Chapter 23 Summary and Analysis

In the final chapter on the Sixth Dwelling, Teresa turns back to the analogy of the butterfly to explain the feeling in the soul of ever-increasing anguish and unrest, like a butterfly never being able to find a place to land. This is the condition in which the soul finds itself for the final element Teresa describes in the Sixth Dwelling. She describes pain like a flaming arrow piercing the body, but the spiritual body, not the physical one. In that moment, she explains, the soul forgets everything about its own existence and is only able to focus on the pain. Estrangement from God is the source of the pain, and the soul becomes fixated on tying to alleviate it. Self-knowledge only intensifies the pain, since the condition of the self is the source of the soul's alienation from her Creator...