Lent Series: Self-awareness and St. Teresa of Avila, Part 4

Interiority over time

We can move forward in our understanding of ‘self-awareness’ according to St. Teresa by relating it to the concept of ‘interiority’. The ancient instruction, ‘Know Thyself’ is a well known maxim.   When Teresa wrote about the ‘soul’, she included the ‘psyche’ of today.  Spiritual self-awareness and psychological self-awareness were two sides of the same coin and spiritual growth can coincide with deeper psychological healing and maturity.

Reading through the classical lens of Teresa, her Confessors and Spiritual Directors, we hear the influence of St. Augustine’s notion of the ‘self’ sounding loudly.  Augustine grew up studying Plato, who linked the classical notion of ‘psyche’ with the divine.  St. Paul focused instead on ‘spirit’, whereas St. Augustine, joined the two together.  

Augustine’s autobiographical writing may be a precursor for Teresa’s own Life; possibly the original example of spiritual journaling in order to grow in self-awareness - both ‘soul’ and ‘psyche’, becoming humble and ultimately reaching God who was ‘always within’.  Augustine developed the theme of interiority, emphasising the inner-self, focused on bringing out what lies within the soul while experiencing spiritual healing and awakening on a psychological level.  The soul in the Interior Castle goes on a similar journey of self-awareness and awakening to spiritual and emotional maturity.

The ‘interiority’ of Augustine is important for self-awareness.  In the Carmelite tradition, confirming Augustine, the presence of God exists in the exterior, physical world and equally in our own silent, invisible, interior world of our soul or ‘psyche’.  Augustine shows us a technique of finding God within whereby the soul looks to her own experiences, considers the world around, becoming conscious of herself by ‘reliving’ her ‘experience’ through self-examination, and learning ‘the way the world is for itself and on itself as the agent of experience’.  The sixteenth century saw a rise in interest in St. Augustine and Teresa’s Confessors must have known this.  Hidden inner life and developing interiority were Teresa’s focus, following Augustine’s instruction: ‘Do not go outward; return within yourself. In the inward man dwells truth’.  Teresa knew the ‘light’ of God, shining in her soul, which ‘always leaves greater light that we may understand the little that we are’.  The favoured route to self-awareness for Teresa was this light of God.  She followed a long tradition back to Plato’s ‘inner light’ and Augustine’s encouragement to find God within.  

Augustine and Teresa agreed they wouldn’t find the truth in their souls per se, only in the light of God, seeing themselves as God saw them, using His lens.  This takes us back to St. Paul’s approach to self-awareness ast he begged the Romans, Corinthians and Philippians to have the ‘mind of Christ’.  In the Interior Castle, Teresa has met God in her soul and wants her nuns to meet Him too.  She guides them within, as Augustine suggests, on the royal road to union.  This is the way to transcendence; the soul is led upwards, out of herself to God, going within.