St Teresa of Avila spoke of seven Mansions, indicating the psychic level of an individual.
“There is a time for penance”, she is reputed to have said, “and a time for partridge”.
She enjoyed conversations about books (St Augustine’s Confessions was a favorite she identified with the reformed sinner), cultivated society figures, and liked having a good meal and a laugh. Cathleen Medwick’s biography of Teresa notes that she was “an extremely businesslike mystic.” Single-minded, even brash, she was a good negotiator and had learned something of finance and law. Yet this picture of a demure sister who knows little was largely false, because when she wrote it Teresa was a powerful figure who did not suffer fools gladly. Throughout her journey through the interior castle or mansion, saint Teresa states her ignorance before learned men and describes herself as a ‘bird with a broken wing’, hopeless at writing and offering nothing new. I have mislaid the reference for the source of the below so please contact me if your copyright is breached and I will remove it. So let’s take the visions of St Teresa of Avila to begin with, not because she is Christian but because her knowledge came from her mystical experiences, not from books or instruction.
I am trying to suggest that the seven stages of personal development, (or seven sages!) are common across cultures and mystical practices. Let’s start at a different place to the beginning.
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