It was the late 1990s, and a party was in full swing—music blaring, drinks flowing, and conversation and laughter filling the rooms. But I was in a quiet corner deep in conversation with Gloria Karpinski, a global teacher of human development. I have no memory of how we got on the subject, but we were discussing what it means to be spiritually mature. We finally agreed on a concise definition: spiritual maturity is the ability to sit comfortably in the lap of paradox. With that weighty issue settled, we rejoined the party and all its merriment. I have never forgotten that definition, and it is the perfect way to introduce the next mystical sensibility on my list: cultivating comfort with paradox.

Drawing from various definitions, paradox is a statement that seems contradictory or nonsensical on the surface but with deeper reflection reveals a profound truth. It often requires us to reconcile two opposing ideas by reconsidering our initial assumptions.

Some paradoxes do not cause us any inner tension; we simply “get them.” We all have heard and used these kinds of statements:

• Less is more.
• The only constant is change.
• The more you know, the less you understand.
• The only certainty is that nothing is certain.

However, many spiritual paradoxes are designed to create inner dissonance. They make us pause and ask to be taken into contemplation. They challenge our conventional thinking and push us to a deeper understanding.

• Be in the world but not of the world.
• You must lose yourself to truly find yourself.
• If you meet the Buddha on the road, slay him.
• Nothing is everything, everything is nothing.

One thing is certain about paradox: it is not something to be figured out. In fact, the harder we try to solve the seeming contradiction, the further we get from insight. Determination is not our way in. A classic Buddhist story illustrates this point. A student asks a teacher how long it will take to master his teachings. The teacher replies, “Ten years.” “But,” the student promises, “I will be the most diligent, dedicated pupil you have ever had.” “In that case,” the teacher says, “twenty years.”

While logic often seeks clear, definitive answers, spiritual paradox offers a different path. It is a powerful tool designed to loosen our rigid attachment to logic and cultivate respect for uncertainty. By moving us beyond either/or thinking toward a more integral both/and perspective, paradox challenges the ego’s need for strict categorization and simplistic or superficial meaning. It encourages a more reflective, contemplative, and expansive awareness. Ultimately, paradox helps us cultivate the humility and grace to honor life’s mysteries, fostering a greater tolerance for abstraction and a deeper trust in inspiration.

Words—naming, defining, characterizing—are totally inadequate to mystical pursuits. Among the greatest gifts of paradox is that it teaches us that “knowing” is not intellectual, but phenomenological. We must feel our way toward “truth” and insight. In fact, mystical perception is more a “cloud of unknowing,” as the title of a classic Christian mystical text tells us. Beyond all thought, imagery, and intellectual concepts is the liminal space where the soul meets and experiences the divine.

Most readers of this blog practice the Andean sacred arts. We meet paradox in this tradition, although it makes mostly subtle appearances. Practices such as saminchakuy and saiwachakuy, along with reflection and contemplation, help us perceive the deeper spiritual truths that words and logic cannot express. They are methods that move us inward to the quiet, luminous places where we listen rather than talk, feel rather than think, and absorb rather than learn. The paradox of these practices is that they are both passive and active, and neither passive nor active. Embedded within the stillness are creational energies, what in the Andean tradition we call ayni, or reciprocal interchanges. As Christian mystic Thomas Merton explains, “One of the strange laws of the contemplative life is that in it you do not sit down and solve problems: you bear with them until they somehow solve themselves. Or until life solves them for you.”

Partnering with life is at the heart of the Andean tradition, and ayni is one of its central tenets. This Andean principle of reciprocity and mutualism is a foundational concept for Andeans within multiple spheres of life: the personal, the communal or social, and the spiritual. At the personal and social levels, it is commonly explained as “today for you, tomorrow for me.” Indigenous Andeans live agrarian lives, and this kind of ayni means that when you need help in your fields or with your herds, I will be there for you, and vice versa. However, even at this personal level ayni is never a purely transactional exchange. It always involves the increase in each party’s well-being. Ayni teaches that our well-being is intrinsically linked to the well-being of others, including that of the natural world. It is a deep-seated worldview that everything is interconnected and that reciprocity empowers both parties.

At an energetic level, ayni’s paradoxicality lies in its dual nature: it is a practical, physical action in life whose roots spring from a profound, non-material spirituality. This paradox includes the understanding that ayni first and foremost is a state of consciousness; however, without action there is no ayni. Ayni involves will, choice, awareness, and intention, yet its deep-down dynamic is the flow of one’s essence within larger energetic fields, from that of the human social sphere to that of alignment with the cosmos. Practicing ayni reveals that we are an integral part of the living universe, not separate from it. In this way, ayni is a conscious alignment with our own true nature.

In the Andean cosmovision, the spiritual and material are seen as two aspects of one reality. The Quechua word for this complementary polarity is yanantin. The concept of yanantin in Andean philosophy presents a powerful and often misunderstood paradox. Western dualisms (such as good versus evil, right versus wrong, me versus you) tend to emphasize a struggle for dominance of one over the other. Yanantin views seemingly opposite forces (such as male/female, light/dark, inner/outer, me/you) as essential, interdependent parts of a unified whole. Yanantin is not about achieving balance, but harmony. In any given situation, one aspect of the yanantin may be more prominent, active, or dominant, but still there is no fundamental asymmetry. The shifting energy dynamics of the yanantin pair create the conditions for growth, change, variety, and novelty. The essence of yanantin is not a focus on its twoness, or the different though complementary aspects of the two individual elements, but on their oneness, on the wholeness are arises from their essential relationship of complementarity. In essence, yanantin is the paradox of being the mirror of itself: of simultaneously perceiving Multiplicity and Oneness, and understanding they are not mutually exclusive. (Andean paqos would not venture into the Buddhist landscape of multiplicity being an illusion, although they would acknowledge that “separateness” is a misunderstanding of the fundamental nature of reality.)

Whatever the paradox, as a spiritual tool it is useful in all kinds of ways. Feeling comfort with paradox, and therefore being willing to embrace it, can heighten creativity. It pushes us to think, feel, and even be in ways that are outside the consensus norm—we wander into the land of creative insight, innovation, and novelty. If we spend any time there, we realize this is an environment of delight, revelation, and even joy. Paradox invites us to be curious and creatively adaptive: when we are face to face with the non-rational and even illogical, we quickly make friends with uncertainty, fluidity, and nuance. Arm in arm, they guide us toward innovative ways to know, understand, ponder, perform, problem-solve, feel, express, and choose. As we seek to harmonize what feels like the tension of opposites, we cultivate the capacity to reframe and reconceptualize: not only about the nature of the cosmos and the world—and our relationship to them—but about our own human nature. We must face our own inconsistencies; and when we do, we are more accepting of others, and even of life in this oh-so-human world. Perhaps the most impactful aspect of embracing paradox is that we open ourselves to a kind of reverence for the polarity in which we are steeped: our simultaneous physical and metaphysical beingness; the astounding complexity and astonishing variety of the world and of ourselves, and their inherent elegance; the stubborn “isness” of mundane material form and the palimpsest of the sacred that informs everything.  As Buddhist philosopher Dōgen Zenji so plainly states this paradox: “In the mundane, nothing is sacred. In sacredness, nothing is mundane.” This is the stance of the mystic, which is why when we befriend paradox, we make a friend for life.