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Entering the Castle
An Inner Path to
God and Your Soul
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Your Power to Create
From wishful thinking
to True Manifestation
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Oct 27. 2006
We’re in it again – election fever. Even though it is only a mid-term election, the psychic tension is once again thick as a fog. Adding to the national miasma is a growing tension over the Iraq war and the never-ending stories of corruption emerging from behind the carefully drawn curtains of the Texas White House. If the election machines don’t jam the process, the Democrats might just take back Congress. Negative ads are loading up the airwaves with one party attacking the other like bullies on the playground. Never mind stating what they could accomplish if voted into office (as if either party ever intends to keep campaign promises); the destruction of reputations is the weapon of choice. What does that tell you about what the people running these campaigns must think of the people watching the ads – namely us??? Just stop for a moment and think: Am I supposed to be swayed one way or the other by these lies? By these sound bites that have been conveniently clipped here and there to spin a message? Am I supposed to make a decision about the whole of a person’s career for four years based on a fifteen-second ad designed to destroy a person’s reputation? Are you the sort of person who could be influenced by such trash?
Meantime, as I observe the buildup of tension in the air because of what’s at stake in these upcoming elections – namely, that the Republicans might lose control of this country (not that they haven’t already, but it would become official if the Democrats win the House) — I will never forget a few incidents that happened as the frenzy of psychic madness over the Presidential election arose two years ago. At a conference in Florida in November 2004, just a week before the election, the tension was palpable, much more so than now. Yet no one was speaking politics at this conference, which was a little like not speaking about elephants walking through the lobby of the hotel or the spaceship that had landed in the parking lot. It occurred to me that we had been forced into silence by some type of contrived social-spiritual etiquette. The ironic subject of the conference was consciousness. They should have been holding discussions on topics such as, “Is our nation conscious at all?” or “How do we apply the principles of consciousness to world crises?” or “How can the individual be of service in times of war?” Instead, any mention of politics was treated with hostility. “I didn’t come to this conference to discuss politics,” was a common response. “You didn’t?” I thought. “Well, you should have. Where else should you go to discuss the future of your nation and the future of your children? Shall you practice avoidance instead, as if that is a way of being of service during these times of global crises? Would that approach help things along?”
Clearly people were stressed, as was evidenced by the following experiences:
The Sacred Contract of America is, as you can appreciate, a complex topic. It is not easily communicated in a few minutes, no more than the whole of your Sacred Contract on this earth can be reduced to a few minutes. Your soul’s journey is so complex and extraordinary. The same complexity that exists for your individual Sacred Contract holds as truth for America’s. You need to be able to think, perceive, and ascend into symbolic thought to understand the language of a Sacred Contract. Documents of the Sacred, whether Holy Scripture or documents of the soul, are never to be taken literally. They are symbolic and require that the reader refine his or her soul into a vessel capable of transcending the judgmental mind and learning the art of discernment, which means to see through the obvious, illusions, and distractions to glean the truth that is hidden or disguised. All of you have wandered into situations, perhaps with your children, and said, “Okay, what’s really going on in this room?” You knew the moment you walked into the room that regardless of the fact that everything appeared normal, it felt abnormal. In that instant, your sense of judgment shifted from using your five senses to review a situation to discernment – shifting to your higher senses to assess the psychic field, at which point your intuitive skills kicked in. Alert parents immediately trust their powers of intuition and act discerning; that is, they begin to look around for clues in the physical world to match up with the alarm signals being transmitted by their intuition. Perhaps they need to check out what’s on the kid’s computer, or look under the mattress for drugs. Had they relied on their fives senses alone, they would have never found drugs or whatever.
Again, the judgmental mind relies only on what the five senses can glean from a situation. The underlying posture of the judging person is generally one of fear and an agenda to maintain control over an external base of power. Therefore, you judge who and what you fear can change your life, regardless of how big or small the change. Fear does not measure size – fear measures authority and power and responds to all targets on the outside as forces that can overturn or influence one’s base of power. A new kid on the block, a new employee, or a new state senator – doesn’t matter what the object of “newness” is to the five senses. All they perceive is a new source of external power that is a threat to them and therefore must be judged accordingly. Judgment is an effort to hold that individual in his or her place, to contain or isolated their power within the parameters of your authority.
Discernment is the ability not to be held prisoner by your own fears, and to recognize the wisdom in change, because change is constant and includes the ongoing stream of new ideas and people into your life. Remaining open-minded is a wise position; learning discernment then becomes essential, as you are able to shift through new ideas, deciding which have merit and which lack substance. You are able to maintain a clear intellect. Becoming a discerning person is your greatest protection from becoming possessed -- and by that I mean coming under the control of hysterical thinking, such as fundamentalism or social fears and mass-produced propaganda. (I’ll leave you to discern the reasons why I included that.) Such control by group thought-forms is a kind of social possession, just as shadow propaganda and alarmist material is very much a form of spell-casting.
Okay then, back to the main topic, which was my introducing the Sacred Contract of America for the last thirty minutes of my workshop. As I discussed the archetypes of America (don’t ask me to go into all those now; I’d be here all night, but it’s a DELICIOUS subject, I can promise you that), naturally the participants wanted to apply those archetypes to the hot topic of the upcoming presidential elections – particularly the archetypes of the Judge (begging the question, where has the wisdom of this nation gone?), the Slave (is America enslaving other nations now instead of liberating them, which is its true Sacred Contract?). There were other questions, but you can tell just from these that the discussion became quite animated. I had already explained to the group that they had to assume the position of an audience capable of a discerning discussion, as opposed to going into attack mode. Everyone laughed a bit—BEFORE I INTRODUCED AMERICA’S ARCHETYPES—and promised to be on their best “spiritual behavior.” America’s archetypes lead to controversial discussions, and one has to remain in a symbolic frame of mind to pull out history and examine the influence of an archetypal pattern on the formation of an event, much less see the unfolding of cycles of pain and suffering, triumph and glory. And these people were giving it their best shot. These wonderful people grasped the meaning of discernment as if they had been dying of thirst. Finally they had an option, a way to speak about what was unfolding in their disintegrating nation. And then one woman – and it only takes one to spoil the party – bellows out, “I did NOT take this workshop to listen to this political babble. A workshop is no place for politics.”
That’s all that needed to be said. Instantly the exciting and free discussion that was unfolding at lightening speed hit the ground and battle lines were drawn. As if someone had shot arrows into everyone’s hot air balloons as they were hovering over the chaotic grounds of America, participating in discussions of the symbolic influence of archetypal patterns in this nation’s struggle, suddenly everyone’s balloon crashed. The harshness of her judgment coupled with her tone was like an organic cry to battle that bypassed the soothing skill of discernment, traveling right through the loins of every person in the room, who then responded with various degrees hostility or silence. Her eyes were filled with fire as she locked onto me, saying that my workshop had completely disappointed her–she was pulling out her big guns now.
Finally, I walked up to her and in a steady voice I looked at her and said, “While I may disappoint you as a teacher, which is something I can easily live with, you are a far greater disappointment to your nation and every worthy American patriot. You think silence while your nation is screaming to have its principles stay alive is a worthy course, but that is the coward’s path. You are a coward and a disgrace to all that is good about the history of this great nation, a nation that is, even as we are gathered in this room, on life-support, because its citizens refuse to face that the Republic is dying. Live with that.”
She stormed out of the room, to no one’s surprise. You could have ignited a fire in that room from the tension, but it wasn’t a tension brought about through our exchange. It was tension brought about through the much deeper frustration of the imposition of silence on thinking people. Americans are a thinking people. We are an expressive people, a celebratory people, a happy people. But we have been silenced because we have forgotten or maybe we have never learned to appreciate how to communicate through the art of discernment – through dialogues that rely on the power of wisdom, insight, and the capacity to listen with respect to what the other person is saying.
Now, more than ever before, in this global psychic climate so ready to explode with hatred, the only tool that can get us through is our capacity to communicate with each other. We must transcend our need to be right, to judge the other, and begin to call on the gifts of the soul. We must use the tools we have been refining in ourselves for these past decades. This is the time we have been preparing for. And every single discussion counts. We must open ourselves to the sharing of ideas and discussions of how to lead our blessed nation through these dark times, lest dark forces stay in control. And I don’t care if they are Republican or Democrat; when it comes to dark forces, I am opposed to whatever disguise they wear.
Every one of you descended upon this earth carrying a Sacred Contact within the “walls of their soul,” a phrase Teresa of Avila was fond of using. One of my great frustrations is finding words sacred enough, magnificent enough to communicate to you all that is involved in a soul’s contract. It is not as simple as “this is your job on earth.” How could that possibly be the case? If it were, every unemployed person would be “contract-less.” Your Sacred Contract holds the key to the route through which your soul intends to awaken you? I could wrap myself up in the depth of that thought for a lifetime. How does my soul intend to awaken me? Or, at our age, the question should be: How is my soul awakening me? All questions should be in present tense for none of you reading this is a child waiting for your life to begin. Just tapping at the door of that question allows you entry into wondering, “What is my soul? What is that force within me?” I can tell you briefly that you will not find the answer to that question in your mind, though your mind will produce an answer for you. That is your “trick” answer. My workshops on Sacred Contracts were created precisely because unlocking a person’s interior life is no small task. And now that I have come to understand so much more about the nature of the soul after living, breathing, and working with Teresa of Avila’s legacy while writing my new book, ENTERING THE CASTLE, adding the dimension of the soul’s journey to my work has made the meaning of “sacred” in Sacred Contracts holy to me. And each of you has a spiritual obligation to be more than your ego; you have an obligation to yourself to develop a discerning mind and soul.
Let me offer you these suggestions:
The hour was about noon. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew. How can you ask me, a Samaritan and a woman, for a drink?” (Recall that Jews had nothing to do with Samaritans.) Jesus replied, “If only you recognized God’s gift, and who it is that is asking you for a drink, you would have asked him instead, and he would have given you living water.” John 4:6-10
How do we know who it is we are meeting? How do we know who is occupying the seat next to us on a plane, or the homeless person whose eyes we often try to avoid as we walk down the street? Wisdom of the heart dictates that we assume the posture of the soul – that we look beyond the physical form, especially when that requires effort.
And then there is the universal wisdom hidden in the Kabbalah, the way of the heart:
“The Kabbalah is illustrated as a Tree of Life, made up of 32 paths of wisdom composed of the ten sefirot plus the 22 paths that interconnect them. Thirty-two is the numerical value of the Hebrew letter lev, meaning heart. At the same time, lev is deeply associated with the Torah, for it is the word formed by connecting its last letter, lamed in the word “Israel” (Deuteronomy 34:12), with its first letter, bet (Gensis 1:1). This connection is made when its end is linked to its beginning in a never-ending cycle. The Torah is thus, “a tree of life to those who grasp it” (Proverbs 3:18), and it brings nourishment which derives from roots planted in the higher plane of wisdom. Learning the ways of the Tree of Life is identified with activating the heart in order that the heart may become a subtle organ of spiritual discernment.” (from The Essence of Kabbalah by Brian L. Lancaster: Chartwell Books, 2005).
Explore the wisdom hidden in the Kabbalah. There is a part of you that is seduced by the mystery of the very idea of 32 paths of wisdom that ascend through the very same path as the chakras. The template of ascension is in our bones, in our blood, in our psyche, and in our soul. We are called to a path of ascension and our only choice is, “Which one?” Teresa of Avila described her path in her brilliant classic, The Interior Castle. My book Entering the Castle explores the seven mansions of ascension in contemporary language, taking the reader into the rooms of each mansion, leading you into the exercises of self-reflection that deepen your relationship with the power of your soul. This is the voice that must be awakened in you now; this is the source of discernment and wisdom that is so vital to each individual as the external world spins evermore into the madness of chaos and illusion.
The Buddha said:
“With everything, whether it is above or below, remote or near, visible or invisible, you shall preserve a relation of unlimited love without any animosity or without a desire to kill. To live in such a consciousness while standing or walking, sitting or lying down till you are asleep, is Brahma Vihara, or, in other words, is living and moving and having your joy in the spirit of Brahma.”
4) Take time for self-reflection, contemplation, and prayer.
These are my offerings to you as the foundation steps toward developing the power of discernment and a passionate love for the wisdom-bearing mind. It is a great comfort to know that you are able to withdraw from the grip of fear and transcend that force in order to think clearly with discernment, uncontaminated by panic. Part of the blessing of learning to enter your Castle, which is the metaphor Teresa of Avila used to describe the deeper state of consciousness within your soul, is that the sojourner accesses wisdom.
Till next time, bless you all. I hope this Newsletter has been an inspiration.
Love,
Caroline
Prayer Requests
A New CMED Institute Workshop Series:
Space is limited
ENTERING THE CASTLE: Exploring Your Mystical Experience of God

A mystical Renaissance is at work in our world, awaking in people a deep and increasingly familiar passion to pursue the mystical landscape of their lives. Mystics, contrary to what most people think, are not individuals who seek life in a monastery or ashram because they want to be isolated from the rest of the world. Mystics are individuals who have been "called" by the Divine to engage with life through inner vision, to understand the mysteries of the Divine, and to be of service in this world through the power of the soul. Most of the renowned mystics that so many people are familiar with, like Francis of Assisi and Teresa of Avila, had dynamic and powerful personalities. Heaven chooses rebels to be mystics because so much is expected of them. These great mystics changed their worlds, and many of them rarely left their monasteries. Their souls did the work for them. They knew what it was to develop a "soul with stamina" and to utilize that stamina within their lives.
Today there is a new archetype for the mystic that is emerging, a "mystic without a monastery". These mystics are individuals just like you - a person who has an ordinary (or somewhat ordinary) life, a family, a partner, a profession - and yet is simultaneously seeking to develop a mystical interior life and through that connection, find a path of service in this world.
ENTERING THE CASTLE: Exploring Your Mystical Experience of God, is an intensive year-long program centered around three weekend workshops. These workshops are based upon the material from my new book, ENTERING THE CASTLE, which will be released spring, 2007. My inspiration for this work came from the brilliant 16th century mystic, Teresa of Avila, who wrote in her masterpiece, THE INTERIOR CASTLE, that the soul was like a crystal that had seven mansions and each mansion had many rooms. I was struck by her description of seven mansions, as that is the universal template that drew me to write ANATOMY of the SPIRIT. As I studied her work, I realized that she was not following a chakra map, but rather a path of mystical illumination based on a journey of prayer that took the student through seven mansions on deep interior work. I realized that it would be a worthy task to bring her work into our contemporary lives and in the process, ENTERING THE CASTLE was written and this extraordinary workshop was created.
ENTERING THE CASTLE is an Institute for the soul. It is a guided excavation of the rooms of your soul, and instructions on what to do with the content of those rooms. This is a workshop in which spiritual direction and soul stamina as well as the fundamental skills of healing are emphasized because these are the essential tools for someone who is a "mystic without a monastery", as I believe many people to be these days. Spirituality through books is not enough and meditation alone is not a spiritual path. Heaven knows intuition and intuitive practices are hardly a spiritual practice….so how does one access the soul? How does one "enter the castle" without a guide?
I believe that to be a "mystic without a monastery" is a new "soul's calling", in the same way that people were once called to the new spiritual path of Buddhism and Christianity. We've had fifty years of exploring this new age human consciousness movement, and it's not new any more. It's middle-aged and needs to mature into a stronger and more dynamic spiritual and social force on this planet. Instead of making people withdraw from the world, to constantly seek their quiet little cabins in the woods and focus on their own healing endlessly, it's time for the generation of mature souls to emerge who can live in both worlds simultaneously - who can be of service to humanity and maintain their contemplative, private life.
The new age created any number of mythologies, not the least of which is that to follow one's highest potential, a person has to leave their home and their relationships and start a healing center or do some other such thing…and most of these people end up waiting and waiting and waiting for their highest potential to come to them - with a guarantee that it won't cost them any money and they won't be alone. All that is such nonsense. A person does not have to leave hearth and home to change this world nor do they have to do something dramatic in the outside world; a mystic never had to leave the monastery to draw his or her followers. Let your soul do the work for you. Learn how to channel grace; learn how to be still and let a healing force run through you to others; learn how to use silence to heal a room in chaos. These are among the true gifts of the spirit and are of more benefit to humanity than you can possibility measure.
ENTERING THE CASTLE is my way of leading you into this new soul calling, of becoming a "mystic without a monastery", of discovering what it means to live a fulfilling life exactly where you are, as who you are, and with the people who were born to walk this life with you. Too many people are in pain because they feel they need to leave their homes to be happy - nonsense. You need to learn how to channel grace into your home front. You need to learn how to "spiritually renovate" your life, all of which is a part of this upcoming Institute.
The sessions are in this order:
SESSION ONE: Approaching the Castle
This session prepares you for your journey into your soul, and that preparation is extensive. Here is just a sample:
SESSION TWO: ENTERING THE CASTLE
Your work begins as you are guided into each of the seven Mansions of your soul. In following the template that I developed with ANATOMY OF THE SPIRIT, the seven Mansions that Teresa of Avila describes in her book, THE INTERIOR CASTLE, are yet one more sequence of seven that parallel the archetypal ladder of the soul, rising from the earth, the first Mansion, to the heavens, the seventh. My own research directed me to expand her image to include two more Mansions, eight and nine.
SESSION THREE: EMBRACING THE POWER IN THE CASTLE
The session is a continuation of discovering the rooms of your soul, looking for your jewels that have yet to be animated.
The practice of contemplation and listening for guidance and higher soul directions is introduced in this Session
ADDITIONAL SUBJECT MATTER:
MYSTICAL SERVICE IN THE WORLD: CHANNELING GRACE, HEALING, and the POWER of PRAYER
This material is about you being of service in the world as a mystic without a monastery, learning to make your soul available as a vessel of healing through prayer, through silence, through action, thought, and deed.
I hope those of you who feel called by this CMED Mysticism Institute will consider joining me on this sojourn. The class size is limited because the work is intense and deeply personal. Additional guest faculty include such extraordinary individuals as Andrew Harvey, philosopher and author of THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICS; Dr. Steve Fanning, Professor of Medieval History, author of, MYSTICS of the Christian Traditions; John O Donohue, A Book of Celtic Wisdom; Teresa Schroeder-Schecker, musician-harpist, mystic, and founder of the Rosa-Mystical hospice program; Peter Occhiogrosso, author of THE JOY OF SECTS and an expert on Sacred Journaling; Jim Curtan, nationally known spiritual director and expert on archetypes in films; and Mario Martinez,. Clinical psychologist and expert on the stigmata and the psychological profiles of mystics. Richard Tarnas, David Stringer,Marianne Williamson,James Finley………..
View Video Samples of Entering The Castle!
Entering The Castle Web Stream
CMED Workshop "Entering the Castle"
Spain April 25-30, 2007
"Saint Teresa of Avila"

David Smith - Avila 10/22/06
Hi Everyone:
In March, my new book, ENTERING THE CASTLE, will be released. The brilliant work of Teresa of Avila entitled, THE INTERIOR CASTLE, inspired the approach that I took in writing ENTERING THE CASTLE. In particular, I was quite taken by her template of the soul that she described as a crystal with seven mansions, each mansion containing many rooms. Her metaphor of the soul as castle no doubt was inspired by her beloved town of Avila, which sits upon the highest ground in Spain and was built to be a castle city. Next April I will be leading a workshop in Avila, Spain, on ENTERING THE CASTLE. I am absolutely thrilled to have the opportunity to be able to lead a workshop in the same town where Teresa was born. In between lectures, participants will have the opportunity to visit the sites where Teresa grew up and the convents where she lived as well as the shrine where she is buried.
The theme of the workshop is one rooted in contemporary mysticism. Teresa's intention in writing THE INTERIOR CASTLE was to illuminate a path to God through prayer by sharing her own experiences of God. She knew the content of the soul and she knew how to guide her nuns into the depths of the soul. Today many people are feeling that same passion to pursue the exploration of their soul and much of that passion is due to the fact that a mystical Renaissance is in progress within our spiritual culture. Many people are being called to become lay mystics or mystics without monasteries, people who enter into service in this world by developing the same stamina of soul that the great mystics practiced so long ago. This is the theme of the workshop that will take place in Avila, Spain, in April. Among the many skills of the mystic that you will be introduced to will be: how to channel grace, how to practice self-reflection and contemplation, and how to be a mystical activist in the world. Mystics, after all, were divine agents for change in the world. They were not hermits but rather individuals who changed the world they lived in through the power of their souls and prayer.
I hope you'll consider joining me on this rare journey to the home of Teresa of Avila where I will introduce you to the power of your own interior Castle.
Love,
Caroline
Wednesday: Workshop at Palacio de los Velada: Evening
Thursday: Tour / Workshop:
Friday: Tour / Workshop:
Saturday: Tour / Workshop:
Sunday: Tour / Workshop:
Monday: Morning lecture / Workshop is over
Total Price Includes: Workshops / All meals / Lodging
Flights not included
Single $3,299 US
Double $2,875 US (per person)
Please specify your roommate, or we will do this for you.
Deposit: $1,500 US.
Balance to be paid 60 days prior to trip.
Reservation For Avila, Spain
Caroline - Mirival Spa

Miraval Spa Jan. 4-7 2007 To register for this workshop please call: 800-232-3969

The first weekend in January marks the fourth time that I will be doing a retreat-workshop at Miraval, a stunning spa just outside Tucson, AZ. The beginning of the year is one of the best times to do a retreat workshop because we are primed to think about shedding, renewal, and healing. This year I am incorporating the theme of the wonderful book I am just completed, ENTERING THE CASTLE, which takes the classic masterpiece of the brilliant Catholic mystic and saint, Teresa of Avila, entitled, THE INTERIOR CASTLE, and explores her teachings within a contemporary approach to the mystical experience. As I have taught now for more than two years, a mystical Renaissance is in progress within our spiritual culture; it is subtle, but it is present, calling people toward a deeper and more authentic experience of God and the power of their soul. Among the many topics that will be explored in this workshop are:
Love Caroline
Miraval Spa
Jan. 4-7 2007
To register for this workshop please call:
800-232-3969
www.miravalresort.com