Digesting Jung: Food for the Journey - Inner City Books

114 The Inner Voice
And he ran unto Eli, and said, Here am I; for thou calledst me.
And he said, I called not; lie down again. . . .
And the Lord called yet again, Samuel. And Samuel arose and
went to Eli, and said, Here am I; for thou didst call me. And he answered,
I called not, my son; lie down again. . . .
And the Lord called Samuel again the third time. And he arose
and went to Eli, and said, Here am I; for thou didst call me. And Eli
perceived that the Lord had called the child.
Therefore Eli said unto Samuel, Go, lie down: and it shall be, if
he call thee, that thou shalt say, Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth.
So Samuel went and lay down in his place.
And the Lord came, and stood, and called as at other times, Samuel,
Samuel. Then Samuel answered, Speak; for thy servant
heareth. 112
That’s more or less what happened to me. One night I distinctly
heard my name called, not once but thrice, and then again.
“Speak!” I cried, leaping out of bed, “I do heareth!”
I was ripe for holy orders before I heard my housemate Arnold
snickering behind the door. We had a good old pillow fight then.
Puers at heart. But having already accepted that God—a.k.a. the
Self—moves in mysterious ways, it was not a great leap of faith to
imagine my feckless friend as His unwitting messenger. Jung:
Vocation, or the feeling of it, is not, however, the prerogative of
great personalities; it is also appropriate to the small ones all the
way down to the “midget” personalities, but as the size decreases the
voice becomes more and more muffled and unconscious. It is as if
the voice of the daemon within were moving further and further off,
and spoke more rarely and more indistinctly. The smaller the personality,
the dimmer and more unconscious it becomes, until finally
it merges indistinguishably with the surrounding society, thus surrendering
its own wholeness and dissolving into the wholeness of
the group. 113
112 1 Sam. 3: 2-10, Authorized Version.
113 “The Development of Personality,” The Development of Personality, CW 17,
par. 302.