Seven Mansions

As mentioned in the previous posts about CRM (Church Resource Ministries), their spiritual formation team, called Imago Christi, bases their Spiritual Formation Development Plan on the Teresian Mansion.

What exactly is the Teresian Mansion? Interior Castle is the work of St. Teresa of Avila, the mystic who invisioned the soul as…

"a castle made of a single diamond . . . in which there are many rooms, just as in Heaven there are many mansions." She describes the various rooms of this castle -- the degrees of purgation and continual strife -- through which the soul in its quest for perfection must pass before reaching the innermost chamber, the place of complete transfiguration and communion with God. -catholicfirst.com

It’s interesting that Imago Christi, and many Christians who are experimenting with contemplative prayer, are not the only ones to form their spirituality on the Teresian Mansions...

Entering the Castle: An Inner Path to God and Your Soul is a book written by Caroline Myss. The foreword to Entering the Castle is written by Ken Wilber:

Entering the Castle is many things: a guide to the life and times of St. Teresa of Avila, the extraordinary 16th-century saint and contemplative master; a guide to her brilliant meditation text, The Interior Castle; and, last but certainly not least, a guide to your own soul—a beautiful, tender, radiant, caring, loving, and authentic guide to the territory of your very own soul...
… Try the seven-step interior experiment given so exquisitely by St. Teresa of Avila, and see for yourself. It’s an interior scientific experiment in almost every sense, so try it and find out for yourself. For this experiment, we are now incredibly fortunate to have Entering the Castle as well, fully based on St. Teresa’s seven interior mansions…
-Ken Wilber (http://www.kenwilber.com/blog/show/133)

(If you want to know who Ken Wilber is, take a look around his New Agey website, Integral Institute, where he is labelled as a 'philosopher-psychologist'. Or take a look at his personal website here. *WARNING: you may find some pictures on these links very offensive!!!)

Anyways, back to Caroline Myss and her book, this page explains about her work that was inspired by Teresa of Avila’s ‘masterpiece’, THE INTERIOR CASTLE:

ENTERING THE CASTLE is my way of leading you into this new soul calling, of becoming a "mystic without a monastery", which she(Caroline) believes is a new "soul's calling".

Her workshop, Exploring Your Mystical Experience of God, is a three year program based on the Interior Castle of Teresa Avila. The following are the seven steps for Session One, that prepares you for the journey into your soul:

* The discovery of God through Organic Divinity;
* The Power of Your Pagan Instincts
* Challenging Your Expectations of God
* Myths about Intuition
* Introduction into Meditation
* Introduction into the fundamentals of healing skills and healing exercises
* The Essential Skill of Journaling

Now here is the interesting part …

These seven interior castles of Teresa Avila coincide with the seven chakras of New Age meditation. This is from Ken Wilber's Integral Institute:

Not only did writing the book lead Caroline to rediscover St. Teresa of Avila, but as Ken(Wilber) mentions, it looked at how the energy of grace can move down the seven chakras—from crown, to head, to throat, to heart, to solar plexus, to sacrum, to root—as Spirit becomes embodied. –integralinstitute.org

Here is a meditation video on Caroline Myss’s site that takes you through these seven chakras that are based on the Teresan Mansion.

It’s interesting that the contemplative term for the daily practise, or Ignatius daily examen, is also used for the daily practice of chakras, here.

Also interesting is that those teaching Christian contemplative spirituality refer to many of the same authors that Caroline Myss promotes (under spirituality and mysticism here)!!! Teresa Avila is not the only contemplative who is quoted by both those who teach contemplative spirituality and New Age meditation. Another name is Thomas Keating, one of the fathers of the contemplative movement and centering prayer. Not only is he often quoted by naïve Christians who are falling for this spirituality, he is also promoted on Ken Wilber’s Integral Institute website, where he says that Jesus has always encouraged us to go into our “inner room”(here).

(You can be sure that the inner room Jesus was referring to is definitely not the same kind of inner room that Teresa Avila, Keating, Wilber, and Myss are talking about.)

I truly feel sorry for Carolyn Myss, who even has an on-line journal club of Inner Dialogue called The Salon, which is a Mystery School for learning the mysteries of chakras, and Sacred Contracts. Poor Ms. Myss is missing the mystery of the ages...that Jesus Christ came to pay in full her debt contract for the wages of sin. It’s He who is calling her soul, not the new “soul calling” of mysticism.

But... the big shame award goes to CRM and Imago Christi, and all those teaching contemplative sprituality, who are promoting the Mansions of Teresa Avila, and passing New Age chakras off to naïve Christians as their "high priority"! This is supposed to be a Christian organization? What a terrible deception!

So as you can see, there is definitely something wrong with this picture. The bride of Christ should be looking foward to living in the Father's mansion, not looking inward to the rooms of St. Teresa's Mansion.

"In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. John 14: 2,3

-------
For extra info:

Kundalini and the chakras

Kundalini and the Toronto Blessing

The Kundalini Effect and Contemplative Prayer by Brian Flynn

The Seven Mansion Worlds: The Urantia Book

The Seven Rays is a metaphysical concept that is used within Theosophy here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Rays

For a description of the above picture (statue of St. Teresa in ecstasy), see here.

See Saint Teresa’s home here:
http://www.myss.com/CMED/workshops/castle_spain/

~ ~ ~

Note: To review what Imago Christi (the spiritual formation ministry of Church Resource Ministries) teaches regarding spiriutal formation and the Teresian Mansions/Paradigm, see HERE and HERE.


***UPDATE:

OPRAH promotes Carolyn Myss, Teresian Mansions and centering prayer. See HERE.