The Yin-Yang symbol is a good example of how the meaning is in the whole and not its parts. Each part is has its existence only in relationship to the other. To see the meaning and purpose in oppositions, we have to be able to think more holistically, which is all the while possible with a consciousness of the whole.

The principle of polarity is also bound up in the concept of relativity. Would there be light without dark, up without down, good without evil? One is what it is only because of its relationship to the other. We can see both as opposites and contradictory, and we can see them as different aspects of a whole that are therefore ultimately complementary.

It helps, too, to see transformation, the process of the merging of polarities, as an archetype, or a universal and oft repeated process whose timeless elements are shared by myth, ritual, and religion, and found in our own lives, as well. An archetype is a pattern repeated because it is an essential aspect of human life that may need to be experienced many times to show us life’s deepest meanings.