Awakening to Wholeness is a series of prompts, reflections, and teachings about how holding the tension of opposites can help us to heal division and experience wholeness. If you feel moved to share your own reflections, we invite you to email us with the subject line “Wisdom of Opposites” or tag us on social media with #EHoPWisdomOfOpposites.
“Back and forth” is another pair of opposites that helps us to understand contemplative dialogue spatially. Similar to the ups and downs, the back and forth are a set of spatial opposites that symbolically represent many layers of meaning.
But whereas the ups and downs are vertical in orientation, the back and forth are horizontal. And where the ups and downs often come naturally, like gentle undulations, the back and forth tend to come more reactively and feel harsher.
With the ups and downs, we tend to appreciate one more than the other, and so we can rest in the assurance that the “better” part will return again. But in the back and forth, the two points of opposites are side by side. It is harder to decipher a “better” part, and we are left to face more directly the discomfort that comes with getting flung about from side to side in uncertainty. The back and forth movement reveals the intensity of the work of opposites.
In our lived experience, facing a big life transition, encountering a different worldview, learning something new, and leaving behind the comforts of the familiar to explore the unknown are all expressions of the “work of opposites” from the spatial lens of the back and forth. In this work we feel knocked off our feet, disoriented by the unknown, and utterly stretched by newness.
Even when we feel shattered to pieces, the synthesis of the thesis and antithesis can lead to wholeness. The benefit of the back and forth, despite the intensity, is that by stretching into expansiveness, we are better equipped to live toward wholeness. It is intense work, but the Holy One often leads us to transformation through the fire of trials.
Contemplative Questions
We offer the following questions as prompts to help you reflect on the presence of opposites in your spiritual practice and your life.
- Which of your life experiences have caused you to feel the intensity of the back and forth?
- Did you welcome the feeling of disorientation and uncertainty, or resist it?
- How has the back and forth, in spite of its intensity and even harshness, taught you to remember wholeness?
Join the conversation! If you feel moved to share your reflections, we invite you to email us with the subject line “Wisdom of Opposites” or tag us on social media with #EHoPWisdomOfOpposites.
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