The fact is that if one tries beyond one’s capacity to be perfect, the shadow descends into hell and becomes the devil.
When one tries desperately to be good and wonderful and perfect, then all the more the shadow develops a definite will to be black and evil and destructive.
People cannot see that; they are always striving to be marvellous, and then they discover that terrible destructive things happen which they cannot understand, and they either deny that such facts have anything to do with them, or if they admit them, they take them for natural afflictions, or they try to minimize them and to shift the responsibility elsewhere.
The fact is that if onetries beyond one’s capacity to be perfect, the shadow descends into hell and becomes the devil.
For it is just as sinful from the standpoint of nature and of truth to be above oneself as to be below oneself.
It is surely not the divine will in man that he should be something which he is not, for when one looks into nature, one sees that it is most definitely the divine will that everything should be what it is. Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 569.
When you accept the fact of your inferiority, it lives with you; you are it too, but not exclusively. You are not only white, one part is black, but both make the whole man.
It is not wiping out the white substance when you accept the black—on the contrary; it is only when you can’t that things go wrong, when there is nothing but white and nothing but black. That is simply neurotic. Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 391.
I earnestly confronted my devil.
I earnestly confronted my devil and behaved with him as with a real person.
This I learned in the Mysterium: to take seriously every unknown wanderer who personally inhabits the inner world, since they are real because they are effectual. It does not help that we say in the spirit of this time: there is no devil.
There was one with me. This took place in me. I did with him what I could. I could speak with him.
A religious conversation is inevitable with the devil, since he demands it, if one does not want to surrender to him unconditionally. Because religion is precisely what the devil and I cannot agree about. I must have it out with him, as I cannot expect that he as an independent personality would accept my standpoint without further ado.
I would be fleeing if I did not try to come to an understanding with him.
If ever you have the rare opportunity to speak with the devil, then do not forget to confront him in all seriousness.
He is your devil after all.
The devil as the adversary is your own other standpoint; he tempts you and sets a stone in your path where you least want it.
Taking the devil seriously does not mean going over to his side, or else one becomes the devil.
Rather it means coming to an understanding. Thereby you accept your other standpoint.
With that the devil fundamentally loses ground, and so do you. And that may be well and good.
Although the devil very much abhors religion for its particular solemnity and candor, it has become apparent, however, that it is precisely through religion that the devil can be brought to an understanding.
What I said about dancing struck him because I spoke about something that belonged in his own domain.
He fails to take seriously only what concerns others because that is the peculiarity of all devils.
In such a manner, I arrive at his seriousness, and with this we reach common / ground where understanding is possible.
The devil is convinced that dancing is neither lust nor madness, but an expression of joy, which is something proper to neither one nor the other.
In this I agree with the devil. Therefore he humanizes himself before my eyes. But I turn green like a tree in spring.
Yet that joy is the devil, or that the devil is joy, has got to worry you.
I pondered this for over a week, and I fear that it has not been enough. Y
ou dispute the fact that your joy is your devil. But it seems as if there is always something devilish about joy.
If your joy is no devil for you, then possibly it is for your neighbors, since joy is the most supreme flowering and greening of life.
This knocks you down, and you must grope for a new path, since the light in that joyful fire has completely gone out for you.
Or your joy tears your neighbor away and throws him off course, since life is like a great fire that torches everything in its vicinity.
But fire is the element of the dev1l.
When I saw that the devil is joy, surely I would have wanted to make a pact with him. But you can make no pact with joy, because it immediately disappears.
Therefore you cannot capture the dev1l either. Yes, it belongs to his essence that he cannot be captured.
He is stupid if he lets himself be caught, and you gain nothing from having yet one more stupid dev1l.
The devil always seeks to saw off the branch on which you sit.
That is useful and protects you from falling asleep and from the vices that go along with it.
The dev1l is an evil element. But joy?
If you run after it, you see that joy also has evil in it, since then you arrive at pleasure and from pleasure go straight to Hell, your own particular Hell, which turns out differently for everyone.
Through my coming to terms with the dev1l, he accepted some of my seriousness, and I accepted some of his joy.
This gave me courage.
But if the dev1l has gotten more earnest, one must brace oneself! It is always a risky thing to accept joy, but it leads us to life and its disappointment, from which the wholeness of our life becomes. ~Carl Jung; The Red Book; Pages 260-261. [Large Red Book Version Page Numbers]
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