S01/E13: “I Am Held” – Living Between the Poles

Introduction – The Nature of Polarity

Welcome back to the Martfotai podcast.

Last time, in Episode 12, I Am Emptiness, we reached the base layer. Everything dissolved. What remained was presence itself. Clear. Aware.

Now life continues.

You open your eyes. You’re pulled. Between rest and ambition. Between honesty and protection. Between freedom and safety.

These feel like opposites. They demand choices. But most of the time, choosing one feels like betraying the other.

You try to balance. To keep the peace. But the effort splits you.

What if that is the wrong question?

Today, we begin again. By being the whole.

You’ll see that it’s not the swing that hurts. It’s forgetting that you are more than either point.

This episode is about fullness. Holding tension. Holding contradiction. Holding both sides without collapse.

This is neither metaphor nor idea. It’s a nervous system skill. A way of standing. A way of breathing.

You’ll learn to stay intact while being pulled. To move without being torn. To act without abandoning yourself.

The tensions don’t leave. They never will. But you stop running from them.

And when you do, you start to live differently.

Section 1: The Two Streams That Create All Suffering

Right now, two streams are moving through you.

The first is your story. It tells you who you are. It says things like, “I’ve failed,” or “I must choose between truth and kindness.” It builds identity. It explains everything.

The second is the moment. The body breathing. The sound in your ear. A flicker of thought. The weight in your chest. It doesn’t care about your story. It only shows what is.

Suffering lives in the gap.

Now, just try this. Bring to mind something that’s been weighing on you. Perhaps you feel you must speak your truth, yet you can’t risk the conflict. You must take care of yourself, yet you can’t disappoint others. You must move forward with a decision, yet you can’t bear the uncertainty. You must forgive to find peace, yet you can’t forget what happened.

I can’t but I must, or I must but I can’t.

Choose something where you feel genuinely torn – where both sides feel equally true and equally impossible to abandon. Where saying yes to one feels like betraying the other. Where the decision is so 50/50 it feels impossible to pick the best.

Choose something that has a charge to it, something that won’t let go, no matter how much you try to reason with it or push it away.

Feel what happens in your body as you hold both sides. Notice where the tension lands – perhaps your chest tightens, your jaw clenches, your breath becomes shallow, or your shoulders rise. That physical response is the friction between the two streams: the story your mind tells about having to choose, and the raw sensation of being pulled in opposite directions.

Now pause.

Don’t try to either fix the story or run from the feeling. Just let both exist.

If you don’t insist the moment be different, something shifts. Your fight with reality softens.

And there’s an interesting thing here. We see a problem and cannot imagine being different with it, but when we simply allow both sides to be, we transform, and our being changes. We literally becomes different, and from that transformed place we see things very differently. A new world opens.

We’ve been trained to collapse this split. To resolve it. To make life make sense. To pick between being authentic or being accepted. Free or safe. This is the real exhaustion. The pressure to choose.

You are not meant to choose. You are meant to bear.

The Work begins here. By seeing the split, and staying whole.

Ask yourself now:
Can I let this tension exist without running?

Can I let both streams be true?

You are not the story. You are not the moment.
You are the one who sees both.

And you can feel that now.

Section 2: The Whole Stick – Why You Can’t Drop Just Half

Every conflict you feel is not two sides pulling you apart. It’s one structure. You are holding both ends and pretending they are separate.

Freedom doesn’t come from choosing one side. It comes from seeing the whole.

Try this now. Think of something that divides you. Maybe the need for closeness and the desire for space. Or the wish to speak honestly while fearing rejection.

Most people swing. Open one day, closed the next. Driven, then numb. Focused, then distracted. This isn’t inconsistency. It’s unconscious effort.

You aren’t being pulled. You are holding.

You hold your need to belong and your need to protect yourself. You hold your ambition and your exhaustion. You hold your hope and your fear.

If you are able, stretch your arms out now like you’re gripping a stick. Try to let go of one end and imagine it fall. You can’t. It has to fall as a whole.

You don’t get to choose peace without also facing discomfort. Every “choice” suppresses something else. And what you suppress fights back later.

George I. Gurdjieff said that every satisfaction has to be paid for with a dissatisfaction. How can we even know something without its opposite? Silence and noise, dark and light, healthy and ill. All need the opposite to be felt, to be seen, to be experienced and known.

So stop choosing. See the whole.

When you feel torn, pause. Look closer. Are these really two separate things, or one experience with two sides?

Let the anger and the guilt be one movement. The desire and the fear. The control and the grief.

And then let go of the belief that one side is wrong.

Only what sees the whole is free. That awareness is already here. It watches the swing without swinging. It doesn’t take sides.

Your work isn’t to pick the better pole. It’s to stop disappearing into either one.

Feel both. See the whole. Stay.

Section 3: The Three Forces That Create Everything

Every moment holds three forces. You usually feel two.

You know what it’s like to want something. That’s the affirming force – the push forward. You know what it’s like to meet resistance. That’s the denying force – what seems to push back against you.

But there’s a third. The reconciling force. It doesn’t fight either side. It waits.

Most conflicts aren’t between wanting and not-wanting. They’re between two wants that seem to clash. You want to speak your truth. They want peace, easiness and silence. Both are affirming forces – both saying yes to something real. Yet they collide.

The same happens inside you. You want closeness and you want space. You want security and you want freedom. These aren’t opposites fighting – they’re two affirmations that appear to contradict each other.

Feel it in your breath right now. Inhale. There’s the pull. Exhale. There’s the push. Pause. There’s the space.

Your next breath is born in that pause.

This same pattern lives in every choice you face. Every tension you feel. The push, the pull, and the pause that births what comes next.

When you stop choosing sides, something arises without effort. Something whole. Maybe clear kindness. Maybe gentle strength. Something that isn’t compromise – “half-honest, half-careful” – but feels complete.

That’s the third force. A presence that appears when you stop fighting between affirmations.

Notice how the mind tries to solve these tensions with old recordings. “I always mess this up.” “This never works out.” “I should know better by now.” These aren’t fresh thoughts – they’re familiar scripts playing on repeat. The real intelligence waits in the silence between the rehearsed phrases.

When you can feel both sides without making them mean something about who you are, they transform from identity into information. The anger isn’t proof you’re broken. The fear isn’t evidence you’re weak. They’re just energies moving through the space that can hold them both.

Your nervous system changes when this happens. The swing between extremes settles. Tension stops being something that tears you apart. It becomes current you can use. In relationship, this changes everything. You can feel someone fully without losing yourself. You can stay close without performing. You can love without clinging.

You don’t manufacture this third thing. You feel the tension, hold it, and let it teach you what it wants to become.

The opposites aren’t problems to solve. They’re the engine. When you hold both sides without collapse, something new appears through you.

Creation.

Section 4: Living Time and the Pendulum That Never Was

There are two ways to live time. One scatters you. The other gathers you.

Ordinary time is measured. Lined up. You move through it, one mood after another. Tense, then calm. Energised, then depleted. Each new state replaces the last. You feel like a different self in each moment.

This is what most people call life, a string of moments. But it isn’t presence. It’s fragmentation.

Maurice Nicoll called this “Living Time” – it’s different. It’s not the time you move through. It’s the time that moves through you.

In Living Time, all your moments still exist. You don’t shift from one identity to the next. You hold all of them in your body.

Try this. Recall three states from the past day, perhaps hope, irritation, and relief. In linear time, they appear in sequence. But now, feel them all together. Let them rise in you as colours on one canvas.

They don’t fight. They form a whole.

This is Living Time. A sphere. Presence. The entire path appearing in you at once.

And from this field, something crucial becomes clear.

The pendulum you thought was real never existed.

When you identify with one state, pride, panic, longing, you become the swing. You ride the highs. Then crash in the lows. And the more you try to manage it, the more it manages you.

But step back, and you see something else. The movement is not error. It’s structure.

A tree is not broken by its seasons. It buds, blooms, fades, falls, yet remains rooted. So too with you.

Try this now. Bring to mind a recent inner swing. Perhaps you felt strong, then doubtful. Generous, then guarded.

Feel both ends. Let them stay. Now step out of the arc. Imagine seeing the full motion from above.

Suddenly, you’re not flung between poles. You are the stillness that allows motion.

This is the pivot. The unmoved point around which movement rotates.

Russell A. Smith, founder of THEDOG school, called this “becoming the pivot.” By presence. You feel everything. But you are no longer tossed by it.

Contradiction becomes clarity through staying.

Tension becomes energy. Not by resisting. By holding.

This is not detachment. It’s embodiment.

You are the presence that makes the swing possible. The stillness within the movement. The pivot that never moves

Section 5: Pendulum Practice – Learning to Hold Both

This isn’t theory. It is a way to train your nervous system.

You’re not trying to stop the pendulum. You’re learning to remain present at both extremes, without being caught by either. That is how the pivot appears.

Follow each step directly.

Step 1: Name the Polarity

Choose one tension you live with. For example: frustration and patience, fear and courage, loneliness and freedom.

Say both aloud. Notice how each feels in your body.

Step 2: Embody One Side Fully

Start with the easier side. If it’s patience, sit like someone fully patient. Let your breath slow. Adjust your face, hands, posture.

Make it stronger. Imagine it. Fill your body with it.

Stay there.

Step 3: Introduce the Opposite Without Collapsing

Let the other side enter gently. If the first was patience, let frustration rise.

Don’t push it away. Let both states be present.

Feel the charge between them. Stay aware. Don’t choose.

You’re not either state. You’re what sees them.

Step 4: Move Between Extremes with Awareness

Now move from one side to the other. Slowly.

Feel patience. Then shift into frustration.

At each end, pause. You are still aware. You are not lost.

You are not swinging. You are holding.

Step 5: Find the Pivot

Stay with the motion. Something shifts.

You no longer feel pulled. You sense the line joining the states.

That is the pivot. You. A presence. The one who stays while the states move.

Step 6: Widen the Arc Without Losing Centre

Now stretch further. Use stronger opposites. Rage and peace. Shame and dignity.

Go to the edges. Let them fill you.

Stay aware throughout. There will be pressure, heat, movement.

But you are still.

This is what is meant by becoming the pivot. You are not managing your emotions. You are letting them be. And not losing yourself.

Step 7: Sit in Stillness

When you are done, drop both states.

Sit quietly.

Let your nervous system rest. There is nothing to fix.

Feel your capacity. You held both without breaking.

You were moved, but not taken.

This is how you remember.

You are not your states. You are not the swing. You are not the noise.

You are the one that holds.

You do not need to choose. You do not need to resolve.

Hold the stick at both ends. Do not let go.

Then you see the truth. The pendulum never swung. You only moved because you forgot who you were.

Section 6: Presence at Maximum Acceleration

Most people think presence means stillness. But the real test is presence in motion, especially when life moves fast.

This is the moment presence is lost: the instant between trigger and reaction, when the system takes over. That’s maximum acceleration. And that’s where presence matters most.

The pendulum moves fastest at the centre, not at the edges. The swing through the middle is where momentum takes control. Choice disappears. You shout before thinking. Shut down before feeling. Say yes before checking in. The nervous system moves first. Awareness vanishes.

We see this everywhere now. Our world has become a collective pendulum swinging wildly between extremes. Social media accelerates every trigger into instant reaction. Political discourse has lost the space between stimulus and response. When someone feels triggered, the demand is no longer for inner presence – it’s for the entire world to change to accommodate the reaction.

This is maximum acceleration on a cultural scale. We’ve forgotten how to be the center that holds. Instead, we ride every swing, absorbing each wave of emotion as identity, letting the water flood the ship. The gap between trigger and reaction has nearly vanished, both individually and collectively.

This makes the Work more essential than ever. Not as personal luxury, but as collective necessity. When the external world is caught in reactive patterns, individual presence becomes both refuge and resistance. Someone who can stay aware during maximum acceleration becomes a stabilizing force in the chaos.

Feel this now. Recall a time when you were caught off guard. Notice how quickly the moment escalated. How little space there was. That’s the flashpoint. That’s where the real work begins.

Now practise.

Movement Practice (adapt to your capacity):

• If you’re able to walk: Stand. Move slowly across the room. Feel every step. Simple. Now move at your usual pace. Harder. Then imagine running late. Or being chased. Try to keep the same awareness.
• If you use mobility aids: Notice the rhythm of your movement – wheels rolling, canes touching ground, the push and glide. Start slow and mindful. Then increase to your normal pace. Then imagine urgency – being late, rushing to help someone. Can you maintain awareness through the acceleration?
• If movement is limited: Use your breath as the vehicle. Breathe slowly, feeling each inhale and exhale. Then breathe at normal pace. Then imagine stress breathing – quick, shallow, urgent. Can you stay present as the breath speeds up?
• For everyone: Try this with any repetitive action you can control – finger tapping that speeds up, counting that accelerates, even rapid eye movements between objects in the room.

The principle remains the same: presence at speed. Awareness in all conditions. In joy, pain, movement, stillness, or conflict. Real presence does not break. It holds.

You need protecting. Your awareness. Your presence.

Picture a ship in a storm. The sea swells. The ship moves with it, but stays afloat. Why? Because the water stays outside.

You are that ship.

The waves are life’s movements. The danger is not the wave. It’s letting the water in. That water is identification. When you let emotion pass through, you stay buoyant. When you absorb it, you sink.

Perhaps this is what was meant when someone was described as ‘walking on water’ – not defying physics, but mastering the art of moving through life’s storms without letting them in. Staying above the waves through presence, not magic.

Now bring this closer.

Think of a trigger: rejection, failure, pressure, shame.

Let it come into awareness. Feel the sensations rise. Don’t brace. Don’t collapse. Let the wave move.

Stay clear. Stay here.

This is not stoicism. It’s nervous system clarity. You are not pushing emotion away. You are letting it be, while staying present. You don’t need to stop the storm. You need to stop abandoning yourself.

This builds something rare: held confidence.

You know you can stay. With anything. Even when it moves fast.

Stability is awareness, held in the fire. It does not chase peace. It does not reject motion.

It stays.

This capacity is what the world needs now. Not more reactive swinging. Not demands that reality change to match our internal weather. But human beings who can remain present in the storm, who can hold contradiction without breaking, who can feel the trigger without becoming it.

The Work has always been countercultural. Now it’s practically revolutionary. In a world that has lost the space between trigger and reaction, someone who can stay present during maximum acceleration isn’t just healing themselves – they’re offering sanity to the collective madness.

This is what makes presence real. You meet life at full speed. You remain intact.

The pendulum still swings. But you do not forget.

You are not the swing. You are the centre it moves through.

That is why presence at speed is the test. Because that is when you usually leave. And that is when the world most needs you to stay.

Stay through the fast moment. That’s when everything changes.

A CFO who led several major organizations used to say ‘Fast is as slow as we go’ – driving maximum speed, pushing everyone to their limits. It delivered results, but people lost themselves in the acceleration. In the Work, we discover something different:

You don’t need to go slow.

You need to stay.

Still is as much as we move.

Section 7: The Invisible Holding That Makes You Whole

You live in two layers of experience. One is visible. It has shape, sound, action. The other is invisible. No one sees your thoughts. No one hears your inner silence. But that invisible layer is what gives coherence to everything else.

Most people think what they see is what is real. But the visible is only the surface. Your awareness, your attention, your sense of self, none of these can be touched or measured. Yet they shape everything.

You don’t need to believe this. You can feel it now. Where is the part of you hearing these words? Not in your ears. Not in your head. It is nowhere. But it is here. You are aware. That awareness surrounds space.

Try this now. Silently repeat these words in your head: ‘I am aware. I am here.’ Don’t say them out loud – just let them echo internally. Now notice: who is speaking those words in your mind? And who is listening to them? Look back at yourself. There’s the one speaking, the one listening, and the one observing both. That observer – that’s the awareness we’re pointing to. The invisible holder of all experience.

This changes everything. You are not holding yourself together. You are being held.

This doesn’t mean by something far away. The holding is already here. It shows up in the breath, in the stillness under noise, in the awareness that stays when your emotions change.

The work is not to fix your contradictions. It’s to notice the space in which they unfold.

Practice: The Invisible World in Your Body

Place one hand on your chest, one on your belly. Let your attention drop below your thoughts. Notice your breath. You are not breathing it. It moves on its own. Your heart beats. Your blood flows. You didn’t plan any of it.

Stay there. The body already knows how to be alive. The same intelligence also holds your reactions, your doubts, your needs. From within.

With each inhale, feel held. With each exhale, release control.

The Result: Trust Beyond Outcome

This isn’t about hoping things work out. It’s the recognition that things are already working, even when they’re difficult.

Opposing forces in you are not pulling you apart. They are part of one motion. Like waves in water, they only look separate if you zoom in.

Your tensions are not mistakes. They are how your system learns to stay whole under pressure.

When this becomes clear, something softens. You are not surviving on your own. You are not isolated in your effort. You are part of a field that supports your becoming.

Within every breath, every beat, every moment you remember to stay.

Section 8: Embodied Integration – Living the Recognition

Living as held awareness is not a concept. It’s a physical practice, a way of moving through the world as the space that holds contradiction without collapse.

Start with the body. At work, notice how ambition shows up. Forward-leaning posture. Tight chest. Shallow breath. Now feel contentment – softer spine, deeper breath, looser shoulders. Try both. Let yourself move forward with care, while staying grounded. Feel the difference between striving and being pulled. When both are present, action becomes unforced.

This isn’t balance through neutrality. It’s strength that includes the full range. Be fierce in your spine, soft in your heart. Sharp in your thoughts, wide in your breath. Speak with clarity and warmth. Move with intent and ease.

In relationships, the body tells the truth before the mind does. Vulnerability may open your chest. Boundaries may firm your stance and anchor your feet. Let both live. You can share openly without folding. You can love without clinging. Feel love as expansion in the chest. Feel acceptance as stillness in your centre. Together, they create a presence that stays.

Your body will learn this first. The mind will follow.

You’ll start to speak with both truths at once: “I love you, and I need space.” “I feel strong, and I feel unsure.”
“I’m committed, and I know nothing is certain.”

This is the real language of truth. Lived. Felt.

Others will feel this too. You’ll no longer demand they stay the same. You’ll allow their wholeness. You can honour someone’s generosity and still say no. You can admire their brilliance without feeding their blind spot. Your nervous system will become large enough to hold their contradiction, too.

This is called a spacious relationship. One where both people are safe to be whole. No demand for perfection. No need to shrink. Just space to unfold, fall, return.

But the real change is inward. You stop seeing contradiction as a problem. You feel it as life moving through you. The war inside softens.

You can be wise and still learning. Tender and strong. Certain and open. This is what it means to live as held awareness: standing as the space that includes it all.

Most of us learned not to include ourselves. We were told repeatedly how we weren’t right. We disappointed others who lived by expectation, demanding we be what we were not, convincing us we were inherently wrong for being. All the while, they were suffering the same thing themselves – unable to include their own wholeness, passing down the wound of self-rejection.

You do not need to fix yourself. You need to include yourself.

Conclusion

You have always been held by what holds everything.

The contradictions you’ve tried to resolve, the tensions you’ve chased into silence, the choices that felt impossible, none of them need fixing. They are the movement of life itself, playing out through you.

The two streams will keep flowing: what your mind says is happening, and what actually is. The poles will keep dancing, effort and rest, knowing and uncertainty, closeness and freedom. But you no longer have to be split by them.

You’ve seen now: you are the space that holds it all.

That space is steady enough to remain centred while everything moves. Soft enough to love. Wide enough to include contradiction without breaking.

The search for resolution was always a search for yourself. The self who includes all sides without collapse.

You don’t find peace by solving tension. Peace lives in the middle of it, aware, steady, whole.

This episode has brought emptiness into the body. What was once a spacious insight is now a living practice. Held awareness means holding the poles without choosing one. Letting your spine stay fierce while your chest stays soft. Feeling strength and tenderness at once. Speaking with clarity and kindness together.

The pendulum only exists when you cling to one end. The moment you see the whole arc, you become the pivot, the still point within the swing.

In our next episode, we explore: “I Am Part of Everything – The Dissolution of Separation.” While this episode focused on holding inner opposites, the next reveals how the boundary between self and other begins to dissolve. You’ll see how every form is an expression of the same creative source.

Until then:

Don’t rush to resolve the tension.
Stay with it.
Feel both sides.
Breathe into the space between them.

This week, practise the pendulum exercise. Choose one polarity in your life, work and rest, love and freedom, safety and growth, and hold both in your nervous system each day. Notice how this changes your presence, your choices, your way of speaking and relating.

A guided version of the pendulum practice will be available soon at martfotai.com. You’ll also find our newsletter and extended episodes there, if you’d like to keep walking this path with us.

Thank you for walking into this contradiction with me.
You don’t have to hold it all together.
You just have to stop resisting being held.

You never had to choose.
You never had to resolve.
You are the space where all choosing happens.

I’m Gary Eggleton, and this is Martfotai.
You’ve found the stillness between all movement. You’ve returned to being held.