(art by Vicki Miller)
Last Friday morning in Gentle Yoga class, Kristin kept bringing to
our minds the idea of opposite forces at play in our bodies, in our asanas.
Warm and cool, grounding and floating, stillness and movement. We were
encouraged to play with those energies and the flows we could feel between
them. It was a great way to feel the effects of what we were doing and expand
our awareness of our bodies in the present moment.
It also reminded me right away of one of my favorite Jungian
concepts: the transcendent function. It applies in counseling situations when
someone is torn between two feelings or choices or situations where neither one
feels satisfactory. Jung’s perspective on that was that holding the tension between
those opposite forces, no matter how uncomfortable it gets, will allow a third
option to arise. Here's a bit someone else wrote about the subject. The
third option is usually something you’ve never imagined, something creative and
outside the box. It may be a combination of the two options, or it may be
something entirely new. But when it shows up, the tension you’ve been holding
and the uncertainty and unsettledness you’ve felt dissolves away and clarity
ensues.
As an example, let’s say you’re working in a job that you
find fulfilling, and it’s necessary that you maintain income to make financial
ends meet. Now add to that picture that you become pregnant. You and your
partner are happy to invite a new little person into your family, but as time goes
and things progress, you find you have decisions to make. Are you going to stay
with your career, that you love but that has become bittersweet now at the
thought of leaving your child with other caregivers for so much time? Are you
going to quit or resign and stay home to care for your child yourself? Your
heart is torn, and your mind is all jumbled with questions and possibilities
and what-if scenarios. A choice needs to be made, so you turn to your sources
of insight (friends, family, professionals, faith leaders, etc) and try to find
something. A classic case of tension of opposites that many have had to face.
Or maybe you’re struggling with coming out to important
people in your life about gender identity or sexual orientation. Do you lay
yourself out for them, hoping that they’ll love and accept you still with the
new awareness of who you are? Or do you stay quiet about what makes you
different than they’re used to, and deal with the growing sense of suppressing
your Self? Many have faced this tough decision point as well.
The third option that we wait to arise in these situations
could be arranging for a job to include some days working from home via
computer, a shift to a new and creatively expansive position, perhaps coming
out to select people first who you know will be supportive and can be allies
for the rest of the process, or thinking about whether with life stressors
revisiting the question in a month or two would be better. There are endless
possibilities that could arise and be the “third option”. The hard part is in
relaxing into the tension, breathing, and finding the ease that is available in
the situation until that happens. Yoga, meditation, counseling, self-care,
journaling, creative outlets are all good ways to ride out the tension. What’s
in your toolbox for times like that?
