Our minds continuously divide the world into opposites, good and bad. Like me, not like me. And then we spend our lives compulsively chasing one and avoiding the other. What if we could free ourselves from this endless compulsive pursuit? That's the promise of Polarity management. And we have two of the world's experts with us today to explain this new field to us and to point out its benefits for our lives and for understanding the world.

Welcome to Deep Transformation. Self, Society, Spirit, Life enhancing, paradigm rattling conversations with cutting edge thinkers, contemplatives and activists with Dr. Roger Walsh and John Dupuy.

I'm Roger Walsh and our co host is John Dupuy. And today we have the opportunity of exploring a really important way of looking at dynamics in the world, a way titled Polarity Management, pioneered by Barry Johnson, who's with us today. Barry developed this field, which is now a thriving field, particularly in the consulting and business world. He's the author of two books, three books actually. Polarity Management, maybe four books, I've lost count. His first on the topic Polarity Management and recently a book titled, the main title is One Word and the subtitle is Making a Difference by Leveraging Polarity, Paradox or Dilemma. It's a very rich book which we'll be focusing on today. And he is the receiver of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Organization Development Network. Also with us, Beena Sharma, a world authority on adult development, a real pioneer in that research field, who is the founder of veda, the Vertical Development Academy, which offers webinars and training programs and testing. And I think I've done almost every webinar she offers. She's a master teacher. And today we are going to be exploring both polarity management and also bringing in Beena's adult development perspective to add a further dimensional context to this. So Barry, let's start with you. First off, how did you discover polarities and their importance and what the heck is a polarity?

Well, first of all, thanks, Roger and John for having me here. I'm appreciative, especially joining Beena because we've been working on this together for a long time. So the first polarity map, which is essentially an infinity loop at its basic core, emerged as when I was working as a Gestalt therapist 50 years ago. So this is. I'm a slow learner, so I've been working with it for a while and we keep learning. Hopefully another learning session happened today as we try to apply polarity thinking to issues that we confront every day within our personal lives, our organizational lives, and also in terms of international affairs. So it, it works at every level of system, which excites me. And the. The essential dimension of polarity is it's about interdependent pairs. So I believe that we have a universal interdependence of all of life and all of matter. And there's a universal interdependence there, which for me also is the most clear example of divine unconditional love. Our universal interdependence and the polarity is essentially the smallest element within our universal interdependence, which is the independence of two. And so that's where the name comes from. It's about our interdependent pairs that show up. And we'll get into that in a moment.

Great, good. And Beena, you changed my life when you said your life had been changed by discovering polarity management. So what did you realize that this has become so important to you?

Well, first, I'm thrilled to be here, especially with you, Barry. Barry is my hero. You know, this is one of the moments where when something earth shaking, transformational happens, you remember where you were, you remember what you were wearing, you remember what time of the day it was. So when I heard first about just this infinity loop that is like the lightning strike that brings two things together in an integrative way that was separated before then, it was just like a bombshell exploding for me. And it is, I believe, the most important thing I have learned, because it connects, connects to everything. And it is, in a way, I would call it, the driving motor of maturity and human development, this capacity to integrate the things that are separate and to see interdependence is the driving engine of human maturity. So I might end up saying a lot of bombastic statements. I'll start with one, which is, there is no human endeavor in which this principle, this reality, this approach, this way of sense making is not applicable, period. It applies everywhere. It's the most expansive, explanatory and applicable idea. And it's not an idea. It brings one closer to reality. So that's a little bit of how significant this work is, has been for me, and it has expanded my own work within adult development. And so I might even, to start off, make that distinction between polarity management and polarity wisdom. There's a difference there. Management is an early word, we might say. It points to managing things, whereas wisdom is a more mature word, more sophisticated. And I'm not comparing those terms as much as using it as an example to show how language embeds maturity and how polarities are at the core. Polarity thinking is at the core. It's a muscle that we can develop.

So you just implied. Well, we could have a whole conversation just to what you've said. Yeah, that was a brilliant. But we better start with some basics. One of the implications of what you said is that the polarity management, which possibly mature into polarity wisdom, is a way of thinking. And maybe, Barry, you could say something about the nature of this thinking, and maybe I'll just kind of seed it by saying you contrast throughout your books, the idea of usual way we think is either this or that. One's right, one's wrong, one's the truth, one's false. But you contrast that not as an opposite, but as a polarity with. With polarity thinking. So maybe you could explain that for us.

Yeah, and let me say this is.

Just really important to me.

All right.

And we're going through some times in our country, in our world, where we need this kind of wisdom. So I'm sure you'll do this, but just give us some concrete examples of very important things and how this thinking, this method can enlighten us or help.

Us get through it.

Sure. Just a couple of examples. In terms of leadership and democracy, to take one dimension that's going on around the planet, one of the key polarities is claiming power and sharing power. And if we claim power without sharing power, it becomes an abuse of power. And if we share power without claiming power, it allows the abuse of power. So the power dynamic, which is important in democracy especially, is about claiming power and sharing power. Within all of our various faith traditions, there's the natural tension between justice and mercy, and how are those played out. And we see that when we look at what's going on in the world as well. But before getting into a lot of descriptions of polarities, I'd like to introduce people to get to experience this dimension in its simplest form and then build out from that. So what I'd like to do, to start, as Beena mentioned, the model in its simplest form is an infinity loop, which is like a figure eight that's laid on its side. And so I'd like people to experience physically this infinity loop and how it works. And so what I like everybody to do is if you'd close your eyes, and I'd like you to put your finger right on the bridge of your nose between your two eyes. And what I'm going to have you do is essentially trace your two eye sockets in the form of an Infinity loop. And I'll guide you through this. And after getting into it a little bit so you get the feel of this process, then I'm going to ask you to engage inhaling and exhaling as a process of flowing through this loop as a simple metaphor for all polarities. So I'd like you to start by just going from the bridge of your nose to your left eyebrow and follow, you can just feel the rim of your socket. Follow it down to your left cheek. Then slowly move across your nose to your right eyebrow. Follow that socket down to your right cheek. And let's cross over a couple more times up to your left eyebrow, left cheek, right eyebrow, right cheek. Okay, so now if you stop here at your right cheek for a second. Now I want you to incorporate inhaling and exhaling and I'll guide you through it. And then I'll let you just follow your own breathing pattern and try to have your breathing match your movement through this infinity loop. So starting with your finger on your right cheek, you're going to cross to your eyebrow. As you inhale, your left eyebrow. So go ahead, inhale, cross to your left eyebrow, down to your left cheek. Now exhale to your right eyebrow, right cheek. Inhale again to your left eyebrow, left cheek, Exhale to your right eyebrow. Just go through a couple times at the pace of your own breathing. Okay, thank you. Now I'd like to just comment about this infinity loop. And the breathing is a metaphor. So within all polarities, you have two upsides or two benefits. Each pole brings something to the relationship and they show up in this case as the two upsides or our two eyebrows. So when you inhale, for example, you go to your left eyebrow. When you inhale, you get oxygen. It's absolutely essential. Over time, however, if you, as you swing down to your left cheek, you experience the limits of inhaling alone. The natural self correction then is to go to your right eyebrow by exhaling, which is great, and it contributes the getting rid of carbon dioxide. And if you hold that exhalation long enough, you experience the limits of exhaling and you're down to your right cheek and you start the process all over again. So with all polarities, there's a couple of important points to be aware of. First is they are interdependent. They need each other. And over time, both need to be included and incorporated. And each one brings something special to the relationship. And so over time, when you go after the benefits of one pole, over time you experience its limits and it brings you back to the upside of the other pole. So that's the essence of all polarities. And Beena, when we were talking about this earlier this morning, in anticipation of this, you were talking about Indian wisdom around this oscillation of the infinity loop around the two eyes. Could you share a little about your response to that as we talked?

Yeah. First, I want to say, so, Peri, you've been teaching this for 50 years, and it's only recently that you've offered this as an experiential embodied metaphor, which I think is absolutely brilliant because it puts it in my body. And what was so interesting for me is to relate it to the Indian idea, because we do look at the left and the right side as being two opposites, if you will. So the left side is the feminine, the right side is the masculine. The left is night, the right is day, the left is moon, the right is the sun. So all dualities are encompassed in left and right. And then this part, which is the center of the forehead, which is above the two eyes, that is the space where the opposites get integrated. So that's the third eye. So you have the left eye and the right eye, and then you have the concept of the third eye. So in just very simple terms, the third eye is the integrating wisdom that's not limited by the left or the right, but includes and transcends both. And so that was very exciting for me to have that little metaphorical embodiment link up to the ancient wisdom of my culture and also linking it to inhaling and exhaling. So I always like to say this, that if you are doing either or thinking in this example, it's as if to say that inhaling is better than exhaling, or you either inhale or exhale, or inhalers are better than exhalers. That's what we do. That's what we do in the way we see people. That's what we do when we take an interdependent, interconnected pair necessary for life and wholeness, and then we separate them using the or.

Yes, that's very helpful. So what happens with all polarities to remember is that each brings something important that's essential to the relationship. And so if we look at leadership, for example, we have the simple polarity of being clear and being flexible. If you're clear without being flexible, you're seen as rigid. If you're flexible without being clear, you're seen as wishy washy. So the question is, how do we as a leader be able to be both clear and flexible? Being self assured and Humble. If you're self assured without being humble, you're seen as arrogant. If you're humble without being self assured, you're again seen as sort of mealy mouth or whatever. So these dimensions show up in leadership, they show up in organizations. Do we centralize in order to get systematic organization and coordination, or do we decentralize in order to be responsive? The answer is yes. And we need to get the benefits of each and over time when we focus on. I'll use one more basic metaphor here as we move on the metaphor of activity and rest. So this is a slightly larger cycle time. Inhaling and exhaling, you know, is a moment by moment cycle time. Activity and rest has a slightly longer cycle time, but it happens within a 24 hour period. We know that if we're active, it provides a great positive dimension. Being physically, mentally active, it's just wonderful. However, activity without any rest leads to burnout and dysfunction. And when you're experiencing that burnout, notice the natural self correction is to go to get the benefits of rest. The upside of rest, you incorporate that and it's easy to see burnout as a problem and rest as a solution. And in one sense it is, but in another sense, it's more accurately seen as a necessary self correction. In an ongoing oscillation of this infinity loop, you're burned out. You need to get some rest. You get the rest, which is rejuvenating. And then if you stayed in that rest position long enough, you'll experience yourself getting muscle atrophy, dysfunction. You need to get up, you know, get out of bed and be active again. So activity and rest is another example of this ongoing oscillation between the two poles. And with all polarities, once you are aware that you have one, first of all, the first thing you can do is stop fighting over whether you're going to be active or restful, because you're in both and you just have to take advantage of both. And what we talk about with leveraging polarities is you need to maximize both upsides and minimize the downsides. And you can be intentional about that if you're aware you have a polarity. So the notion of either or thinking, I want to be clear about this from the beginning. Either or thinking is absolutely essential. It is bedrock. We need either or thinking to differentiate our. We learn as a child, we learn to differentiate our eyes from our nose or a car from a house. So any language taught in any culture, all cultures have language. What the language has in common is it differentiates things from each other. So we learn math, we learn science, we learn our language, we learn our culture. That's all about differentiating in either or thinking. So it's absolutely essential. The problem with either or thinking is not inherent to either or thinking. It's either or thinking without its polarity pole, both and thinking. And that's when we get into trouble. So we need to supplement either or thinking with both and thinking. So we learn about either or thinking when we are growing up in school and when we have tests, we also learn about both and thinking. And the way this happens in our culture is less formal, but it's like, I'd like you to imagine for a second that you're two years old and you're playing in your home with either some siblings or some neighbor kids or whatever, and you got some toys on the floor, and you're getting into an argument over the toys, and one of your parents comes in and sees you arguing over the toys. What is it that our parents teach us? By two years old, we know if we're fighting over the toys, we should learn to.

What about share?

Yes, we learn to share.

Right, Roger?

I. I remember back when. Right.

I did that once. Yes.

I still don't get it.

You know, I'm working on that.

So in this teaching us to share, what our parents were helping us with or our teachers in early school or whatever were teaching us, is that we need to learn to take care of ourselves and take care of others. But rather than say, you need to understand polarities, they get right to the chase, and they say, you need to learn to share. And then they help us figure out how. Well, how would I do that? Well, if you have the same toy you're fighting over, you say, well, you can have it for some time, and then the other person has it for some time, or you divide up the toys, but you figure out a way to take care of myself and take care of the other. So this basic understanding of our interdependence and the need to share and both and thinking, it's in the culture. It's just not as powerful as the either or thinking model is because it's so fundamental to language and culture and science. So, Beena, would you share some other examples about both and thinking and how it shows up in leaders or in organizations?

Yeah. You gave a good example of being clear and flexible, and you said we are seen as that. And I am quite interested in how we project on others. So it's the same dynamic. So I might be. I'm just thinking I have A brother who's quite cautious, and I tend to be more adventurous. But we both decided that one is the better way. He thinks it's better to be cautious because then I'm safe. And I've decided it's better to be adventurous because it's exciting. And, you know, there are so many possibilities. And so I think this, first of all, the key word is the better. You know, that's the. That's problematic. If you privilege one pole over the other, then there will be a point in which you will enter the downside of over focusing or privileging that pole. And that's why I say preferences are the root of evil. Because when you prefer something, then you will. Then there is some sort of dysfunction. And if you do it in an extreme way, then extreme dysfunction can become evil. But what we also do is see the downside in the other. So he sees me not as adventurous and all the wonderful thing that comes with adventure. He sees me as foolhardy, you know, just sometimes just wasting time and flailing and, you know, you should be resting and you shouldn't take on too much and all the things that come with my adventurousness. And I tend to see him as more fearful, narrow, constricted, constrained, you know, contracted. So that's also the other dynamic that happens in interpersonal context or relationships is we see the positive value that we are upholding that we are pursuing as part of our preferred pole. But we see the downside in the other. And so I see the downside of his preferred value. He sees the downside of my preferred value. Now, can you imagine all the different things that that leads to? It means then he can't appreciate adventurous. Not only that, he can't claim it for himself, so he disowns it. And then he projects the downside of it on me, and I do the same. So I can't claim my cautiousness, my sense of safekeeping. And then I interpret that as that's being fearful. I never want to be fearful, so I'm never going to embrace that. So the essence, I think, of polarity, wisdom is embracing the wisdom in the opposite interdependent value that is also needed for health in the system. Because both of us are going to end up over time in the downsides. I'm going to end up being more foolhardy than adventurous. He's going to end up being more fearful than cautious if he continues to privilege. If both of us continue to privilege. So hope that sort of breaks it down a little bit deeper into the Deeper sort of psychological dynamic that happens when we privilege one pole over the other. And we need to. In some situations. In some situations it is more helpful for me to be adventurous. And in some situations I better be cautious.

Yes.

And to extend from what you're saying there at the end, Wiener, one of the things I appreciate about this way of thinking is its inherent flexibility. And it seems like an antidote to the automatic rigidity that is built into our psychological systems of kind of getting into ruts. And this polarity thinking expands our openness, our repertoire and range of possibilities.

Just to say that that rigidity is what we call polarization.

Right.

And so I might make another bombastic statement that polarity thinking heals polarization.

Oh boy, do we need polarity thinking. Man, I'm telling you, there's one other distinguishing characteristic that hasn't been mentioned yet, and I'd love to have either or both of you speak to it. And that is one of the things that really struck me in distinguishing either or thinking from polarity, both and thinking is that the either or inherently leads to an assumption that you can handle this problem once and for all. Okay, I'm going to choose this. You know, conservatism is the way to go, and that's the end of the problem. But you point out that with the both and thinking, it's never final. There's always an ongoing balancing game.

Yes, there's an ongoing dynamic between the two. Over time, you have to incorporate both or you get in trouble. Just like over time, you have to. If you've been inhaling for a while, you're going to have to exhale. If you've been active for a while, you're going to have to get some rest. So there is this ongoing nature to all polarities and there are tons of problems we need to solve which they finalize. Like how do we get to the moon and back safely? That's a problem to solve, involves all sorts of this necessary problem solving aspect. And so that's absolutely essential. So the problem with either or thinking is that either or thinking without its pole partner, the polarity of either or thinking and both and thinking is essential. So both and thinking has its own downside. This is important. We're not advocating that both and thinking is the wave of the future and either or thinking is to be left behind. We're saying no, no, either or thinking is absolutely essential. It's bedrock and it gets us into trouble. As a matter of fact, I will go so far as to say that either or thinking without Its necessary partner, both and thinking is the root cause of poverty, racism, sexism and war. And this is fundamentally important. So if we try to bring either or thinking without both and thinking to address poverty, racism, sexism or war, it will not work because the absence of both and thinking is what caused the difficulty in the first place. So using either or thinking alone to address the results of either or thinking alone will not work. We absolutely have to supplement either or thinking with both and thinking. Absence of both and thinking leads to our tendency along with either or thinking. One of our tendencies is the assumption that if we have an evil result, we need to find the inherently evil source. This is the foundation of all James Bond movies and all crime movies, et cetera. You know, it's like if there's some evil that's being perpetrated, then we say, well, okay, we need to get at the root cause here, find who it is. So at the opening of a James Bond movie, you have some evil that's happening, and you need to somehow track down the evil source and destroy or whatever this evil source. And everybody cheers when this villain has been destroyed. But this notion that the root cause of evil is an inherently evil source is something that I'm suggesting is actually a false assumption and a false pursuit that there is no inherently evil source. An alternative. Well, so then what is the source of evil? And the source of evil results is is pursuing either or thinking to the neglect of both and thinking. So it's evil comes in pairs and so does good. So let me share how this happens in all nations, large or small, all groups, there's some form. I'm focusing on justice and mercy. Now, this polarity, there's some set of rules. They're either written like the Ten Commandments or they're in the culture. You understand, these are things you don't do. And that's to guide the culture in order to help people survive. So we have these rules or guidelines for how we should survive. So that's on the justice side or the law side. And what happens in a very linear process is that if some laws are good, the linear assumption would be that more laws would be better. So you can see where this is headed. Draws lots and lots of laws. The other Truth about justice poll is if you have laws, you need to have some sort of consequences if you break the laws, right? If. If you don't have consequences, then the laws are meaningless. Now, if some consequences are effective, harsher consequences are probably better. So think about where this is headed. You're pursuing justice to the neglect of its interdependent pole, which is mercy and forgiveness. So let's just pursue the justice poll for a second. I have more and more laws and harsher and harsher consequences. What does this look like? It looks like if you're getting to the downside of this, without mercy, it looks like stoning a woman to death for being pregnant out of wedlock. Now, how did we get there? How did in the name of justice, how did we get to stoning a woman to death? And we do it self righteously. How did we get there? We pursued justice, laws and necessary consequences to the neglect of mercy. This is why Desmond Tutu's book no Future Without Forgiveness, he's emphasizing this other poll and the whole reconciliation movement after apartheid in South Africa was about paying attention to the mercy pole. And so we need to pay attention to that mercy pole pole, which is the understanding of forgiveness. And without that, we just become extremely self righteously cruel to each other. That's an example of how that works. So if you could look at the two upsides, our two eyebrows, the two upsides of any polarity as good things. They're two good things, absolutely essential, and they need each other. And if you pursue one good thing to the neglect of its good partner, it becomes evil. So the source of evil is not something that's inherently evil. It's actually one good pursued without its partner. So what can you do to respond to that? You can pursue both goods. You pursue justice with mercy. That is the way to undo the over focus on one pole or the other is to pursue both poles.

Barry, could you. I'm laughing at myself here, at the thought of one upping you using your own polarity management. Could it be true that you do a both and that there can be really malevolent people who we could quote, call evil and there can be a destructive evil things that happen as a result of focusing on one pole exclusively.

I want to make sure I'm understanding the question, Roger.

Well, you're saying that you made a pretty powerful statement that all evil can be traced to either or thinking. And I'm wondering if.

Let me just back that up a second.

Okay, thanks.

Because this is important clarification that you're raising. It's a helpful point. It's either or thinking to the neglect of both and thinking. Okay, that's different. Either or thinking is not too much either or thinking. You can't get too much either or thinking. You can only get either or thinking dysfunctionally when it is pursued to the neglect of both and thinking. Now you can have both and thinking without enough either or thinking and also get yourself into trouble because again, it's a polarity. So if it's a polarity, both will bring a positive upside and both will have their own downside. And so there's the tyranny of both and thinking. And there's the tyranny of either or thinking. Yeah, the tyranny of both and thinking is the loss of all the benefits of either or thinking. Without either or thinking, we do not have language. We do not have science, we do not have moral principles. We do not have culture. I mean, it's absolutely essential. And so it is a huge gift that's essential. Without its partner, both and thinking, it becomes dysfunctional. We don't have to look for some evil person. Oh, it's this evil group. It's their fault. No, no, it's not something inherently evil about any of us. It's about our universal interdependence. And when we act as if we weren't universally interdependent, we become dysfunctional.

No problem with that. I can agree with all of that. And my question is, can it be both a dysfunctional overemphasis on either or thinking and malevolent actors?

Yes, as a matter of fact, if you over focus on either of them, you end up getting the downside of both.

Okay.

And maybe the malevolent actors piece brings the maturity element.

Yeah. And I wanted to want to ask you about that pina because, Barry, you're giving a very powerful argument for the importance of both ways of thinking. Yet the reality is we seem primed to emphasize the either or thinking. And if I understand your work correctly, Beena, you suggest that both and thinking requires a certain maturity process. Am I right there?

That is true. We might say that to do only either or thinking, to do black and white thinking, to do mechanical thinking, is a function of less maturity or immaturity. And as we grow, as life teaches us about what is true, what's the better way of living, or as we realize that the world is not we, what we make it out to be, and we come into, we are disconfirmed in our beliefs about the world, then we begin to embrace the things that we leave out. So at early stages, there is, you know, in our work, we do an instrument that measures using language, how people see the world, how they make sense of themselves, how they make sense of others. And at early stages, we see a much narrower perspective taking the world is smaller. It's all about me. There is no capacity really to include the other person because of a function of my worldview. And it could be that I'm in a survival mode. There could be many reasons. It could be because of childhood difficulties, or it could be because of the conditions that are prevalent that call out the small side of me. But at the first stage of development, we really are so overly concerned about ourselves that we don't have the bandwidth or the capacity to even consider another person. So it's also called the self centric stage. But then as we develop and we get socialized and we realize that, you know, we are living in the society, we need to follow the rules, we need to take care of other people, then we step into the next stage of development. There are these eight stages of development that we've gone through in an earlier conversation with you. So one of the interesting things I find is to look at the polarities or the poll preferences, I should say, that show up at each stage. In some ways you can say that stages can be defined by a series of pole preferences. You know, you, I pay attention to one pole only of another, one pole of another, one pole of another, and they all stack up and then very quickly. That is sort of the blueprint of a much narrower way of seeing dive.

Deeper with us in part two of our exploration of polarity management and its implications and applications for surviving and thriving in relationships, organizations and life.

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