Struggling with conflict? The nature of duality and tension of the opposites

Duality on the Subway

Late one Saturday night, I was on the subway going home from a wonderful evening at a writer’s studio. I had given myself concentrated time to write about the experience of duality and then unity with the Divine for an upcoming workshop on the divine. My intention was to map out the workshop and to write about my personal experience. That night, the writing was hard. I wasn’t quite sure what I was trying to say. I read and pulled what I could from my psyche. I was full of ideas; however, the writing wasn’t easy. I was frustrated with myself.

As the universe sometimes does, traveling home, I was given an experience that offered a poignant mirror of the trouble that I was having with my writing. I was getting ahead of myself, jumping to the end of the story rather than understanding the process.  

I am not normally on the subway late Saturday evenings. I was surprised at how busy it was; the subway car was packed with people returning to their homes from being downtown for an evening out. I was fortunate to get a seat where I could get lost in my thoughts and reflections.

A commotion pulled me out of my reverie. A woman in her 30s with short wavy black hair was throwing her clothes on the floor of the cab and yelling at a man who had just moved past her to wait at the door. On the floor beside her, a large black bag lay filled with clothes. She stood next to it. Her appearance didn’t suggest that she was homeless or otherwise unwell. I was curious. The encounter agitated her. The ferocity with which she flung the clothes on the floor made me think that she was punishing them. The man responded “I asked several times if I could pass” The explanation didn’t soothe her agitated soul. She kept flipping her clothes on the floor even after the doors had closed and the man had left. The subway moved forward again.

Other passengers tried to soothe her agitation. Their efforts were futile; futile to be reasonable to someone who is being unreasonable. The woman cried out in response “Go home. Go back to your country. We don’t want you here.”

The week before a young Canadian born man walked into a mosque filled with peaceful praying Muslims and opened fire. Six innocent deeply spiritual people died that night. It was a culmination of an increase in anger and hatred at immigrants that have erupted across North America. The situation on the subway train was another example of how duality, splitting, and projection destroys the heart, love, and compassion.

Duality & Holding the Tension of the Opposites

It is true that there is an inherent duality in the universe – black and white, good and bad, yes and no. However, at the level of unity, this duality is paradoxical. The incident on the subway reflects the paradigm that is overly judgemental and reveres ego rationality and the will. It is a false distinction – “I am good, immigrants are bad” or “I am right. You are wrong” or “I am bad and you are good”

Jung so wisely wrote “we might as well put our casual philosophy in our pocket. . . . reason and the will that is grounded in reason are valid only up to a point” CW7 para 72. He believed that our lives can only flow along an ascent, that psychic energy insists on the fulfillment on it owns terms, and there can be no energy available for life unless there is the tension of the opposites.

This means that we must make conscious the opposite of the ego, the opposite of our conscious standpoint, and hold both in a state of inner conflict until the SOUL fashions a resolution. Only through bringing to consciousness the material which we have repressed can the tension of the opposites be created. These are the only conditions in which psyche has the possibility of moving forward. Life is born only of the spark of opposites CW7 para 78

Splitting Mechanisms – They are natural!

Here is another paradox. The psychological mechanisms of splitting and repression come from our hardwired survival instinct; they are part of our nature. As children, we need to split to keep ourselves alive. It starts very young as we come to understand how powerless we are in the world and how dependent we are on our caregivers for survival. We need the capacity to distinguish between bad sensations and good sensations – bad to put your hand on a hot pot; bad to have a wet stinky diaper that burns;  bad to be hit. On the other hand, it is good to be fed; good to be dry and warm; good to be held and comforted.

When the good and bad parts are split in our consciousness, the shadow is created. We identify with the good parts of ourselves that our families and society find acceptable. We repress and reject the unacceptable parts and say that they are bad. Sometimes it is the other way around, we say we are bad and project the good parts or overly idealize the other. Any way you look at it, the “not I” aspects play themselves out unconsciously in our relationships with others and with groups of people.

The key to understanding what we split off can be found in our judgments. Judgment is an instrument of separation. Judgment distinguish this from that, we from them, and good from the bad. In its extreme form, it is an instrument of rejection. Wherever there is judgment, we contract and close ourselves off from love, compassion, healing, and resolution.

Experiencing the Tension of the Opposites

The experience of the tension of the opposites or holding the inner conflict consciously is challenging. It is hard!  It asks us to be courageous and brave. We want to send that pesky unconscious material packing back to where it came from. Our natural tendency is to avoid, deny or to repress again. We don’t want to think about it. The unconscious challenges the status quo of the ego. We don’t like change, we don’t like having our sacred cows challenged. It is unnerving and threatening.

Unconscious material comes to us many disguises.

• It can come in the form of a difficult outer experience or a conflict with something or someone. Like the young woman on the subway train, she projected the unwanted aspects of herself onto immigrants.
• It can be an element in a dream where we are being chased or an unknown figure comes knocking at our door. We are reluctant to open the door.
• We feel the unconscious in the stress that we carry in our bodies or through sleepless nights where we wake up inexplicable night after night.
• Sometimes, it will come in the form of irrational emotional eruptions or fears.
• Old mechanisms of fight or flight that come from early childhood defenses kick in and want action.
• We fight the truth of our heart and true feelings with rationalizations of the head about why we need to do something else. Such rationalizations usually arise from fear of hurt and betrayal that we would do anything not to feel again.
• We fear what others will think or we can feel a strong societal or community pressure to conform.

What is in the WAY is the WAY

What we resist persists. The longer we ignore the messages of our SOUL, the more adamant and insistent the messages become.

I first heard “what is in the way is the way ” from inter-spiritual teacher Miranda Macpherson. It helped me to reframe my own resistance and to shift my orientation to the parts of myself and life that I found troubling. I saw for myself the possibility of transformation if I could accept and embrace my challenges.

If we accept and embrace instead of reject, we give ourselves a great opportunity.

If we go against the inclination to reject that which we don’t like and don’t want, we have the opportunity to transform and to become stronger in our sense of self.

If we can hold the paradox and hold together the conflict, the tension of opposites, we have the opportunity to open our hearts towards integration, healing, wholeness, and freedom to be who we are. We can experience compassion for the tender parts of our personality that need to be more refined. We can also offer compassion and love to others.

The next time you experience internal or external conflict, try being curious about it. Invite it in for tea and try to understand what you need to protect.

“When you cling to the hair’s breath of judgement, heaven and earth are set apart. If you want to realize the truth, don’t be for or against.  The struggle between good and evil is the primary disease of the mind” Lao Tzu

We live in a universe where everything is connected to everything else through energy and vibration. It also means that we are connected to everything else and to everybody else. Current scientific paradigm has for a long time shown that there is no subject/object distinction. There is no you out there and me in here, and there is no we and them. Life is a mirror of our own internal psyche and there is only unity and love.

Christina Becker
February 2020
all rights reserved.

Have you found value here? Have you been inspired or moved?  Please consider sharing the post on your social media networks by using the buttons below.

I love to hear your comments and ideas. Use the comments below or send me an email.