Pain

I find that no one talks about it in spiritual circles. No one mentions it. It seems that we treat pain as if it were a small thing, but it is not a small thing. It sometimes seems that we treat pain as if it were a shameful thing, as if to say that if we were really so spiritually enlightened, we wouldn't experience pain, or the exigencies of our pain wouldn't keep us from experiencing unconditional love and joy.

The reality is that many of us experience pain, sometimes severe, sometimes chronic and continuous and it looms large in our consciousness at times. This is not shameful; it is a part of our experience of being in the world.

I don't have a lot to say about it, but I will say this. When we convince ourselves that pain is best ignored and pretend that it's all okay, we do ourselves a disservice. I believe that we do better when we acknowledge the pain and feel it, not to try to enjoy it, but to bring ourselves once again into that acceptance of our experience in the moment.

We can practice dissolving all resistance to it. I've done that and been surprised by the results; it's an exercise that has taught me a great deal about my response to pain and the choices I have with regards to it. Yet every now and then I just give up and take a mega-dose of pain killing acetaminophen. And sometimes, if the pain has been too strong for too long, I break down and cry. That doesn't make me weak and it doesn't make me less spiritually enlightened than anybody else. It just makes me human.

We are consciousness that is divine and infinitely loving. Yet let us remember that we are consciousness embodied and that sometimes our bodies experience pain. Pain then fills our consciousness more or less. Breathing deeply and slowly helps immeasurably with this. Acceptance and the dissolving of resistance to the pain is a practice that offers great benefits. The pain is lessened when we relax our bodies out of the instinctive tension brought on by the pain and our consciousness is expanded by our practice of dissolving all resistance to this most personal of problems. When we center ourselves in our hearts and breathe deeply, we can actually come to a full acceptance of the pain. This too is of our being in the world, and our being in the world is a sacred thing.

That's all I wanted to say, really. I just don't like to completely ignore such a powerful experience, especially since I am so well acquainted with it!