Nov 15 2024
Teresa of Avila – Let nothing disturb you
Let nothing disturb you
by Teresa of Avila
English version by Ivan M. Granger
(Lines written on a bookmark found in Teresa of Avila’s Breviary)
Let nothing disturb you;
Feel no fear.
All things pass;
God remains.
Patience and steadiness
Achieve all things.
When you are at one with God,
Nothing is found
to be missing.
Of all things
God alone
fills all.
/ Image by Jonny Gios /
If you’ve been wondering what’s been up with me lately, I have, of course, been aware of world events lately, paying attention to the shifting energetic pathways that are unfolding and, on a more personal level, I have been especially busy with my day job as a computer programmer. But also, in my quiet moments, I have been reading. I have been re-reading Thoreau’s Walden.
Walden was a defining book for me. Reading it at about age 20, when I was struggling because, standing at the threshold of adulthood, I saw little I valued in the academic and career paths open to me at the time. I was out of sync with the world. I had immense, unnamed ambitions of an inner nature while being jostled about by a world that was excessively busy with its own ends, but largely empty. In that dark moment, I came across Thoreau, and I finally found a companion, someone who gave me permission think my own thoughts and see the world my own way. We need examples, those who inspire, yes, but also those who are clear seeing curmudgeons to call out stupidity and cruelty masquerading as unquestioned convention.
Thoreau taught me to seek the essential.
Simplify, simplify, simplify.
He also taught me to be a fighter, to examine and overturn every cherished truth in society.
He gave me the courage to be unique.
Rereading Thoreau today, I realize that he is crankier than I remembered, and I don’t as readily agree with every critique he lays before society, but his voice, like an American prophet, still resonates. His words still ring through the lengthening years.
But man’s capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried.
Maybe I’ll find a way to share more of my thoughts on Walden in future Poetry Chaikhana emails. I’m nurturing a few ideas.
Have the writings of Thoreau meant something to you? Which other writers or books have been transformative to you at key points in your life?
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Something for us today by the great Catholic saint and reformer, Teresa of Avila.
I like that this selection, unlike more formally composed poems and songs, feels jotted down by St. Teresa, personal notes to herself, poetic reminders from herself to herself, to be seen each time she refers to her book of daily prayers.
Simple observations on the relationship between one’s self, “all things” — the world, the externalized world, the world of people and things and experiences — and God.
All things pass;
God remains.
Everything we can separate out and label within the mind, every “thing,” is inherently transitory. Even the most concrete fixture of the landscape or in society eventually changes and disappears.
This recognition is often terrifying to the little self. What can we call a certainty? With everything coming into and out of existence and continuously changing in the process, can we even know what a thing is before it is something else or gone completely? Since we so often define ourselves by the things in our lives, how can we safely know who or what we are?
Fear becomes the continuous experience of the small self.
Let nothing disturb you;
Feel no fear.
Yes, all things pass. Nothing remains the same. Even who we imagine ourselves to be changes. But when we recognize the rightness of this, that there is, in fact, a flow to existence, then we can relax and let go of that fear.
Patience and steadiness
Achieve all things.
I particularly like these lines. As an Aries child, full of fire and bursts of erratic action, I was just as likely to bloody my head against the wall as achieve my half-formed goals. The long lesson of adulthood has been, for me, the cultivation of patience and steadiness. The truth of this line is not as transactional as stating that persistent action eventually pays off — though that is often the case. The deeper truth, I find, is that steady action, steady purpose, cultivates a steadiness of mind, regardless of outcome. When the mind is steady, it is less easily unsettled by things shifting around us. When the mind is steady, it more naturally settles into stillness. When we are steady, we settle into oneness with God.
When you are at one with God,
Nothing is found
to be missing.
We find this statement by mystics throughout the world’s traditions. In God we find all things.
It is the final line explains it to me:
Of all things
God alone
fills all.
I’m sure you’ve had this happen to you before: There was something you desperately wanted, a promotion at work, a new lover, some prized object, anything, and then you got it and — you felt deflated. It was nice for a moment or a week, and then you felt nothing. Worse than nothing, you had poured so much energy into attaining this yearned for thing, and then it betrayed you by not fulfilling its promise of joy and satisfaction. That’s just it. Everything — every thing we can call a “thing” — is not only constantly changing and disappearing, it is also empty. One empty thing leaves us empty. Ten empty things still just leaves us empty, A really huge empty thing just leaves us feeling hugely empty.
God alone fills all. Fulfillment is found only in the Eternal.
That doesn’t mean everyone should abandon their house and take religious vows. And, of course, so many of the people and even things in our lives can bring us a certain amount of fulfillment and meaning. But it is not really having that person or thing in our lives that fills us up. When we really look, we see that each relationship or thing that is meaningful to us is acting as a sort of metaphor or outer representation of something already within ourselves. That person or experience or thing mirrors back to us something about ourselves that shines. We use the outer “thing” as permission to witness our own inner light. In other words, whether in the smile of a beloved spouse, the achievement of a hard earned goal, or the glory of a rosy sunset spread across the ocean, it is the light of the Divine we see, and that is when we come back to ourselves, and that is what fills us up, returning us to wholeness.
Have a beautiful day!
Recommended Books: Teresa of Avila
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Teresa of Avila |
Teresa de Jesus, more popularly known as Teresa of Avila, lived in a time of turmoil and religious reform. She was a nun in Catholic Spain during the immediate aftermath of the Protestant Reformation, when Spain saw itself as the most secure bastion of traditional Catholic faith and practice.
She was a strong and inspired leader, in a time and place when women were relegated to more passive roles. And she was a deep mystic, who was said to sometimes levitate off the ground, with her face illuminated.
Teresa entered the Carmelite order of nuns against the wishes of her father. She formed and headed the “discalced” movement within the Carmelite order, a movement that advocated simplicity, humility, and the spiritual life over the increasingly worldly and sometimes corrupt practices that dominated many other communities of monks and nuns. Through the Discalced Carmelite movement, she founded several monasteries. These activities led her into a world of politics, legal battles, letter campaigns, and long periods of exhausting travel.
Like Francis of Assisi, Teresa also suffered from a series of debilitating illnesses and injuries, often made even worse by the treatments of the time. Later in life, for example, she fell down a flight of stairs and broke her arm. It was poorly set and limited her movement. Someone had to re-break her arm in order to reset it, but an even worse job was done, leaving her essentially crippled and needing aid for such simple things as dressing herself.
Obedience was one of the virtues Teresa particularly extolled. Politically, this was significant at a time when the Catholic world was being challenged by the Protestant reformation, and when many mystical movements within the Catholic church narrowly escaped the label of heresy. Yet obedience, for her and for monastics throughout the centuries, has the spiritual value of freeing the individual from self-will and the trap of ego. In other words, when practiced with intelligent caution, obedience can be understood as a technique that opens the heart and the awareness.
Despite her physical sufferings and the challenges of her foundational work within the Catholic church, she remained supremely dedicated to the mystical life. She shared a close spiritual connection with John of the Cross, her younger contemporary, and was in many ways a mentor to that great poet and mystic.
Teresa of Avila wrote poetry, many letters, histories of her work in establishing monastic foundations, but it is her book on the path of prayer, The Way of Perfection, and her spiritual autobiography, The Interior Castle, that are most widely read and considered her masterpieces.
A being when one with God or The Creator, has no religion.
When one is one with the Creator, all these are insignificant.
Teresa have been on this path, traversed by few, as is depicted by her poetry.