ABSTRACT
The Carmelite mystic Saint Teresa of Ávila (whose life is already described in the introduction to Chapter 3) is particularly famous for her work The Interior Castle (in Spanish El Castillo Interior). In this work, written when her health was starting to fade, Saint Teresa detailed one of her visions in which she had perceived the human soul to be a crystal in the shape of a castle that contains seven ‘mansions’ (moradas). In the following extract (the second chapter of the sixth ‘mansion’), Teresa continues her exploration by examining the relationship between God and the soul and the journey to union of the two. The love between God and the soul deepens through the time they spend together in solitude. Their love is a deep wound in which longing and pain are mixed with joy and ecstasy as these come from God.
