- “William Blake spoke about the need to reconcile these two parts of the self. He said we should go to heaven for form and to hell for energy – and marry the two. When we can face our inner heaven and our inner hell, this is the highest form of creativity.”
- On romance: the ancient world understood that romantic feelings were fleeting, gifts from the gods – humans were only carriers of divine energy
- Today, when this energy is bestowed upon us, we need a ritual of thanksgiving to contain it, and a way of returning it to its rightful source
- Honor it vs letting it consume us
- “While contradiction is static and unproductive, paradox makes room for grace and mystery”
- Ex. masculinity only has relevance when in contrast to femininity
- You cannot know joy and happiness without experiencing sadness and grief
- Opposition births meaning
- “Personal suffering begins when we are crucified between these opposites. If we try to embrace one without paying tribute to the other, we degrade paradox into contradiction. Yet both pairs of opposites must be equally honored. To suffer one’s confusion is the first step in healing.”
- Honor the dark and the light
- Live in the contradiction, embrace it
- “If I can stay with my conflicting impulses long enough, the two opposing forces will teach each other something and produce an insight that serves them both. This is not a compromise but a depth of understanding that puts my life in perspective and allows me to know with certainty what I should do.”
- Sit with the opposition – let the resolution come about naturally from within, from both sides
- “The solution must rise from the dynamics of the opposing energies that are facing each other.”
- Paradox reaches its next stage of development by means of a highly conscious waiting. The ego can’t do anymore, it must wait for what is bigger than itself
- “Jung has said that to be in a situation where there is no way out, or to be in a conflict where there is no solutions, is the classical beginning of the process of individuation. It is meant to be a situation without solution: the unconscious wants the hopeless conflict in order to put the ego-consciousness up against the wall, so that the man has to realize that whatever he does is wrong, whichever way he decides will be wrong. This is meant to knock out the superiority of the ego, which always acts from the illusion that it has the responsibility of decision. Naturally, if a man says, “Oh well, then I shall just let everything go and make no decision, but just protract and wriggle out of [it],” the whole thing is equally wrong, for then naturally nothing happens. But if he is ethical enough to suffer to the core of his personality, then generally… the Self manifests. In religious language you could say that the situation without issue is meant to force the man to rely on an act of God. In psychological language the situation without issue, which the anima arranges with great skill in a man’s life, is meant to drive him into a condition in which is he capable of experiencing the Self. When thinking of the anima as the soul guide, we are apt to think of Beatrice leading Dante up to Paradise, but we should not forget that he experienced that only after he had gone through Hell. Normally, the anima does not take a man by the hand and lead him right up to Paradise; she puts him first into a hot cauldron where he is nicely roasted for a while.”
- Surrendering is key
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