The Tension of the Opposites

The past two years have been quite a ride. A massive roller-coaster ride, if you will. Twisting and turning, clinging on for dear life, screaming your lungs out. Half excited, half mortified. I was/am terrified, petrified, scared, angry, lonely and also happy, grateful, joyous and at peace, with fleeting spells of emptiness and fullness. Phew. Disorienting. It is a pervasive sensation of surrender, when things reach a breaking point within and when you let go and allow life to sweep you off your feet(not in a romantic way). You feel perpetually out of balance and yet strangely protected. It's kind of weird to explain. When you decide to let go off the resistance and learn to embrace your fears a little, it's scary. You are on the edge, on the cusp of facing up to the beauty and especially the ugliness within. The ugliness that we have been in denial of.

At some point, life decides to shake you and slap you hard enough to wake you up from your slumber of convenience and forces you to deal with your "stuff". It shakes up all your rigidly held beliefs, your roots, makes your question your identity and makes your probe deeper into uncomfortable spaces, unchartered waters. It urges you to hold the 'tension of opposites' as Jung beautifully put it. It eggs you on, to embrace your inner polarities completely without denial. It pushes you to re-parent yourself by loving the good, the bad and the ugly within you in equal measure, up until a point when you realize that there is no 'good', 'bad' or 'ugly'. Those are just our immature and harsh inner judgements coming from a place of self hate and social conditioning. Wisdom is to realize that we are all humans and by design, we will fail. When we accept failure, we make room for success. When we accept hatred/irritation/helplessness, we make room for acceptance/gratitude/peace/love. Tension of the opposites. Both polarities can and should coexist for harmonious living. That is the nature of the human design. Acceptance of our human condition, is the end of all judgements and labels, and the adoption of nuance that life demands of us.

These are the toughest and probably the most courageous things you will ever do. But, that is what one must do in order to find balance. Embrace all our parts and love ourselves through it all. Maybe, just maybe, then you will find an opening and finally be able to get off the destructive autopilot mode of living and engage with life in a more conscious manner. It is not easy work, but it is the work that has the potential to set you free. When you clear up inner space by owning up to your 'shadow regions', that is when you make room for love, compassion and peace to enter. That is when you can live consciously. Inner work is not a journey with an end destination. It is the work of a lifetime.

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