Trusting Pain

What if pain was not a mistake? What if pain didn’t mean that we screwed up, they screwed up, or God fell asleep on the job? What if each of us received our own measure of pain when we took on a body, not for punishment, but because it would be our teacher of awareness and compassion?  What if there was another way to work with pain, a way that allowed us to open up into a place that was bigger than struggle itself? And what if one of the greatest gifts we could give the world would be to move beyond struggling with our pain into being able to meet it with great compassion?

To open up to this possibility, we first have to explore the very novel idea that pain is not a mistake. Agnus Whistling Elk, a Native American shaman from Manitoba, spoke this truth in a most eloquent way:

If you look at something carefully, you will always be able to see its dark side. And yet we choose never to look into the shadows. Understand that it is what you choose not to observe in your life that controls your life. Everything begins with a circle of motion; without the positive and negative poles there would be no movement, no creation.  Without the dark side, your beauty would not exist. Don’t be afraid to look at both sides.  You need them both. Honor all as part of the Great Spirit.

Everywhere we look, we can see the truth of Agnus’s words: “Without positive and negative poles there would be no movement, no creation.” This shows up in the atom, which is a combination of positive and negative charges. It is evident in the acid/alkaline balance in our bodies and in the fact that the opposites of male and female are necessary in the procreation of complex life forms. It is also noticeable in the violence of nature. Mountain ranges are born when two tectonic plates collide. New forests are brought forth after lightning fires.

The importance of the negative aspects of life also shows up inside of us. We need our pain, our imperfections, and our failures. We would not be who we are without them. The author Thomas Moore invites us into this spacious relationship with that which disturbs when he says:

This requirement that we have to be perfect, that we have to get ourselves emotionally right, is such a burden. The more we try, the worse it gets! And so we try one type of therapy after another. It’s pretty defeating. See, soul really thrives in failure and imperfection. Jung said that soul moves at the weak point, where the personality is thin, where things are not secure and stable. That’s where soul has an entry. We need those vulnerable points.

On every level, in every experience, and in each being’s existence, the dance of life is a dance of dark and light. Darkness is rich and necessary, the place of fertility and creativity. Half of the Earth is always bathed in the dark of night. Out of black, moist dirt comes astounding creativity. Seeds, including us, incubate away from the light, and plants do their growth work in the dead of night.  The same is true for our emotional and spiritual lives. Each of us was given pairs of opposites, a desire to awaken and great resistance, vast courage and deep fear, raw hatred and an awakening heart. The opposites are our teachers.  In a way, the dance of our lives is about cooking the opposites until they blend into the rich soup of our potential.

So the invitation is to move out of fear and blame around pain, and become curious instead. It is my experience, having had a lot of pain in my life, if I resist, the pain gets more intense whether it shows up physically, mentally, or emotionally. But when I accept that this is what life is presenting right now so I can soften and respond, willing to listen and learn from what life is offering, then even the most difficult experience becomes my friend.

I leave you with a quote from the rapper Lil John: (I love that Awakening is showing up in the rapper world!)

“This is the biggest thing I learned on my journey – acceptance and with acceptance comes peace.  If you don’t accept what the universe and God is trying to tell you and you are always fighting it…like “Ahh, I want it to be this way”, ….No! You have to accept what He is telling you. Learn the lesson from that experience, good or bad. If you accept it, it will not bother you. If you have acceptance with whatever happens in your life you won’t be stressed because you know it’s going to be okay.”

If you’d like to explore pain further, I invite you to listen to my radio show Listening, Pain can Transform your Life airing on Dreamvisions 7 Radio on Thursdays, May 2nd and 9th at 5am and 5pm HERE. After the 9th, it will be available on demand, along with every other radio show I’ve ever done HERE. Please feel free to explore my archive and dive into topics that call to you.

Offerings:

If this exploration of pain calls to you, I invite you to join us for our next free live call. The topic is: Healing the Unhealed. We will look at pain as a part of this healing. The next live call will take place on May 7th, so save the date. Here is the summary:

We are each a community of parts, parts we like and parts we don’t like. But the parts we try to hide from don’t go away. In fact, they influence us from underneath our everyday awareness. Join Mary in exploring how to heal your unlikable parts so you can become a whole and vibrantly alive community.

Learn more and Register here