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.
One of the most direct questions I ask myself when I want to assess how well my ongoing contemplative practice is integrating into my daily life is the following: how do I respond when things do not go as I planned?
Reactions may vary, from angry to irritated to able to go with the flow. My partner was the first to point my patterns out to me, as at times, I might still be agitated from something not going my way earlier in the day, and I might not even be conscious of the link between my current agitation and the earlier event. Thank goodness for consistent partners who can help us see such patterns!
What I have come to recognize about the pattern is that I came to rely heavily on order and structure in my childhood, probably in response to my earliest years when there was more chaos in our home. Putting things in order and making a plan allowed me to experience a sense of control and agency. When events turned out as “what I wanted, when I wanted it,” it felt satisfying, and assured me that the world could be a dependable and trustworthy place.
Much later, in the formative years of young adulthood, I encountered the powerful words of Paulo Coelho: when you truly want something good and worthy, the entire universe conspires with you to make it happen. Again, “what I want, when I want it” potentially points me in the direction of meaning and life purpose.
How then, to explain the occurrences of anger and irritation? My sense is that irritation, in particular, arises in me when I set up smaller wants as though they were the biggest, truest ones. When I misplace deep longing into the wants that are actually more casual and conditional, I confuse the benefits of deep longing with superficial desires to have everything go my way, all the time. When I remember the habit of letting go of the “little wants” instead of stewing over them, I can learn the wisdom pattern of teaching my soul to treasure truly wanting what I want, when I want it.
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.
- Think of a recent instance of things not going as you planned or wanted. How did you respond? How did you feel?
- What might this response indicate about your life, your contemplative practice, and how the two are (or are not!) integrating in this moment?
- What tools, prayers, or questions do you use to discern which of your desires are the smaller ones, and which are the biggest, deepest, truest ones?
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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Christine Luna Munger
Christine Luna Munger, PhD currently serves as the director of the Episcopal House of Prayer. She previously served as Coordinator of the Spiritual Direction Certificate and Professor of Theology at St. Catherine University. She regularly writes, teaches, and leads group prayer sits at EHoP.
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