What is Your Soul Like?

Photo by Linus Sandvide on Unsplash

The heavens are the dwelling place of God. And our imaginations fail to truly wonder in all the treasures of his chambers. So how do we think about being given the Holy Spirit—that God by his Spirit, indwells us? In a sense, heaven is somehow intertwined in our own bodies. Our souls house God. Paul uses this wonder as an argument for why we need to glorify God with our bodies: “Don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God?” (1 Cor. 6:19).

This is the hook Teresa of Avila uses in, The Interior Castle, a book on prayer that she was ordered to write for the Discalced Carmelite nuns in 1577, at sixty-two years old. Her work has reached well beyond her Sisters, helping men and women for hundreds of years to commune with God:

For reflecting upon it carefully, Sisters, we realize that the soul of the just person is nothing else but a paradise where the Lord says he finds his delight. So then, what do you think that abode will be like where a King so powerful, so wise, so pure, so full of all good things takes his delight? I don’t find anything comparable to the magnificent beauty of a soul and its marvelous capacity.

Do you think of your soul this way? And of believers around you? Paradise? Heaven? Where the Lord finds delight? How would it transform our lives if we meditate on this more? That’s what Teresa does.

Let’s allow ourselves to think like a child for a second and ask the obvious questions: where exactly is our soul? How do we access our own souls? How do we access God even as he is indwelling us? How do we get to him? How do we participate in the paradise that is within us?

These may seem like child-like questions, but I would argue children may be better at answering them than we are.

Theresa explains with metaphor that our soul is like a castle “in which there are many rooms, just as in heaven there are many dwelling places.” The Inner Castle takes us through these rooms, helping us get closer and closer to the inner chambers. You see, there are many reptiles, as she calls them, blocking our way. We have work to do. Our fears, humiliations, shame, self-condemnation, distractions, and many creative forms of self-sabotage are the reptiles and shadows that disillusion our own self-knowledge and understanding of God.

Mirabai Starr’s translation of The Inner Castle says the soul of the righteous person is “none other than a garden in which the Beloved takes great delight.”  Yes, both of these translations are so rich. A paradise garden—isn’t that what we see coming out of heaven from God as the bride of Christ at the end of Revelation? And this helps my imagination even more. In the Song of Songs we see the allegory of Christ and his bride, and his describing her body as a garden paradise, exclaiming, “How beautiful you are, and how pleasant, my love, with such delights!” (Song 7:6). How could this not be in Teresa’s mind and heart when writing about the soul since she already wrote commentary on the Song? And so we too can go to the Song of Songs to help our imaginations take off, as God is beckoning us to do in his word. By the fourth verse in the Song, the bride is already longing for the king to bring her to his inner chambers.

I think this is the longing of each one of us. What we really want. And we hardly let ourselves even think about it.

Let’s wonder in the marvelous capacity of our souls. How many rooms, how many gardens and springs, how many universes?

Mirabai Starr stirs up our imaginations in her Introduction:

There is a secret place. A radiant sanctuary. As real as your own kitchen. More real than that. Constructed of the purest elements. Overflowing with the ten thousand beautiful things. Worlds within worlds. Forests, rivers. Velvet coverlets thrown over featherbeds, fountains bubbling beneath a canopy of stars. Bountiful forests, universal libraries. A wine cellar offering an intoxication so sweet you will never be sober again. A clarity so complete you will never forget.

This magnificent refuge is inside you.

Do we dare to open the door in prayer and meditation? To go treasure-hunting in the paradise of God’s creation? To experience God’s dwelling in, knowing, and loving us? Do we consider the great value of our souls and the bodies that they are matched to? Do we consider the great generosity of God? Then, as Theresa says, “The things of the soul must always be considered as plentiful, spacious, and large; to do so is not an exaggeration.”

Since I’m already getting all mystical in this post, I will share that I record my dreams sometimes. Over and over, I find myself in my dreams trying to find a place. Here’s what it looks like: total confusion. I’m usually traveling, sometimes for work, sometimes for vacation. And so there is a city, a beach, or a hotel, a mall, or a complicated house, and I can’t get to where I am supposed to be. I’m always trying to get there but there are strange obstacles in my way. It could be family, friends, or physical, structural difficulties. Often, I try to contact Matt for help but either I can’t get through to him or he can’t get to me.  Sometimes, sometimes, I find a place of peace and I do not want to leave. And I know I am there, where I’m supposed to be. I take in its beauty and it’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced.

Something always invades this. Maybe they are intruders, wanting to harm me. Or a need I have to address for someone in the family. Whether I am in danger or demand, I can’t stay. But I feel that peace with all my senses. And I sense that in all these dreams, that is what I am after. Searching for.

As I am rereading Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle, these dreams keep coming to mind. They are beckoning me. They are the rooms. And I have a lot of work to do.