In part two of our explorations of polarity management with world experts Barry Johnson and Beena Sharma, we dive into the implications and applications of polarity management for understanding, surviving and thriving in relationships, organizations and life.

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

So one of the interesting things I find is to look at the polarities or the pole 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. So at each stage you see some natural preferencing or privileging. Sometimes it's unconscious and sometimes it's chosen. So at the very early stage we privilege self interest over others interests because that's all we can do. So it's more a function of the stage and there's only intent and immediate gratification. There's no idea of the impact, there's no idea of the consequence, there's no capacity. Then we get to the next stage. There are a couple of other things we end up privileging, we end up privileging the other person. It's more important what you think of me and I want to make sure that you are happy with me. I'm more interested in your approval and I really don't have my own voice in that case. I privilege that part. I privilege harmonizing over asserting myself at the next stage as I separate myself from the social approval stage, if you will. My sense of self comes from what I do, what I know. And so now I privilege what I know. And so I become more advocating. I know what's what, I know what's right, this is how it should be. And inquiry is not online. I don't know yet how to inquire because I'm still finding who I am, finding my voice, finding what's important to me. And I also privilege just working by myself. It's hard for me to work with somebody else and collaborate because I'm so convinced that this one way of doing it and to include you is messy and I don't know how to do that yet. Then at the next stage I learn that I learn a little bit of collaboration, I learn a bit little bit of inquiry. But then there are other things that I tend to privilege because of that stage view. One of them is achieving and performing. So I'm able to collaborate, I'm able to set goals, and I'm achieving and performing, but I'm not learning from my mistakes or I'm not learning from others. And I'm driving, driving, driving. And I don't know what it means to just pause and let's see what's emerging.

Let me say something at this point. I've been working out all these polarities in my brain while we've been speaking. And this came to me that the ancient Greeks, the concept, the idea of virtue was very important. They really struggled. What the heck does that mean? And I think Aristotle, I believe it's. When he came to it, he finally said it. Virtuous. A virtuous act. How we approach a situation is by doing what is appropriate. And it seems to me that this polarity is what helps us as a mechanism whereby we can arrive at that appropriate point and we can do what fits the moment, what fits the occasion.

Absolutely right. Absolutely. It's adapting to what is needed. But if you privilege one all the time, and then if the opposite is needed and you haven't included that, you don't know how to do that, then you're incapable actually of adapting, of bringing what's appropriate. And that's. So when you do polarity thinking, you're able to, you're able to dance, you know, you can bring. I can bring adventurous when needed, I can bring cautiousness when needed. That's appropriateness. But when you do unipolar thinking, then you, it's like, you know, the old ad age, you know, you, you have a hammer and everything is a nail, and that's what you do. So should I continue on the later stage polarities or should we just pause here and perhaps you want to go somewhere else?

I think at some stage it would be really interesting to see how polarity thinking changes across developmental stages. But let me bring in a very concrete thing. Barry really emphasized that we need both, that either all thinking and both and thinking are absolutely essential and that the two are actually a polarity, interdependent polarity. But it seems that there's a progression that we start off with either or thinking overemphasizing that. Then it seems like when we get the both end thinking or polarity thinking, it seems like, or not full polarity thinking yet, but it seems like that can be overemphasized. And I think you were implying that binary. But Barry, you emphasized the importance of the inclusion of the either or and Beena, is that a later stage?

Absolutely. So the progression is, first you only think of one or the other. You don't even recognize that you've left the other out. Then as you develop, you recognize the contrast, you begin to include it. And the words you use in the language is, yeah, this, but, this, there's a but. And then it goes into this or this. Now there's active tension. Now it is seen as competing. So that's either or sort of in its fullness. And then you realize, well, it's not either or, it's sort of relative, it's a gray area. And then you step into full both and thinking. And when you begin to see the relief of both hand thinking, there is a tendency to reject either or thinking at that particular stage. You think, oh, I've been there, done that. That's completely dysfunctional. We just need to do both and thinking. And then you get to the downside of both and thinking until the downside will teach you. Actually, it's not either both and or either or. It's both both and and either or, which is actually the next stage of development, which we call integrative. But you can see how teaching and practicing polarity thinking at every stage leads to integration of whatever preferences are there at that stage. And also helps them to begin to not make that mistake of rejecting either either or thinking or both hand thinking.

Yeah, just agreeing with you, Beena. One of the things we say is that the rejection of either or thinking is an example of either or thinking. Right? Because it's like once I see both and think, I experience it and I'm still working with an either or mindset. So I say, oh, the choice is I have to choose now both and thinking, because either or thinking is no good. I put an either or frame on this move. A couple of other things. One of the fundamental distinctions between either or thinking and both and thinking is that both and thinking can include either or thinking in the frame. The reverse is not true. There's no space in either or thinking for both and thinking. There's a capacity enhancement here that allows you the potential of embracing either or thinking and both and thinking that shows up. Once you have the opportunity to really experience and appreciate both and thinking, it allows you to continue to incorporate, you know, the either or mindset. The other thing I that I was thinking of, I had this image bean as you were talking about moving through the vertical development process. When you look at the infinity loop and you look at getting both upsides if you look at a telephone pole, the old time telephone poles that used to have a peg on the right side and then another peg up, you'd step on that to climb the pole. You'd step on one side of the pole and then the other. It's like going through vertical development. You're stepping on one side, which is one pole of a polarity, and then when you take the next step up, you're focusing on the other pole. So you're kind of moving through. You're dealing with different polarities, but you're shifting poles as you move through. And as you move through, you become more and more at ease with this movement. You know, it's like.

And it's elevating.

Yeah, it's elevating, yeah.

And when you embrace the other, you're at a higher place.

Yeah.

Can I give a historical example of that? I keep on working these polarities out, and I'm going back to the ancient Greeks and Athens, 5th century. Around that time, they were really working with the idea of tyranny and democracy, you know, and trying to put that together. They came all kinds of. And obviously when you have a tyrant English tell you what to do, address the problems, get right to the point, make judgments, et cetera, and then you give the power to the people. It can turn into mobocracy. You can start lynching people. You know, just spontaneous insanity of the mob getting together. So they, they did things like, well, we'll have two rulers and then an only rule for three years, and then we changed the two. So they were trying to find those polarities. And I would venture to say that we're still struggling in the United States with the same thing that the ancient Greeks were dealing with.

Yes. Yeah. And one way to name that polarity is provide direction and encourage participation. So you need, you know, the executive function is providing direction and the legislative function within our own democracy is encouraging participation. So how do you both provide direction and engage participation? And that's the fundamental question. And what happens is when you're in a crisis, the shift, the natural shift is so when there's a fire, you don't sit around and discuss, what do we do? You look to the fire chief or the people who know about how to deal with fires, and they provide the direction. You know, this is what you do.

You don't have a meeting and talk about how we're going to work this out. You do what you got to do.

Exactly. Because the situation requires that executive directive function. You it. Now, if you wanted to hold on to that directive function and maintain your, if you will, the strong direction side and. And minimize the participation. One of the things you could do as a fire chief is pay somebody to start fires. So now you are building in a system that you always need the message that we're in significant trouble, and only I, the fire chief, knows how to take care of it. So keep looking to me. So if you can create the sense of significant urgency and distress, it causes people to look to that executive function and a leader emerges and how do they hold onto it? They need to continue to have some kind of a sense of crisis going on to which they are the answer.

They need to say that. That we're in a state of war. Yeah, it doesn't apply now because this is an emergency situation. So you find an enemy and you get everybody fired up about it. And I just have to take over because I'm the strongman and that other stuff, it just stops us from doing what needs to be done. So I'm going to do it.

Exactly. And that's a very natural survival instinct to look to in a crisis, to look to somebody or some small group who's providing that executive function, providing direction, and that's what feeds dictatorships and what sustains them. And you also, then you need somebody to blame the enemy for whom you are the one that's saving them from this enemy, whatever that is, certainly clarifies.

A lot of what's going on right now.

Yeah, I think so. And the question is, how do we both respect the need for direction and reinforce participation? So right now there was some wisdom in the creating of, you know, the balance of power, if you will. The ability to claim power and share power is a fundamental polarity. And so it's like, well, we need to distribute that power somehow. So let's have an executive function. We need that direction. And how about this participation side? While we create a legislature, you know, we create house and ascent, we create congress. That's the participation side. And how do we mediate this with some sort of justice? Well, we have a justice system, so we have this with delegated powers that are shared. And we also build in a time in which the leadership changes. And rather than have that leadership get locked in, what we say is, no, no, we're going to be able to change that over time. So that executive function, we change within it. So it doesn't get. We don't have a king, we don't have an executive who stays in power all the time, because we don't Trust that arrangement to in that balance of power. And right now we have a very strong executive function in the administration that is challenging both the judicial branch and the legislative branch in terms of their assertion of power. So the executive branch is claiming a lot of power right now. And the question is, will the legislative branch be able to claim its own power and push back and say, wait a minute, you know, that's not a decision that the executive branch makes, that's a decision that Congress makes. We'll make those decisions, not you. Or the judicial branch says, wait a minute, you know, that is a violation of the law as we understand it. So you're not going to be able to do that. So the question is, will we be able to rebalance, if you will, that power tension between these three branches? And we've got an opportunity in the midterm elections to possibly change that or not.

Well, that's bringing it back home, isn't it? Well, I have one more, more polarity that I've been bouncing around in here. In spiritual practice, you have the practice of stillness, emptiness. And that's very essential in all these different traditions. And however they state that. And then you have, well, what do you do? You know, you take this wisdom from the emptiness and then it has to become action in the world. So if you just sit around and do emptiness all the time, well, that's okay. But what does it lack? Well, it lacks creativity and going out and doing good virtuous things in the world. So, you know, how do we balance that?

Yeah, I think that's a wonderful polarity. It's some version of, again, just with all polarities, there's a lot of different ways to name the poles. There's not sort of a right way, but there's like just a cluster of. Thematically, this is what we're talking about here. This is what we're talking about here. And in this one, one of the names I would use is doing and being. So how do we just let ourselves be, be centered, be peaceful, be self caring and be involved in doing, being active in the world, making our contribution. So it's doing and being. And in Martin Buber's book, you know, I, Thou and I, it's. He's talking about this fundamental dimension that it's at the transformative level in which he talks about the world of I. It is the, the world of experience in which I experience conversation, I. I experience you. I look at being and think how beautiful she is today. And I think about how bright she's been and so that's in the world of I it, I'm aware of other things and I can celebrate them. It's wonderful. In the world of I Thou, I am in a space of universal connection, interdependence, and I am just at one with the universe. And there is no differentiation between me and Beena. The differentiation just disappears. And he talks about this as the I thou relationship. It's subject, subject, not subject with object. Right. And he describes this oscillation. When we become aware that we have been in the world of I Thou, we are back in the world of I it, of experiencing it. So we can only reflect. When we reflect on the experience, the I thou experience, we are. We're back into the world of I it. So most of our life we spend in the world of I it. The way I describe it in my book is the first 284 pages are in the I it world. And I've got three pages and that talk about the I thou and dimension and I it. And that's the last three pages. And it's my very simple effort to create some counterbalance to the first 284 pages. Because talking about it, you're not in it anymore. And this is fundamental, by the way. Buber says it's the fundamental dimension of being human to have been in that I thou space and be able to return. And the oscillation back and forth between those dimensions of absolute unity, on the one hand, and then being in the world in which we're differentiated.

Let's see, there are two.

Maybe another angle to your question, that I can bring, John, to the stillness, to the meditation, stillness and action in the world. So one thing is to see how each informs the other. The more I'm able to be still and reflect, the more my action becomes informed. And then the more I act and experience, then the more I can actually use stillness in a more powerful way. And another aspect of this is how am I acting in the world itself? How is my action? How integrated is my action, which is another layer. So you see that polarities can nest and they stack. So if you're willing, I can offer a quick reflection. And I want to thank my colleague at ciis, Sanjay Manchanda, for this little exercise which really takes you through the Tetralemma. Not just a dilemma, but the tetralemma. So it's literally 30 seconds each. So we'll just start with this belief and living into this belief that I am inadequate. Just take a moment and to see how is that true and how Can I acknowledge that I am inadequate? What's true about that? So ten seconds. I'm inadequate. And I think we can all connect to that.

That wasn't hard.

Yes.

Yeah.

Now I'm asking you, inviting you to embrace the other pole, the opposite belief which I. I am adequate. And so acknowledging the ways in which I am or how is that true? That aspect of my identity. How is that true? I am adequate. And now a higher level embrace. I am inadequate and I'm adequate. Embracing both. Including both. And the last one. Am neither adequate nor inadequate. I'm not limiting my identity to either being adequate or inadequate. I'm neither adequate nor inadequate. And the last just saying I am three times just I am. So where my action comes from, which of these you know, does it come from feeling adequate? Does it come from feeling inadequate? Does it come from this larger embrace? And stillness can teach that good experience?

And I hadn't any problems with how I'm inadequate and I didn't have any. A problem's coming up with things that I can do well or I'm seem to be used by a higher power or bring some goodness in the world. But when you said okay, put them together before you even said it came out I am, that was the solution. That feels very, very clear.

Very good.

It feels like a nice embrace of polarities. And what about Veena, the I am not.

That is a more fundamental polarity of I am and I am not. That's also a polarity that to see. Is that what you mean being a non being? I mean how do you mean I am not?

Yeah, well, I'm thinking more of the recognition that the very assumption I am is pretty. That's a big assumption.

Yeah. So I didn't do the last one, which is part of the exercises which you go beyond the I. That's beyond the I. I just didn't go there today.

But yeah, can I say at a very fundamental level, I've been interested in decades or quantum physics where they look at the most fundamental things that we know about reality. And in that quantum world things exist and then they don't exist. They're a particle and then they become a wave depending on the what is observing it. And it's impossible to have a pure vacuum because they have the things called quantum phone that from the nothingness something appears. And so if there wasn't this nothingness, you wouldn't have anythingness. And, and you know, it's like back and forth. It's just built into the pattern of, of the way things Work.

Yeah. And, and it's, it's a wonderful enhanced appreciation of our universal interdependence. You know what I mean? It's like, it's another fun sort of awareness of. And I hadn't heard about what you just described, John. So it's, it's fun for me. It's like, it's like ah, yet another, you know, fun way to appreciate the richness of talking about our universal interdependence.

Yeah, There's a couple of many ways we can go here. And to first off, just to emphasize what John was saying about, you know, I'm no expert on quantum physics, but I, I have been just intrigued as John has to read Carlo Rovelli's work on his so called interdependent interpretation of quantum physics. That fundamentally there are no separate entities. Everything is interconnected, interdependent. So just to emphasize that foundation. But there are two themes we can, that would be great to continue exploring here. One is some very specific examples of, of applications here, particularly some of the global contemporary issues we're facing. The other is to continue your developmental analysis, Peter. And maybe that can provide a framework for coming back to the example. So as I understand your work, you have been able to find that different two kind of developmental processes regarding polarities. One is that different emphasis on specific polarities at different stages. And second, as we mature there's a more effective way in which we relate to polarity. So maybe you could take it from there.

Yeah, sure. So what you might call one is content and the other is the process. And I think we went over this where at early stages. So I'll first talk about how we respond to tension and how we respond to opposition in the first place. In the first place we just choose one unconsciously there's one and then the other begins to come alive. And then we see it as competing. We tend to juggle, we tend to contrast it and we see it as tension and conflicting. And then as we develop, we don't see the conflict as much as the complementarity. We see. Oh, it's not just, it's not this against this. It's not directive versus participative. Our language changes. You'll see that at earlier stages people will use versus they will use or. But you don't see that at later stages. You see and, and you see the complementarity. You see it supplementing, you see it augmenting. You see a picture of the world where they're both needed in different ways initially. It's also seen as both are needed equally. And then it becomes more nuanced. You need. Sometimes you need less of one, and sometimes you need more of the other, and sometimes you need more of one in this situation and less of that in this situation. So there's more contextual inclusion. And then you also realize your own privileging of both end. And you recognize that at some point it's, you know, you have to be surgical about something. We have these expressions that sometimes you just have to cut the cord and, you know, accept the bleeding, that kind of thing. So you begin to see the value of that, and then you're able to modulate even that, being able to do that either or when needed. But it is now seen in context. It is seen as perhaps doing either or within a part of the system to see the benefit in the larger part, or to begin to see the either or in the system that is necessary to keep that system, you know, from being dysfunctional. I know these are sounding a little abstract, but I think you understand that in situations that are very complex, you're able to parse where do I need to be, where do I need to hold the line, and where do I need to be open so I can do both. And then at the later stage, the last two stages, it really becomes a flow. It happens because it's so much integrated and embodied in you that you don't have to think about it so much. You are automatically able to respond in appropriate ways. That's wisdom. You're able to bring what is needed, and then you continue to learn from that, because we are always learning from the feedback, from the impact of what we do. So that would be the trajectory of how we respond to opposition and conflict and tension.

And as you presented that latter stage there being, what flashed into my mind was an image of the Yin Yang symbol of Taoism. Is that applicable here?

Oh, totally. All the way up and all the way down. And in the Indian system, we have a personified yin yang, which is the deity, is the image of the masculine and the feminine in one body, which to me is more accessible, because the yin yang is an abstraction, whereas the embodied yin and yang feels like, oh, this is in me, this is part of me, and I can include both. And, Barry, you were going to say something after.

Yeah, yeah, I was just going to build on what you were saying, Beena, in remembering one of my mentors, Jack Gibb, who was a lot about trust theory, and I was involved with him when I was in my doctoral program. And one of his statements Was that if you could see an individual or an organization or a nation state completely, that love is a natural byproduct of seeing completely. And this capacity, as you were describing this, is like a capacity to see a more complete universe. So I see a polarity lens as being helpful in our pursuit of being able to enhance our capacity to love. Love individuals, love nations, love enemies. And so, anyway, that was one thing that I was thinking of. And what's happened to me, as I've been more and more fascinated by the notion of our universal interdependence as a manifestation of a divine, unconditional love, it has changed the way I've looked at the polarity map. Often with a polarity map, you have two poles and then a greater purpose or an integrating peace, why bother to manage the tension between the two poles? And you can have a greater purpose. And when we looked at inhaling and exhaling our activity and rest, we might put life as the greater purpose and death as the deeper fear. And recently, as I've been thinking more and more about nature and the violence in nature, I have put life and death as two poles. And this is, I think, for me, it's a significant shift that you could obviously have life as a. You can have a greater purpose, be a pole of a larger polarity. And so if you look at life and death as a polarity and as a part of our universal interdependence in the world, then you can. You can appreciate that the life of every living thing on the planet is dependent on the death of another living thing. So you can look at. And I was sharing, did a presentation where I showed this. It was a picture of a wolf pack going after an elk. And the pictures of them attacking the elk, they're killing the elk, and they're gnarling. They're tearing this elk apart. And this is a part of nature. And we tend to assume that when we look at universal interdependence, there is no violence going on. But you are really not paying attention to what's going on in nature. And there is a lot of violence going on. There's a lot of destruction going on in order to pursue life itself. And so I showed a picture on the screen of these wolves attacking. Then I showed a picture of this. It was a. Looked like a mother wolf with two little pups, right? They were just relaxing in the sunlight, and she was just sort of hovering over them, taking care of them. And so. So which is the real wolf? The one that's attacking this elk? Or the one that's actually feeding these pups, you know, from attacking this elk. And the ability to. To incorporate that as a part of nature is really important to me.

So I want to add there that that is a later stage. Polarity, understanding up until a particular stage, life is good, death is bad, death can never be a good thing. And then it is seen that life and death are the life cycle. And they both contributed to life, that you need life and you need death to contribute to life.

I wouldn't say I forget. 3rd 4th century ADE Buddhist sage said, emptiness is form and form is emptiness. And that's kind of a co on. But when you can put that together, emptiness and form, then when you're dying, the process of becoming nothing is simply because something comes out of that nothing. I mean, it's the same thing.

Yeah.

Putting it together, it's like kind of the fear just goes away. It's like, okay, it's all good. Whatever it is. I'm not there or there it is, you know. That's nice.

Yeah.

So much in what. What your boss said here, we could. We could have a conversation around each of your statements. But let's play with just a couple here. First, Barry, you just, in a one liner said something incredibly important, that love is an automatic response to seeing completely or to seeing the whole. That's a powerful statement. Do you want to expand on that?

Well, yes. It's been something I've been living with, has been my experience becoming more and more true for me. So I. I'm more and more aware of the truth in what Jack was saying. And this was at least 30 years ago now that he said that and the quest there. So it's a different quest. One quest I talked about earlier is the. The sort of the warrior quest for finding the evil source and destroying the evil source in order to save whatever. That quest, I believe, is dehumanizing for the one on the quest and for whomever is found. And this is what happens with what I call name calling. We identify somebody as a fascist or as a racist or as a sexist or as a something. But whenever we try to find somebody, we try to address racism by trying to identify, well, who are the racists? And let's educate them or put them in jail or do something with them because they're the source of the evil. But let's take that for a second. If I'm spending my life trying to fight racism by looking for racists who need to be addressed, think about that quest. I am constantly In a position of judging everybody I'm talking with to try to identify whether they are somebody who need my retribution because they are racist. This is obviously denying the fact that when you're raised in a culture in which racism is so present, everybody has their own racism, their own racial bias. It's like that. It's in you, Beena mentioned earlier. You're deflecting it from yourself, projecting it out, and you're seeking someone to find. And so even your whole inquiry process is invested in finding out who are the evil ones. And let's get them now. What if your whole process was trying to see people completely with the intent of loving them? That's the quest. It's like, what will help me see them more completely? Well, certainly listening to them, empathizing with them, acknowledging that I could easily be them, doesn't matter who it is. If it's Trump, it's Hitler, it doesn't matter. It becomes relatively easy to say, that could be me there, but for fortune go I. So the quest is so different, and the possibilities you just discover as it. And it happens for yourself as well. Because if we could see ourselves completely, love would be a natural result. We can allow ourselves to be with our imperfections, with our foibles, with our. All of us, our messiness, and love who it is we find. And I don't think it's possible without having some sense of being loved, being seen and being loved to. I think that's a piece of that interdependence. Then it increases my capacity to see and love. That's how it shows up for me. And so if I find somebody with whom it's extremely difficult for me to even want to invest energy in attempting to see them completely because I'm so pissed off at how they're behaving in the world. What I can be aware of is, is the inability to see them completely is about my own limitation. It's not about the potential to love them were I able to see them completely. So I'm really just. I'm really confronting my own limitations at this point. You know, I. I just can't get beyond what this guy is doing or what this woman is doing, what this person is doing. I can't get beyond that. But that's me not getting beyond that. It's not them being impossible to love.

You know, that is radical responsibility, what I'm hearing, you know, that's taking radical responsibility for one's own incapacity to see. And they. But for fortune go you or you or I is such a high order perspective to bring. And I can't help but think in terms of the stages. You know, we are taught as we grow up, you know, us versus them. We are taught that separation, you know, even while I was taught to share with my friends, I was also told, you know, as a child, they are them, you know, be careful, you know, be careful of your sayings. And so the us versus them begins, that separation begins and then we slowly begin to acknowledge the other. And then we are interested in, oh, they have a different perspective. And at least we are willing to listen. But I really hold mine and then I begin to see, oh, but your truth is also a truth. It's not just my truth. It's not just about let's agree to disagree, but let's acknowledge that we both have truths. And then it goes further where you begin to realize that the truth that we are creating, whether it's positive or not, I'm contributing to that system. And then I come to the fact that even the separation between you and I is just an idea, is a construct and there is no difference. And you and I are now we see me and you completely. And then we see our innocence also. That's high order maturity. It's not that easy in the world.

It is indeed. And feels like this is pointing to something. Well, both acknowledge is pointing to something extremely important. I'm thinking that love is an automatic or natural response to seeing fully. And you introduced defenselessly, Barry. So seeing fully and defenselessly. And it feels like that ties into some of the more profound aspects of contemplative perspectives. Some of them, for example, the idea of, you know, theologically the idea of an all loving God. And then of course you've got the polarity of how to, how do you put together all loving God with suffering in the world? But still in other traditions, for example, certainly in the Bhakti traditions of pure tradition being around in Buddhism, there's a very advanced recognition of what's called primordial purity, that even though there is the suffering and the incompleteness and problematic nature of constituents, there is something fundamentally pure and positive about the whole. That's a very advanced recognition. So it feels like you're pointing to something not only of enormous practical importance, Barry, but of absolutely something ontologically fundamental.

Yeah, and I think so. And we've had it like you've mentioned that these are historical. I mean, mysticism has been around for a long time. And the mystic that I most regularly appreciate is as Richard Rohr and Richard's daily meditations and his, you know, it's the action and reflection for action and meditation. I really resonate with that. And I keep being reminded of that, that dimension for all of us. I wrote a book when I was. This is brief part of my history that is fun to sort of connect back to. I was raised in a very conservative Lutheran church. And at age 13, I thought I was going to be a Lutheran minister. That was my plan from 13 on. I thought, I'm going to be a Lutheran minister. But I was also, at that same time, I was struggling with the fear of going to hell. So very strong fear of this and doing things right. And as I found myself being attracted to young women, to, you know, these teenage girls, I got in my teenage years and I immediately saw this as lust. And I tried to figure out how to not be attracted to young girls because I was going to hell. So serious about it that I thought one day I had a scissors in my hand, thinking if I punched out both of my eyes, I wouldn't see them. And then I wouldn't be lusting. I wouldn't be in this sinful position as a person. Which shows how dramatic this can be for someone who takes, you know, this seriously as a young person. And fortunately, I didn't have enough courage to do it. But then I saw myself as both a coward and a sinner. And the reason I had to poke out both eyes is if I just poked out one eye, I wouldn't, you know, I'd still be able to see with one eye. That was tragic. And it was based on a text, you know, in the New Testament, if your eyes cause you to sin, it's better to have your eyes plucked out and go to heaven than to have your sight and go to hell. So, I mean, I just interpreted that literally. And I was in that form. So then. Then I evolved into a place where I became, in a very individualistic thing, which that religion is. It's about your individual salvation. I realized that I was loved just as I was. This was transformative for me. And I thought, this is really amazing. But I kept being bothered by the fact that there were all these people who didn't have the opportunity that I had to be aware of being loved and what would happen to them. So now all of them are going to hell. And I thought, this is not. This doesn't. There's something I was struggling with. So I struggled with that until I got an awareness when I just. When I was graduating from college in 1965. And it hit me. Which was a. I now call it a mystical experience. Then I thought it was just I'll be damned. I just couldn't believe it. It was that in the traditional notion that, you know, there's heaven and hell, I thought no, the. The message of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is that everybody's saved. It was a universalist assumption and I was just so captured by it, I couldn't even study for my final exams. And I started just telling people and people were pushing back like crazy as I was saying this and I. And so I wrote a. Wrote a small book about it, went to New York and I wrote just a small book on it. It's called all and now the cycle. This was 65. So however many years ago. That was 60 years ago. The book and is also a three letter word. And I'm saying the same thing. It's just, it's. It's got a little more experience behind it. Yeah. So anyway, I was on to something there that I didn't appreciate how wonderful it was. And I'm appreciating more and more just in this conversation with you about how wonderful that our universal interdependence is a manifestation of divine unconditional love. And we can see it. You can look either place and you don't have to even believe in a deity to. It's not about believing it. It's about just appreciating our. Our universal interdependence.

Wow, that's such a beautiful story and unfolding, Barry, and an exquisite example of the way that any profound realization can continue to open its implications for us over a lifetime.

Yeah.

And maybe Beena, that would. This would be a way back into allowing you to add to your. What you told us about development. Because I think you pointed to the fact that development emphasizes both. There are shifts in both content and process. And you came to the process, but you didn't talk about the content of what polarities emerge at different stages. Stay with us for part three, where we dive deeper into polarity management and its applications to contemporary social, political and global crises, as well as how to become more effective and masterful in our own lives.

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