Chapter 4b

Experiences in the Desert

Intentions

HI iii(r) 2

77 After a hard struggle I have come a piece of the way nearer to you. How hard this struggle was! I had fallen into an undergrowth of doubt, confusion, and scorn. I recognize that I must be alone with my soul. I come with empty hands to you, my soul. What do you want to hear? But my soul spoke to me and said:

if you come to a friend,
do you come to take?

I knew that this should not be so, but it seems to me that I am poor and empty. I would like to sit down near you, and at least feel the breath of your animating presence. My way is hot sand. All day long, sandy dusty paths. My patience is sometimes weak, and once I despaired of myself, as you know.

My soul answered, and said:

you speak to me
as if you were a child
complaining to its mother.
i am not your mother.

I do not want to complain, but let me say to you that mine is a long and dusty road. You are to me like a shady tree in the wilderness. I would like to enjoy your shade. But my soul answered:

you are pleasure-seeking.
where is your patience?
your time has not yet run its course.

have you forgotten
why
you went into the desert?

My faith is weak, my face is blind from all that shimmering blaze of the desert sun. The heat lies on me like lead. Thirst torments me, I dare not think how unendingly long my way is, and above all, I see nothing in front of me. But the soul answered:

you speak as if you have still
learned nothing.

can you not wait?

should everything fall into your lap
ripe and finished?

you are full, yes,
you teem with intentions and desirousness--
do you still not know
that the way to Truth
stands open only
to those without intentions?

I know that everything you say, oh my soul, is also my thought. But I hardly live according to it. The soul said:

how, tell me,
do you then believe
that your thoughts should help you?

I would always like to refer to the fact that I am a human being, just a human being who is weak and sometimes does not do his best. But the soul said:

is this what you think it means
to be human?

You are hard, my soul, but you are right. How little we still commit ourselves to living. We should grow like a tree that likewise does not know its law. We tie ourselves up with intentions, not mindful of the fact that intention is the limitation, yes, the exclusion of life. We believe that we can illuminate the darkness with an intention, and in that way aim past the Light.78 How can we presume to want to know, in advance, from where the Light will come to us?

Vessel

Let me bring only one complaint before you: I suffer from scorn, my own scorn. But my soul said to me:

do you think little of yourself?

I do not believe so. My soul answered:

then listen,
do you think little of me?
do you still not know
that you are not writing a book
to feed your vanity
but that you are speaking
with me?

how can you suffer from scorn
if you address me
with those words that i give you?
do you know, then,
who i am?

have you
grasped me,
defined me,
and made me
into a dead formula?
have you measured the depths of my chasms,
and explored all the ways down which
i am yet going to lead you?

scorn cannot challenge you
if you are not vain
to the marrow of your bones.

Your Truth is hard. I want to lay down my vanity before you, since it blinds me. See, that is why I also believed my hands were empty when I came to you today. I did not consider that it is you who fills empty hands if only they want to stretch out, yet they do not want to. I did not know that I am your vessel, empty without you, but brimming over with you.

Cleverness

[2]

This was my twenty-fifth night in the desert. This is how long it took my soul to awaken from a shadowy being to her own life, until she could approach me as a free-standing being, separate from me. And I received hard but salutary words from her. I needed that taking in hand, since I could not overcome the scorn within me.

The spirit of this time considers itself extremely clever, like every such spirit of the time. But wisdom is simple-minded, not just simple. Because of this, the clever person mocks wisdom, since mockery is his weapon. He uses the pointed, poisonous weapon, because he is struck by naive wisdom. If he were not struck, he would not need the weapon. Only in the desert do we become aware our terrible simple-mindedness, but we are afraid of admitting it. That is why we are scornful.

fol. iii(r) / iii(v)

But mockery does not attain simple-mindedness. The mockery falls on the mocker, and in the desert, where no one hears and answers, he suffocates from his own scorn.

The cleverer you are, the more foolish your simple-mindedness. The totally clever are total fools in their simple-mindedness. We cannot save ourselves from the cleverness of the spirit of this time through increasing our cleverness, but through accepting what our cleverness hates most, namely simple-mindedness. Yet, we also do not want to be artificial fools because we have fallen into simple-mindedness, rather, we will be clever fools. That leads to the supreme meaning.

Cleverness couples itself with intention. Simple-mindedness knows no intention. Cleverness conquers the world, but simple-mindedness the soul. So take on the vow of poverty of spirit in order to partake of the soul.79

Against this, the scorn of my cleverness rose up.80 Many will laugh at my foolishness. But no one will laugh more than I laughed at myself.

So, I overcame scorn. But when I had overcome it, I was near to my soul, and she could speak to me, and I was soon to see the desert becoming green.

77 December 11, 19I3.
78 In "Commentary on 'The Secret of the Golden Flower' "(1929), Jung criticized the Western tendency to turn everything into methods and intentions. The cardinal lesson, as presented by the Chinese texts and by Meister Lockhart, was that of allowing psychic events to happen of their own accord: "Letting things happen, the action through non-action, the 'letting go of oneself' of Meister Lockhart, became the key for me that succeeded in opening the door to the way: One must be able to psychically let things happen" (cw 13, §2o).
79 Christ preached: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:3). In a number of Christian communities, members take a vow of poverty In 1934, lung wrote: "just as in Christianity the vow of worldly poverty turned the mind away from the riches of this earth, so spiritual poverty seeks to renounce the false riches of the spirit in order to withdraw not only from the sorry remnants-which today call themselves the protestant 'cllurches'-of a great past, but also from all the allurements of exotic aromas, in order, finally to turn back to itself, where, in the cold light of consciousness, the blank barrenness of the world reaches to the very stars" ("On the archetypes of the collective unconscious," CW 9, I, §29).
80 The Draft continues: "This, too, is an image of the ancients, that they lived in things symbolically: they renounced wealth in order to have a share of the voluntary poverty of their souls. Therefore I had to grant my soul my most extreme poverty and need. And the scorn of my cleverness rose up against this" (P. 47).

< Liber Primus