Union of Opposites
After a yoga class, the other day, I found myself having a conversation with a friend.
I was telling her about someone who played a major role in building the yoga community where I live, this was someone who deeply influenced me as a teacher.
Our relationship was meaningful, and it was complex She had a very strong personality and seemed at times, larger than life, and at times, our dynamic was a challenge.
She is no longer with us in physical form but her legacy lives on.
After someone passes away, it’s easy to idealize them or reduce the story about them to only their best or less than best parts, But the truth is, we are all walking contradictions.
That short conversation sparked a very important reflection on the tensions that we each carry and the oppositions we live within, and try to navigate through.
Our experiences, and the thoughts, feelings and emotions we have around them, shape how we show up,: although attitude is what determines how we engage.
I catch myself, despite being a yoga teacher, living in contradiction, offering teachings rooted in unity and wholeness, while I feel sometimes fragmented inside, grappling with judgment, fear and disconnection.
In the past, I would shame myself for this tension, but I’m learning that working within opposition isn’t a personal failure, it’s something that we all have to contend with.
At the heart creative energy, yoga and spiritual practice , is this constant play of opposites.
Within these oppositions lies spectrum of both and.
For example, there’s often a disconnect between what we say, and what we energetically transmit.
I could say something like “I support you’, but if Im holding resentment, anger, fear, worry, ,or doubt, that is what will be felt, because energy is consistently truthful.
Often we don’t even notice the subtile contradictions until the friction begins and something doesn’t feel quite right.
This shows up everywhere, in relationships, art, yoga, or whatever we’re facing.
On the yoga mat, I might have precision to alignment, , but if I’m not fully present to the whole, the practice will feel hollow.
In the art studio, tension and contrast are welcome, offering needed energy and interest.
I’m learning that these moments of tension don’t render me a failure, and that the opposition is necessary at times, so I don’t have to avoid it,
ON SOFTENING THE TENSION BETWEEN THE OPPOSITES.
Tension is really an invitation and whether we’re standing between the opposing energies of effort, and surrender, shadow and light, self and other. It all requires presence, compassionate honesty, and room to breathe.
I’m learning how to soften my resistance and knee-jerk reactions and I am making the choice to become curious instead. I’m finding that as I allow both energies to exist without making one right and one wrong, I can recognize truth in both and hold each with grace.
WHAT DOES UNION OF OPPOSITES MEAN IF EVERYTHING IS CUT FROM THE SAME CLOTH?
Union of opposites isn’t about blending things until they are the same, it’s recognizing that contrast itself made up of the same essence. Light and shadow may reveal different things but they can’t exist without each other.
The cloth they are cut from is consciousness. When we stay awake to all sides without rushing to “fix” or “choose”, were offered a richness that couldn’t be accessed from only one perspective.
Union does not ask the opposites to resolve or agree, it gives them space to coexist and breathe together where a deeper truth can be realized.
So perhaps the work isn’t to resolve all tension, or fix every contradiction within. Maybe it is to stay awake inside it. To let yoga practice, art making and relationships be spaces where paradox can thrive, where light reveals the shadow, and the shadow teaches us to honor the light. Where nothing has to be perfect to be whole. This is what I am learning and unlearning, not how to silence the friction but to listen more gently inside of it.