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What’s Adversity Got To Do With It

What’s Adversity Got To Do With It

Last updated on: May 16, 2016 at 10:00 am by Robert Atkinson

What’s Adversity Got To Do With It 2016-05-05T19:16:58-04:00 Robert Atkinson

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We like to think that things will go smoothly, that we can accomplish what we want without too much difficulty, that love will come easily, and even that growth can come without much struggle. Is this really the case, in the real world?

Well, Tina Turner’s classic, What’s Love Got To Do With It, nails it:

You must understand though the touch of your hand

Makes my pulse react

That it’s only the thrill of boy meeting girl

Opposites attract

It’s physical

Only logical

You must try to ignore that it means more than that ooo

What’s love got to do, got to do with it

What’s love but a second hand emotion

What’s love got to do, got to do with it

Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken…

Not only do opposites attract, they create the necessary spark for something we can’t get very far in life without. Opposition puts us on a trajectory that we are intended to be on, a path leading to transformation.

We don’t typically think that finding and falling in love is going to lead to our transformation. Nor that setting off in any new direction, a new job, a new home, you get the picture, could necessarily do that, either.

Yet these are all the kinds of life changes that initiate new forms of tension, challenges, and struggles for us to deal with. In fact, as much as we might prefer it otherwise, the necessary ingredient for transformation is opposition. Jung makes this quite clear: “There is no balance, no system of self-regulation, without opposition.”

What other way can we put it than transformation happens through the clash of opposing forces. Whether it is two people who happen to be opposites, or any set of circumstances (or beliefs) that create tension, there is a purpose in such opposition.

A century before Jung, Baha’u’llah, the most recent prophet of God, confirmed this: “Know ye that trials and tribulations have, from time immemorial, been the lot of the chosen Ones of God… Such is God’s method carried into effect of old, and such will it remain in the future. Blessed are the steadfastly enduring, that they are patient under ills and hardships.” He added, “Adversity is the oil that feedeth the flame of this Lamp! Such is God’s transforming power.”

There is a pattern here that can be pretty easily identified, and with it some very useful tools, both of which can not only assist us through this process but also even allow us to welcome such changes into our lives.

First, we know from biology that our physical development maintains a balance between opposing forces in our lives through the process of homeostasis. We also know from biology that through homeorhesis we persist along the pathway we are meant to be on despite complications encountered. Our biological development is pre-set to unfold according to an innate blueprint; we have an inborn tendency that keeps us on this biological path.

Is there is a parallel principle governing our psycho-spiritual development that is similarly designed to keep us on a trajectory toward growth and transformation?

Little acknowledged is that over 100 years ago anthropologist Arnold van Gennep found, through his extensive cross-cultural studies of traditional rites of passage, that life cycle ceremonies all over the world designed to guide a person from one stage of life to another share a common pattern.

Whether it was a birth ceremony, a wedding ceremony, or a vision quest leading one from childhood to adulthood, each of these rites followed a three-stage pattern consisting of separation from the familiar, transition to a new status, and incorporation, a return to the community with a new role.

Indigenous peoples everywhere were very accustomed to living within this archetypal framework. We also understand this pattern as birth, death, and rebirth. This is a pattern of quest, challenge, and renewal, and is the standard process by which we undergo every life transition – and achieve transformation.

In our own lives, we can recognize how this pattern of transformation takes the form of beginning, muddle, and resolution. Our challenge today is identifying this pattern when it occurs in our lives, as it often will.

If we can identify this pattern, and even be a little better prepared for it, when opposition and adversity do come into our lives, we might be better able to recognize them for what they are – harbingers of transformation – and integrate these necessary ingredients of life into our new understanding that we are always in the process of becoming.

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