I am reading Secrets of the Flesh, Judith Thurman’s biography of Colette. Two great quotes emerged early on:

“When my body thinks…all my flesh has a soul.” Colette in Retreat from Love

And then this, in Thurman’s masterly introduction:

“A coherent personality aspires, like a work of art, to contain its conflicts without resolving them dogmatically.”

This is so well put, and is a key understanding in successful self-actualization. Or to put it another way, successful getting-along-with-oneself.

Combine this with the first quote and we have a recipe for individuation, for emotional and spiritual maturation, for acknowledgement of the wisdom of the body, and the parallel and intertwined wisdom of the psyche. Both body and psyche contain apparent contradictions that we often struggle to make sense of. Usually fruitlessly. (One of the most obvious being the spurious but nonetheless useful distinction between body and psyche, somewhat illusory while we are incarnated.)

The purposeful, loving acceptance of these contradictions brings us into harmony and well-being. Paradox is integral to life and to nature. Holding the paradox bravely and not slipping into the easy territory of black and white, is essential if we are to mature into genuinely loving beings, able to give ourselves to the world and take what it is we really need in return.

Hence the great power and endless appeal of the Trickster archetype. Life is indeed Lila, Divine Play — and yet it is also serious and must often be tackled head on. Everything is paradoxical at root. Nothing will ever make sense if we only take a rational point of view, and if we try, then some of our potential limbs of knowing will atrophy and drop off. As Thurman implies, it is by containing the contradictions, rather than forcing them into complicity, that we develop coherence.