Foreword
Entering the Castle is many things: a guide to the life and times of St. Teresa of Ávila, the extraordinary sixteenth-century saint and contemplative master; a guide to her brilliant meditation text, The Interior Castle; and, last but certainly not least, a guide to your soul -- a beautiful, tender, radiant, caring, loving, and authentic guide to the territory of your soul.
Mysticism in general and contemplation in particular are such staggeringly vast and often confusing topics that, especially if one is new to either of them, they can prove lethally overwhelming to the soul, right when it is looking for something, if not exactly simplistic, then at least simple enough to ground what might be its confusion, chaos, perhaps fear, perhaps suffering. What I would like to do, then, in just a few pages, is offer the reader some simple experiential reference points that might help to ground some of the central ideas of mystical or contemplative spirituality. I will first give seven of the most central ideas of mysticism and then attempt ... read full excerpt from: Entering the Castle: An Inner Path to God and Your Soul ebook
