When God Takes the Wheel — The Interior Castle

Teresa opens the fifth mansions, begging light to describe riches impossible to depict and asking whether silence would be wiser. Few nuns never enter, yet many gain admittance at least to the portal; Carmelites are called to contemplation, though outward virtue alone cannot purchase the pearl buried within. To buy this treasure God demands everything held back; the prayer of union proves whether nothing was reserved.

Unlike quiet prayer's drowsiness, union puts the soul asleep to world and self, unable to think though it loves without knowing how or whom; faculties suspend as the soul dies to earth and lives in God, a delicious death where even breath may seem unconscious. The intellect, astounded, can barely move, unlike quiet prayer where doubt lingers and lizards of fancy still scurry. In genuine union the devil cannot interfere because God joins the soul's essence; earthly unions with vanities lack divine peace.

Teresa urges competent directors, warns timid theologians who shut hearts to wonders, and gives a decisive sign: God visits the soul in a manner which prevents its doubting, leaving certitude years later that He dwelt within it. We can do nothing on our own part to gain this favor; it comes from God alone, like the Bride carried into the wine cellar without walking herself.