Teresa of Jesus feast day today (aka) Teresa of Avila

I had one spiritual director in the past tell me my level of spirituality was like that of Teresa of Avila, aka Teresa of Jesus,  I considered it a compliment back then, now I consider it to be an insult.

I do not read about the saints for the most part, it is too depressing to do so and it reveals how the church manipulates the truth  about certain people to make them saints. 

There are requirements a “lay person is required to meet” as to their level of being “holy” while alive, which the hierarchy, religious and clergy do not live up to themselves but they judge the laity by.

Then there is the question of so called miracles these saints have performed to get to be a saint, Satan himself is pretty good at performing miracles as well, as Moses found out in the court of the pharaoh… So just because the “saint” perform alleged miracles are they from God… I have read many accounts of so called miracles being labeled such when they clearly were not, labeled as such to push the cause of a saint …I am also aware of miracles that truly seem to be real and from God that the Church rejects for it goes against their worldly agenda. Play along with the hierarchy of the Church and you are on the way to sainthood, call them out for the evil they do and you are labeled a "demon" ... not a new thing to do this also happened to Jesus Christ himself , when the fakes and frauds in his native religion, said he was curing people, by the power of Satan. 

The name and the personal power of the saint is “pushed”, by the Church… not God … troubling to me and something I never pushed in my own spirituality … it was and always go to God, no one should be going to a "person" alive or dead … do not ask me to pray for you.. I am not a magical genie, my prayers nor anyone else’s are greater than the others … only God is the greater … not a creature … I pray “with people” … if you are too lazy to pray for yourself do not ask me to do the work for you (sounds crass, I know but it is true) I pray for the intentions of God not man …

It is like someone who is down on their luck and needs money … if they are trying to help themselves and looking for work, or doing the best they can with what they have,  I will help them … but if you are playing me because you are lazy … I walk away … same is true with my spiritual life. I believe the job is to get people to go to God themselves and pray, not to get people to pray to a saint or ask someone else to pray for them, while they go about their business and never change their own ways in life, such is called "enabling bad behavior" ... I do believe in intercessory prayers but it is done via Christ not man or any creature. This is the prayer 'Jesus I trust in you", just let it go and trust God has it under control.   

Regards Teresa of Avila the church white washed her a bit … well a lot … they say, she entered the convent because she was afraid of marriage and dying in child birth… yet there is also evidence that Teresa was forced into a convent by her father … her father put her into a convent when he learned that she was sleeping with her much older Aunt, so Teresa of Avila was not only a lesbian, she was engaging in incest… you will not hear this detail from anyone in the hierarchy of the Church 

Teresa never considered that to be a mortal sin, nor did the Church and she never renounced being a lesbian … which seems to be a long standing “sick” policy of the hierarchy of the church… you can have sex with the same sex as yourself (be it male with male or female with female)  and you are not “sinning”… WOW freak’n  WOW  … so yeah for this reason and for so many others,  I do not read the lives of the saints … a porn book would be less disturbing to the hidden lifestyles of many so called saints.    

Teresa is said to have "mystical union" and there is the famous statue where she is in "ecstasy"   Ecstasy and yes the church considers it to be sexual as well… yet the famous statue of Teresa in “ecstasy” was brought on by an angel piercing her, not God … so was it a “good angel” or an evil one clothed in light ??? and that sounds a bit old testament to me ... where the angels saw the women and "went into them" and God considered it to be evil in the old testament, yet it was "grace for an angel to do this to Teresa"??? ... Teresa of Avila is very graphic about this encounter and others in her writings and the Church hails it and for the most part Teresa rips into the praying the rosary  and other forms of prayer (does not sound Catholic to me, yet she is a saint)   

There are some historians say… Teresa was a beautiful woman … others who say she was an old hag …??? Who knows what was really going on with Teresa of Avila? 

Teresa said she married Jesus, in a vision with the Virgin Mary and King David present, yet Teresa never renounced being a lesbian … now how does that sit with “mystical union”, married to Jesus in the spiritual realm, while being an active lesbian in this realm …???  Clearly the hierarchy of the church, many religious and clergy always had a twisted sense of what is sexual and what is not and they still  engage in homosexuality or being a lesbian and still call themselves holy (thus mocking the vow of celibacy and natural order) … as we are learning  this today with all the revelations of sexual and homosexual abuses within the church …

And I wonder is this "thinking about what is sexuality" in the Church,  the reason for the psychological warfare, in regards to what are the sins of the flesh, which has raged against the laity who are heterosexual for hundreds of years ...  This perverted thinking in the Church, about sexuality is not new, only by God's grace is it being revealed to us now in this day and age.

 (can't have a "religious order" without your founder being canonized, it gives the order "street creds") ... yet there are many "founders of religious orders when you really looked into their background were perverts or child molesters.
             
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Yet to end this post ... I do believe Teresa had visions and encounters with Jesus Christ ... to the extent she described them in her books ... ??? ... do not know ??? and in some areas I do see similarity to my own spirituality ...

 Teresa had an analytical mind when reflecting on mental prayer and mystical theology overshadows her potentially inflammatory words about confessors: Teresa did have a lot of "smack down words" when it came to priests and what was being taught in the Church, such as her going to confession and confessing her sins to "demons, as in the priests she was confessing to"!!! I am loving that about Teresa, she was right then and it is correct now when you go into a confessional ... is this priest a "demon in his thinking"???  ... but here are Teresa's words “I do not fear Satan half so much as I fear those who fear him.” ..... this making a priest in error more harmful to the soul than Satan himself!

 to the larger significance of The Life’s “audacious, unrestrained optimism about the human potential for love and its affirmation of the ultimate triumph of good over evil.” Small wonder that later writers, from Francis de Sales, Vincent de Paul and Richard Crashaw to George Eliot, Thomas Hardy and Gertrude Stein, were captivated by Teresa's  autobiography. She did have a way with words ...

Teresa's prayer life reminds me of Judaism more than Catholicism, which mine is as well ... Catholics are not really taught about mysticism and deep inner refection they are always lead to see the Church as their deep connection to God not your inner self like a Jew does... Teresa's spirituality also hints of Gnosticism ... which my own spirituality also does at times ... true spirituality is so much deeper than most people realize or have been taught ... Teresa touched that level in her life ...   


 we are not lumped together with God, we are individualized, just a parent takes each child and learns and works within that child's personality, so does God with each one of us ... so do not follow saints ... follow God and his Son and pray for the Holy Spirit so you can discern, what is truth and false teachings ... I believe this is why God has revealed the corruption within the Church in our lifetimes, for the corruption has gone on far to long and a correction is starting to be made.