Contradictions within the mind

I just came across some information related to self-actualisation and personality theory/

There exist polar opposites in an individual.

Consider the following polar opposites:
1) regarding everything as infinitely meaningful vs regarding everything as completely meaningless or absurd,
2) having a deadly serious temperament vs having a playful, joking temperament,
3) the experience of Being vs the experience of Nothingness or Non-Being,
4) Identifying oneself with everything vs nothing,
5) the experience of freely-willed actions vs the experience of actions beyond one's will,
6) the experience of being passionate and attached vs the experience of detachment.

The point is that the self-actualized individual will have or experience many of these polar opposites, at different times, but more importantly, simultaneously. I don't doubt that experiencing polar opposites simultaneously can be a disturbing thing for some, but the reconciliation of these opposites is one of the keys, I think, to Self-Actualization because it allows one to go beyond opposites and contradictions. One is no longer trapped within one or another 'perspective', but instead realizes all of them simultaneously.

John Donne; A Valediction

This is a beautiful poem I studied in high school by John Donne.


AS virtuous men pass mildly away, 
    And whisper to their souls to go, 
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
    "Now his breath goes," and some say, "No." ^[1]                    
So let us melt, and make no noise,                                       5
    No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
'Twere profanation of our joys 
    To tell the laity our love. 
Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
    Men reckon what it did, and meant ;                              10
But trepidation of the spheres, 
    Though greater far, is innocent. 
Dull sublunary lovers' love 
    —Whose soul is sense—cannot admit 
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove                                     15
    The thing which elemented it. 

But we by a love so much refined,
    That ourselves know not what it is, 
Inter-assurèd of the mind, 
    Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.                           20
Our two souls therefore, which are one, 
    Though I must go, endure not yet 
A breach, but an expansion, 
    Like gold to aery thinness beat. 
If they be two, they are two so                                          25
    As stiff twin compasses are two ; 
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show 
    To move, but doth, if th' other do. 
And though it in the centre sit, 
    Yet, when the other far doth roam,                                30
It leans, and hearkens after it, 
    And grows erect, as that comes home. 
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
    Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,                                    35
    And makes me end where I begun. 

John Donne 1635

I want to be in this rainforest,
in the dark with the ivory-blue moonlight
shining on my cheek and eyelash,
as it is filtered through pockets
in the dense canopy.

Where an old tree has fell, light rain sprinkles down
and glistens as it catches the essence of moon light.
Harmonic forest sounds softly break the silence.

The stars are of amazing brilliance tonight,
away from smog and chaos, in this perfectly enclosed,
hidden, secluded, sanctuary.

Reality becomes a dream, and dreams become reality.
The air is tranquil, and one finds ones own mind engulfed in it;
finding unity in solitude and pleasure in serenity.