When I was a child, I had a baby doll. I could change the expression on her face from a smile to a frown by turning the knob on the top of her head. Turn the knob and my doll was smiling. Turn the knob and my doll was frowning. I always knew the smile and the frown were but a turn away.
Life experiences shift and change just as quickly. Like the colors of a kaleidoscope, the elements of change are always present, ready with the slightest shift to create a new experience. Rather than be intimidated by or fearful of this unpredictable, impermanent aspect of life, we can learn to anticipate and befriend it. Psychology calls this “holding the tension of the opposites.”
As we move from Center into everyday life, we move into the field of time, the field of duality or opposites – night and day, right and wrong, good and evil, light and dark. It is the field of change, the field of suffering, the field of our human endeavor. Our perspective of this field of time and how this impacts our life determines the freedom and comfort we experience as we live out our life.
If I believe the universe will provide what I need in order to become whole, I can trust that what ever happens to me is in the service of my wholeness. I can call the light of consciousness into whatever darkness I find myself and hold the tension until the dark is transformed into its opposite – until it releases the light present in it. Rather than view a downturn, the opposite of the safety I experience now, as negative, I would see it as part of my evolution toward wholeness.
If I believe man is “fallen,” estranged from nature and transcendence, pitted against an impersonal universe, I would not trust my natural self to know what is best for me. I would not trust that what happens to me – a shift into an opposite energy — is what is supposed to happen, part of the evolution of my wholeness. My goal would be to outsmart the fates and gain the upper hand. Any downturn of circumstance would be seen as a misfortune to avoid at all cost.
Were I to rename the faces on my baby doll in light of these two perspectives, I would rename them fear and joy. Fear and joy are like two aspects, or opposites, that shift and play with one another, always present when the other is present, even when hidden from our awareness.
If I believe the universe will provide what I need in order to become whole, I will address any fear I experience with the assurance I am in the hands of a wisdom greater than my own. I will view my anxiety as an indicator of my aliveness. If I believe that man is “fallen,” that life is unsafe, I will view my fear as a way for me to hold my edge as I compete with others to try to gain control of whatever happens. I would act out of negative energy instead of positive energy.
The face of fear on my baby doll, then, congers up two different experiences depending on my perspective of the universe. “There’s nothing I can do to stop the unexpected” leaves me on guard, trying to outsmart the inevitable. “There’s something I need to learn from what is happening right now, some new energy trying to be released in me” does not entirely alleviate the fear but couples the fear with the joy that I am moving towards some shade of wholeness.
If we have been lulled into believing — by the American Dream, by our religious ethic — things should always be good, that, if we do the right thing, we are safe from harm, we are devastated and disoriented when bad things happen. We take it personally, like we have been singularly picked out for this momentary derailment, by God or by some downturn of fate.
In reality, it’s the natural law of things. As the stock market goes up, it is already correcting itself and making its way back down. As we make special effort to live a healthy life, we are, at that same moment, in the process of dying. As we try to get everything in our life under our control, something will happen in the family or in our finances to throw us into chaos. Everything contains its opposite. It is the natural course of things, not an unexpected catastrophe.
Holding the tension of the opposites means that we become more comfortable with transitory moments, with the in-between states of knowing, with the turnaround that is occurring at this very instant. It is befriending fear and joy as two blurred feelings within the same experience: I fear losing the magic that cannot be sustained while delighting in the joy that the magic brings.
Our thinking can terrorize us or set us free. “This isn’t supposed to happen to me because I follow the rules” sets me up for terror. I see any downturn as personal, catastrophic, a threat to my core safety rather than a natural movement. Seeing sudden shifts as natural allows me to more easily ride the waves. If my intention is pure, if I have done my best to do what I see as the right thing, I can trust that life, the universe, the transcendent that informs me at my personal center, is somehow near, coaxing me towards my ultimate wholeness.
I am more able to sit with the fear until I can dance with it, dialogue with it, learn from it, and eventually, transform it into something that offers grace. Rather than fear the unexpected, the downturn, I recognize it, as it is happening in my life, as an old friend coming back around to greet me. I am able to hold the two experiences as part of the whole movement called change. This allows me to surrender myself to a deeper act of living in the world.
As a child, I was in charge of turning the knob on my baby doll’s head to change the frown into a smile. As an adult, I am in charge of changing the thinking that goes on in my head, to change the fear, or frown, into a joyful celebration of life as it presents itself to me on a daily basis.