Beginning a Deeper Prayer Life with Saint Teresa of Avila - Prayer of Recollection - TOG EP 123

Show Intro - Growing in Prayer to the Second Mansions in today's episode of tales of Glory we're going to talk about practicing his presence and we're going to let the doctor on PR St Tres of ABA teach us all about this and by the end of this episode you too will be in the presence of Jesus [Music] welcome to El Glory listeners exciting topics for episode 123 today we will look at the types of prayer we'll need to implement in our prayer life to grow from St Teresa's first Mansions degrees of prayer to get us to the second Mansions we're actually taking a cell pause here we went through the first two chapters of the first Mansions now before we dive into the second Mansions we need to understand some terminology and we need to begin implementing a particular type of prayer called practicing this presence that St tresa alludes to in the very first paragraph of her second Mansions chapter so before we get the second Mansions we need to come up to speed on what St Teresa and her people knew and took for granted back in the 1500s that we have a hard time understanding today so beginner our season soul in prayer I guarantee you'll learn something new today to include in your interior prayer life so this instruction is about developing a relationship ship through prayer with Jesus Christ I'm using St teres of AAS treaties on prayer the interior Castle as the classical spiritual commentary road map for building one's prayer life from beginner to Advanced degree of prayer today's topic covered is what components of prayer should be implemented to practice to grow your heart in Jesus and advance in prayer in your relationship with him St terresa revealed to us the state Recap on Prayer in the First Mansions of the Soul recently saved through God's grace we saw that in the first Mansions the soul was outside the interior castle in the courtyard with the reptiles lizards guards and through justification and beginning a simple prayer life the soul entered into the first rooms of the Interior Castle I.E the first Mansions the first Dwelling Places simple prayer Life as we know as we're recapping from the first Mansions includes beginning stages of vocal prayer mental prayer and scriptural meditation and we covered those back in episode 122 of tales of Glory in the second the first Mansions chapter 2 so when we learn to pray we are and what St Teresa defines is a first degree of prayer the first Waters she outlines these in her um autobiography life and her other book on trees on prayer way of perfection and these are in the first Mansions the first three Mansions are aesthetical prayer where we do all the work to reach God in our prayer life St Teresa said especially the first and second Mansions could be very tedious as we learn to pray lots of things happen using trees's an analogy we must work to draw water from the well using buckets in the first Mansions we are beginning to learn and implement the early stages of meditation and mental prayer again these are covered back in episode 122 if you don't know what we're talking about here Prayer Life in the Second Mansions so in order to get the soul to the second Mansions what does that prayer life look like what must the progress look like for the soul when we're learning to pray your progress is of utmost important what form of prayer does St Teresa recommend to move from first mansions to Second mansions to identify the work that needs to be done here let's examine our prayer life road map for the interior Castle what does St Teresa say about the souls who enter the second Mansions so let's dive into the treaties on prayer and see what she says so although this this episode 123 is not going to be on the second Mansions there's reasons we're going to hit the first paragraph right now because we need to do some prep work to understand some terms and to begin certain styles of Prayer in order to get us into the second Mansions or to even begin to understand the material she's going to cover in the second mansions chapter 1 and that's the objective here today so paragraph 1 of second Mansions chapter 1 let us now come to consider who the souls are that enter the second mansions and what they do here I want to say very little to you about this because elsewhere I have written about it at length and it will be impossible for me to avoid repeating a great deal of this so she's diverting us to stuff she's written elsewhere if you in the 1500s and you are a span Mystic and you are learning the style of prayer it was Community knowledge it was tradition in church that they knew what these spiritual books were most people read them most people understood the language they were speaking because it was very fluent back then about what these terms are of practicing his presence I.E what Teresa calls recollection so continue on because I cannot remember anything of what I said if it could be arranged in a different form I am quite sure you would not mind as we are never tired of books that treat of this numerous though they are again she's referencing the books that were widely available to Spanish Mystics in the 1500s that are not widely available now actually the classical ones are still in print we have to know where to look and actually dial in our minds to align with what they were talking about in the 1500s a lot of this stuff like that I said was still practiced up to the' 60s and and churches not only Catholic churches remember I keep referencing my friend in inner healing lean Payne she's um she passed away about maybe 10 years ago and she wrote a lot of books about healing a lot of it revolved around practicing his presence and bringing drawing in God bringing his presence in and praying for healing for yourself so this is not something entirely Catholic it was something entirely in the church that I feel both sides have really abandoned until recently we're diving back into it now there suddenly a lot of interest in this we've kind of abandoned the the tools we had to go into deeper prayer so to speak so again hold the presses and she writes because elsewhere I've written of it at length I will be impossibly for to avoid repeating a great deal of this so again where did she write this where was this elsewhere what she referring to what is this St Teresa you speaking of let's go look at this she's referring back to her manuscripts before the interior Castle Saint Teresa refers back to her earlier writings in Life and Way so we mentioned the book life and the way of perfection previously in the last two episodes her autobiography life was written between the years of 1562 to 1565 and it really didn't get published until after her death but a few of the manuscripts were floating around for people to have read them her book way of perfection which is on sanctification through prayer was written in 1566 and her book the interior Castle which we're studying right now is written in 1577 and again published in 1588 some some time after her death so St Teresa lived from 1515 to 1582 the two primary Works she is referencing in that paragraph We just read was her book of life and the way of perfection so in the Book of Life in the chapters 11 through 13 she's talking about practicing his presence recollection talking about humility in prayer and meditating on the passion that's something she thought would be common knowledge today we don't do a lot of meditating on the passion we don't do practicing his presence in church we're more about the prophetic right we've skipped some things that's probably why some stuff's kind of messed up here in church right now we don't practice his presence it's critical according to the doctor of prayer Catholic Church practicing his presence recollection is critical and we have the way of perfection chapters 20- 29 she wrote about vocal prayer mental prayer remember we covered this back in episode 121 she talked about the pattern oer praying our father I think we covered that in episode 121 and 122 and she covered how to do recollection practicing his presence so the topics we see floating around here are vocal prayer mental prayer and recollection or beginning recollection and that's what she expecting her Souls that are starting to migrate out of the first mansions and the second Mansions are beginning to practice his presence and what is that we going to unpack that what does that look like have a few spiritual exercises here to teach you what that looks like it's actually very simple if you go overboard and try to do stuff you're not getting stuff things aren't working it's because you're probably trying too hard St Teresa was very simple in the way she implemented things here especially practicing his presence so Souls that enter the second Mansions have implemented the following types of prayer recollection practicing his presence mental prayer and vocal prayer we've established this so what exactly is the aesthetical prayer of recollection there are actual two forms there's an aesthetical prayer recollection we do all the work remember where we're going out to the well we're drawing the buckets of water oursel What is the ascetical prayer of recollection? there's actually a mystical form prayer of recollection which happens in the fourth Mansions where we'll talk about how we kind of get there and we kind of practice his presence so much that we're always kind of in his presence and there'll be a way mystically where Jesus will start coming towards us with his presence and that's in the fourth Mansions but we're speaking of here is the aesthetical or acquired prayer of recollection where we do all the work going out and trying to reach Jesus and pulling his presence to us so remember that aesthetical prayer means we do all the work in prayer we laborous draw water up from the well remember that's the first Waters we're drawing prayer we're drawing the prayer up through the well souls in the first three Mansions are in the first Waters of prayer they're tediously doing labor as she called it the soul is not accustomed to praying or communing with Jesus in the first and second Mansions it's trying it's working on it so it's tedious it's not very easy but she says to perseverance she'll get there those who persevere a key thing the soul must learn to do is pull itself into the indwelling Jesus presence that's recollection who's inside of us Jesus and we want to be aware of his presence inside of us that's what we're going to be working on here so Teresa calls this component of prayer recollection in contemporary terms we call it practicing his presence initially the soul will be of Jesus in small moments throughout the day right maybe sporadic we'll we'll say okay I got remember to go contact Jesus right now where am I this is beginning prayer so I go and I either imagine him or we'll talk about these some of these methodologies she uses this only time we use methodologies till it turns into a form of prayer but sometimes we have to employ these to get us going in the Discerning Hearts podcast St tesa's life Dr lils describes recollection as developing a spiritual muscle he States and this is a very good explanation St Teresa instructs us that the aesthetical prayer of recollection is a critical component of preparing our mental prayer as we learn to incorporate recollection into our prayer we must consider using the physical mental faculties Jesus provided us with so we can commune with him a lot of times I call these faculties who's talking about the the uh the will which the emotions the intellect and the imagination I call it um Jesus broadcasting Studio it's where we have that ability to broadcast up to Jesus and we can receive information back through him that's what the faculties are and that's kind of he's talking about here it's components of the Soul carrying on with Dr Lil's explanation these faculties of the Mind are intellect right our thought and will over time as we Embrace recollection in our daily prayers we will go from spous fuzzy moments of contact with him to eventually continuous throughout the day that's our goal so as a beginner we're going to have these spous fuzzy moments we're trying to contact Jesus feel his presence and it's going to just flicker out but eventually as we persevere continually do this he's going to become with us continously throughout the day without us doing much effort but that takes time consistency and perseverance in prayer to do this and it happens I'm speaking from this place right now where I worked on this years and years and years ago where it is he's continuously with you throughout the day and you feel him you're having a bad day just like I've going straight to Jesus right now here he is you know I don't have to work on it to get there but that took time that I had to put into my prayer time to practice his presence to where he's with me throughout the day all day you know it's good stuff so to recap kind of what Dr Lil said it's like working out in a gym we will struggle to develop a musle muscle which is recollection prayer however with our efforts consistency and perseverance we will begin to see progress in our sessions kind of like weightlifting right you just can't go in under the bench and bench 225 pounds you're going to have to work your way up to it you're going to have to back off to where you can lift something easily and get a you know quite a few reps in and eventually keep adding more weight adding more weight and that's kind of what we're doing here till it becomes you know habitual you just lift your 22 25b same idea for an analogy that is the St Teresa writes about recollection in the second mansions in second Mansions par uh chapter 1 paragraph 18 here she says it as I said first of all I have already written to you about how you ought to behave when you have to suffer disturbances with which the devil tats you she's talking about her book's life and the way of perfection and about how recollection cannot be by making strenuous efforts but must come gently after which you'll be able to practice it for longer periods of time right your practicing prin is very gentle you go hi you know Jesus I'm I'm trying to draw you in we'll talk about how we do this in a second it's tedious because it takes a lot of time to do it but it's not strenuous in second Mansions chapter 1 paragraph 1 St Teresa references her other works which contains the prayer of recollection so again she assumed we had access to these works we read about it we understood it like every other 1500's you know Catholic Mystic back there and but we don't we don't have this material readily available we had to search for it or hunt for it or find translations so in her previous work the way of perfection she writes The Following on recollection may the Lord teach this to those of you who do not know it for my own part I must confess that until the Lord taught me this method I never knew knew what it was to get satisfaction and comfort out of prayer and is because I have always gained such great benefits from this custom of interior recollection they have written written about it in such length perhaps you all know this but some sister may come to you who will not know it so you must not be vexed at anything that's spoken about it here and she writes that in the way of perfection okay she's speaking on recollection so recollection is interesting because it was part of St Teresa's approach to training her nuns to pray unceasingly where we heard that before 1 Thessalonians 5: 16-8 it reads Rejoice always pray without ceasing give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you this was the model she was working her away from how do how do you get to you know she was always thinking this stuff how do you get to a place where you're praying unceasingly and you do it by practicing his presence your spirit does it she taught her nun starting out with learning to practice his presence to do so daily for moments at a time and then over time gently stretch it out stay in God's presence in your mind for as long as possible it's a simple practice approach to keep the faculties from what they are capable of in your prayer walk your heart and ement is will grow through consistency and perseverance this must become habitual you do that by just you know at first it'll seem sporadic and hopping around a bit but more and more you practice it the more you start doing more and more and it's not so sporadic anymore like I said this is something that's done over time you develop it you have to be consistent with it if she can let her practice recollection many times daily if not let her do so occasionally as she grows accustomed to it she will feel its benefits either sooner or later once the Lord has granted it to her she will no longer exchange it for any treasure so she consistently starts feeling the Lord present with her that's our goal and this is something that's achievable in beginning prayer in fact it's one of the early stages of beginning prayer you want to do you don't want to go off go I want to be a prophet right know or hearing God this is the we're working on us our prayer life working on dialing in and feeling the presence of Jesus it's very important recollection or practicing his presence is simply invoking the fact faculties of the intellect and the imagination to perceive the presence of Jesus who dwells in you as your heart and soul grow in your first Manion prayer life you will incorporate the prayer of recollection to Envision the presence of Jesus inside you right you may just be going off a picture or something maybe you're you're envisioning maybe like from the the movie The Passion The Passion of the Christ with Jesus on the cross he's been severely beaten you look up in his eyes and that's a form of recollection when you're envisioning Jesus and what he went through the passion that's a form of recollection using your imagination to pull you into that this use of the imagination in prayer may seem Goofy and awkward initially or for some it may even be hard to picture Jesus internally I'll pause right there a second if you've been traumatized by a male severely traumatized through childhood or something by a male and you have a hard time going to Jesus the man that you're still spiritual and you pray to him you can either intellectually feel his presence which means you're not going for a picture you just go inside you like to feel jesus' presence I'm pulling it up this is what it feel like or you can use the lion of Judah go find pictures of lion of Judah on the internet and focus on that as a form to go to Jesus initially if you're having problems of focusing on Jesus as the man because of the the trauma and you're going through healing right now it's okay there's ways to work this and still get you need to go Jesus will work with you so returning to this however the more you practice and the more times during the day you do this the more quickly you'll be able to get to Jesus in this manner of prayer so again it's like working out right it's going to become easier you know that first week or two learning to run a treadmill was tedious and like after a while like you're running your mile you're running your six minute mile or your 7 minute mile and you can do it and you're doing better and better and doing better performance kind of the same idea we have to work this prayer muscle and get it going and it's our way of showing diligence that we're trying to work towards God initially as he's going to start working towards us we're developing a relationship right we're doing work on ourselves why because this is a key component of mental prayer we're going to do recollection and it's going to slide into mental prayer I'm showing the process and as we build that up then we're start going to Jesus start developing our relationship with them we're starting basic building blocks of relationship with Jesus right here by practicing his presence and acknowledging he's inside of us and how do we feel him and to him especially when we're hurt or angry or something we need to talk to him in prayer the more we practice his presence the more he's readily available and we don't have to practice his presence down the road if that makes sense we'll get to a point where Jesus is still there or it's super quick I'm practicing his presence and like within a micr second Jesus is there that's our goals as it becomes habitual you will over time develop the involuntary prayer muscle for recollection jesus' presence will stay with with you this habitual form of going to his presence is necessary for spiritual growth in the castle and for preparing for the rooms that are to come implementing the prayer of Implementing the prayer of recollection recollection we have discussed Teresa's recollection of the faculties remember in her prayer model the component of the Soul our mind that are involved in prayer which he refers to as a faculties of the Mind the faculties include the intellect the heart the emotions the imagination and the will as we learn to pray in the first and second Mansions our faculties are all over the place as we try to pray right it's like we're trying to pray hey did I leave the oven on or I'm praying and oh I got to be at a meeting at 6 o'clock I got to prepare for it you know it's stuff we have to shut down and make space for God inside our mind like stealing our mind remember act stealing our mind stealing is a step one of it we start practic his presence we start focusing on who God is or Jesus is trying to bring a picture into our mind and we'll talk about this as we get here the goal overall is for our will to be conformed to the will of Jesus right that seventh manions but we're first through the seventh we're more and more conforming our will of Jesus to get to the higher degrees of prayer The Mansions we must start by training our faculties and what to do when we pray we begin the first Mansions By working the intellect and the imagination we're just starting off right we're priming the pump here so to speak we're priming the well remember we are working on a building a relationship with the indwelling Jesus Christ the intellect and the imagination must work to perceive the indwelling Jesus with us Peter Thomas roorbach writes in his book conversation with Christ which is a very good book I have both on Kendall and I have it um soft copy it talks about recollection it's this book right here if you want to see what it looks like it's that one there good stuff so he writes in page 104 the constant remembrance of Christ must be facilitated by any one of three customary methods external imaginative or intellectual presence of God external is what external be like looking at a picture or a statue a crucifix something like that that's the external way to focus your mind and dial in on Jesus imaginative you can do it inside your mind you're you're you're in the garden of jemane with him while he's he's weeping about what he has to go through or you're looking up at him at the cross where he's badly beaten through your mind that's imaginative intellectual is a presence of God it means you're not seeing him in the imagination but somewhere in your body or just you feel his you just feel his presence okay I feel jesus' presence here he's with me that's an intellectual presence where you're not getting a vision or a picture you feel his presence and eventually most all of you will get there towards an intellectual presence of God you'll feel him that's how you start feeling shifting initially like why use the imagination isn't that kind of like just um duping yourself lying to yourself no it's we're priming the pump to get Jesus in he's already there with us but our mind doesn't know how to see him and we'll probably be using our little finger paints and paint by colors and as we get better he's going to start coming in help filling in the picture for us and eventually just take over and show us who he is that's what we're doing here but our mind has been our spirit's been the prayer up and buckets out of the well that's what's going on here we got work to do but eventually Jesus will help us and install some Plumbing where we'll get some machines installed to help us get the get the prayer to us machines would be like higher forms of prayer continue on with um Peter Thomas robach had said the external practice consists in employing exterior objects as reminders of our Lord's presence a crucifix a holy picture Etc can be a tangible means for for awaking us to The Nearness of Christ the imaginative presence relies on mental depicting of our Lord and a position close to us as he's sitting next to you you know and so forth like when I go for drives and I I talk to Jesus I use practicing his presence where I put him in the car seat next to me and I'll talk with him when I'm praying so I can have vocal prayer much like mental prayer but like he sit right next to me talking finally intellectual recollection affects a remembrance of God's Presence by means of some doctrine of Faith a consideration of the Trinity's presence in our souls God's protective Providence so it's it's is a reminder that there the Trinity is presence in our souls and may have some spiritual tangible feeling or connection to that that's an intellectual Vision But whichever these means we adopt to bring the presence of God to our minds we are still obliged to cement our contact with Christ through the function of the will expressed an acts of love we're going to him these are all acts of love we're practicing his presence we're not petitioning him for help we're drawing him near when you're on a date you don't go to the person you're dating hey I need your help with this you know and just keep hitting with petitions can you help me with the rent can you help me with this I need this going on can you help me get this coworker at work you know that's probably going to drive the date off right same thing we want to establish communication so we learn about who each other is and so they're acts of love right we're learning to date each other learning to court here that's what's going on through practicing his presence and there's quiet we're not getting these prophetic things we're not going to courts of Heaven it's quiet we're still and we're focusing on Jesus we're pulling him into us or pulling them into our presence so get an idea what we're Spiritual Exercises I. Where’s Jesus? talking about we kind of went through the the my theology there of what this looks like in prayer let's do a spiritual exercise beginning recollection where's Jesus this is something we take John Paul Jackson courses or dream interpretation courses this is something you use quite a bit to dial your mind in for practicing his presence I know our friend um Abby over at the the shift right she does dream interpretation training and a couple times I've been online with her during her some of her training sessions she'll do this to help prime the pump where is Jesus in the room you know it's kind of let your mind go Ste your mind let it relax and again if you have trouble with Jesus where's the line of Judah in the room if you have TR trouble dealing with men okay there's ways about this as you heal we'll shift back over to Jesus but don't worry about this right now the process is where's Jesus in the room or where's the line of Judah still the faculties your mind be still know that I'm God still your mind a second be still now it's just quiet and you your mind still Jesus where are you in this room show me show me where you're at did you get something remember this is super easy if something just pops your mind like oh he's sitting in a chair across from me that's goofy that's how it works he's sitting next to me he's sitting in the dining room table across from me that's how it works got an image now let do one more time where's Jesus in the room where is he don't you get him what is Jesus wearing can can you see Jesus face can you see him what's his face doing is it smiling is he looking back at you looking elsewhere what's going on with his face what sort of emotions does he have on his face look at his eyes okay just rest there a second I want to do is start bringing in for landing prepare to come out of the presence of Jesus it's simple exercise give yourself a moment and come out of the recollection or it may just fade off on its own both are okay in early stages of recollection it just it may be instantaneous and disappears that's normal or it may just fade off you can't hold it if you can't hold it that's okay too because that's letting us know that Jesus is working with us too and he's the one helping broadcast the image let's go ahead and come out of that exercise oh you know come in for landing we're back up Spiritual Exercises II. Meeting Jesus at the Fountain here we're going to do another spiritual exercise this one's a little B more in depth we're doing beginning recollection and this one's called meeting Jesus at the fountain so give yourself a second or you may be ready to dive back can't if you did the first exercise still your mind so it's quiet and there's nothing just still your mind now picture a beautiful garden in your mind you're going to go to meet Jesus just picture a beautiful garden in your mind now enter the garden and walk through it let's go look at the Garden let's walk through it see what's there look at the flowers in the garden and all their beauty up ahead of you you can hear the sound of water pouring out of a large fountain in the middle of the [Music] garden you walk towards the fountain and sit on its Basin the area around you is peaceful the sound of water is soothing coming out of the [Music] fountain you sit there peacefully and look around enjoy the garden enjoy the soothing sound of the water coming out the [Music] fountain you turn and look and you see Jesus walking over to you for e as you see Jesus walking over to you allow your imagination to take over the moment with Jesus do you Embrace him do you run to him and hug [Music] him just sit in this moment while you're with him is there anything Jesus wants to tell you now you can either pause the podcast here or we can prepare to come out of the presence of Jesus give yourself a moment and come out of the recollection or it just may fade off on its own both are okay remember we can't control it so it's if it just suddenly Fades off now after the encounter it's okay it fades off that's what it's supposed to do okay we have a third spiritual exercise on recollection meeting Jesus in the car Spiritual Exercises III. Meeting Jesus at the Breakroom Watercooler or at the break room water cooler this is somewhere we have to exercise connecting with Jesus throughout the day and these are other ways to do this maybe you won't have a place where you can sit down and imagine go meetting Jesus in the garden so here are some simple ways to do it in fact these are ways I actually did it when I was commuting and going to work so while driving imagine Jesus in the passenger seat next to you remember I mentioned that talk with him out loud or mental prayer or just drive and imagine him there if you're not ready to talk to him yet and see how long it you can just stay there it'll fade and out lawyer driving so don't worry about it I used to do this at work too I would take a a break at work on the way to water cooler focus on an image of Jesus in my mind and talk to him is it multiple ways during the day and just fire it up or you just remember you're doing some work on your Excel spreadsheet and also remember I need to reach out to Jesus again and just like that that second or something reach out to Jesus and see you can Dial Dial him in practice his presence feel him usually the water cooler ones the best when you take a break or you know because you you you're walking away from your work wherever you're walking to you can focus on just dialing in Jesus and give him all the attention that's why I like the water cooler one the best look for ways to practice recollection throughout the day try entering into mental prayer after spontaneous recollection sessions right so we do the see if you can go into mental prayer and hey Jesus how you doing I'm at work you know no joy here I'm at work it's not fun you know or something like that or thank you for that you know helping me out with that huge project because I didn't know how I was going to get through that so I'm GNA high five you on that one when you're looking for ways at work and throughout the day or at home spontaneous recollection Teresan Recollection Comments and Review sessions teres recollection comments St Teresa's overall goal for her treaties on the interior Castle is to assist Souls progressing in prayer to the point where their souls will be in full Union with the indwelling Jesus in them the practice of recollection is needed for better Fidelity in mental prayer Fidelity is actually a word of faith for better Faith it's not talking about your stereo it's better um tuning in for Faith and prayer Fidel better Fidelity and mental prayer when the first through the third Mansions right this a cical prayer I have another quote from Thomas Rach who writes in conversation with Christ as in our formal meditation our continuous contact with Christ Embraces two elements thought and will those the faculties right got that guys that's the faculties the thought and the will is being invoked during this we are to think of Christ but more important we are to make an effective response to him the basic value of recollection consists not in how well we can think of him but rather in how well we can love [Music] him throughout our thought of Christ we are drawn to express our love for him it's a lot of times too it's adoration so you can go to Recollections say Jesus is amazing look at that day that's incredible look at that animal that's an amazing creature Jesus that's that's that's recalling him practicing his presence and Pull It in that that's a creature over there something my my Creator made I'm just going to pull in a picture of my Creator as I look look at this so practicing his presence recollection in the first Waters degree of prayer we are in the beginning stages of repairing our faculties the intellect the will and the imagination to enter into a con instant remembrance of Jesus right we want to pray unceasingly we're kind of starting to get there right we're getting our um our soul to constantly be in the presence of Jesus that's what we want we're going from image to image from glory to glory that's what we're pulling in here we're trying to get our will to be in full Union this is how it starts this the beginning baby steps right here step one St Teresa outlines three basic styles to employ during prayer and throughout the day the first is external where a cross or a scene depicting Jesus or the passion stirs the presence of Jesus inside of us we get a response from it internally by by focusing on these these pictures the next one is imagination is where our imaginative faculties create an internal scene of Jesus present with us so are you standing there looking up at Jesus on the cross who was badly beaten for you are you in the garden jemane with where he's so weary that he has to you drink from the cup his father gave [Music] him that's a way of using our imagination to pull ourselves into the presence intellectual is where we feel the presence of Jesus with us or nearby so you're not having this picture in your mind but you may get to a place where all of a sudden you just you're tuned in and go I Can Feel Jesus with me it's just some tangible feeling inside the body that you feel it that his presence is there and again be honest yourself for you're Don't Force any of this you're not getting any of this stuff don't worry about it that's being honest it will come through time just means you got some work to do and it's such a huge reward and it finally does show up if you put the work into it that's why it's important to be honest with yourself because you know it's the real deal when you get it and we don't have a lot of uh Real Deal people right now in the churches we see a lot of fake it till make it and they're causing a lot of problems right now big time so the purpose of practicing his presence and Essence is to develop a prayer muscle since we work hard to stay close to the indwelling Jesus we can effortlessly go to him and our mental prayer and meditation over time so if we have this in place where it's habitual and we practice his presence and we can do it without unseizing we're not even knowing we're doing it now because we've done it so much that we can just go straight to him in prayer and meditation without any prep and that's what we're after here the goal is that if we persevere at practicing his presence we will stay in his presence throughout the day Souls understanding the practice of recollection that is practicing his presence is critical for progressing into the second Mansions that's how we leave the the first Mansions practicing recollection very important just because you start practicing recollection doesn't mean you're going to leave the first Mansions it's a progressive Spiritual Development and when you get to that degree of prayer the second Mansions you'll feel like you're already in it remember there's no sign going hey I'm in the second Mansions now you'll be sitting there going wait a minute you know some of this degrees of prayer got easier just like St Teresa said I think I'm floating around the second Mansion right now that's how it works or you talk to spiritual director he'll he'll tell you too you know what's going on this practice in prayer development was so common in the 1500s that St Teresa thought it would be ridiculous or Overkill to mention it in her treaties on his second mansions and that was oversight I mean I kind of wish you put it in there somebody reinserted the chapters like read this first that's kind of like what I did here we did a a Copa from the first Mansions second Mansions because we need to insert recollection and styles of prayer to show us what she's talking about the interior prayer life we must get into place in order to make it to the second Mansions St Teresa writes in paragraph one of the second Mansions let us now come to consider who the souls are that enter the second mansions and what they do here here we go I want to say very little to you about this because elsewhere I've written of it at length and it'll be impossible for me to avoid repeating a great deal of this because I cannot remember anything of what I said if it could be arranged in different form I'm quite sure you would not mind as we are never tired of books that treat of this numerous though they are numerous though they are in the 1500s numerous though they aren't today we have a few of them left we probably we have um one from our brother right practicing his presence and we have this things from St Tre of AA and a few things from St Alfonso I think we have the numerical alphabet or something or spiritual alphabet that's still around from Alonso very few books and most of them seem encrypted the most because of how they were translated from 1500 Spanish to contemporary English just like here you know what does this mean oh she's talking about recollection where's recollection we have to go find it elsewhere so where did she write about this in length in her other books she wrote about in life and in the way of perfection in life in chapters 11-13 and way of perfection chapters 20 through 29 these chapters focused on you guessed it recollection practicing his presence as well as vocal prayer and mental prayer other spiritual books widely available during her time cover this prayer method as well and it was called recollection you are now a 21st century beginning Mystic informed on what the 1500's mystics knew as common knowledge now go out and pull Jesus presence into your interior prayer life we gave you three simple tools to do this like I said this very simple it's not experiential it's not like oh I'm in the courts of heaven right now oh I see Angels none of that none of that you're doing it too hard and you're doing it wrong if you're getting there right now it's just we're dealing with the indwelling Jesus how do we go to him how do we feel him how we see him how do we spark and get this going how do we keep it going so we're praying unceasingly like Paul talked about so we're now ready to proceed to St Teresa of aa's interior Castle discussion on the second Mansion stages of prayer so we now have in place which she spoke about in length elsewhere it was was the recollection and if you put that in place start practicing it you know it's it's it will become easier you'll stop you'll go from trying to focus on an image or focus on something external like a crucifix or something to where you'll have that intellectual Vision where you're not seeing him but you're feeling him she talked about this the intellectual presence and that's what the goal you want to get to it'll happen it just takes time you can't force it she said you know it just little baby steps things just improve a little bit at a time whatever's in front of you improve it improve it improve it improve it good stuff there yeah I had to take a like I said major celop pause from first Mansions chapter 1 and 2 to Second Mansions because if I dove right into us I had to put a big insert at the very beginning on the prayer of recollection and what it looks like I think the best way to do it was just to do like we did here this is actually if I were to add an addendum to St Teresa Al and Castle this would be first Mansions chapter 3 prayer of recollection but she wrote about extensively elsewhere and we had to dig it up and mine it so we did there it is for you guys practice it use it it takes time it seems frustrating but the more you use it the more you start like the more you go to practice's presence the quicker Jesus will come after time to the point where he's just staying with you like I said if I want to go to mental prayer right now I can switch channels pretty quickly because I can feel the intellectual presence of Jesus with me as we do this good stuff so if you like this content subscribe to us right hit the Conclusion Subscribe button down there on YouTube Rumble Spotify or wherever you're listening to his Apple podcast um you like to bless the ministry we would be grateful some of these podcasts like we do St Teresa on average I'm looking at about four days worth of work for continuous days of work what's that that's 36 hours maybe 40 sometimes so it takes a lot of work to put this in so if you love this stuff you love this information please help out go to PayPal if you go to field guided spiritual warfare. blogspot.com and you look on the right hand side there's a PayPal button how to bless Ministry that will give a a taxfree version or if you go straight to PayPal it will take some money off which is fine it's okay but doesn't all go to us if you go to PayPal you can donate to M16 Ministries gmail.com [Music] and that's the end of it here next time we return we'll be in the second Mansions chapter 1 Al there's only one chapter for second Mansions we'll be diving into that you'll have a better understanding of what St Teresa is talking about now we understand recollection because that's what the second Mansion is pretty much mostly about that and dealing with sin we're still dealing with sin will it ever go away will we ever lose it we'll stay tuned and find out love you guys now be a blessing and make good choice this is the M16 Bishop at the M16 HQ Studios checking out a man go practice your recollection [Music]