Why does drawing closer to God sometimes make your fears louder? In this third episode of the Foundations series on The Christian Jung, Angela Meer explores individuation, the early church’s Way, and Teresa of Ávila’s Interior Castle as a map for bringing your fears to Christ.
Before they were called Christians, the followers of Jesus were known as people of the Way (Acts 9:2). Not a label, but a road you walk with the One who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Angela traces that road through Moses turning aside at the burning bush, Jeremiah’s fire shut up in his bones, Isaiah’s voice behind you saying “This is the way,” and the two disciples on the road to Emmaus whose hearts burned before they recognized Jesus.
Carl Jung called the inward side of this road individuation, which he translated as “coming to selfhood,” and he noticed it almost always begins with loss. He saw Jesus as the One who became Himself completely, the example by which we become ourselves. Centuries earlier, Teresa of Ávila had already drawn the map: the soul as a castle of clear crystal with God dwelling at the center, and prayer as the gate.
Angela shares her own story of the season when growing closer to God brought her deepest fears to the surface, including the fear that surrender would erase her personality, and the shame-based hiding she learned growing up with cerebral palsy, and how God has been excavating the person He made from under those layers. The episode teaches three movements of the contemplative life: fear can be a door, not a wall; some undoings are holy, like Teresa’s silkworm becoming a butterfly; and prayer is the gate. It includes a short breath prayer and closes with Teresa’s bookmark, “Let nothing disturb thee,” in Longfellow’s translation.
If your fears have grown louder as you’ve drawn near to God, you may not be going backward. You may be walking deeper into the castle than you’ve ever gone.
Closing block (paste at the end of the description):
📖 Read the full article and guided practice: [FREE ARTICLE LINK]
🌿 Join the wait list for A Return to Awe, my fall course: https://landing.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/f6n3e2
🕯️ Join the FireHouse Contemplative Communities wait list: https://landing.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/d5f3x9
Angela Meer is an ordained minister with graduate degrees in Jungian studies.
It’s time to awaken holy wonder.
Show notes:
Scripture referenced (World English Bible): Acts 9:2; Acts 24:14; John 14:6; 2 Corinthians 4:16; Exodus 3:4-5; Jeremiah 1:5; Jeremiah 20:9; Isaiah 30:21; Luke 24:32; Colossians 3:3.
Key terms: The Way (hodos, the early church’s name for following Jesus). Individuation (Jung’s word for the lifelong process of becoming whole, “coming to selfhood”). The Interior Castle (Teresa of Ávila’s 1577 book picturing the soul as a crystal castle with God at the center). Contemplation (quietly attending to God Himself).
Jung: Collected Works 7, para. 266; “Psychotherapists or the Clergy,” Collected Works 11, para. 509.
Prayer: Teresa of Ávila’s bookmark, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Episode tags: Foundations, Carl Jung, contemplative prayer, Contemplative Series, Moses and the burning bush, Acts 9 the Way, road to Emmaus
