book being used for this season can be found here. Check out our online course on the Interior Castle, details are here. Connect with us: We also produce other podcasts you might enjoy. To learn more about them and our other offerings, visit cac.org This podcast is made possible, thanks to the generosity of our donors. If you would love to support the ongoing work of the Center for Action and Contemplation and the continued work of our podcasts, you can donate at cac.org/podcastsupport Thank you!

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to a podcast by the Center for Action and Contemplation.
0:04.4	To learn more, visit cac.org.
0:08.4	Greetings, I'm Jim Finley.
0:11.4	Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.
0:14.3	Readings everyone. Readings everyone. readings everyone and welcome to our time here together turning to the Christian
0:28.9	mystic centuries of Avalon to help us deepen our experience of and response to God's presence in our lives.
0:37.0	Focusing our attention now in this session on the fifth mansion, the fifth dwelling place of the soul.
0:45.0	And she begins to help us begin to understand this heightened state of realize intimacy with God by contrasting
1:00.8	it to the fourth mansion, by we're distinguishing it from the fourth
1:05.4	mansion and so she says in the first chapter do not think that this is a state like the last, namely, like the fourth mansion we've just explored,
1:17.0	in which we dream. I say dream because the soul seems to be as it were drowsy so that it neither seems
1:25.2	asleep nor feels awake. Here that is here now in this fifth mansion we are
1:31.9	all asleep and fast asleep to the things of the world
1:36.4	and to ourselves. In fact for the short time that the condition last the soul is without consciousness and has no power to think, even though it may desire to do so.
1:48.0	There is no need now for the soul to devise any method of suspending the thought. Even in loving if we were able
1:59.0	to love, it cannot understand how or what it is that it loves, or what it would desire.
2:05.7	In fact, it has completely died to the world so that it may live more fully in God.
2:12.4	This is a delectable death, snatching of the soul from all the
2:16.7	activities from which it can perform while it is in the body, a death full of delight. For in order to come closer to God, the
2:26.7	soul appears to have withdrawn so far from the body that I do not know if it's if it has still life enough to be able to breathe.
2:37.0	I've just been thinking about this and I believe it has not or at least if it still breathes it does so without realizing it.
2:46.0	The mind would like to occupy itself wholly in understanding something of which it feels, and it has not the strength to do this. It becomes so
	...

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