Embracing the Paradox

We are pathologizing what is most human within us. If I hear another friend at a party tell me he or she is bipolar, I think I shall scream and run out of the room, tearing my clothes in two.

(Please note that I am not writing here of the very serious mood disorder we once called Manic Depression, which does affect many people profoundly. I will set aside discussing the history of the psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which grows thicker and broader in each new addition. I will not write of Big Pharmaceutical and its manipulation of our culture. That is food for another day.)

Today we explore a central concept in Jungian thought: the tension of the opposites. Carl Jung saw that the Self--the archetype of the Whole, our most true and integrated Self--is a union of the Conscious and the Unconscious. In those rare mystical experiences that may come only once in a lifetime, we may glimpse this union briefly. The ego stands as the center of our conscious life, but our unconscious remains exactly what it is: unconscious, unknown to us.

We can describe this as the Rational opposed to the Irrational. There is a tension here which cannot be resolved, a tension we all have experienced in the push and pull of our inner worlds. Jung described the psyche as having many parts--archetypes and complexes, memories and images--some which we accept and celebrate, and some which we deny. The disowned, primitive part of us he called the Shadow, which some describe as "that which I do not wish to be."

When the Shadow is denied, we are at risk of acting out. Recognizing and working with the Shadow is the heart of Twelve Step practice, which Jung assisted in birthing.

We live in a culture which celebrates control and power and the rational. Our national ego admits no wrongdoing. On this planet fundamentalist religions are expanding. Mystics are mistrusted: direct contact with God must be mediated by a cleric or a book, must meet certain rules, must conform.

Jung wrote that this is exactly what happened in Germany in the Thirties. Nationalism--egotism on a grand scale--led to the eruption of an entire people's Shadow, and millions died.

He believed that a swing too far into one side of the polarity will result in a compensating shift into the other. So too may we erupt unskillfully in our personal lives.

We humans have within us many energies. In our dreams, in our art, we can explore the tensions of the polarities within us. In expression and acceptance, we allow a flow between them. We embrace the paradox.