The Labyrinth Within
“You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.”
In her famous work, Interior Castle, St. Teresa of Avila describes seven 'mansions’ through which the earnest Christian journeys in their quest to encounter God in prayer. With each mansion, a little more self is let go; a little more God is found.
The first two mansions are purgative, that is, the Christian repents and leaves behind all of the temptations and distractions of the world, such as status, reputation, admiration, self-reliance, and material security. The second two are illuminative; they illuminate the false security of resting in the practices and favours of God rather than in Godself. The final three are unitive; gradually, the Christian “knows itself to be a chosen child of God, to Whom it is united by perfect conformity of the will” (Interior Castles, p. 19). This stage includes the dark night of the soul, where the believer experiences intense suffering and the seeming abandonment of God’s presence for the purpose of practicing faith in the darkest night and trusting in God’s divine will to walk with them in the wilderness.
The point: Faith is not linear. It is not rewarded with celebratory pit stops and gold stars. Instead, it progresses deeper within oneself for the sake of meeting God there.
Many Protestants rebel against this sentiment, arguing that it is selfish to think of oneself at all. Psychological research on the benefits of self-love and self-care is rejected as worldly, selfish, and ‘unbiblical,’ to which I ask, “What about Jesus’ second commandment: Love your neighbour as yourself”?
Can you love others without loving yourself first? In my experience, not well.
When I first began the inward journey, I discovered depths to myself that were awful, horrendous, and disgusting. These were my first two mansions. I repented in (metaphorical) sackcloth and ashes, and, at the very end of myself, I heard God say, “I love you. I love you, just as you are, not as you will be. I know what you can be—I made you!—but I love you here and now; the fact of whether you repent or not has no bearing on my love for you.”
Could I accept that love for myself? With great difficulty and wrestling, I did. Of course, this kind of acceptance abhors continuing in patterns of sin and deceit, so I gladly gave up the darker depths to myself from within the arms of my Saviour’s love.
Self-flagellation and self-loathing, I have determined, are not from God. They are a device from the devil, a scheme from the pit of hell, determined to keep all of God’s children bound to navel gazing and proud insistence that they are too humble to think better of themselves.
It’s hogwash. There are stronger words for it, but I’ll spare you.
If we cannot accept and love ourselves, we who are loved eternally by God, we have decided that we are not worth loving. We have decided that God’s love is not enough, that his assurance that we are His is not enough, that, instead, we know best.
In short, we have made ourselves God.
It’s pride. It’s idolatry. It’s the worst kind of sin, exalting ourselves—in a twisted, flagellating humility—above our Creator and God. It’s taking the fruit for ourselves and declaring, “I know what is best for myself.”
And so, in the true humility of repentance, we accept God’s love for us. We journey deeper into the labyrinth of our souls, knowing that He is walking with us to the centre and that perfect union with Him is found there in the stillness and the silence.
Perfect love for ourselves is resting in complete unity with God in his love for us. John Mark Comer describes this as “looking at God looking at us in love.” This is heaven on earth; it is where we were created to exist in union with Him. Can we experience it fully on this side of Christ’s return? Probably not, but that hasn’t stopped the desert mothers and fathers, the medieval mystics, and the modern charismatics from trying.
Then, when we perfectly accept and love ourselves (no, this doesn’t mean that we condone further sins; rather, we freely repent and welcome God’s welcoming love for us), we can freely offer love to others. We do not judge them, for we have stared down our own darkness and have welcomed God’s eternal love as it washes us in light. We are not afraid of others because we have faced the demons within our very selves and know God’s power to set us free.
The labyrinth within is twisty. At times, I feel lost. However, the difference between a labyrinth and a maze is that you can’t get lost in a labyrinth. As long as you keep marching forward, you’ll find the centre. I march past the monsters of my pride, anger, and self-reliance. I walk deeper past the beauty of the practices that lead me closer to God, past my envy of others’ experiences with Him, past my illusions of my spiritual progress, past the emotional highs, past the emptiness of the dark night of the soul and the unworthiness that accompanies it. And eventually, at the very heart, I find God, that Perfect Love, that Being who Cannot Be Described but in Love.
This is the process of prayer, stillness, solitude, fasting, and retreat—yes, all those wonderful Christian practices that lead us closer to God have a purpose as they draw us closer to the Source of Light and Love.
But let’s not forget that the practices themselves are not the goal. God is the goal; communion with Him is the goal.
Finally, it must be said that we don’t stay in the centre. We don’t while away our days in perfect glory and union with God, ignoring the passing of seasons and the faces of those whom we love. We encounter God so that we can more fully engage with the world and people around us, so that we can show empathy and love to them as we’ve been shown—remembering all the while that the goal is still being with God as we live and interact with others. Love overflows in humble service; union with God is for others as we are His body in the world.
That sure stillness of God joins me as I walk out of the labyrinth to encounter the world once more. The confidence I have in His Love is my anchor; I am not swayed by the darkness in the world nor am I afraid of it, because I know that Christ is already declared victorious and that He is walking within it to bring others to Him, too—by the words and the testimony of His people, that Living, Breathing Body called the Church.
