When you meet your polar opposites, it’s time to get interested!

I am seated on a crowded train going back home, with lots of people from all sorts of backgrounds who are clearly travelling long-distance to the South West. Holiday time is coming. It’s noisy, with lots of buzzy talking. There’s various digital gadgets in use, someone is broadcasting his music, and there are loud conversations on mobile phones. A tinny sound emits from someone’s iPod headset.

I am aware that my initial reaction to this “mob” is to retreat inside, to want to push it away, to resist it. And then I start to reflect on differences and my awareness of my reacting to them.

You might like to imagine the distinctions implicit in what I’ve written just now. I write that the train is crowded, there’s lots of different people, its noisy, I can hear digital equipment in use, there’s loud talking, I use the word “mob”. In each of these words there’s an implicit comparison with something different.

What would be your preferred alternative, if any, to this experience? What picture comes to mind? For me, perhaps the alternatives might be a partly empty train, with business travellers, who are quiet and maybe absorbed in their work, the equipment is in silent mode, mobile conversations are unobtrusive, - and whatever isn’t “mob” about the group.

I wonder what opposites came to your mind. And in thinking of these opposites might you be describing yourself in someway?

What always strikes me about any difference that I notice is that it also has some relevance for me. I find it very useful to pause and think about what facet of me I am experiencing in the other person. I am referring to the Shadow of course, what we disown about ourselves in some way that we project on to others. A useful clue that the Shadow is at work is when I have a reaction of some sort.

However, this time what I also thought was how, when I make a difference, a distinction, there is always anther side, another part of the self, an opposite maybe. What people tend to do is view the world and themselves in terms of polarities. So when I perceive a group of people being noisy, I’m occupying another polarity of preferring quiet, or when I experience a place as crowded, maybe I prefer open, empty spaces. By being sharply in one polarity I might be resisting the other polarity and, by the process of the Law of Attraction, draw it to me. What I resist, I get. So if I’m preparing to travel, I might anticipate having a crowded, noisy train because I don’t want that, and lo and behold, I get exactly that. I gave my thought to it, even by thinking I didn’t want it. Thus do we create our own reality.

With polarities, what is lacking is middle ground. One side is too sharply distinguished. The other side is denied and pushed away. Of course it then keeps popping up in ways that aren’t wanted.

Difference needs to be accepted and embraced. It requires an effort of will, to go out and include the experience in our awareness, because it is also a part of us. After all, we are really all one. It’s the human experience to live in separation and distinction.

Polarities are often worth exploring. I often help people work with the other sides of themselves so as to see what it’s got to teach them. There’s frequently a great learning there. A quiet person could experiment more with his or her noisy side, tap into lots of energy and contact inner aliveness.

When we reach out, accept and embrace the other polarity, and include it in our awareness, we transcend it and move to another level. It then loses its resistant energy and our vibration harmonises. And thus we can enter a place of inner stillness.


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