As I continued to investigate the Not Knowing Place during the Stay at Home months, I remembered reading about standing in paradox and the tension of opposites in the book, “The Great Work of Your Life” by Stephen Cope:

“Marion Woodman writes, “We learn to live in paradox, in a world where two apparently exclusive views are held at the same time. In this world, rhythms of paradox are circuitous, slow, born of feeling rising from the thinking heart. Many sense such a place exists. Few talk or walk from it.”

Carl Jung’s developmental strategy for standing in paradox: One must hold both sides of a paradox at the same time without choosing one or the other. Exiling neither. Privileging neither. In this way, we can gradually learn to tolerate living in the tension of opposites.

Marion states the technique with stunning clarity: “Holding an inner or outer conflict quietly instead of attempting to resolve it quickly is a difficult idea to entertain. It is even more challenging to experience. However, as Carl Jung believed, if we held tension between the two opposing forces, there would emerge a third way, which would unite and transcend the two. Indeed, he believed that this transcendent force was crucial to individuation. Whatever the third way is, it usually comes as a surprise, because it had not penetrated our defenses until now. A hasty move to resolve tension can abort growth of the new. If we can hold conflict in psychic utero long enough we can give birth to something new in ourselves.”

Hold conflict in psychic utero. This is a skill that can be learned. But it requires a host of collateral skills that most of us in the west has not nurtured: the capacity to stand in the mystery; the capacity to tolerate the unknown; the courage to live in the wilderness for a while; the love of the dark and the night and the moon; the wisdom of the circle, not the line.”