“If we can stay with the tension of opposites long enough —sustain it, be true to it—we can sometimes become vessels within which the divine opposites come together and give birth to a new reality.”
- Marie-Louise von Franz, Swizz Pshycholgist (1915-1988)
“The greater the tension, the greater is the potential. Great energy springs from a correspondingly great tension between opposites.”
- Carl Jung
Dear Wise Women,
In our first gathering of this session, I wrote:
“During the course of our eleven weeks together, spirit will guide us and bring forth many messages. We will deepen and we will explore. Guided by Grace, let it be so.”
And so it was. And so it is.
This week, like so many times before, the title for this week’s sharing came to me in the stillness (or what I have come to call the pause) in the time between our sharing circles and the creation of the next treasure trove. In truth, I felt tremendous resistance to the words “Holding the Opposites” and doubted the impulse to follow them. However, knowing that resistance has wisdom, I pushed myself to stay with it. I became very curious and I listened for answers. The answers didn’t come easily and several times my mind fully rejected the concept and searched for a different “theme”. But time and time again, in the stillness of my meditations and in the liminal space between sleeping and waking, all I heard was “Holding The Opposites”.
So I continued to sit with it.
Though my mind stayed muddled about what it actually meant to “hold the opposites”, my body most definitely felt it. It is very hard to describe the sensation and I hesitate to put words to it as I want you to feel it in your own way. What I can say is that by blending the word “hold” with “opposites” a new way of being with tension was created. It also seemed to draw me even deeper into the “peace inside of pain” that we explored last week. And so I referenced some of the words from last week and I was especially drawn to the passage of Mark Nepo’s that wise women Laurie had brought forward:
“The deepest place on Earth is not a physical place, but the stillness we enter at the bottom of our pain, at the bottom of our fear and worry. The stillness we enter there opens us to a spacious state of being that some call joy. When we put down our dreams and maps of memory, precious as they are, we can feel the pulse of life. “
After re-reading these words, the impulse became stronger and more clear and so I decided to see what others had written about “holding the opposites”. I was deeply moved by what I learned and at how seamlessly these teachings wove into all that we have been exploring together.
As always, I hope these words land tenderly and meet you where you are,
Patti
“Meaningful transformation is the secret aim of the tension inside life.”
- Micheal Meade
Whilst the two sides of a dilemma can appear to be irreconcilable opposites, at their heart they are one. In a genuine polarity, one side cannot exist without the other: up and down, happy and sad, male and female…to be in this world is to be part of the realm of opposites.
There are moments in our lives where we find that circumstances have brought some unresolved dynamic within us into critical focus. Perhaps we are having to decide whether or not to change jobs, pursue a new relationship, move house, or make decisions around care for an elderly relative, for example. When faced with challenges such as these we can experience ourselves becoming polarized, caught between opposing choices with no real idea of how to proceed. Once we have become hooked by the dilemma and the internal conflict that lies at the heart of it, the inherent tension can be hard to endure.
The failure to engage with the tension of opposites in a way that leads to creative outcomes has big implications in the wider world. In the era in which we currently find ourselves it’s easy to observe how, as the future of the world appears increasingly uncertain and less secure, people have a tendency to become more divided in their thinking around all kinds of issues: religion, politics, national borders and identity, personal opinions even…all of these have become fertile ground for the rise of fundamentalism. As the sense of uncertainty grows in people, so does the tendency to seek the security of black and white ideas. Increasingly, it seems we don’t have the stomach for occupying the spaces in between which, in reality, contain many different shades of grey.
The problem is that genuine solutions only appear where we are willing to risk some dissolution. We find internal tension uncomfortable, the lack of steady or familiar ground unsettling. In our eagerness to be at ease with ourselves again, we are tempted to choose one side of a dilemma prematurely. There can be relief in extricating ourselves from the feeling of internal conflict but, in bringing the debate to a conclusion too soon, we miss out on a greater opportunity. Rather than having brought about a genuine resolution, we find the issue merely reappears in another form further down the road, or it manifests again at a deeper level of life.
What we often fail to appreciate is that the tension we encounter in this kind decision making is, in essence, a creative force - one that has the potential to bring renewal into our lives. More than that, this tension of the opposites, as Jung called it, can in fact be a necessary pre-condition for real transformation to occur - it's how we grow. If we are able to hold the tension, rather than rushing to choose one option over the other, there is the potential for something new to emerge. This third possibility could be an idea, an image, a feeling, a fresh way of understanding our situation, or a new way of inhabiting it. Its arrival on the scene resolves our dilemma in a way that transcends the need to choose one side over another.
As mature individuals, we need to develop the ability to allow an issue to grow in complexity and tension inside us long enough for the possibility of a previously unknown or unseen solution to appear. For a third way to emerge, we may need to be willing to allow our ideas about how the outcome should look to dissolve, and to recover our ability to be surprised.
- Gavin Conochie (inspired by Carl Jung and Michael Meade)
“Short-term thinking always tries to avoid the genuine need to hold the opposites long enough for a third way to emerge.”
- Michael Meade
I also can’t resist sharing one of my favourite (and often quoted) passages from Pema Chodron:
“We are at a time when old systems and ideas are being questioned and falling apart, and there is a great opportunity for something fresh to emerge. I have no idea what that will look like and no preconceptions about how things should turn out, but I do have a strong sense that the time we live in is a fertile ground for training in being open-minded and open-hearted. If we can learn to hold this falling apart–ness with- out polarizing and without becoming fundamentalist, then whatever we do today will have a positive effect on the future.”
- Pema Chodron
Finally, in closing I share more of the poem that I began last week’s treasure trove with. You can imagine my surprise when this poem was quoted in a blog I read entitled “Holding the Tension of the Opposites”. I remain ever grateful for the synchronicities that continue to guide the way.
And a woman spoke, saying Tell us of Pain.
And he said:
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over the fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.
Much of your pain is self-chosen,
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility:
For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen’
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.
- Kahlil Gibran