Author: Ryan Klette

  • The Mandorla: Meeting Ourselves in the Space Between

    The Mandorla: Meeting Ourselves in the Space Between

    The Mandorla: Meeting Ourselves in the Space Between

    A dear teacher of mine, Caroline Carey, shares a powerful process called the Mandorla.

    At first glance, it seems simple: two overlapping circles.

    Each circle represents a different truth, a polarity that exists in our lives. One may hold light, the other shadow. One may carry longing, the other resistance. One may be the part of us that longs for belonging, while another wants to stand apart.

    The place where the circles overlap is the Mandorla — the almond-shaped space in the middle.

    It isn’t about choosing one side over the other. Instead, we step into the space between them and become curious about what each side has to tell us.

    Caroline teaches that The Magic of Mandorla can help us come into a deeper relationship with what she describes as our core wound. Rather than treating this wound as something to overcome, we can begin to meet it with curiosity and compassion. In doing so, we may begin to see that what we have struggled with can also hold a particular gift.

    “And the fire and the rose are one.”
    — T. S. Eliot

    An Ancient Symbol

    The Mandorla is an ancient symbol found across religious and artistic traditions. Its familiar almond shape is created where two circles overlap, a form also known as the vesica piscis.

    The image has often been associated with union: the meeting of opposites, the place where two seemingly different realities come together.

    For me, this is what makes the image so powerful. It gives us a picture of something we all experience:

    living between opposing truths.

    We can want closeness and fear it.

    Want freedom and crave security.

    Long for change while desperately wanting things to stay the same.

    Why the Middle Matters

    When we step consciously into each circle, we can listen:

    What lives here?
    What does this side know?
    What is it trying to tell me?

    We might notice words, memories, images, emotions or sensations in the body.

    And when we give each side enough space to speak, something interesting can happen.

    We may begin to realise that neither side needs to be rejected.

    When we are caught in polarity, however, we can become identified with one side. We cling to hope and reject fear. We push ourselves toward connection while ignoring our need for safety. Or we retreat into protection and lose contact with what we long for.

    The Mandorla offers another possibility:

    What happens if I can hold both?

    Not solving the tension.

    Not forcing harmony.

    Just becoming curious about what might become visible when we stop choosing sides.

    Yin and Yang: Another Polarity

    Yin and Yang offer another beautiful example of polarity.

    We all have an active side and a receptive side. We might also think of these as masculine and feminine qualities within us, qualities that all of us carry, regardless of our gender.

    Sometimes our masculine, active energy can override the feminine, receptive side.

    We can get caught in over-doing: pushing forward, achieving, fixing, making things happen. We can become so focused on action that we struggle to stop and rest. Even when our bodies are asking us to slow down, we keep going.

    At other times, we can become too identified with the feminine, receptive side. We may be waiting, holding back or not taking enough action when perhaps it is time to step forward.

    Neither side is wrong. The question is: how are these two sides relating to each other?

    This is where I find the Mandorla so useful.

    We can draw the two circles and represent both sides as we currently experience them.

    What does my active side look like?

    What does my receptive side look like?

    How are they showing up in my life right now?

    And perhaps most importantly: What does each side need?

    Maybe the active side needs to learn how to rest, receive and allow.

    Maybe the receptive side needs encouragement to take a risk, step forward and act.

    By bringing both sides into the Mandorla, we can begin to see what each one is trying to do and what might allow them to come into a healthier relationship with one another.

    Rather than choosing masculine or feminine, doing or being, perhaps we can learn to move more freely between them.

    Sometimes it is time to act.

    Sometimes it is time to rest.

    Sometimes we need to push forward.

    Sometimes we need to let go and receive.

    We don’t have to get rid of one side to make room for the other.

    We can develop a better relationship between them.

    ✍️ A Mandorla Journaling Practice

    You can try this as a simple creative journaling exercise.

    1. Take a blank sheet of paper and draw two overlapping circles.
    2. Identify a polarity you are experiencing in your life right now.
      Freedom / security. Belonging / independence. Hope / fear. Doing / being.
    3. Step into the first circle. Write words, images, memories or sensations that belong here. Let this side speak freely.
    4. Move into the second circle and do the same. Give this side space to express itself.
    5. You can return to the circles over several days or weeks, adding drawings, words, colours, images or symbols.
    6. When both sides have had a chance to speak, move into the Mandorla — the almond-shaped space between them.
    7. Ask: What does each side want me to know?
      What is important to each of them?
      What does each side need?
      Where has our relationship become rigid or stuck?
      What becomes possible when I don’t have to choose?
      What is needed now?

    Then notice what emerges.

    It may be a word.

    An image.

    A bodily sensation.

    A new possibility.

    Or simply a little more space around something that previously felt stuck.

    A Mandorla in Practice

    Imagine someone who longs deeply for connection but also becomes frightened when people get too close.

    In one circle she might write:

    Warmth. Belonging. Being seen. Laughter. Love.

    In the other:

    Danger. Rejection. Too much. Don’t trust. They’ll leave.

    Rather than deciding that one side is healthy and the other is a problem, she gives both sides her attention.

    She begins to wonder whether both are, in their own ways, trying to protect something important.

    Then she moves into the Mandorla.

    And something new emerges:

    “I want to risk small steps. I don’t need to rush. I can let people in slowly, in ways that feel safe.”

    The fear hasn’t disappeared. The longing hasn’t disappeared. But she is no longer trapped between them.

    There is now another possibility, one that honours both.

    This is part of what Caroline points toward when she speaks of transforming the core wound into a gift: not getting rid of the difficult parts of ourselves, but developing a different relationship with them.

    Closing Thought

    I find the Mandorla especially meaningful at a time when so much of our world seems organised around choosing sides.

    We can see this in politics, culture, religion, relationships and within ourselves.

    The Mandorla doesn’t ask us to erase differences or pretend that opposing truths are the same.

    It asks something more difficult:

    Can we stay present in the tension long enough to listen?

    Can we make room for the part that wants to move forward and the part that wants to protect us?

    Can we listen without immediately deciding who is right?

    Sometimes, when we stop trying to resolve the tension, something new begins to emerge from it.

    The Mandorla is the space between.

    A place to pause. To listen. To hold both.

    And perhaps to discover what neither side could see alone.

  • The Trap You Don’t Have to Escape From

    The Trap You Don’t Have to Escape From

    I felt that same old familiar feeling — rock and a hard place, as the saying goes. I’ve been there many, many times before. That place where there really doesn’t seem to be any movement either way. You’re damned.

    If you’re quiet enough, the answer will come. The movement will come.
    And it’s not a movement that comes from your mind.
    Hell, you can’t even take credit for it — because there’s nothing you did for it, except one big thing:

    Give up the struggle.

    Instead of trying to find your way out of the hard place, forcing solutions, trying to figure it all out, or arguing with life about why you’re in there in the first place, you do something so counterintuitive, so revolutionary, that your mind nearly jumps out of its own head.

    You simply stop the struggle.

    Imagine being tied up in one of those knots that only tightens the more you pull. That’s not far from the truth of the hard place. It’s as if the more we try to wrestle our way out, the deeper we dig the hole.

    But still — no one likes being stuck. And rightly so.

    Maybe I shouldn’t speak for everyone. I’ve met a few who seem to prefer stuckness because the idea of freedom is just too overwhelming.
    But most of us, I imagine, would much rather be free.
    And there’s nothing worse than the feeling of no movement.

    What I’m getting at is this: stuckness — the not-knowing, the confusion, the fog, the feeling lost — these are all forms of the hard place.
    And I don’t think any of that is actually the problem.

    In fact, I think we’d be wise to expect them.
    Being lost and confused is just part of being human.

    I watched this series recently — Somebody Somewhere — and I highly recommend it for the realness of its characters and the vulnerability of its story. There’s a line that changes the course of the main character Sam’s life. Her friend says to her:

    “No one knows what they’re doing.”

    Never has a truer word been spoken.
    None of us really know.
    We’re just making it up as we go, and stumbling as we go.

    But somehow, we’ve picked up this bad habit of expecting more from ourselves, like we ought to know better.
    Well, how on earth ought we to know more than we do?

    It’s a total delusion. We can only know what we know.
    And we’re going to get it wrong — again and again — and that does not need to be a problem.

    In fact, in my experience, the less I make it a problem, the more I learn.

    So back to that damned ditch I was in — that old familiar feeling. Can’t say yes, can’t say no. No obvious way to go.

    But something strange happened.

    I noticed I wasn’t so afraid of the feeling anymore.
    And a little voice inside reminded me:
    I am completely free to make my best move.

    I think of a tennis court — the best rallies, the impossible shots that come out of impossible angles.
    Even if the player loses the point, we love watching that kind of play — the creativity, the comeback, the refusal to give in.

    Something in us lights up when we see someone come back from a hard place.
    People rising out of difficulty, big or small — it’s an endless fascination.

    So maybe the point isn’t to wish for the rock and the hard place.

    But what if we could be just a little more grateful for those moments?
    Because they’re asking something of us — something more than we think we have.

    And the only way out… is in.
    To trust that it’s in you, in me, in everyone — and to learn to follow it.

  • Choosing the Hard Thing

    Choosing the Hard Thing

    If you are not prepared for the hard thing, given the opportunity, you’ll go for the easy option. Case in point: me.

    I intend to do this writing—the hard thing—and then I click on my browser and YouTube wants to tell me about F1, the easy thing. No disrespect towards the easy action. For some reason, I love to watch cars speed around a race track at ridiculous speeds. But it’s a very easy action to take. It takes much more to stay with the hard thing.

    Here are some thoughts about why that is so, and what we can do to make the harder thing easier. Which sounds like a kind of oxymoron, but what if the hard thing is what you really want? The choice that’s most likely to fill you up.

    Life is full of these hard actions we avoid doing. Once I’ve set my mind on something, guaranteed something else will come and pull me in a different direction. And let’s say I click on that seductive video, what’s the true cost, aside from the time lost? I’d argue it’s usually more than we think.

    What I forget is that it’s my life I’m giving—these small moments that make up the bigger arcs of time. That become the patterns that shape my future self.

    These small choices matter. At the same time, I can also err in the other direction, putting pressure on every moment to make it count. That’s its own form of insanity. So what does the middle ground look like? How do I do more of the hard things, without making life impossibly hard overall?

    One way is to give yourself permission to do nothing at all which, it turns out, is a lot harder than it seems. And possibly a step up from the F1 video that calls to the distractor parts of me. These moments of pause and non-doing are sometimes themselves expressions of the hard thing. Especially in modern society, where we have to contend with all the voices calling us lazy or unproductive. But what if the pause gives you the space to find the right action?

    Epictetus, in his way, warned against wishing life away. Even the waiting is part of it. You remember wanting to get there, on the way to the beach. But you wouldn’t actually want to fast-track it so that you didn’t have the experience of not being there yet. That part is just as valid as arriving—an expression of life.

    There are all kinds of moments, and we can’t hope to be doing the most productive thing in every one. But we can aim for the hard part: to stay with experience, especially when it isn’t the way we want it to be.

    “Don’t demand that things happen as you wish, but wish that they happen as they do happen, and you will go on well.” —Epictetus

    Back to my F1 example: does doing the hard thing mean I should never exchange ten minutes of my life for the experience of seeing cars go fast around a track? To my mind, not at all. We have a very real need for non-directional time, especially in a modern context. If it’s always about doing and achieving, we’re sure to run into crisis at some point.

    Time that’s playful in nature, or relaxing, or that disconnects us from the directional drive of our lives—that time is essential.

    There’s also no way to avoid getting distracted. I don’t imagine there’s anyone on this planet who’s 100% focused all the time. It’s more realistic to see distraction as a normal, even useful part of the day. You can wake up inside the distraction, and see what it’s trying to do for you.

    Most of the time, it’s just trying to take us away from discomfort or pain. But what if we stayed with the uncomfortable experience, even if that’s just our old friend boredom? It could be anything. What happens when you don’t resist it, but let it in for a moment—get to know it, even if just for 30 seconds? Doing nothing more than not trying to change your experience.

    As Gary Keller likes to say:
    “What’s the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”

  • The Myth of Not Enough Time

    The Myth of Not Enough Time

    It’s been an unusually busy year for me—taking on a full year of both study and work. Feels like I’ve been mastering the art of juggling tasks and life. But even though, objectively, there are more things to get done, it’s not like I don’t have the time to do them. It’s my relationship with time that counts—the story I’m telling myself about how much of it I actually have.

    The story often goes something like: “I don’t have enough time.” or “there is too much to do”. But stories like these carries weight. It blinds me to the fact that I can often get done in ten minutes what, on another day, might take me an hour. What is that? It’s not hyper-productivity. It’s just… doing the thing in front of me, without resistance. Just doing it—without obsessing over how it turns out.

    It’s exactly like this writing. I could easily say, “I have no time for it,” with all the deadlines stacked up around me—but that’s not really true. When I’m just in it, it gets done in its own way. Not because I forced it, not because I nailed it, but because I didn’t get in the way of it. What I think I’m starting to learn is not to worry so much about the outcomes. There will be failures and shortcomings. Doing the thing that’s yours to do doesn’t insulate you from imperfection. But maybe those imperfections are something to celebrate. They’re proof we’re alive. That we’re actually in the business of living.

    And that’s not so much about getting somewhere—though sure, there are many places to get to. It’s more about being here. Its receptive, its listening, receiving and allowing that to move something in us. What wants to move beyond our thinking of things .. what if we did more of that ?

    But some parts of us just don’t know how to not be in fast gear. Those parts are carrying beliefs that might not even be ours. We inherit them—from ancestry, from culture, from the world. The idea that we need to keep doing, being busy to prove our worth. We often carry these beliefs without even knowing it. And for those parts of us that are trying to hold it all together, slowing down can feel like dying.

    “Busyness is not a proxy for productivity. It’s a sign that your time is being used carelessly.”
    — Cal Newport, Slow Productivity

    The big misconception is that slowing down means moving slower. Not true. You might even find yourself moving faster. It’s a state of mind.

  • Discovering the habit you didn’t know you needed

    Discovering the habit you didn’t know you needed

    These are often life defining moments, when we stop long enough to reflect on what we’re doing and find ways to get behind ourselves a little more. One of my mentors told me many times over, “you’re fine the way and you need to grow”. The point being we have to take care to do this growing work from a place of acceptance so that we don’t end up fighting ourselves tooth and nail in the service of ‘goals’. If you’re like me with roots in western culture, then you are probably well acquainted with the habit of pushing, controlling and trying to make things happen. When it comes to our personal development, this mode of being can only take us so far. Its often more receptivity we need, to listen in and move with the language of intuition. 

    As habits go, I imagine the underlying question for most of us is how we can feel better, be more productive and bring more of ourselves to everyday life. Its certainly a big question and not one that could be addressed in one article.   What I want to explore here is how to find the habits that are likely to contribute to this project in unexpected ways, and especially the ones that are hidden from view. 

    A short story to lay the foundation for the case of the hidden habit. Take Ami for instance, she is driven by connection. She loves to network and be part of groups. Although not always easy, navigating the dynamics within group space comes naturally to her. Recently, she was on a team building day and one of the exercises she took part in was to stand in sequence from most to least experienced person in the company. Her manager made a mistake and had her stand out of place before a lessor experienced person. She immediately felt something off in her gut. It was visceral rather than intellectual, a ‘felt sense’ as philosopher Eugene Gendlin termed it. The problem is we often miss this felt sense that we can only experience in the body, and this has untold consequences because the body can guide us in ways the mind cannot. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk wrote a New York best seller called ‘the body keeps score’, the essence of which explains how the body never lies and that understanding the language of the body is key to unlocking our potential. Not so for the mind. We can get caught up in all kinds of stories that have little bearing on reality. That doesn’t mean we need to reject the mind, mind has a magnificence of its own. Just that mind and body together will always lead us in more informed ways so that our actions reflect more of who we are. Back to the story, Ami asserted herself with the manager that wrongly placed her and moved to her correct place. She immediately noticed a sense of calm return to her body. Towards the end of the line, she noticed that her friend Tanya was also out of place but wasn’t standing for  her place. Tanya was unable to read and act on the cues that her body would have been sending her, that would have likely led her to a similar action as Ami. 

    This is the function of social intelligence and its instinctive, meaning we are not moved from our heads but rather from the gut. Ami was more connected to this intelligence, she knew it in her body and followed the sensations that accompanied the instinct. When she stood out of her place she experienced unease and only when she returned to the right sequence did she feel ok again. In contrast, Tanya was not used to navigating the discomfort that ensues when navigating group dynamics like these. You may have to stretch your imagination to feel into the possible effects of each outcome. Part of our survival depends on being able to read and navigate these kinds of social cues. Those who are connected to this intelligence are able to contribute to the groups they are part of in more meaningful ways and earn status that in itself is a kind of currency. 

    Although instinctual energy is not something that shows up in the mind, we can still bring perspective to it to see how it is working in us. Think about when you are thirsty, you know it in the body. You feel the thirst and reach for a glass of water. This is another example of our instincts in action, and we have three broad categories of instinctual energy. One only needs to look to nature for confirmation as these instincts have evolved over millions of years to shape the nervous system that we know today.  These intelligence’s function to keep us safe and thriving in the world. At a basic level, they are as follows: 

    1. Self preservation (SP) – immediate needs, money, nutrition, general health and wellbeing 

    2. Sexual / creative (SX) – need for one to one connection , creation, transmission and recreation 

    3. Social (SO) – safety in the group, tuned into well being of the group. what is our role or contribution to the group 

    The key point here is that we need all three instincts in balance and for most of us there is a significant gap between the leading and lagging instinct. As the theory goes, which is connected to the Enneagram typology system, these instincts are stacked from a dominant to weakest. In my case, I am SP leading, followed by SX and SO lagging. That means some of the most effective work I have done on myself has been in the realm of the social instinct. And this certainly wasn’t always obvious to me. In fact for most of my life, I did my personal work, guess where! more in my leading instinct. I focused on diet, health, money and all things self-preservation. The really interesting point is working on the weaker is good for all three as well as our emotional and psychological health.

    As we develop from childhood we tend to grow more dominant in one instinct and weaker in another. To maxmise gains in the practice of habits building, we do well to pay attention to our weaker instinct. Say for instance you are self preservation dominant, that means you would be the kind of person that is naturally more attuned to things like diet, health and wellbeing. One can often tell a SP dominant person when you enter their home. You might feel a sense of calm as you enter their home, many plants for instance and resources like light and air that resource us.   For this kind of person building habits around health and wellness or even care around money may not be the ground that needs the most immediate attention. That’s not to say that people who lead with SP shouldn’t work on habits in this area but the question for me is, what is most pressing baring in mind that strengthening the weaker instinct tends to bring balance to the others all on its own. I am SP leading and my social has mostly tended to be the lagging instinct. Like I said, I leaned into SP when the going got tough in my life. 

    My wife in contrast is a very different kettle of fish. We are actually exactly opposite in our instinctual stack so that I end up being the one nagging her to fill up her water bottle and she is on my case to better prepare for social engagements. Just the other day for instance we had people over and we sat in the lounge for the duration of the evening. Being social, she said to me the next day that she had a niggle to move us to the kitchen. She felt it would have been more conducive for the group. This hadn’t crossed my mind at all but when I listened to her I understood exactly what she meant. It was a similar to the feeling I get when I know I didn’t eat well, and feel the effects of it the next day.   Its a perfect illustration of different things going on for us and neither being more right, just different strengths. 

    Because we understand this map of instincts, it gives us the opportunity to language what would otherwise be invisible to us. We can both (gently) call each other out when our focus is other than where it should be. On a relationship level this can be a game changer because its a very common reason why we miss each other. We often expect people, especially the ones we care about to see the world from our vantage point and we are often worlds apart. 

    What to do then? how to find the habit hiding from view. Reflect on your instinctual stack. if you are SP like I am you will most likely thrive in habits that move you to deeper levels of health and wellbeing. But that’s not necessarily going to be the most productive way of focusing your energy. If you are like me than developing the social instinct may not occur to you at all. Now you are in the field of the hidden habit. Well what could you do in order to develop socially could be a powerful question to ask yourself. If you are like my wife, you would be someone who would likely hugely benefit from exercising the SP instinct and could think through the kinds of habits that would support you in this space. Maybe you are someone with a lower Sexual / creative instinct. This is often called one to one, people who thrive in the juice of intimate connection and the intensity of creative energy. 

    Simple steps to follow – 

    1. Identify your instinctual stack. 
    2. Experiment with habits  in your weakest instinct.
    3. Review and adjust as you go.