I took my time with this book and am so glad that I did. I was surprised by the self deprecating humour and was fascinated with her insights. The writing about the spiritual afflictions in the 6th and 7th mansions was beyond my understanding, but as a beginning reader of the Christian Mystics, this was overall, an accessible book.

After reading this book for the second time, I think it is impossible not to love St Teresa of Avila as a spiritual master. What I love about this book is that her description of the Christian life as an entering into our “interior castle” is a creative way of describing what it looks like to develop intimacy with Jesus in our individual hearts. An honest look into this book should dismantle any assumption that liturgical/classical Christianity is merely ritualistic or unconcerned with a “personal relationship with Jesus.” In fact, this book is filled with some of the best wisdom you can get when it comes to developing intimacy with Christ.

In our relationship with God now and at the final judgment, we are measured by the degree that we love.

“…the Lord does not look so much at the magnitude of anything we do as at the love with which we do it. If we accomplish what we can, His Majesty will see to it that we become able to do more each day. We must not begin by growing weary; but during the whole of this short life, which for any one of you may be shorter than you think, we must offer the Lord whatever interior and exterior sacrifice we are able to give Him, and His Majesty will unite it with that which He offered to the Father for us upon the Cross, so that it may have the value won for it by our will, even though our actions in themselves may be trivial” (7th Mansion, Ch 4).

Thus, as Mother Teresa famously said, do small things with great love.

This is a truly amazing and beautiful book! It does take time to read however. The translation is very readable in the study notes and interpretive notes are very helpful. This classic and the notes that come with it will continue to feed my soul for years to come. This will likely not be the last time I read it.

A book that I will definitely have to come back to as there is too much to absorb. But I love how Teresa of Avila does a great job of pulling people into the best things they can do: prayer and action!

And to recognize that prayer is also a gift we receive from God as we spend time in His presence and is not meant to leave us with nothing to do after... But that to inspires us into action... And that as we are drawn to God there is nuances to each dwelling as we draw nearer and for And that each person will experience these dwellings in the different ways and St Teresa merely is a guide to help those of us lost in prayer to pick up again and realize it is possible to connect with God in a very real way.

It took me some time to decide how to rate this work. It is well written, engaging, and explains well the concepts it is trying to explain. It's only technical detraction being that it does sidetrack often. In these respects I would give it 4 or 4.5 stars.

Now that being said the subject and premises of the book I would give only a 1 star. The entire basis of the work is that strain of thought that seems so common in religious thinkers, the belief that in order to hold their creator in high regard they must hold creation in a low one. Not a paragraph goes by in which the author does not remind the reader that all of existence and all things which god has wrought are evil, detestable, repugnant. Intermixed in are advice on loving god that could come from a manual on gaslighting people into abusive relationships, at one point even admonishing people for being in good health because they obviously aren't praying hard enough if their health hasn't suffered for it.

Because I could not decide which rating to use I decided to give a 3 star average.

This book was good and enlightening but I did feel that at times I had to go back and reread things because they did not necessarily make sense to me. I am not going to give up on this book and plan to reread it at some point in the future.

Part of the appeal of mysticism to me is how it offers a road. Avila suggests here that the Interior Castle of the soul is configured like a castle with many rooms that lead deeper and deeper to the center. So, the highest mystical plane is in the center, while the outermost room is the lowest.

This schema kinda gives you a path, a way to move forward in some way. I think in our contemporary "there's no purpose to life" worldview, things like this give structure and meaning, in that they promise higher truths and give you something like a path to get there.

Either way, it's an interesting book.

Also, I've read that Descartes probably got his notion of the deceiving demon in Meditations on First Philosophy from Avila, who was concerned that spiritual messages she received in prayer would be from demons pretending to be God. Pretty neat stuff!

I don't remember which edition I read. Will come back to this later.

My mediocre experience of this book probably stems from how I've already heard these concepts rehashed and retold, but the scope of Teresa's vision in the 1500s is impressive to behold.