Embracing Paradox

In last week’s blog entry about the barfing Cutter moth invasion and Blue, the community cat who likes to come into my house and scratch my new sofa, I wrote, “Not everything that, or everyone who, wants to be in your presence has your best interest in mind.” That’s true. Who wants a cat sharpening his claws on their new sofa or moth barf on their walls? At the same time, the opposite of the statement is equally true. Everything that, and everyone who, wants to be in our presence does have our best interest in mind. It is serving us, often by holding up a mirror so we can see ourselves, make new choices, expand our consciousness and experience greater self-expression and life satisfaction. The moths and cat helped me learn to set appropriate boundaries in close personal relationships. They taught me how to take better care of myself. The moths and cat both served and did not serve my best interests at the same time. A paradox.

“Out of nothing, everything comes,” one of my spiritual teachers told me. The rose grows, buds, blooms out of bare brown winter branches, apparently coming into being from nothing. Books, films, plays, paintings come out of nothing, the creator’s imagination, into form. How did you create your current job, your present home? They didn’t exist. Then they did.

“Embrace paradox,” the spiritual teacher also said. It isn’t always pleasant, or easy, to embrace as true the opposite and apparently contradictory aspects of a paradox at the same time. I believe it deepens us. Being consciously aware of both the positive and negative aspects of the challenging situations in which we find ourselves is one thing. Embracing both is another. It can be a rigorous spiritual practice. It builds spiritual muscle. Ask anyone who is divorced if they know what it is like to both love and hate their former partner. In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron gives an additional example of paradox when she writes, “…we must get serious about taking ourselves lightly. We must work at learning to play.” Play is one of the best ways to stimulate creativity. By embracing paradox, we have access to the full spectrum of life’s experiences.

Meister Eckhart said, “Truly, it is in the darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.” It is a paradox to find light in darkness, joy in sorrow. To me, Eckhart’s comment about the light being nearest to us in sorrow reflects the loss of a close and loving relationship which brought us great joy. After the death of a close friend, when I spent time in hospice’s poetry for healing group, the close connections between death and life, loss and gain, joy and sorrow became apparent to me. I’ll close with a poem I wrote about that paradox.

Life is Loss

Life is loss.

Each moment

we lose

the previous moment.

We lose

our health.

We lose

our hair.

We lose

our beauty.

We lose

our friends,

our family.

It never ends.

Life is new.

Each moment,

we gain.

We gain

a canvas

for our dreams,

another opportunity

to become,

expand,

experience,

express

who we are.

We gain

another moment

to live,

filled

with profound sorrow,

filled

with exquisite joy.

©2009  Terranda King