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Teresa of Avila and the Importance of Self-KnowledgeIn the special section on the prayer of the four waters in the book of her Life, Teresa has a rich quote on self-knowledge:
“This path of self-knowledge must never be abandoned, nor is there on this journey a soul so much a giant that it has no need to return often to the stage of an infant…Along this path of prayer, self-knowledge and the thought of one’s sins is the bread with which all palates must be fed.” (Life Ch 13:15)
The Loving and Merciful Creator And The Loved and Forgiven Creature
Teresa identified two elements as the foundation of her spirituality. The first was her sinfulness. Through self-knowledge, she slowly accepted the limits of her ability to break loose of her brokenness. Through the growing light of God’s presence within her, she truly saw herself as a world class sinner. This is one of great ironies of the spiritual life. The more we grow in love with God, the more we are mindful of our personal sinfulness. Her sense of sin centered on the time wasted in so many ways that kept her from loving Jesus.
Secondly, she realized she was loved and forgiven in spite of her deeply flawed condition. This is why Teresa held self-knowledge in such esteem. The path of self-knowledge gradually opened Teresa to the grandeur of God and her total dependence on God. She was the creature caught in sin. Nevertheless, she experienced herself as both forgiven and loved as a child of God. Her ever-expanding awareness of herself as a sinful creature let her realize that she lived in a sea of mercy. Self-knowledge was a critical component of Teresa’s fundamental grasp of her reality as a sinner both loved and forgiven. This experience motivated Teresa to place God as the loving and merciful center of her reality. At the same time, her self-importance diminished constantly as her love for God, and consequently, her love for her neighbor, intensified.
Autoconocimiento: Clave del viaje espiritual
Self-knowledge demands a relentless quest for a deeper and more extensive awareness of our personal reality. The demands and benefits of self-knowledge will never be exhausted in this lifetime. Learning what truly is going on within ourselves is a task that is never completed. One way of getting insight into the search for self-knowledge is seeing the conflict in our lives as a struggle between the false self and the true self, between sin and grace.
The false self involves layer after layer of self-deception, fallacies and a sense of self-grandiosity that places us at the center of our consciousness. We tend to become blinded to our faults and failures and, more importantly, blind to the presence of God at the true center of our being. We emphasize the shortcomings of others. Jesus put it ever so clearly when he pointed our inability to see the log in our own eye yet totally aware of the splinter in our neighbor’s eye. (Mt 7:3) Self-righteousness dominates our worldview. As we become mindful of the false values flowing from our fragmented heart, we find ourselves facing a fork in the road.
We have a choice of life or death. We choose death when we double down on the clamoring of the false self for more attention. We choose life when we open ourselves to the mercy of God which draws us toward the true self. At the heart of this decision is the perennial challenge of knowing ourselves.
Teresa of Avila was unyielding in declaring the importance of self-knowledge as the special avenue to God in the center of our being. In one of her many statements on self-knowledge she said:
“Well now, it is foolish to think that we will enter heaven without entering ourselves, reflecting on our misery and what we owe God and begging Him often for mercy.” (The Interior Castle 2.1.11)
Many of the Gospel mandates are an expression of this practice of leaving the false self of our self-centeredness and moving on to the true self which is seeking God at our center. In Mark we read: “If anyone wants to be first, he must make himself last of all.” (Mk 9:35) Matthew tells us: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Mt 10:39) Again, John says: “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a grain of wheat, but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” (Jn 12:24) Finally, Matthew adds: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” (Mt 16:24) The Gospels contain numerous other statements with the same message. Fundamental to all these teachings of Jesus is the treasure of knowing ourselves in relation to God. This is self-knowledge.
The Importance of Prayer
Prayer becomes an energizing force on the passage to this life-giving self-knowledge. Prayer is an invitation to redirect our lives. The encounter with God’s Word and God’s will in deep personal prayer is our ticket to our true destiny at the center where God awaits. Meaningful reflection and prayer draw us into the light of the Scriptures which often open new horizons in our normal awareness. This unlocks the way to deeper self-knowledge.
This new spiritual maturity leads to novel ways of accepting others. Our relationships and responsibilities move out of a narrow world of self-concern. They grow into a more spacious stance of openness, acceptance and service for others.
For Teresa, prayer was the answer to almost all problems. However, she had an expansive notion of prayer. It took place in the context of the relationship between God at the center, our person and our life experience. In the interaction of these elements in prayer, self-knowledge has a pivotal role. The mystery of God unfolds in the dynamic of the person’s prayer and life experience. Self-understanding brings this process together. The movement, in accepting the reality of God’s place and our place, brings God’s mercy to the forefront. This is what the spiritual life hopes to accomplish. As she advanced in self-knowledge, the great Carmelite Saint became more convinced in her oft-repeated belief: “My life is the story of God’s mercy.”