Teresa reformed the Carmelite order alongside John of the Cross and wrote with startling directness about her own contemplative experience. Her The Interior Castle maps the soul as a crystal with seven dwellings, through which one moves deeper toward union with God.
Her voice is unusually practical for a mystic — skeptical of visions, more interested in the quality of ordinary love and service that awakening produces. “Prayer,” she said, “is nothing else than a friendly conversation with the One we know loves us.”