Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome back.
Chapter 2: Who was St. Teresa of Avila and why is she significant?
From time to time, as we move through these practices, I'd like to introduce you to a number of friends of mine.
Chapter 3: What common misconception do beginners have about meditation?
These are other teachers and masters along the way.
Chapter 4: What remains unchanged in our meditation practice?
Great souls who have given much to this particular path of meditative prayer and contemplation. The first I'd like to mention is St.
Chapter 5: How can we arrive into presence with trust?
Teresa of Avila. Teresa was an extraordinary figure, a great reformer, teacher, and mystic.
Chapter 6: What role does breath play in meditation according to Teresa?
Someone who didn't just talk the talk, but who walked fully and deeply the walk of contemplation and compassionate action. as a Carmelite saint, sister, and mystic. She knew that the very heart of the gospel, the heart of prayer, was an encounter with divine love.
And she sought to teach her sisters and brothers, and then laterally, all those who would come into contact with her, of the immediacy of the divine presence. Perhaps the most important lesson she gives is that lesson she makes known to all beginners on the path of prayer and meditation.
Chapter 7: How can we embrace unconditional love in our meditation practice?
And we are all truly beginners. She tells us that the single biggest mistake that we can make is thinking that when we are worthy enough or holy enough or good enough, that that is when everything begins.
that is when the divine presence arrives that is when we become something new nothing she tells us could be further from the truth the image that's often used that she has passed down is that to think that way is to be like someone who's waiting for their best friend waiting all day looking out the window opening the door looking for the merest sight of them coming up the path
when all along they've been sitting behind us at the kitchen table, waiting for us to arrive, even though the kitchen is messy, even though there's parts of our life that perhaps we're not happy with. This is negligible as far as divine love and presence is concerned. It seeks only communion, seeks only to introduce us to love, to peace, to compassion.
Make no mistake about it, we will be changed by that encounter. We will become better because of that encounter. But all we have to do to begin is to open the door, to rest in the presence, to recognize that we begin from a place of infinite and unconditional love. Teresa is also known for telling her sisters, her brothers, and those who followed her again and again, do not worry.
All things change, but God remains the same. So as we enter into meditative practice, we can remember that though our life may be very tumultuous at the moment or may be peaceful, that we may be experiencing a lot or a little
Though we may find the day easy or the day hard, the one thing that is absolutely consistent, that is the foundation of this practice and of all practices, is that we are loved and that nothing changes of that love ever. So let us enter into the practice. Let us work with Teresa. Teresa. And let us allow her to lead us on the path of love today.
Settling ourselves into our meditation sitting, we find our feet strong and stable upon the ground. We sit with the breath open, the back relaxed and straight, hands resting on our lap. But we sit, as Teresa teaches us, with a sense of expectancy, a sense of trust, a sense of knowing that we are met, that we arrive into presence.
a presence that has waited for us, longed for us, a presence that loves us as we are and loves us into what we could become. And so as we settle into meditation, we do so positively, openly, trustingly. We find that when we make this as an intention, it is often easier for us to come into deep stillness more quickly.
If we have nothing to prove, and if we are received by one who is, above all else, the friend of our soul, the friend of the innermost part of our being, what have we to worry about? So let the shoulders drop. Let the back relax. Let the furrows of worry in our brow be smoothed, released. The tension in our jaw dissolve. Let us come into stable sitting, peaceful sitting.
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