S01E17 – I Am Both This and That – Holding Two Truths Without Splitting

Introduction

Welcome back to Martfotai, a direct path to wholeness, inner freedom, and becoming.

This podcast explores the deeper waters of presence, awareness, and the natural unfolding of consciousness. It is a practical way of transformation built on direct experience, rooted in the Work of G.I. Gurdjieff, and refined for those ready to integrate swiftly and completely.

Today we take the next step in The Great Unweaving.

In our last episode, “I Am This Or I Am That,” we saw through the prison of false choice,  In our last episode, “I Am This Or I Am That,” we explored how binary thinking can limit our perception and trap us in exhausting either/or battles. We discovered that real choice begins with “A or not-A” where “not-A” represents infinite possibility. We learned to step beyond limited options and recognise the broader field of what’s available.

Today, we explore what happens when you refuse to choose against yourself.

“I am spiritual AND practical.” “I am strong AND vulnerable.” “I am independent AND deeply connected.”

This isn’t compromise. This isn’t trying to balance opposing forces. This is the recognition that what seemed like opposites were always one movement, temporarily forgotten as separate sides.

Welcome to the mature response: embracing paradox without fragmentation.

Here’s what’s extraordinary. The moment you stop fighting between aspects of yourself, energy becomes available that was previously locked in internal conflict. The exhausting swing between positions transforms into dynamic wholeness.

You discover you can be ambitious whilst being content. Confident whilst remaining humble. Present whilst planning wisely for the future.

The war within ends through recognition that there was never actually a war, just completeness temporarily forgotten as fragmentation.

Section 1: The Maturity Principle

Beyond Childhood Simplicity

Children need things to be simple. Good or bad. Right or wrong. Safe or dangerous.

This binary thinking serves survival when the nervous system is developing, when the world feels too complex to navigate with subtlety.

Yet many adults remain locked in this childhood pattern, demanding that life conform to either/or categories that make them feel secure.

“She’s wonderful or she’s terrible.” “This job is perfect or it’s wrong for me.” “I’m successful or I’m a failure.”

Maturity is the capacity to hold tension without premature resolution.

The mature person can see that someone can be simultaneously wonderful and difficult. Loving and frustrating. Generous and self-centered.

They can recognise that a job can be fulfilling and challenging. Right for now and temporary. Perfect for this stage and insufficient for long-term growth.

They can acknowledge being successful in some areas whilst still developing in others. Confident about certain abilities and humble about what they’ve yet to learn.

The Rush to Resolution

Watch how quickly the mind wants to collapse paradox.

“Tell me which one is true. Tell me what to choose. Tell me how this works so I can file it away and move on.”

This rush to resolution keeps consciousness immature because it prevents the deeper seeing that only emerges when you can hold complexity without collapse.

When your partner is simultaneously loving and infuriating, the immature response is: “Which one are they really?” The mature response is: “How can I love them fully whilst maintaining clear boundaries?”

When you feel excited about an opportunity and anxious about the risks, the immature response is: “I shouldn’t feel conflicted.” The mature response is: “What does this combination of excitement and anxiety reveal about what matters to me?”

When you’re ready for change and afraid of the unknown, the immature response is: “I need to figure out what I really want.” The mature response is: “How can I honour my readiness and my fear as I move forward?”

What Integration Actually Feels Like

Integration isn’t the absence of tension. It’s the capacity to remain whole whilst feeling the full spectrum of what’s alive.

When you’re truly integrated, you can feel ambitious and content simultaneously. The ambition doesn’t destroy the contentment, and the contentment doesn’t kill the ambition. They exist together, each informing the other.

You can be firm and gentle at the same time. The firmness isn’t harsh because it’s tempered by gentleness. The gentleness isn’t weak because it’s supported by firmness.

You can be confident and humble in the same moment. Confident about what you know, humble about what you don’t. The confidence doesn’t become arrogance because it’s balanced by humility. The humility doesn’t become self-doubt because it’s grounded in genuine confidence.

This is what Gurdjieff meant when he spoke of higher centers of consciousness, the capacity to hold multiple truths simultaneously without them cancelling each other out.

Where there is paradox, seen and held simultaneously, there is often truth.

Section 2: The Physiology of Paradox

How the Body Responds to Integration

Your nervous system knows the difference between fighting internal contradictions and embracing them.

When you’re split against yourself, trying to be only confident without any vulnerability, or only independent without any need for connection, your body generates stress hormones. There’s internal conflict at the cellular level.

When you embrace all aspects of yourself, the nervous system shifts into a different mode entirely. The fight-or-flight activation that comes from internal war settles into something more spacious.

Try this right now. Think of a quality you’ve been trying to embody perfectly, maybe being more assertive, or more patient, or more disciplined.

Notice how there’s often a subtle tension in trying to be only that. A slight strain, as if you’re holding your breath against the parts of yourself that don’t fit the image.

Now try embracing the quality you want AND its apparent opposite. “I am assertive and receptive.” “I am patient and passionate.” “I am disciplined and spontaneous.”

Feel what happens in your body when you include everything. There’s often a subtle exhale, a softening, as if you can finally breathe fully again.

The Energetics of Wholeness

Split energy is exhausting because it takes effort to maintain internal divisions.

When you’re trying to be only spiritual, you have to constantly suppress your practical concerns, your human needs, your worldly desires. This suppression requires energy.

When you’re trying to be only strong, you have to constantly guard against any sign of vulnerability, any moment of uncertainty, any need for help. This guarding is exhausting.

When you embrace being spiritual and practical, strong and vulnerable, independent and interconnected, the energy that was locked in maintaining divisions becomes available for creative response.

You have more presence because you’re no longer defending against aspects of yourself. You have more authenticity because you’re no longer performing a partial identity. You have more aliveness because nothing in you is being exiled or suppressed.

Breathing the Paradox

Here’s a practice that makes this tangible.

Choose a polarity you’ve been struggling with. Perhaps being focused and relaxed. Or being open and boundaried. Or being confident and humble.

Breathe in the first quality. Let’s say confidence. Feel it in your chest, your posture, your inner sense of self.

Breathe out the second quality. Humility. Feel the receptiveness, the not-knowing, the willingness to learn.

Continue breathing, inhaling confidence, exhaling humility.

After several breaths, notice something remarkable. They begin to support each other rather than cancelling each other out. Your confidence becomes more grounded because it includes humility. Your humility becomes more stable because it includes confidence.

In the pause between the in-breath and out-breath, you can feel them simultaneously. This is the space where paradox lives.

Section 3: The Third Force – When Opposites Create Something New

Beyond Compromise

When most people try to resolve contradictions, they create compromise. Half this, half that. A little bit of everything, the full expression of nothing.

“I’ll be somewhat ambitious and somewhat content.” “I’ll be moderately confident and moderately humble.” “I’ll be partially open and partially boundaried.”

This isn’t integration. It’s dilution.

Real integration doesn’t diminish either side. It allows each to be fully expressed, and in that full expression, something new emerges that transcends them.

When you’re fully ambitious AND fully content, what emerges might be what we could call inspired action. Movement that comes from wholeness rather than need, from vision rather than dissatisfaction.

This points to something Gurdjieff understood deeply. That seeking satisfaction through only one side of ourselves inevitably creates its opposite. As he observed, there is a cosmic law that every satisfaction must be paid for with dissatisfaction. The dissatisfaction isn’t separate from the satisfaction—it’s built into any partial approach. This compensation is inevitable, not accidental. It arises from the nature of mechanical or unconscious satisfaction, especially when people seek pleasure without awareness or effort. True development, according to Gurdjieff, comes not from seeking satisfaction, but from conscious suffering and intentional labour, which can break this automatic cycle.

But when we embrace both fully, we step outside this mechanical swing. The satisfaction doesn’t create its opposite because we’re not excluding anything that could later demand payment.

When you’re fully confident AND fully humble, what emerges might be authentic presence. Self-possession that doesn’t need to defend itself, knowing that doesn’t need to prove itself.

When you’re fully independent AND fully interconnected, what emerges might be conscious relationship. Connection that doesn’t lose individuality, autonomy that doesn’t require isolation.

The Reconciling Force in Daily Life

Gurdjieff spoke of three forces in every phenomenon: the affirming force, the denying force, and the reconciling force.

Most conflicts aren’t between wanting and not-wanting. They’re between two wants that seem to clash.

You want intimacy and you want freedom. These are affirming forces, each saying yes to something real in your life. They only appear to be in conflict when you believe you have to choose between them.

You want security and you want adventure. You want to be understood and you want to maintain mystery. You want to grow and you want to rest.

The difficulty arises because, as Gurdjieff observed, most people are “third-force blind.” We see what we want – the first force. We might even acknowledge what opposes it – the second force. But we rarely perceive the third force: the deeper purpose that could transform the apparent contradiction.

Someone wants to be both disciplined and spontaneous but sees only the conflict between structure and freedom. They miss the third force – perhaps the purpose of living with full engagement, which requires both reliable foundations and creative responsiveness.

The key to accessing the third force is expanding your sense of purpose beyond the immediate wants. Instead of asking “How do I choose between discipline and spontaneity?” you might ask “What am I ultimately trying to create in my life?” Often, that larger purpose naturally includes both sides of the apparent contradiction.

When you can hold these desires fully, without trying to resolve them prematurely, and when you connect with a purpose large enough to contain them, a third force emerges. A creative response that serves multiple needs in ways you couldn’t have planned or predicted.

This might look like intimate relationships that actually increase your sense of freedom because they’re based on choice rather than need. Security that comes from developing adaptability rather than controlling circumstances. Rest that includes growth because it’s conscious rest rather than unconscious escape.

Integration in Practice

Consider the executive torn between being demanding and compassionate with her team. When she expands beyond the immediate conflict to ask, “What am I ultimately trying to create here?” (perhaps sustainable excellence), the third force emerges. Being both demanding and compassionate becomes necessary for that larger purpose. The demanding aspect ensures standards; the compassionate aspect ensures sustainability. Together, they generate what neither could produce separately.

Or the parent struggling between firmness and understanding with a teenager. The larger purpose might be raising someone who is both responsible and emotionally healthy. Suddenly, both firmness and understanding become essential. When both are present simultaneously, discipline becomes guidance rather than punishment.

These aren’t compromises where each quality is diluted. They’re integrations where a larger purpose naturally includes both sides, and their combination creates something qualitatively different from either alone.

Section 4: Ending the Inner War

What You Resist Persists

The aspects of yourself you fight against don’t disappear. They go underground, where they influence you unconsciously.

If you’re trying to be only positive, your doubts and concerns don’t vanish. They affect your decisions in ways you don’t recognise. Your relentless positivity might become brittle, defensive, disconnected from reality.

If you’re trying to be only rational, your emotions don’t stop existing. They leak out sideways in passive-aggression, sudden outbursts, or mysterious physical symptoms.

If you’re trying to be only independent, your need for connection doesn’t disappear. It might emerge as workaholism, or perfectionism, or chronic dissatisfaction that you can’t quite explain.

What You Embrace Transforms

When you turn toward what you’ve been avoiding in yourself, something alchemical happens.

The emotion that seemed so threatening becomes information. The need that seemed so inconvenient becomes guidance. The quality that seemed so problematic becomes a resource.

Your sensitivity, which you thought made you weak, becomes your ability to read situations and people with unusual accuracy.

Your intensity, which you thought was too much for others, becomes your capacity to create powerful change and deep connections.

Your need for solitude, which you thought made you antisocial, becomes your way of processing experience and returning to others with greater presence.

The integration doesn’t happen through thinking about it. It happens through including what was excluded, embracing what was pushed away, breathing space around what felt too threatening to feel.

The Nervous System Learns

Your body learns that it’s safe to be multiple things simultaneously. That you don’t have to choose between strength and softness, between clarity and compassion, between groundedness and openness.

As the nervous system learns to contain paradox, your capacity for complexity increases. You can navigate situations that would have overwhelmed you when you were operating from either/or thinking.

You can be present with someone’s pain without trying to fix it. You can pursue goals without attachment to specific outcomes. You can love people whilst maintaining clear boundaries about what you will and won’t accept.

This isn’t detachment. It’s integration. The capacity to feel everything whilst being owned by nothing.

Section 5: Practical Integration – The Paradox Experiment

Daily Practice

For the next week, choose one polarity you’ve been struggling with and practice embodying its fullness consciously.

Perhaps you’ve been torn between being disciplined and being spontaneous. Instead of trying to find the right balance, practice being disciplined AND spontaneous.

Wake up with discipline about your morning routine AND spontaneity about how you respond to what emerges during the day.

Plan your work with precision AND remain open to creative tangents that might be more important than your plan.

Commit to relationships wholeheartedly AND maintain your individual path without apology.

Relationship Integration

Most relationship problems come from either/or thinking applied to love.

“I can be close to you, or I can maintain my autonomy.” “I can support your dreams, or I can pursue my own.” “I can be honest about my needs, or I can keep the peace.”

Practice embracing multiple truths simultaneously.

Be close AND autonomous. The closeness becomes more authentic because it’s chosen rather than needed. The autonomy becomes more grounded because it includes connection rather than defending against it.

Support your partner’s dreams AND pursue your own. You discover that supporting someone else’s growth often feeds your own, and pursuing your own path often increases your capacity to support others.

Be honest about your needs AND committed to harmony. The honesty becomes more skilful because it includes care for the relationship. The harmony becomes more sustainable because it includes truth rather than avoiding it.

Professional Paradox

In work situations, practice being collaborative and decisive. Innovative and practical. Confident and open to feedback.

Notice how these qualities support each other when they’re present simultaneously rather than one being sacrificed for the other.

Collaboration that includes decisiveness becomes leadership. Innovation that includes practicality becomes implementation. Confidence that includes receptivity becomes wisdom.

The Felt Sense

Throughout this practice, pay attention to what integration feels like in your body.

There’s often a sense of relaxation, as if you can finally stop defending against parts of yourself. There’s more energy available because nothing is being suppressed or exiled.

There’s also often a sense of coming home to yourself. Of remembering a wholeness that was always there, temporarily forgotten through the habit of taking sides against yourself.

Section 6: The Wisdom of Traditions

Ancient Understanding

Long before psychology discovered integration, wisdom traditions understood the necessity of holding opposites.

The Taoist yin-yang symbol shows apparent opposites interpenetrating each other, each containing the seed of its complement.

Zen koans deliberately present logical contradictions to exhaust the mind’s need to resolve everything into simple categories.

Ancient Greek philosophy speaks of coincidentia oppositorum, the coincidence of opposites that characterises higher states of consciousness. This term, meaning “the coincidence of opposites,” points to a reality where contradictions are simultaneously true.

These traditions knew that ultimate truth is paradoxical, that life itself is paradoxical, and that consciousness mature enough to hold paradox can perceive what remains hidden from either/or thinking.

The Evolution of Thinking

Binary thinking served human survival when quick decisions meant the difference between life and death. Friend or foe. Safe or dangerous. Edible or poisonous.

Yet as consciousness evolves, the capacity for paradox becomes essential for navigating increasing complexity.

The challenges facing individuals and societies now require thinking that can hold multiple perspectives simultaneously. Solutions that serve multiple needs. Responses that integrate rather than eliminate contradiction.

The person who can be rooted and flexible navigates change more skilfully than someone who is only rooted or only flexible.

The leader who can be visionary and practical creates more sustainable progress than someone who chooses only one approach.

The parent who can be nurturing and firm raises more balanced children than someone who operates from only one stance.

Integration as Natural Development

Holding paradox isn’t a special skill reserved for mystics or philosophers. It’s the natural development of consciousness as it matures.

Young children are naturally integrated until they learn to split themselves to fit social expectations.

Adolescents often swing between extremes as they try to figure out who they are.

Adults have the opportunity to reclaim integration consciously, choosing to include rather than exclude aspects of themselves.

This isn’t returning to childish naivety. It’s ascending to conscious wholeness that can engage complexity without being fragmented by it.

Section 7: What Changes When You Stop Choosing Sides

Presence

When you’re no longer defending against parts of yourself, a different quality of attention emerges.

You find yourself naturally curious about what’s arising rather than immediately categorising it as good or bad. There’s space around experience that wasn’t there before.

In conversations, you can hold multiple perspectives without losing your center. You can disagree without becoming adversarial. You can support without losing yourself in someone else’s experience.

This creates what we might call responsive presence, engagement that comes from wholeness rather than reaction, choice rather than compulsion.

Creativity

Internal conflict consumes creative energy. When that conflict resolves into integration, creativity flourishes.

You have access to your visionary capacity and your practical skills. Your discipline and your spontaneity. Your individual voice and your ability to collaborate.

Problems that seemed impossible to solve from either/or thinking often have elegant solutions when approached from paradox-holding consciousness.

Relationships

When you stop requiring others to be only one thing, relationships become more spacious.

You can love someone whilst acknowledging their limitations. You can appreciate their strengths without needing them to be perfect. You can maintain your own truth whilst allowing them to have theirs.

This creates room for everyone to be human, to grow, to make mistakes without the relationship ending every time someone doesn’t live up to an idealised image.

Decision-Making

Decisions become less agonising because you’re no longer trying to find the perfect choice that eliminates all downsides.

You can choose something that serves your current needs whilst knowing it might change later. You can commit to a path whilst remaining open to course corrections. You can act decisively whilst acknowledging uncertainty.

This allows for what we might call intelligent commitment, wholehearted engagement that doesn’t require guarantees about outcomes. Safe uncertainty.

The Transformation

What emerges from all of this is remarkable: you become someone who can engage fully with life without being fragmented by its contradictions.

You discover that what you thought was weakness, complexity, your apparent inconsistencies, your refusal to be simple, was actually the seed of your greatest strength.

The very paradoxes that once tormented you become the source of your aliveness, your creativity, your capacity to meet whatever arises with presence rather than reactivity.

You are no longer at war with yourself. And in that peace, something entirely new becomes possible.

Conclusion: The End of the Either/Or Prison

This episode represents a crucial step in The Great Unweaving. Having seen through false choices in Episode 16, you now have the tools to live beyond them.

Next week, Episode 18: “I Am Neither This Nor That”, is where we discover what happens when you step outside all positions entirely. We’ll explore the freedom that comes from no longer needing to identify with any quality, any role, any stance at all.

Then Episode 19: “I Am None of That at All”, is where we find what remains when even the capacity to hold paradox dissolves into pure presence.

Each step takes us deeper into recognising that what we thought were problems to solve were actually the very structure of consciousness learning to know itself.

The Integration That Changes Everything

When you can be ambitious and content, strong and vulnerable, independent and connected, something extraordinary happens.

You discover that you have more energy, more creativity, more authentic presence than when you were trying to be only one thing.

The war within ends through the recognition that there was never actually a war, just wholeness temporarily forgotten as fragmentation.

You are human and divine, individual and universal, this and that.

And in that recognition, the healing that was always possible finally becomes actual.

[Long pause]

The paradox isn’t the problem. The paradox is the gateway.

You are the consciousness vast enough to hold all contradiction without being fragmented by any of it.

[Closing music]

Next time on Martfotai: “I Am Neither This Nor That” – Letting Go of All Positions

Freedom begins when you stop picking sides, and stop needing to.

Thank you for walking this path with us.

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The wholeness you seek already includes everything you are.