Protesting the way things are by setting ourselves on fire is taking things with way more seriousness than they deserve. Life is a conundrum. A really good koan. Better than “What is the sound of one hand clapping,” or “What was your face before your grandparents (or you) were born?”

Our life often (always) makes no more sense than a Zen Koan. And we have to realize that and allow it to ground us in the here, now as that which needs to be thrown out with the rest of the trash and embraced/cherished with heartfelt love for being exactly as it is in a NO! YES! kind of way.

Carl Jung said, “There is no balance, no system of self-regulation, without opposition. The psyche is just such a self-regulating system” — Carl Jung

The psyche stands in opposition to our agendas, desires, self-interests, will, aims, ambitions, etc. And is forever calling us back to our Original Nature, to serve the cause of the self-realization of our own virtues, the self-expression, self-exhibition, of the truth of our own being—who we always been and who we will always be—in the moment-to-moment reality of the circumstances comprising each situation as it arises, all our life long. – jd

And Carl Jung also said, “
Wholeness is not achieved by cutting off a portion of one’s being, but by integration of the contraries.”

And by bearing the pain of polarities that cannot be reconciled/integrated, but must remain in eternal suspension, with the individual standing in full awareness between the two opposites that are mutually exclusive and both true expressions of how things are: This is how things are and that is also how things are and THAT is how things are! – jd

Our place is to live the life that cannot be lived Anyway! Nevertheless! Evenso! There is the way things are and the way things also are and we live in the gap, the space, the emptiness between things and concepts. This is referred to with the Japanese word “MA.” We become “MA” when we live holding opposites together and bearing consciously, physically, the pain of their opposition, in a It is the way! Kind of way.