Here Teresa hears God saying to her that “true gain” consists in “doing my will”. We are not to strive directly for “greater joy” in God, for this is the false-self centered approach found in the weed. We are instead to strive to do God’s will, which is always other-centered, particularly the love of others. This places us firmly in the stem of the flower, and leads directly to the peace, joy, and love of Christ. Thus the joy of Christ, which can not be apprehended by directly pursuing it, can be received as a gift from Jesus, if we obey his will to love, and do His will in all things. It is similar to the pursuit of a butterfly; if you want to see it up close, it is better not to pursue it directly, for it is nearly impossible to catch it in your hands. But if you sit quietly in your garden, it may make a gift of itself to you by landing on your knee! As we have already seen, True joy only comes from loving God and other humans (and, indeed all creation).

Then Teresa goes on to say that doing the will of God “means surrendering our lives into the hands of God, what is best with our gifts, and forgetting as far as possible all our self-interest…” Saint Theresa’s phrase “…surrendering our lives into the hands of God..” reminds us of Saint Theresa’s phrase of “…self surrender.”, and Brother Lawrence’s phrases, “ We must trust God once and for all and abandon ourselves to Him alone”, and “we should surrender ourselves in things temporal and in things spiritual, entirely and with complete abandonment to God.” As we have discussed, this surrender includes every part of ourselves, including our thinking, willfulness, emotions, and actions, although Saint Theresa is certainly emphasizing willfulness here.

Saint Theresa goes on to say that the point she is trying to make is we should make a free will “…gift of our hearts emptying them of ourselves that they may be filled with God.” Saint Teresa is referring here to complete transformation of the False-Self into the True-Self. “ What power lies in this gift! Our almighty Father becomes one with us and transforms us, uniting creator and creature.” This is divine union, the goal of every Christian, where we now live out of our True Self, a state where God can live God’s life in and through us. God’s love can now flow through us, unobstructed by the deluded, self-centered False Self. We become a healthy branch on God’s vine, where God’s loving sap flows freely into the branch, and produces good fruit of loving service to others.

“How desirable is this union! To attain it is to live in this world and in the next without care of any kind.” In this state of divine union, all human emotional suffering has been eliminated; we now live without care of any kind. There is no more worry, anxiety, fear or anger, because the world of the weed has been completely uprooted and replaced by the world of the flower; the excessive and disordered willfulness of the weed has been conformed to the will of God, and the deluded thinking of the weed, which gives rise to the disordered willfulness has been transformed into the trueful thinking of God. Now that our thinking and willfulness have been completely transformed, it is now impossible to experience emotional suffering. In its place, we experience the peace, joy, and love of Christ; and coming from this heavenly place, all our words and actions are effortlessly loving and tremendously fruitful for others. It is now impossible to be abusive toward others any more, because the causes of abusive action (deluded thinking, leading to disordered willfulness, leading to painful emotional suffering, which then leads to abusive action) have all been eliminated.

The False Self has now completely dissolved, like the wicked witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz. Now we are living a truly authentic and meaningful life, where in we allow God to fully live God’s life in and through us, and God allows us to fully participate in God’s life and God’s mission to fully bring about the Kingdom of God on earth by drawing every human into the divine union with God. This then is the mystery of living out of our True Self, like a healthy, fruitful branch firmly connected to the divine vine. There is no more meaningful life to live on this earth than helping God to bring about God’s Kingdom of love, on person at a time, by inviting that person to come into the closest possible relationship with God, which we are calling divine union.

We have now described the entire spiritual journey in some detail. It encompasses the complete transformation of the human mind into the mind of Christ. It is the journey out of the False Self into the True Self, which is divine union. It is the journey out of the living hell of the weed, into the Kingdom of God, represented by the flower.

But the False Self dies hard, and will fight to live on until it has been dissolved completely. In the next chapter we will return to the dirty, nitty gritty daily struggle to progress  on the spiritual journey.

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