http://www.amazon.com/Francisco-De-Osuna-Spiritual-Spirituality/dp/080912145XAlso check : http://www.patheos.com/blogs/yimcatholic/2011/07/for-thoughts-on-our-adversary-by-fray-francisco-de-osuna.html
and
While St. Teresa of Jesus and St. John of the Cross are considered the crown jewels of 16th century Spanish mysticism, both owe a large debt to their predecessor Francisco de Osuna. He was born around 1492 and was a Franciscan priest from southern Spain who taught in the years just prior to our Carmelite masters. The principal work he is known for is “The Third Spiritual Alphabet,” a treatise on recollection, the “narrow gate” we must walk with no exception.
Through Osuna, Teresa developed her teaching that humility is the basis for everything and that “entering within” is the means by which we find Christ in prayer. And we find many of the expressions she would later take as her own ... images like the wax seal and the hedge hog curling up as illusions to infused prayer. Further, Osuna’s way was primarily affective; the key ingredient behind the Teresian concept of mental prayer “as a loving conversation between friends.” :
But perhaps Osuna’s greatest contribution to St. Teresa was his relentless hammering away that the heart and mind must be kept in continual custody ... the remedy to the “wild horses” that so plagued her. Without first learning to quiet and still the faculties, the soul can never learn to hear the Master’s voice who speaks to us in the language of silence.http://www.meditationsfromcarmel.com/sites/default/files/pdfs/carmelite_promises/Promise_3.pdf
Like Teresa, Osuna describes our Lord as a gentleman who, “being very courteous, does not wish to enter into the houses of our hearts unless we ourselves are there to welcome him. So He knocks at the doors of our consent with his holy inspiration.” (p241) And it’s through distractions that we fail to welcome Him … each time we assent, we lose sight of Christ and our union suffers. So important is this Osuna declares “if you analyze evil, you will discover that it begins when the heart is distracted and scattered.” (p244) He then makes a variety of pleas that no doubt struck St. Teresa to the very core:
"Nothing is more fleeting in me than my heart; how often it abandons me to run after evil thoughts and how many times it offends God. Vain, restless, fickle, my heart runs away as it pleases, deaf to divine counsel. It cannot be contained within itself and changes more often than the most changeable thing. Distracted by an infinity of things, it roams here and there through countless experiences in endless search of rest. When my heart is totally miserable from all this effort, it reappears, drained of all repose, feeling no peace within but all out of sorts with itself, and then, fleeing once more in a confusion of wills, it changes advice, builds new things, destroys the old, rebuilds what it just tore down, reorders and rearranges things, again and again, because it no longer desires what it thought it desired, and so it never can stay in one place. (p246)"
He continues in a manner that foreshadows St. John of the Cross from “The Ascent”...
"Fleeing from heavenly to earthly considerations, my heart is open to vanity, curiosity carries it off, desire seduces it, delight deceives it, luxury sullies it, envy torments, ire disturbs and sadness wearies it, so that finally it is cast to all the vices, miserably unhappy and all because it chose to abandon the one God who could satisfy it. (p246)"
Osuna concludes: “I am not united with God and therefore am divided within myself.” (p247)
In these passionate laments, Osuna reveals the great need souls have to discipline their unruly hearts … the dangers of interior dissension being simply too great for souls walking the way of perfection. If “con-templation” means to be with God in His temple ... then interior battles like this are how we banish Christ from our very hearts. Thus, Osuna directs souls to continually quiet the understanding and put to rest the speculation, scrutiny and analyzing of the intellect to reach out to God in the loving simplicity of our hearts ... what St. Teresa would later describe as to “not think much, but love much".
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