As I contemplated the energies of today’s Equinox, the complementary essences and energies held around the  world, I came across a quote from physicist Niels Bohr. His powerful words are still rippling through my mind and my inner consciousness:

“If you hold opposites together in your mind, you will suspend your normal thinking process and allow an intelligence beyond rational thought to create a new form.“

As background, this quote arose from an insight Bohr had while studying the apparent dichotomy of light itself, i.e. how sometimes it behaves as a particle and at other times as a wave. Underneath that is a concept held in quantum mechanics, that HOW we choose to study an element (or thought, or idea, to extend that concept further) also shapes the outcome, its behaviour.  Expect a wave, you see a wave. Expect a particle, you see a particle. 

As a physicist, Bohr looked at the apparent incompatabilities of light itself, the inherent ambivalence and ambiguity of one state expressing itself in two very different realities and, instead, considered the intersection — the liminal connection — of those two states, the inherent wisdom in its ability to transform and act from two different states. 

This is how he described the duality of light:

“In a situation where the wave aspect of a system is revealed, its particle aspect is concealed; and, in a situation where the particle aspect is revealed, its wave aspect is concealed. Revealing both simultaneously is impossible; the wave and particle aspects are complementary.”

Bohr found the deeper meaning in the liminality.

In the duality of Equinox, we too can find its wisdom, its medicine.

Rather than simply trying to balance the dualities, like Bohr we too can consider the intersection of those equinox dualities, the commonality, and the complementary energies. We may not personally experience Spring and Autumn at the same time — unlike our planet, where at least one aspect of the Equinox (balance of light and dark) — but we are aware of them, and those energies and that awareness may inform our own experience.

Bohr’s contemplation took him one step further, to his development of the Principle of Complementarity, accepting that objects have certain pairs of complementary properties which cannot all be observed or measured simultaneously (such as position and momentum).

What can we learn from those dualities? The wisdom, the answer, is in exploring that liminal space.  

What “new form” are you creating “beyond rational thought”?

What wisdom or medicine is this Equinox revealing to you?