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trina willard
  

yen yang

So Pam and I were having a great conversation today (actually many were involved and it was wonderfully inspiring) and this idea that I kick around now and then came to the surface. I believe in the idea of balance- that this plane in which we exist is one of duality and that for our continued growth and evolution, we must transcend the illusion of duality and seperation, embracing the paradox that things aren't one or the other or even a little of both, but both at the same time (seperate and one, light and dark, masculine and feminine)(see the Jung quote below). So here's the question: If we aren't ever going to irradicate shadow, dark, evil, pain, etc. because the dark is the necessary complement to the light, the essential contrast that allows us to experience light, good, joy, etc. (your wound is your gift) then it seems that the next question is how do we manifest the balance/completeness of the two in one without causing the suffering that we do with our current, violent manifestation of the shadow? Do we? Can we? Is it naive to think that we can ease suffering? Or is there another way to manifest this yen yang? Is there another way to Know the dark and the light both, without having to immerse ourselves in one or the other, back and forth, being wounded, being healed, making war, making peace? If this struggle is the current dream of the planet, what is the next dream that is trying to be birthed?

Could midwifing that dream be like midwifing a song, or a painting, feeling it coming through, uncertain about how it will look when it's done, but certian as each note comes, each color choosing itself, guiding the brush...

Cause if that's what it's like, than we all need to fucking relax! You can't force that kind of truth! It has to flow from Source...

Here's that Jung quote: ..If a union is to take place between opposites like spirit and matter, conscious and unconscious, bright and dark, and so on, it will happen in a third thing, which represents not a compromise but something new...

Another part of the great conversation involved the seemingly apparent truth that trying to bring about change in our culture, our society, the institutions that we currently invest in in ways we don't even realize, was necessarily a difficult process that involved "swimming upstream" the whole damn way.  Someone in our conversation was saying it happens so frequently that as soon as a real breakthrough seems eminent, something happens to smash it, that there are undeniable forces working against the changes that move us toward a more balanced, whole way of being, forces that we must constantly overcome. And so again, I wondered, maybe that's the old way. Surely the new way is something that has to be born from the very push and pull that we currently perceive as struggle. Old/new? Push/pull? What about FLOW???

Richard Tarnas says we're like a baby in the birth canal in this era.  It feels like a fight for our lives at the time being, but it's actually a really natural process that will end in a new consciousness opening up to us.  (He's a Jungian Depth Psychologist who has written some really interesting books about the history of Western thought and the myths that can carry us through our current dark times.)

I know there are myths for this stuff. I know lots of you who read my mental meanderings have ideas on the subject. Tell me a story. What is the Third Thing? How can it look? Where does the magic of conscious creation fall in this story? Let's muse over the relationships of these things for a while.... Please?

Posted on 1/9/06; 2:50:42 PM

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© Copyright 2008 Trina Willard.
Last update: Monday, January 9, 2006 at 2:50:42 PM Pacific.