Every real solution is only reached by intense suffering.
Letters of C. G. Jung: Volume I, 1906-1950 (Vol 1)
To P. W. Martin
Dear Mr. Martin, 20 August 1937
I’m indeed very sorry that I have left your letter unanswered, but I was so busy that I could not find the
necessary time to answer your question properly.
It is a very difficult and important question, what you call the technique of dealing with the shadow.
There is, as a matter of fact, no technique at all, inasmuch as technique means that there is a
known and perhaps even prescribable way to deal with a certain difficulty or task.
It is rather a dealing comparable to diplomacy or statesmanship.
There is, for instance, no particular technique that would help us to reconcile two political parties
opposing each other.
It can be a question of good will, or diplomatic cunning or civil war or anything.
If one can speak of a technique at all, it consists solely in an attitude.
First of all one has to accept and to take seriously into account the existence of the shadow.
Secondly, it is necessary to be informed about its qualities and intentions.
Thirdly, long and difficult negotiations will be unavoidable.
Nobody can know what the final outcome of such negotiations will be.
One only knows that through careful collaboration the problem itself becomes changed.
Very often certain apparently impossible intentions of the shadow are mere threats due to an unwillingness on the part of the ego to enter upon a serious consideration of the shadow.
Such threats diminish usually when one meets them seriously.
Pairs of opposites have a natural tendency to meet on the middle line, but the middle line is never a compromise thought out by the intellect and forced upon the fighting parties.
It is rather a result of the conflict one has to suffer.
Such conflicts are never solved by a clever trick or by an intelligent invention but by enduring them.
As a matter of fact, you have to heat up such conflicts until they rage in full swing so that the opposites slowly melt together.
It is a sort of alchemistic procedure rather than a rational choice and decision.
The suffering is an indispensable part of it.
Every real solution is only reached by intense suffering.
The suffering shows the degree in which we are intolerable to ourselves.
“Agree with thine enemy” outside and inside!
That’s the problem!
Such agreement should violate yourself as little as your enemy.
I admit it is not easy to find the right formula, yet if you find it you have made a whole of yourself and this, I think, is the meaning of human life.
In the meantime you have received my Terry Lectures.
I should be very much obliged if you kindly looked them through, and you are only expected to correct the worst errors in orthography and style.
But I have to bear it if the general style is somewhat awkward and crude.
In America I’m not expected to write a flawless style.
So please don’t spend too much time on it.
If you just read through them it will be all they need.
I hope so at least!
I’m very grateful to you for your willingness to give me your help.
Sincerely yours,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 233-235
What do you let yourself suffer through the suffering of another?
- III. 19. 132
Jung. My soul, it is hellishly difficult.
Soul. It happens as it must. There is nothing more to say.
I. But how must it happen?
S. Should I foretell the future to you? Should there be anticipation? So listen: no stone will be left unturned. Everything will fall down again.
There will be mountains where there are valleys, there will be dry land where there is water. Are you satisfied?
I. Do you dare to joke? What are you planning? Do you have magical designs once more?
S. Not at all. I am merely boisterous.
I. Have you intoxicated yourself again?
S. A little. I smell opportunities.
I. It is fatal if you have caught sight of something again. Do you really want to plunge yourself again into matter?
Who grants you the right?
S. Who other than you? You are soft again, like butter in the sun.
I. Where have you caught me?
S. Now, where possibly else than in the so-called humanness? You are impressionable.
A good word, is it not?
I . What are you playing at?
S. The so-called soft heart.
I . Do you want me to cringe at being humane?
S. No, but at the mixing. What do you let yourself suffer through the suffering of another?
They want to see you solid, strong, and healthy. They still need you as an impenetrable wall.
That would be true love-more stone than heart.
I. You are hellishly cruel.
S. Do yeti you want me to plunge myself into the heat of eternal procreation?
Do you want again and again to be blended into the molten flow, in the dissolution of matter?
To start all over again from the beginning? But you need the continuation, not the beginning.
I. Who can prove to me that you are not lying?
S. Do you feel that I’m lying?
I. I can’t say. But where should it go?
S. To your Golgotha, where everyone is going to leave you. For now, you still must be more unknown.
I. What are these dark words? What is my Golgotha?
S. Do you want to know this?
I . I must have clarity. If you know it, speak.
S. I know only the word. However, Philemon knows more.
I. So call him.
S. <D, a mortal wants to know about Golgotha, his Golgotha.
Philemon: Is it curiosity? Or would you like clairvoyance? Golgotha is death for the sake of the Gods. -?- What does this tell you?
I. I seek no death for the sake of the Gods, since I would like to live for the sake of men.
Philemon. But the Gods want your life back. You have given birth to the luminous one.
He who bore him will procreate no more. He will give his life to the Gods and not to men. What are you pondering?
I. I am considering what it means to give one’s life to the Gods.
Philemon. Ask Ka, the shadow. He knows about this.
I. So answer me Ka, dark son of the earth.
Ka. How should I form my gem, how should I give form to the Gods, if you yourself go on the way of procreation?
Haven’t you drawn magical appearance from the black rod? If you are not solid, the light that everyone thirsts for will extinguish.
Who should live from himself, if you don’t do it? Will you borrow life from others through mixing? All are drawn into procreation.
Who possesses his soul? You must be solid for everyone, unmixed and cut off.
I. I see the inevitable. ~The Black Books, Vol. VII, Page 197-198
