Spiritual conjunctions

October 1, 2:57 AMLA Religion & Spirituality ExaminerKurt Barstow

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Road sign

If you ask me, the “both/and” category rather than the “either/or” category wins hands down nearly every time. It opens us to a larger, more complete, and more compassionate life. I can say this because I am a habitual “either/or” thinker (although consciously, if asked, I would likely almost always choose “both/and”) and periodically catch myself getting caught up in the unfruitful struggles of that world. One is either good or bad, one of the elect or one of the damned, right or wrong, beautiful or ugly, up or down, courageous or a coward, smart or dumb, successful or a failure, moral or immoral, gay or straight, a virgin or a whore, sober or an addict, healthy or sick. You’re either with me or against me, part of my group or part of theirs. You’re either spiritual or materialistic, enlightened or not enlightened, religious or secular. You inhabit the sacred or the profane world. It’s either being or nothingness, the temporal or the eternal, Samsara or Nirvana. All or nothing at all.

I don’t mean to be too extreme about it. Obviously, in a world made up of separate objects and individuals and in which we have to discriminate and make choices “either/or” is important and has its proper uses. You want to order either the giant piece of double chocolate cake or the cherry pie with vanilla ice cream, but not both. You take either Mary or Beth to the prom, but not both Mary and Beth. It’s either a mountain lion or a house cat that you see up ahead on the trail. That is either a chair on which you will sit or a table on which you will place your plate. The painting is either a Rembrandt or not. You can only vote for John McCain or Barack Obama. There are points in your life in which you may have to decide between a particular this and a particular that that aren’t compatible or can’t be held together. We couldn’t very well negotiate life or perform any number of important tasks without such discrimination.

But when it comes to self-evaluation or the judgment of others the categorizing “either/or” can also become a hindrance, keeping one from full engagement with and full experience of self and other. I, for example, often feel a huge chasm between sexuality and spirituality. I realize that this is very much a culturally conditioned “either/or” duo (different categories rather than opposites), but it is rather insidious and very much creeps into the good/bad antithesis. So I have tended to separate these two domains into warring factions; if I am in the mode of one, I can’t be in the mode of the other. At least, this is the kind of assumption that I can find behind my thinking--especially that which tends to crude labeling--when I stop to examine it closely. What happens in such moments is that I realize I am sterilizing or making too precious my spirituality and depriving my sexuality of the very creative force from which it stems. And, anyhow, I might ask, just to turn my mind’s assumptions on their head, isn’t an open-hearted sexuality potentially more spiritual than a close-minded spirituality? In any case, the problem is one of isolating these two aspects of experience rather than seeing them on a constantly intermingling continuum.
 

Reconciling the opposites from an alchemical treatise

We might say that these correlative conjunctions offer us different sorts of experience as follows:

either/or: judging, comparing, separating, dividing, limiting, measuring, requires you to choose between and see difference

both/and: accepting, uniting, enlarging, expanding, opening up, crossing, requires you to hold together and see connection

“Either/or” is particularly useful for the ego, for its needs to protect itself, mark out its territory, be special, and define itself as well as others, whereas “both/and” is rather more a language of the higher self, concerned as it is with flexibility, moving between boundaries, connecting, and creating new possibility. “Either/or” is the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) and Newtonian physics (distinct individual objects acting on one another); “Both/and” is the parasympathetic nervous (calm and connection) system and quantum physics (waves and particles, both here and there). In integral terms, “either/or” thinking belongs especially to the egocentric and ethnocentric areas of development whereas “both/and” thinking is more allied with worldcentric thinking.
 

There is something, I think, having to do with the shadow, that disowned part of ourselves, in all of this. For one thing, the slippery shadow is often to be found in our judgments of other people; these are actually often projections of ourselves onto others that serve both to distance ourselves from our shadow and to keep other people at arm’s length. “She is such a horrible addict; I just can’t stand to see her wasting her life away like that.” “The most spiritual thing they managed to do all year was buy a new Range Rover.” “What an idiot that guy is.” “They should go to hell for what they did.” “How can you be so lazy.” “You’re anger is over the top, out of control.” Often these kinds of judgments are indicative of our own disowned self, which is why we have such a powerful reaction to them. Really, behind it all, I am worried about my own addictive behaviors, materialism, intelligence, moral uprightness, industriousness, or self-control, and the reason I can’t accept other people is that I am busy trying to keep these negative energies at bay within myself. So the next step of shadow work, after identifying the disowned part of yourself, is to accept it: I have addictive behaviors, I am lazy, etc. In this process, we are forced to reconcile the opposites and see ourselves along a continuum of behavior that is more realistic and more complete. A beautiful example of this was given recently in the ToDo Institute’s journal Thirty Thousand Days by Linda Krech, who said something to the effect that she wasn’t the best mother, she was the best mother, the worst mother, and everything between the two. One could probably say that, insofar as the opposites that play out in us are not reconciled, balanced, or owned up to, there is a proportional degree of shadow or disowned self in play.
 

In terms not of the individual psyche but rather of the larger consciousness, in terms of interpersonal or even international relationships, there are enormous implications to our habits of “either/or” or “both/and” thinking. Rather than rating our partners, parents, children or other loved ones, for example, we can see, accept, and love them more fully as the best, the worst, and all the range in between. We can allow them to be strong and weak, beautiful and ugly, right and wrong. We can see that everyone on some level has the potential for sober thought or addictive behavior, addictive thought or sober behavior. We are all, even our leaders, combinations of success and failure. In recognizing and reconciling the opposites we enter into a process that challenges us to recognize how similar we are to each other, all made up of and struggling with the same characteristics, how deeply a shared thing is both our humanity and our divinity. In so far as we do this for ourselves, we are more likely, it would seem, to be able to relate to the world in terms of, for example, the Four Divine Abidings of Buddhism (Lovingkindness, Compassion, Shared Joy, and Equanimity) or the Christian Fruits of the Spirit (Love, Patience, Gentleness, Kindness, Generosity, Self-Control, Joy, Peace, and Faithfulness). This process of regarding our own and others’ infinite potential rather than ending investigation or conversation with tidy, antithetical labels leads us to grow toward connection, understanding, forgiveness, and reconciliation.
 

Diagram of exclusion and inclusion

In the verses of the Tao Te Ching the opposites are shown in many contexts for different effect. In one Lao Tzu (translated by Stephen Spender) evokes the danger of the “either/or” world and suggests the way beyond it:

Success is as dangerous as failure.
Hope is as hollow as fear.

What does it mean that success is as dangerous as failure?
Whether you go up the ladder or down it,
your position is shaky.
When you stand with your two feet on the ground,
you will always keep your balance.

What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear?
Hope and fear are both phantoms
that arise from thinking of the self.
When we don’t see the self as self,
what do we have to fear?

See the world as your self.
Have faith in the way things are.
Love the world as your self;
then you can care for all things.

And, speaking more broadly but coming to what is essentially the same conclusion, The Sufi poet Hafiz (translated by Daniel Ladinsky) writes:

Only

That Illumined
One

Who keeps
Seducing the formless into form

Had the charm to win my
Heart.

Only a Perfect One

Who is always
Laughing at the word
Two

Can make you know

Of

Love.