E.1-15: Mystical Union: Jung, Teresa of Ávila, and the Spirit Who Unites the Soul with Christ
Season 1: Episode 15
Mystical Union: Jung, Teresa of Ávila, and the Spirit Who Unites the Soul with Christ
listen by clicking the audio player here:
In this episode you will learn:
All your longings — every wound, every dry season, every divided part of your soul — are not random struggles. They are doorways into the mystery of union with God. In this episode, Angela Meer leads us into the heart of mystical Christianity, where anima and animus become rivers flowing into the ocean of Christ’s love.
We talk about:
🔥 Why Teresa of Ávila’s Interior Castle leads us from distraction into the innermost chamber where the Bridegroom waits
🧠 How John of the Cross shows that the dark night is mercy, not punishment — stripping us for deeper union
💬 Why our wounds, when reconciled by the Spirit, move us beyond the “war of genders” into Paul’s vision of oneness in Christ
✝️ How Jung’s dream of Christ revealed Him as the coniunctio oppositorum — the union of opposites, the true mystical marriage
If you’ve ever wondered whether your longing, your wounds, or your silence could actually be the Spirit’s invitation — this episode shows you that the end is not division, but a wedding. 🌿
Episode Length: 13:00
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Transcript
All your longings — every wound, every dry season, every divided part of your soul — are not random struggles, but doorways into a greater mystery, the mystery of union with God.
The anima and animus teach us about tenderness and truth, imagination and conviction. But the Spirit’s work doesn’t stop there. The Spirit unblocks the wells so that all these streams may flow into the ocean of God Himself.
Today we’re going to step into that ocean, into the mystery of mystical union. We’ll walk with Teresa of Ávila through her interior castle, with John of the Cross through his dark night, and with the apostle John into Revelation’s wedding feast.
This is the heart of the journey: not just healing, but union. Not just wholeness, but intimacy. The soul married to Christ.”
It’s time to Awaken Holy Wonder. Stay with me.
teresa of avila: the interior castle
This is part 5 of a 10 part arc. I invite you to go back to episode 11 to catch the full teaching.
“From beginning to end, the Bible is a love story.
In Genesis, God walks with Adam and Eve in the cool of the garden. In Hosea, God calls His people His bride. Jesus calls Himself the Bridegroom. Paul says in Ephesians 5 that marriage is only a shadow pointing to the greater mystery: Christ and the Church. And Revelation closes not with a war, but with a wedding: ‘Blessed are those invited to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.’
Jung called the soul’s longing for wholeness individuation. St Teresa and John of the Cross called it union with God. Both knew this: the anima and animus, when healed by the Spirit, are not ends in themselves. They are rivers, rivers that flow into the ocean of God’s heart for us.
📖 Teresa of Ávila: The Interior Castle
“Teresa described the soul as a castle with many rooms. At first, we live in the outer courts — restless, distracted, preoccupied with the noise of life. But through prayer, the soul begins to move inward.
Each chamber brings new surrender, new intimacy. And at the very center — in the innermost chamber — dwells the Bridegroom.
For Teresa, this was not a metaphor only. She wrote of being pierced by the love of Christ, her soul aflame with longing. But she always insisted: the purpose of mystical marriage is not ecstasy for its own sake. It is transformation. The soul united with Christ overflows with love for others.
This is the fruit of the anima and animus unblocked by the Spirit. Tenderness deepens into love. Conviction steadies into obedience. The soul becomes a living flame.
st. john of the cross and our dark nights of the soul
John shows us that before union comes purification.
John of the Cross spoke of the dark night of the soul. This is when God removes every false image, every illusion, every attachment.
For the anima, this may feel like dryness: no beauty, no intimacy, no song. For the animus, this may feel like silence: no clarity, no conviction, no word.
John says this stripping is God’s mercy. The Spirit is emptying the wells of all stagnant water so that only living water may flow.
He writes: ‘In the evening of life, we will be judged by love alone.’ The dark night is not punishment. It is preparation. It is the Spirit making room for union.”
💔 Our Wounds & Today’s Extremes
“And yet, here’s where this becomes very real.
The poet Rumi once said, ‘The wound is the place where the Light enters you.’ For many of us, the wounds around anima and animus run deep.
Let me ask you: Whose love did you crave more? Mother? Father? Whose absence or harshness marked you? These wounds don’t just shape our childhood — they shape our anima and animus. And unless they are healed, they spill out everywhere.
Look at our culture today. One side rails against patriarchy. The other insists women belong only in the home. Both are shouting, both are wounded. Both are projecting their unassimilated anima and animus complexes outward.
This is not integration. This is war on gender. And Paul reminds us: ‘We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the powers and principalities of this present darkness.’
The Spirit is calling us to move beyond the war of genders into archetypal and spiritual realities. The anima and animus must be reconciled within, or else they will remain at war outside us.
And when the Spirit enters those wounds, when He reconciles tenderness and truth, then we discover what Paul meant in Galatians 3:28: ‘There is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’ Not the erasing of the body, but the fulfillment of it. Not war, but union.
the wedding feast
I want to share something of my own journey with you.
When I first began to study Jung, I felt torn in two. My Christian background had always taught me that psychology was suspect, even dangerous. Dreams, archetypes, symbols — these seemed too close to the edge, too much like forbidden territory.
And yet… I couldn’t deny what I was experiencing. Jung’s words echoed something I already felt in Scripture — the psalmists crying out from the depths, the prophets speaking in images and visions, Paul talking about mysteries hidden in Christ.
There was a season when I thought I had to leave my studies on Jung to stay faithful to Christ. But the Spirit showed me something else. It wasn’t a choice of Christ or Jung, but Christ above Jung — Christ fulfilling what Jung only glimpsed.
And slowly I began to see: the anima, the animus, the patterns Jung described — they weren’t threats to my faith. They were part of the image of God written in the soul. The Spirit wasn’t asking me to abandon my roots. He was inviting me to let those roots go deeper, to let the wells be unblocked in a new way.
That realization didn’t come overnight. It came through tears, through tension, through doubt. But in the end, I discovered something astonishing: the place I feared would divide me became the place God united me. My faith and Jung’s insights no longer opposed each other. They became rivers flowing into the same ocean — the ocean of Christ.”
🎥 Cultural Stories
“We hear this longing in our stories.
In The Return of the King, Aragorn does not end his journey with battle, but with coronation and wedding. The true end is not conquest, but union.
In Beauty and the Beast, love transforms what power could not. The beast’s pride is broken, the anima’s longing is fulfilled, and together they are transfigured.
Even fairy tales whisper the same truth: all our journeys lead toward love.”
📖 Revelation’s Wedding Feast
“Jung himself once had a dream that startled him. He saw a luminous, majestic figure high in the heavens, seated in glory. The figure seemed to gather opposites into himself — light and darkness, heaven and earth, spirit and body. Jung did not fully understand it at the time. But years later, through his alchemical studies, he recognized what he had seen: Christ as the living symbol of the coniunctio oppositorum — the union of opposites.
Christ appeared to Jung as the place where the divine and the human are reconciled in one. Paul tells us in Colossians 1:19–20: ‘For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood on the cross.’
Jung glimpsed this archetypally. Scripture declares it historically and spiritually: Christ is the union of opposites. God and man. Heaven and earth. The eternal Word taking on flesh.
Think of John 1:14: ‘The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.’ That is the coniunctio. The eternal married to the temporal, spirit joined to body, so that we might be made whole.
And think of Ephesians 2:14: ‘For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.’ Jung saw it as the archetype of reconciliation. Paul proclaims it as the reality of Christ who reconciles Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free — so that all may be one in Him.
So even in Jung’s dream, God was whispering the truth: the anima and the animus, the opposites in us, are only signposts. They point beyond themselves to the One who holds all things together in love. Christ Himself is the mystical union we seek.”
“Revelation 19 says: ‘Let us rejoice and be glad and give Him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and His bride has made herself ready.’
This is where it all points: the anima as the Bride’s longing, the animus as the Prophet’s word — both fulfilled in the Bridegroom. The Spirit prepares the Bride, removes the stains, fills the lamps, and brings her into union.
The end is not war, my friends. The end is a wedding.”
reflect and pray
As we close today, I want to invite you to notice where the Spirit may already be drawing you into union. Was it in a dream where longing and love stirred more deeply than you could explain? Was it in prayer where silence became presence? Was it in the wound that unexpectedly opened you to God’s tenderness?
These are not accidents. They are the Spirit preparing your soul for the Bridegroom, awakening the deep desire for intimacy with Christ. So this week, I encourage you to sit in stillness. Ask the Spirit: Where are You inviting me to deeper union? How are You leading me into the harbor of Christ’s love?”
“If you’d like to explore more deeply how anima and animus are reconciled by the Spirit and how that journey leads us into union with Christ, I’d love to invite you into the Christian Jung Community. More than learning, our goal is transformation — to allow the Spirit to unblock the wells of the soul and prepare us for the fullness of God’s love. You can join us at AngelaMeer.com.”
“We’ll be here every week, uncovering the ways faith and psychology meet in the mystery of God’s design. Next week, we’ll look at how the Spirit’s healing of the anima and animus doesn’t end in the individual alone — but spills outward into community, reshaping how we love, how we speak, and how we live together. You won’t want to miss it.”
🌿 Contemplative Prayer Action
“Before you move on with your day, I invite you into a moment of silence. Three to five minutes if you can. Let the Spirit hover over the waters of your soul. Breathe. Wait. Let Him show you where the wells are being unblocked.
And let us pray with the words attributed to St. Brendan the Navigator, whose own journey was one of trust and union:
‘Help me to journey beyond the familiar
and into the unknown.
Give me the faith to leave old ways behind
and to step into new waters —
where You are already waiting.
Christ of the mysteries,
I trust You to be stronger than each storm within me,
and to bring me at last
into the harbor of Your love.’
Amen.”