On Holding Both: The Art of Pendulation
As of late, I’ve been asked often about being alone. More specifically, my choice to be alone. Nearly a year ago, I made the conscious decision to truly be with myself. My intent was to scrap off those bottom bits of codependency that haunted me; the ones tucked away in the far-off corners of my body. I sought to feel the sovereignty of being completely self-reliant; to once-and-for-all, break the ties that bound me to my psychological history.
Just recently, it came to me that in the process of being alone, I no longer feel alone, even when I am SO alone. It reminded me of the story of the Russian cosmonaut who was solo up in space in this tiny capsule when, after a few hours, he hears a ticking coming from the dashboard. It won’t stop and he’s got 20 more days left of the mission to go. Ultimately, he must succumb to the noise. He does so by falling in love with it - he turned the incessant ticking into music.
I recall a night when I was on my “mission,” of being alone where I became suicidal. It was a crazy scene: my big-S-self was calling the bluff of my little-s-self, as if to say, “Oh yeah, watta ya gonna do?” We tend apologize for talking about suicidal ideations and macabre subjects of the like. But, the truth is that through the process of facing a part of my mortality, I am able to love deeper and have empathy where I didn’t before. The most gorgeous illumination? My internal boundaries that we’re all innately equipped with, rose up to meet me - for perhaps - the first time in my life.
It seems that there is no such thing as a balance in life. It’s more of growing a capacity to hold two constructs, emotions or sensations at the same time, and allow the pendulum to swing between them. In that space where the pendulum swings, we tussle, push, pull, learn and grow. I believe this is the fertile ground - the tilling, if you will - from which our existence, humanity and intuition rise up in natural form, no longer besieged by conditioning. In somatic work, this practice is called pendulation.
This “holding both” or pendulation that I speak of, was eloquently and humanly studied and written about by Carl Jung. His famous words remind us that everything is made up of both a shadow and a light energy. And, that the process of individuation involves touching gently into both and not getting caught up or stuck in the state in which they create sensation-wise in our bodies. One of my favorite writings from his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, elucidating this subject:
“The world into which we are born is brutal and cruel, and at the same time one of divine beauty. Which element we think outweighs the other, whether meaninglessness or meaning, is a matter of temperament. If meaninglessness were absolutely preponderant, the meaningfulness of life would vanish to an increasing degree with each step in our development. But that is- or seems to me- not the case. Probably as in all metaphysical questions, both are true: Life is-or has- meaning and meaninglessness. I cherish the anxious hope that meaning will preponderate and will the battle.”
Yes, yes, Dr. Jung, probably both are true…