Flexing In Flow: Using Enantiodromia as a Path to Eudemonia

“The Madman knows that once God is dead, man must live like a god: man must go beyond the limits of his own being, leave his own nature behind and assume the burden, the risk, and the pleasure of divinity.” ~Octavio Paz

What does it mean to assume the burden, the risk, and the pleasure of divinity?

It means proactively building the bridge to the Overman. It means renovating your routine and reconditioning your cultural conditioning. It means flexing your spirituality (your Soul) to edge out your religiosity (your Ego). It means killing your attachment to God to resurrect your Nonattachment to Infinity.

This requires courage and audacity, endurance and insouciance, perseverance and dissonance. It requires madness and moxie, folly and fortitude, nonconformity and fervidity.

It’s not for the faint of heart, the status quo junkies, the dogma dupes, the order-clingers, or the comfort zone mongers. It’s for mettle-sharpeners, Phoenix-resurrectors, and Lion-awakeners. It’s for those who would be gods.

Defining our terms:

Eudaimonia is an ancient Greek philosophical term for "flourishing," "well-being," or "living a good life," as opposed to a fleeting emotion. It signifies a stable state of fulfilling one's highest potential through rational activity, virtue, and wisdom. Unlike happiness, which can be temporary, eudaimonia is a deeper, active, and enduring state that results from living a virtuous and meaningful life according to one's own values.

Enantiodromia is the principle that everything eventually makes way for its opposite. Coined by ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus and later introduced into modern psychology by Carl Jung, describes the natural tendency for things to turn into their opposite, especially when pushed to an extreme. In essence, enantiodromia serves as a reminder of the inherent interconnectedness and dynamic interplay of opposites in nature and within the human psyche. Understanding this principle encourages self-awareness, along with a willingness to explore and integrate neglected aspects of the self for personal growth and wholeness.

Enantiodromia suggests that life’s deepest truths emerge not from clinging to one pole but from embracing the tension and flow between opposites. To achieve eudaimonia, one must engage with this alchemical process while allowing the self to be reshaped through cycles of destruction and renewal.

Iteration as a whetstone:

“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.” ~Pema Chödrön

Chödrön’s insight captures the essence of this process. Eudaimonia is not a static state but a dynamic one, requiring you to surrender comfort and certainty. Each time you are “thrown out of the nest,” you confront the opposite of your current state—security becomes vulnerability, certainty becomes curiosity, knowledge becomes doubt. By embracing these shifts, you refine your being, much like a blade sharpened on a whetstone through iterative cycles of friction.

The process of iteration—repeating, refining, and adapting—is a practical application of enantiodromia. Each cycle of experience sharpens your understanding, stripping away illusions and revealing deeper truths. Imagine the self as raw material, honed through repeated encounters with life’s challenges. Mistakes, failures, and moments of discomfort become the grit that polishes the soul. Through iteration, you learn to navigate the tension between effort and surrender, action and reflection.

This oscillation is neither failure nor victory but progress—a refining process that brings you closer to eudaimonia. By viewing life as an iterative journey, you embrace the inevitability of change and use it as a tool for growth. Each cycle teaches you to balance opposing forces—work and rest, self and other, certainty and mystery—until you align with our deepest purpose.

Put your ego on a leash:“The Soul demands your folly, not your wisdom.” ~Carl Jung

Subordinate the ego’s rigid control to the soul’s wild, intuitive wisdom. The ego, with its focus on status (cultural conditioning), certainty (rigid religiosity), and self-preservation (comfort zone dependence), often resists the transformative pull of enantiodromia. It clings to fixed identities and safe routines, fearing the unknown.

Yet eudaimonia requires you to leash the ego, allowing the soul—your deeper, more authentic self—to lead. This process involves embracing vulnerability and folly, as Jung suggests. The soul thrives in the liminal space where opposites meet—between courage and fear, joy and sorrow, individuality and interconnectedness.

By surrendering the ego’s need for control, you allow your soul to guide you through the cycles of enantiodromia. A moment of profound loss may awaken compassion, or an act of reckless courage may reveal inner strength. This dance between opposites, led by the soul, fosters a state of flourishing that transcends the ego’s narrow desires.

The real secret to becoming adaptable to paradox and maintaining the tension between opposites is keeping humility ahead of hubris. Make sure the Ego works for the Soul and not the other way around.

Forget yourself; remember No-mind:

“To study the self is to forget the self.” ~Dogen

In Zen practice, No-mind (mushin) is a state of pure awareness, unburdened by the self’s narratives and attachments. Through enantiodromia, the self’s obsession with identity—its need to define and defend itself—gives way to its opposite: a spacious, selfless awareness.

Forgetting the self does not mean erasing individuality but releasing the illusion of a fixed, separate self. In this state, you connect with the flow of existence, where opposites like self and other, being and non-being, dissolve. This is a key to eudaimonia: by letting go of the self’s endless striving, you align with the deeper harmonies of the cosmos. You balance written laws with the Unwritten Law.

Through No-mind, you’re able to elevate yourself above the battlefield of the human condition. You see the big picture despite your small picture ego. From this strategic advantage, you’re able to utilize cognitive shifts in perspective. The Astronaut Overview Effect and Buddhist nonattachment become second nature.

Meditation, mindfulness, and creative immersion can facilitate this shift, allowing you to experience moments of No-mind where eudaimonia emerges naturally, like a river finding its True North.

Kill the religious God; resurrect the spiritual God:

“But now a great thing in the street

Seems any human nod,

Where shift in strange democracy

The million masks of God.” ~G.K. Chesterton

The “death of God,” famously declared by Nietzsche, represents the collapse of rigid, dogmatic religious structures that constrain human potential. Through enantiodromia, this death gives rise to its opposite: a living, spiritual divinity that emerges from within.

To achieve eudaimonia, you must move beyond external authorities and dogmatic beliefs while embracing a spirituality that is personal, dynamic, and experiential. This is about transcending religion’s limitations to discovering a God (or a sense of the divine) that pulses through all existence.

Divinity is not confined to temples but manifests in the ordinary, in the interplay of human connection, and the multiplicity of life. By killing the rigid “religious god,” you resurrect a spiritual God that invites you to live as a co-creator, embodying divine creativity and personal responsibility.

The disconnected religious God must die for the interconnected spiritual God to emerge. Only you have the power to kill the religious God. Only you have the power to resurrect the spiritual God.

A religious God implies a deity bound by dogma, institutions, and historical texts, whereas a spiritual God is a more personal, internal, and universal or even mystical experience of the sacred. This simple shift in perspective is a move from external authority to internal authenticity. It paves the way for individuals to seek divinity or meaning in more personal, existential, or even poetic forms.

The spiritual God is liberating (courage-based) rather than authoritative (fear-based). It is painful growth rather than comfortable stagnation. It’s open-minded questioning rather than close-minded acceptance. It’s interdependent rather than codependent. It speaks a language older than words rather than a language limited by words. It is driven by curiosity rather than certainty.

If, as Mark Twain said, “Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection,” then the delayed perfection of the religious God must be cooked into the continuous improvement of Truth, lest we starve at the table of delusion.

Integrating the Path to Eudaimonia:

“To romanticize the world is to make us aware of the magic, mystery and wonder of the world; it is to educate the senses to see the ordinary as extraordinary, the familiar as strange, the mundane as sacred, the finite as infinite.” ~Novalis

The journey to eudaimonia through enantiodromia is a dance of opposites, a process of continual transformation. Iteration serves as the whetstone, sharpening your being through cycles of trial and error. The ego, leashed by the soul, learns to surrender its need for control, embracing the folly and wisdom of the deeper self. Forgetting the self opens the door to No-mind, a state of pure awareness where opposites dissolve. And by releasing dogmatic notions of God, you awaken to a living spirituality that infuses every moment with meaning.

This path is not linear but cyclical, requiring courage to face the unknown and humility to embrace change. Each step—whether a leap into folly, a moment of self-forgetting, or a reimagining of the divine—will bring you closer to eudaimonia. As Chödrön suggests, you must be willing to be “thrown out of the nest” again and again, trusting that the tension of opposites will lead you to a life of flourishing.

In practice, this might look like a daily commitment to self-reflection, meditation, or creative expression, where you confront and integrate your inner contradictions. It might mean embracing moments of discomfort as opportunities for growth or seeking the divine in the ordinary interactions of life. By living in alignment with enantiodromia, you become, as Paz suggests, like God—bearing the burden and joy of your own divinity, fully alive in the strange democracy of existence.

Image source:

God of the Universe by Sarper Baran

About the Author:

Gary Z McGee, a former Navy Intelligence Specialist turned philosopher, is the author of Birthday Suit of God and The Looking Glass Man. His works are inspired by the great philosophers of the ages and his wide-awake view of the modern world.

This article (Flexing in Flow: Using Enantiodromia as a Path to Eudemonia) was originally created and published by Self-inflicted Philosophy and is printed here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Gary Z McGee and self-inflictedphilosophy.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this statement of copyright.