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The Horn’s of a Dilemma …
Posted by Joseph Riggio on Friday, December 07, 2007Resolving the Paradox ... and Wisdom’s Emerging ...
Howdy all,
Today will be quick, unless I find that I have a lot more time than I expect to later on during the day to come back and write more ...
The reason I'm writing such a short entry today is that I'm on my way to a program I joined in September in NYC at the Open Center, Applied Mythology hosted by the group,
Last night we began the second module at the Open Center with an evening program with mythic scholar Michael Meade. It was two and a half hours of drumming, singing, story, poetry and political diatribe. He is a master performer and keep the audience engaged and enthralled. In that relatively short time he demonstrated a profound mastery of the art of metaphor and myth as well.
Somewhere in all of that Michael told a short story about the initiation ritual of Ancient Greece. In this particular ritual, which is the root of modern Olympic gymnastics as well, the boys and girls trained to do a spectacular feat, which would prove to be their initiation as well. They would train themselves to vault over a charging bull as it rushed at them to gore them to death ...
The bull would be sent rushing at the child who'd been preparing themselves and who'd been trained to stand immobile. Waiting for what must have seemed an eternity for the bull to come close enough ... at the last possible moment the child would take a running start and engage the monstrous beast head-on. As the enormous beast charged them the child would run directly at it, leaping over the horns and landing hands-down on its back, flipping themselves over to land safely on their feet behind the bull and out of harms way. For it's part the bull would continue charging forward crashing through the very spot the child had been standing only a moment before deprived of it's own moment of glory and satisfaction.
Michael told this story to make a point about holding the tension of the middle way as a sign of maturity. He told the group that the immature position is to take a side and a stand, a position of youth. Then as a person matures and becomes an elder they begin to accumulate the wisdom of life. The more wisdom a person has accumulated the more they can stand the tension of holding two opposing positions, seeing them as both being valid and not choosing either. When this tension is held ... and held ... and held ... and held ... long enough, something not present in either position emerges. This is the resolution of the seeming paradox present in the opposition. This is avoiding the horns of a dilemma.
I personally loved this bit of the evening, I'd even say it was my favorite part. To some extent this is true because it reminds me so much of Roye's training about seemingly incongruous pairs, which for him also represented the resolution of paradox, and the signal that a great wisdom was emerging.
Until then ...
Joseph Riggio, Social Designer ... Mythogenisist ...
Princeton, NY
