Interior Castle, Mansion, Teresa of Avila, reptiles

You set your face to the hills but where will your help come from? Climb, push upward, call out what you want call to the rock, up on the mountaintop, you reach a mirrormere reflecting a castle, you reflect on the castle, stoop so low your intent face drifts infinitely close to the image, you see your face in the castle, not only a model, and with many mansions, not your father's house, but his word has prepared a place for you.

Now let us discover how to enter it. Ho, ho, incongruous! Next you'll tell someone to go into a room he is already in. There are, however, very different ways of being in this castle; many souls live at the drawbridge of the building where the sentinels stand, caring neither to enter farther than the stone edifice, nor to know who dwells in that place, or what blinding rooms it contains. Not you! You have heard of the interior crystal, so you set your face to it, bravely endure rustles and heavings in the dusk light, lay out your mat with care, orient to the lost sun, and sit down to meditate.

You have heard it said that souls without prayer are like bodies palsied and lame, accustomed to think of nothing but look down only for sudden movements in the periphery, impossible for them to retire into their own hearts, accustomed as they are to retreating into their archaic brains, watching for the great lizards that stalk and flash in the moat outside the castle, their case seems hopeless, they do not endeavour to understand that the water here reflects nothing, that dark seeks dark and how great the darkness, so when they approach the gate at last, still they look back, catch​ glance of a reptile rising out of the murk, head all snakes.

You have heard that their minds become cells of stone, bodies pillars of salt. But I tell you the truth, take up your mat, look straight at the doorway, and walk.
[paragraph contim. It appears impossible for them to retire into their own hearts; accustomed as they are to be with the reptiles and other creatures which live outside the castle, they have come at last to imitate their habits. Though these souls are by their nature so richly endowed, capable of communion even with God Himself, yet their case seems hopeless. Unless they endeavour to understand and remedy their most miserable plight, their minds will become, as it were, bereft of movement, just as Lot's wife became a pillar of salt for looking backwards in disobedience to God's command. 11