Guest blog by Karen J. Gordon
Learning to Stand in the Sacred Tension Between Two Truths
After my youngest child, Theresa, died at the age of two years and four months, I entered Jungian analysis and began trying to understand the range of emotions I had lived during the last weeks of her illness.
I shared with my analyst how I had held Theresa completely “in” life ~ loving her, caring for her, playing with her, even imagining our future together as a family. Simultaneously, I was preparing for her imminent death in very concrete ways, including choosing the perfect burial plot and knitting her burial blanket.
My analyst said I had been “living the opposites,” which I later learned was shorthand for Jung’s concept of “holding the tension of the opposites.” Her explanation helped me understand how fiercely and tenderly love can stand in two truths at once.
That understanding has stayed with me for decades.
Most of us are taught that one truth must cancel out another. If we are hopeful, we should not be afraid. If we are grieving, we should not feel joy. If we are spiritual, we should not feel anger, doubt, confusion, or despair. If we love someone deeply, we should not also feel exhausted, frightened, or overwhelmed.
But the soul does not live in such tidy categories.
To live the opposites is to make room for the fullness of human experience without forcing ourselves into premature resolution. It is the capacity to say: This is breaking my heart, and beauty is still here. I am afraid, and I am still willing. I do not know what will happen, and I can take the next loving step. I am grieving what has been lost, and I am still being asked to live.
This is not the same as being passive, confused, or indecisive. It is not spiritual bypassing. It is not pretending everything is fine. In fact, living the opposites requires fierce honesty. It asks us to stop flattening reality into either/or when life is clearly presenting us with both/and.
We may be watching the world tremble and still feel called to create. We may be disappointed in someone and still love them. We may feel the ache of aging and still discover new forms of vitality. We may long for certainty and still walk a path of deep spiritual trust.
In difficult times, the mind often wants to solve the tension quickly. It wants to pick a side, close the door, declare the meaning, or rush toward certainty. But the deeper self may be asking for something more mature: to stay present long enough for a larger wisdom to emerge.
Living the opposites can become a spiritual practice. We can pause, breathe, and ask: What are the two truths I am being asked to hold right now? What part of me wants to collapse into only one of them? What might become possible if I allow both to be here?
This practice does not erase pain. But it can keep us from abandoning ourselves when life becomes complex. It can help us remain loving without becoming naïve, strong without becoming hardened, and open without losing discernment.
Perhaps this is one of the quiet initiations of being human: learning that the heart is larger than contradiction.
It can hold sorrow and gratitude. Fear and devotion. Endings and beginnings. The breaking and the blessing.
And sometimes, when we stop demanding that life resolve itself before we are willing to fully inhabit it, we discover that we are not being torn apart by the opposites.
We are being widened by them.
(Karen is Administrative Manager for Seven Sisters Mystery School.)
I love this article. Thank you so much, Karen. You have deeply shared as well as given permission to be fully and totally ALL that I am in the fullness of tensions and paradoxes. It is wonder full you have put this into words so beautifully.
I hope it is Ok to share that my latest book, ‘ In the Nest of the Divine Mother’ is available ( on Amazon etc)
The Divine Mother, in all forms and non forms is my strength and Love.
Thank you, Alice, and thank you for sharing your book with us 💖
Inspired humble masterpiece
Big gratitude and blessings 🌹
♥️
Thank you, Norma 💕
Beautiful!!
Thank you, Mariska 💖
Karen, this is amazing 👏 Brilliant! Thank you.
Thank you, Pamela 💕
Karen, this is such a profound sharing. Helpful, hopeful, illuminating. I feel honored to know you.
Thank you, Marguerite. Loads of Love to you 🧡
I love this article. Thank you.
Thank you, Christie 💞
This resonated deeply with me, it is something I have long struggled with but could not name or describe. I really needed to see this and I thank you.
We’re glad to know this post resonated, Noelle 💖
Hello, Are you referring to what we call in psychotherapy polarity work, let me know.
Do you see a similarity, Cate?
Thank you Karen. It’s so nice to have put in words what i have been contemplating for years. Well written, well said and beautifully on point.
Thank you, kristy 💕
Mahalo nui for sharing. You exemplified the opposites by your vulnerability, articulated with grace, and illuminating the capacity of the heart to expand.
When working with this concept, I have imagined holding the opposites in my hands, outstretched before me. This was inspired by Richard Miller’s “Yoga Nidra”
book.
This keeps each in focused awareness, in a concrete way, and transformation invariably ensues in a miraculous way.
Thank you, Mary 💖 for the sharing and the image of holding the opposites.
I found this to be so true while caring for my husband AND the awareness was very taxing in my body. That decade contained peaks of joy and chasms of fear and grief which demanded so much energy with “normal” being an illusion. Now, beyond all that, I accept so much more of my emotional spectrum, and others’ as well.
Thank you, Star. 💖 It’s helpful to know many others have walked and are walking this same path.
Such a meaningful and personally relevant explanation for the conflicting feelings I’ve been experiencing. I’m so grateful for your insights, spoken from one who has walked this path of pain and love. Thank you.
Thank you, Ellen 💖 We’re glad the post was meaningful.
Beautifully expressed! A gift I will share with family ❤️
Thank you, Melissa 💖
Beautiful and poignant wisdom, Karen.
I find that holding both/and is so freeing and self-loving, and it helps me let go of self-judgment.
Letting go of the self-judgment piece is huge! Thank you for sharing, Jodine.