For many years when I’ve taught about the different ways in which we develop an identity I’ve described a line with two poles.
At one end is “I”, the unique, separate, different “me”. We have a whole body system, the immune system, developed to be constantly on the alert for what is not “I”, whether it be a virus, another person’s genetic material, or a chemical substance from “outside”. The immune system is primed to quickly recognise any such foreign material and isolate or remove it.
At the other end is “we”, the connected self, the “me” which is part of “we”, whether that be in relationship with another single person, or with a group.
We all need to know that we are unique, that we are different and separate from others. What can come with that however, is a sense of disconnection, or loneliness. Just as importantly we need to know that we are connected, that we belong, that we “fit in” and that we love and are loved. What can come with that can be a loss of personal identity, a feeling of just being a number within the group.
I pointed out that this line with its two poles didn’t have a point somewhere along it where everything was balanced. It doesn’t work like that. We move continuously along the line, back and forth, changing our focus, our awareness and our sense of self, but never wholly living at only one of those poles.
Then last year, I read two books which mentioned concepts which fitted right in to this simple diagram. Thomas Berry’s The Great Work, where he beautifully describes the twin polar opposites of “wildness and discipline“.
When first the solar system gathered itself together with the sun as the center surrounded by the nine fragments of matter shaped into planets, the planets that we observe in the sky each night, these were all composed of the same matter; yet Mars turned into rock so firm that nothing fluid can exist there, and Jupiter remained a fiery mass of gases so fluid that nothing firm can exist there. Only the Earth became a living planet filled with those innumerable forms of geological structure and biological expression that we observe throughout the natural world……….The excess of discipline suppressed the wildness of Mars. The excess of wildness overcame the discipline of Jupiter. Their creativity was lost by an excess of one over the other.
The greater the wildness, the greater the emphasis on “I”, on separateness. The greater the discipline, the greater the emphasis on “we”, on the bonds, the connections.
And Howard Bloom’s The Global Mind, where he picks out five characteristics of complex adaptive systems and highlights the first two as “diversity generators” and “conformity enforcers”. Diversity generators increase the wildness and the sense of “I”, whilst the conformity enforcers increase the discipline and the sense of belonging.
I now have two lists with a line connecting them, and it still didn’t look right. It wasn’t a simple spectrum for example, and it wasn’t a line where there was some balanced point half way along where we “should” be. So, I turned the horizontal line into a vertical line running between the two lists, and then I bent the line into an “S” shape. Drawing a circle right around the whole image turned it into a yin yang symbol and I thought, “Yes, that’s it” – that’s the heart of the universe.
I struggle with this all the time; the balance between the expression of my (and everyone else’s) individuality and the innate recognition that we are all intimately connected with one another. I keep coming back to the way I understand “namaste;” that there’s a bit of the Divine in me, and a bit of the Divine in you, and when we inhabit those places, despite our differences, we are the same being.
Lovely reply from Mrs. C….for me, homeopathically I see the people I see often stuck in one place on spectrum, whereby they need others to affirm themselves too much and lose sense of self for instance…so like Jupiter (can be also opposite, re- too separate and lost in self without letting external influences in, so like Mars). Health is having a fluidity, so the Yin Yan symbol is cool in that it reflects that we do well with having our way of being but can adapt in circumstances when appropriate that lean towards the opposite end of the spectrum.