St Teresa's 7 'mansions'

[LittleDiana]

I think that st. Theresa wrote about the seven mansions in order to help people go through the different stages of prayer, not as a way to "count the steps" but to understand what's going on, and so be able to deal with the different things that may be happening to you. I mean, something in the lines of: "I'm experiencing X in prayer. That may mean that I am in situation A or situation B; so I should avoid doing f and try to do m instead".