Our Gemara on Amud Aleph discusses the protocol for reading the Tetragrammaton. Although it is spelled with the letters Yud, Heh, Vav, etc., it is pronounced as Ado--nai. The Yud-Heh, etc., name in Hebrew implies an intrinsic existence that makes itself. The Ado—nai name in Hebrew refers to God as a master or Lord. The duality between the pronunciation, and the word that is seen on the page, represents a fundamental duality and tension in the physical and spiritual world.

Chayyim V'chesed (443) and Sod Yesharim (The Night of Shabbos Chol HaMoed Pesach 9) explain that on the one hand, God is completely independent and unfathomable, but on the other hand, relative to the perspective of physical beings, He is a Master. That means to say, humans need to relate to God as a mighty power and revered king in order to grasp our smallness and vulnerability. If God were made too abstract, humans would have difficulty seeing God as an ever-present entity who is unlimited in ability and engaged with His subjects. This is a necessary concession for the physical world, but God Himself is greater than any description. This is what the verse (Zecharia 14:9) means when it says, "On that day, Hashem YKV-etc., and His name (Ado–nai) will be one," that is, that creation will have been elevated to a spiritual state that can apprehend God as He truly is, so His essence and His name will be one in the same.

Because as I like to say in Psychology of the Daf, “everything is everything”, this pattern repeats throughout the creation. Toldos Yaakov Yosef (Yisro) says that this duality exists within the person, the body and soul, within the Torah (Oral and Written), and in prayer too (the words and the heart and emotions).

When patterns repeat themselves, it is a sign of design. The space held by the tension between the physical and spiritual, body and soul, and God’s immanence and transcendence enables something not fully comprehensible in the physical world, be rendered more comprehensible than without holding the tension.  It is like an irrational number, you can hold it in your head conceptually, but it cannot be reduced to the precise math.

Another example of this manifestation is the tension between human intellect and emotions, that is, rational thought versus emotional and intuitive thought. The word "rational" comes from the Greek, "to measure." Rational thought is always going to look better on paper by its very definition. It can always be demonstrated. Emotional and intuitive thought get a bad rap because literally, it is irrational. Some, therefore, make the error of squelching and discounting non-rational thought. 

A human functions best when emotions are felt and processed fully. Emotions and intuition can come from unconsciously perceived data coming from the more animal part of ourselves. But animals can know things. Bees and spiders build elaborate structures; homing pigeons have a GPS better than WAZE. Are they engineers capable of intelligent creative design? No. But their instinct and programming provide remarkable abilities. The animal part of the human personality, which comes out in emotions, often has vital data that must be considered. They are like the lights on your dashboard - they represent information about the status of the equipment but not rational intelligence. When the lights start flashing, it is dangerous to ignore them nor should you trust them fully. Instead, once you let them report to you, you can decide what response is best. So too, emotions must be felt and acknowledged fully before trying to use rational thought alone to decide. When the check engine light goes on, it might be a minor issue or it might be on fire — you won’t know unless you check the engine.