"The cage is more difficult to understand, but it does bring the paradox that the golden bird
must sit in a wooden cage and the beautiful horse
must have a plain leather saddle. This probably refers to another age-old problem which has come up again and again in humanity: what does one do with a precious inner experience? If you do not ask that question, you are all right: but if you have a precious inner experience which changes your whole life, the natural thing would be to realize that you had it and never tell anybody
—just as the man who found the pearl hid it again, hiding the kingdom of heaven within himself and not bragging about it in the marketplace.
-
We have a proverb which says, “the devil never sleeps,’’ and with many people, when they have had an overwhelming or precious inner experience, the devil starts to bite them, saying that this must in some way appear outside as well. With introverts, naturally, the extraverted inferior shadow comes in and asks, “What is the use of being enlightened if nobody admires me because of it?” This is absolutely destructive, but so innate in human nature that anybody who has not yet assimilated his other side, the introvert who has not assimilated his extraversion completely, or vice versa, generally cannot help making this mistake.
-
In former times, it was a temptation to create a sect or a new movement or something like that; with us, it is a temptation to claim the ability to lead other people to the same experience and to give unwanted advice to those around us, if we have made some inner step forward, or even to make it a profession without having been pushed by an inner reason."
-
'Individuation in Fairy Tales', by Marie-Louise von Franz.
