The phenomenological experience of living crucified between the opposites (good/evil, spirit/matter, self/other, life/death, the competing needs within the psyche) without hope of resolution is a very hard thing to do - it is apparent and understandable why most people prematurely embrace a polarity, any polarity, in order to exit the pain involved in staying within that space.

To stay within the crucifixion requires a certain mysterious element that can only be described as grace, as it isn’t possible to remain in it based on willpower. Grace is the right word, not in a sentimental Christian sense but in the older, harsher sense: the arrival of a capacity the ego did not earn and could not manufacture, allowing it to endure what would otherwise destroy it. Simone Weil referenced this concept in Gravity and Grace, but she was unable to survive that liminal tension; she chose ego dissolution and was destroyed by it (I’ll cover her in a future post).

One thing this experience teaches is discernment: it becomes obvious, within a few sentences, whether someone is writing from within the lived crucifixion or treating it as an intellectual exercise - and my eyes are increasingly glazing over at the latter.