Maeva Fages

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Human beings, polarity, the myth of Plato

Words took some time to be tasted & explored again, in structured sentences.
Emotions & intense questioning have been, undoubtedly, at the core of this phase of life. Like for most of us.
As I navigate into those unknown shores, I have also been contemplating about the nature of human beings. What does it mean to be human at the end? What’s the essence of human-ness?

A long time ago, I read lines from the Greek philosopher Plato, which stayed with me somehow, though I am not sure I fully understood their meaning back then. Those lines now take another journey in my own reflections.
Plato narrates the story, through the words of Aristophanes, of human beings and how they looked like at the beginning of their creation. Humans were one entity, with 4 legs, 4 arms and a head with 2 faces. They were strong & fast thanks to the power of all their limbs and their wholeness.

Being so strong they tried to ascend to heaven to attack the gods. Zeus and the other gods decided to cut them in half, leaving humans in a forever quest to be « reunited » with another part of themselves. The navel would then be the eternal reminder of the cut & the symbol of our pursuit to wholeness.

In this division, the gods created duality and polarity.

A polarity between the feminine & masculine, science & mysticism, rational & emotional, intellectual & creative, light & dark, Yin & Yang, etc.

Could this story be a so perfect illustration of our human life experience? Searching outside for the one entity in its wholeness we were once? In the process, we carry on nurturing those polarities & divisions in our quest to find again that the Oneness residing within.

As we walk through life with this wound of separation & abandonment of parts of ourselves, there is a choice we could make: Should I/we continue cultivating this perception & feeling of separation, and, in the process, forever nourish my structural wounds of polarity? Or could I/we take another path which would bring together all the perceived polarities? And try to embark again on this journey to collectively remember what we were once: splendid creatures without any divisions, bathing into Oneness.
Now more than ever, I remember this myth. We now get to choose mindfully which parts or path we wish to nourish.

«We are the mirror as well as the face in it. We are tasting the taste this minute of eternity. We are pain and what cures pain both. We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours », Rumi. There is no Yin if there is no Yang, there is no light if there is no dark, the right does not exist without the left, etc...Duality only exists for us to fully realize that it actually does not exist. Everything is the opposite of what it appears to be, and nothing is the opposite of what it appears to be.

To this journey of remembrance, I bow. 😘