Throughout history, great faiths have been subjected to persecution and attack from beyond the wall - literally walls, in Peter Harrison's remarkable book of the great monastery-fortresses, and church-fortresses, of the world.

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Internationally renowned motivational teacher, spiritual instructor, and popular theologian Caroline Myss has created a transcendent work of unique insight and revelation in Entering the Castle. This exciting new teaching of contemporary mysticism is also a brilliant synthesis of the psychology of consciousness and of Eastern and Western mystical traditions. Myss provides a highly original inner path to self-knowledge -- which is also the road into a spiritual knowledge of God and your own soul -- as she reveals a necessary external path, one that takes you out into the world to serve God and others as a mystic without a monastery -- without having to retreat into total silence, self-denial, or isolation. As her main template for this extraordinary, modern spiritual journey, Myss uses the beloved, revered writings of The Interior Castle by Teresa of Ávila. Adapting Teresa's vision of the soul as a beautiful crystal castle with many floors, or mansions, and many rooms within those mansions, Myss guides us from room to room, helping us meet different aspects of our self, our soul, and our spirit -- preparing us for the ultimate encounter with God and our own divinity. Through intense practices and methods of spiritual inquiry adapted for contemporary life, she helps us to develop our personal powers of prayer, contemplation, and intuition and to ascend the seven levels of soul knowledge that build an ever stronger interior castle of our own -- a soul of strength and stamina. As in all her books, Myss also recounts stories of profoundly moving real-life experiences -- of her own, as well as of her students and of renowned spiritual figures -- that bring home the universal truth of her insights. Presiding over the entire book and journey are the great mystics, ancient and contemporary, of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism with their inspiring lives and discerning spirits. And over all, the benevolence, truth, and gentle and tough love of Teresa of Ávila shine through. Doubtless Myss's most deeply personal, revealing, compassionate, and transforming book yet, Entering the Castle is a comprehensive guidebook for the journey of your life -- a journey into the center of your soul. There, peace, God, and a fearless bliss wait for you to discover them...and claim them for your own.

INTERIOR CASTLE EXPLORED is a penetrating interpretation of St. Teresa of Avila's central teaching on prayer. But it is more than a contemporary Carmelite commentary on the 16th-century Carmelite classic; it is also, in its own right, a guide to the life of deep union with God. +

Teresa of Avila, a renowned sixteenth–century Spanish mystic, received the vision for The Interior Castle one Sunday in 1577. In this signature work, Teresa uses the castle as a symbol for the interior life to describe her mystical experience of the presence of God. Her humble and straightforward treatise invites readers on a spiritual journey to enter into the deep places in their soul where they will find God. "The soul of the just person is nothing else but a paradise where the Lord says he finds his delight. So then, what do you think that abode will be like where a King so powerful, so wise, so pure, so full of all good things takes his delight? I don't find anything comparable to the magnificent beauty of a soul and its marvelous capacity." –– Teresa of Avila

Is Chip Engelbrecht a newly-fledged god? Or has he been cursed by the gods? Chip's curse seem to run in the family. His South African grandfather was driven to suicide by it, and so was his father. Chip's South African grandmother calls him a "duiwel" and spits on the ground every time she meets him. His mother? She's just plain crazy. She still dances on his father's grave. Chip wants to live a very long life, and part of his plan is to avoid his family at all costs. The holes in his walls are his coping technique, that and avoiding all personal relationships with women. When his mother sends him a locked trunk and an ancient iron key, a note written in his grandfather's hand vaults Chip on a quest to South Africa to find the answers to the curse that hangs over his family. On his journey, Chip finds being a god is tougher than he ever expected, especially when he's forced to choose who lives and who dies in the aftermath of a horrific catastrophe.