St. Teresa of Avila

Okay, so there was this woman in Spain around the time of the Inquisition that defied all odds and became the founder of a Carmelite Order in a time when women had no power. She was encouraged to write, and she hated writing, and because of her spotty education, she wrote in Spanish in a very personal, odd way. Kind of the way I write, very stream of consciousness and using word play and very individual expressions.

She was a great mystic, but people who met her mostly saw this old nun who was constantly trying to get her nuns to follow the rules of the Order. The Inquistion investigated her, and Teresa's spiritual advisors saved her from persecution. She followed the Church authority in a very tongue-in-cheek way.

Her visions were extremely passionate, some say sexual, and her teaching was so very esoteric that it's hard to describe. Essentially what she taught is that through a process of meditation, the only Western meditation practice of any complexity that has ever existed, one can reach these mystical states that end in a perfect humility before Christ.

Her order exists today, and is considered by scholars the only true meditative Western religious order in existence. She was greatly influenced by St. John of the Cross, but she broke with him because of his excessive asceticism, and because his defiance of Church authority put her in danger of being executed. I'll talk about him next.