She met with the Sage, telling him what she wanted from her spiritual practice. The Sage said, "That's all good, but please remember, you always want more than you want."
*Brian K. Wilcox. "Meetings with an Anonymous Sage."
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Teresa of Avila wrote to her nuns in 1577, "The soul sees clearly that God knows what he is doing better than she knows what she is wanting."
*Saint Teresa of Avila. The Interior Castle. New Trans. & Intro. by Mirabai Starr.
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Here, there are three participants: he, she, and she. The first 'she' is the nun's conscious religious life. She (the ego) has a vision of what she desires from devotion, and her wishes are good. This first she represents all on a spiritual path and signifies clear aspirations (lit., Lat. aspirare, breathe at, upon). We all have an ego, which is not bad, only very limited. Aspirations, often rather self-centered, are essential even to begin the spiritual walk.
Stimulus is fueled by a continuing vision of what benefits one foresees to arise from one's spiritual practice. This is proper desire, again, even if self-centered - these await transformation. Without desire, how far could we go? We could not even begin.
Our aspirations change over time as we transform on the Way: the ego - the first 'she' - being drawn into the heart - the second 'she.' Some aspirations drop away, some are added, and some are altered in some way - for the Way is the living Way, not a dead way. If we have the same aspirations in the same way from many years prior, we need to be honest about how we are not growing spiritually. We may be doing a lot of devotions, attending worship or a meditation community, reading sacred literature, and engaging in good deeds, but we are in neutral, possibly even in reverse.
The second 'she' is the nun's - and our - supraconscious, what Teresa calls the soul. The second she is not a she, he, or it. This she is not a something or somewhere. This she is transpersonal and incorporeal. We could call this she the heart, as do Sufis, the meeting place between the Spirit and the first she, between Life and conscious life. We all have this innate, unseen Center where the Formless and form meet, often called the True Self. The heart is aligned deeply and clearly with the supernal Will. The heart's will is infallible in its desire to fulfill the Will. This Will is the Intelligence which is reflected in natural law - that is, how formless Life manifests in the realm of forms. The spiritual being learns how to walk in this territory of Intelligence - the learning never ceases and continues after our present form.
'God' represents the Absolute, the Source, and the Spirit of spirits. The Will is universal, so nothing the heart discerns spiritually conflicts with universal Reason. All in the Light is Harmony, for God is Harmony. The ubiquitous Intelligence will never lead one to do anything incompatible with the universal Good. God is not stupid, and in alignment with the Spirit, no intent or action is foolish, ignorant, or harmful. An action may appear to be wise and be foolish; an action may appear to be foolish and be wise.
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In the heart-and-God, one no longer is attached to G.o.d. Teresa's "he" is a shadow. And one can no longer differentiate between one want and another - want and want-, for there is only one Want. The sense of two and one can flow freely, one into the other, like converging and diverging streams. One no longer can say a my will or a God's will, however, in any absolute sense. Desire, pure, arises from nowhere, which is to say, spontaneously as undifferentiated Life. In One, likewise, all just wrote in the above sentences - all sentences - are veils within veils. We could say shadows. Yet, we need shadows, even as a moon upon the waters can lead us to look upward: "upward" meaning from form to the Formless. For form does not unite us to the Formless, but the Formless to form - in theistic terms, God unites us to God. Hence, Teresa wrote with shadows, pointing us to the Unspeakable Truth. In the intimacy of that living, moving Truth, we are led to humble, surrendered quietude - our wants are stilled and silent. The first 'she' is absorbed into the second 'she.' The head drops into the heart.
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The alignment with Spirit was practiced by a congregation in financial matters. The Christian church I was serving as pastor was struggling to meet the budget. Yearly, like so many other communities, a group would gather to decide what the congregation could afford the following year based on the incoming funds from the prior year.
A spiritually-hearted man, the lay leader of the church, informed us of a nearby church that met, prayed about what God willed for that church to invest in for the next year, and, thereby, after prayerful discernment, formulated its next year budget - even if it appeared more than what could be projected of monies based on the prior year. Interesting - they never struggled to meet their budget.
See the difference between the two ways. Struggles are often a sign we are not moving from alignment with the Divine Will; instead, we are deciding matters. The other church practiced its financial stewardship in a way that might have appeared foolish to many churches but is wise.
Christian New Testament -
... God chose what [appears to be] foolish in the world to shame [those who appear to be] wise; ... (I Corinthians 1.27).
The church I served in many ways seemed to have little interest in being a spiritual body, and I never sensed they knew what that would look like; yet, as with all us, they wanted more than they knew. They were blinded by how it was done back then, rather than how Spirit would want us to do it now. We often are. I lasted into the second year and was, thankfully, moved and blessed with a joyful ministry with three congregations not hovering solicitously over beliefs and tradition. The spiritual Way is not a way among ways; the Way is beyond all ways, by whatever name, tradition, or beliefs.
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Teresa knew that part of us that desires what the mind cannot begin to comprehend. The mind does not even have the words for this aspiration, though we might sometimes feel it deeply. We cannot get it from a spiritual guide, a holy book, or a sacred community. At best, our highest aspirations reflect this treasure of Good, Truth, and Beauty.
Hence, our surrender into Grace is consciously opening ourselves through aspiration to what we cannot knowingly know we desire. We trust the heart knows in union with the One's knowing - they are one. We are wise not to limit Grace to what we think Grace wants.
As we are drawn more to the Light, we surrender our lesser desires regarding the more excellent Good at some point, no matter how good. In this yielding, we acknowledge openness to what we want but do not know we want. This is a challenging transformation, for the mind likes to feel in control by its lesser reasoning.
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A small world - a prison - is the world of our conscious aspirations compared to what the mind cannot begin to envision our heart desires. Spacious is the freedom of living in surrender to the life of love with Love. What a relief to let go of what we esteem as most desirable and relax into the heart space, content not even to know where and to what we are moving - drawn by hidden Grace-, glad not to know what is already being given to us. We become quite comfortable with not-knowing. This place is Love, and it shines.
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*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2023. Permission given to use photographs and writings with credit given to copyright owner.
*Brian's book is An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love. The book is a collection of poems Brian wrote based on wisdom traditions, predominantly Christian, Buddhist, and Sufi, with extensive notes on the poetry's teachings and imagery.
