Duality

When I was 18, I got a tattoo on the inside of my ankle. It's a very simple design, two small flowers intertwined. Any tattoo gotten at age 18 might seem childish and regrettable 16 years later. And it's true that the design is definitely less sophisticated than one I might choose now. Yet the meaning of the design still resonates with me and I actually don't regret having gotten it.

Throughout my senior year of high school, I doodled that image on notebooks while I should have been paying attention to teachers. Instead, I was often in my own thoughts. I had been reading a lot of Carl Jung and was fascinated with his ideas about individuation - the anima, animus, the shadow self, these parts of ourselves that we separate and keep divided. This division was familiar to me and the idea of some internal union was fascinating.

Astrologically speaking, I'm prone to duality. Geminis are described as being able to see two sides of one situation, to accept the duality of a situation as a matter of course. They tend to be analytical and enjoy an intellectual understanding of things on a conscious level. This very blog is proof of that in myself.
Further, my moon and ascendant are in Pisces which tends to explore the more emotional, psychological and subconscious elements of existence. Symbology and intuition are the preferred methods of understanding. Perhaps because of this side of me, I was able to be open to energywork and to accept it based on feeling as easily as if it was intellectually proven.

While it's easy for me to acknowledge both of these 'sides' of me, the difficulty is sometimes in figuring out the balance between the two and hopefully, the place where they merge into a whole. Perhaps because I've been interested in this for 16 years, I see it in many things. In spirituality, the balance between the 'self' and the 'universe' - how is it possible to feel part of everything without denying the individual experience?

The closest I've come to an answer has been through artistic expression. In literature, I'm always impressed by books that blend everyday details and interactions with deeper, existential truths. In art, I am struck by artists who express themselves individually and yet the product is something that resonates beyond those individual details and hits a universal experience that others can share.

Despite my analytical nature, it's my habit to prefer the gestalt to the details, the feeling over the 'proof'. Only recently have I begun to recognize that the little, seemingly mundane details are not at odds with the whole. They don't disprove it. They offer a physically manifested expression of it. Without the artists' perspective and individual expression, the universal remains remote. Without the details about a characters physical surroundings and daily interactions, his existential struggles are disembodied, ghostly.

I once wrote a blog post about sentimentality - how I put so much worth in the banana bread I make for my friends, the scarf my mother gave me. I think it's from this place that I do that. There is a desire to have a physical proof of an intangible experience- a blending of the outer and inner world. And yet my mindset has been that they are separate - that there is no merging point. There is banana bread and there is love. So when the banana bread burns or the scarf gets lost, I feel divided, unable to latch on to the world around me.

The trick in all of this seems to be recognizing that the details, the small things...they don't have to be perfect, godlike, some total representation of an entire experience. And they are also not trivial, meaningless and shallow. When I put too much importance in them or too little, I fail to recognize them as a merging point - one out of infinite possible, simple expressions of something larger.

I sometimes forget about this tattoo. Usually until some toddler points it out and asks me if I drew on myself. (next inevitable question, 'if you can draw on yourself, why can't I draw on myself?') I don't think it's a perfect representation of the idea behind it. I don't think it's necessarily beautiful in and of itself. And yet, I've never regretted it. In itself, it's ink on skin. It's also the physical manifestation of a question, an intangible experience I've had for 16 years.

I don't mind it being permanent, because this question, this effort to find a merging point, is indelible in the deepest, invisible parts of me.