Pain As Your Teacher
The power of turning toward your experience is phenomenal, especially when it is something that you don’t like. In order to be willing to take this healing step, you need to understand that the challenges of your life are for you. One of the ways that I describe this is to imagine a fierce lion, one that represents everything that you hate and fear. It has been chasing you your entire life. At moments it gets so close that you can feel its breath on the back of your legs. The closer it gets, the faster you run. If you are lucky, there will be a time when you can’t run anymore because you are just too tired. As you fall to the ground, ready to be devoured, the lion screeches to a halt, and you find yourself face to face with your pain. The lion opens its mouth and rather than eating you, on its tongue is a gift that it has been trying to bring to you for many years. Your pain has waited your entire life for you to be present for it. It always comes bearing gifts, but you have to turn and look in order to discover these gifts.
The pain in your life is not comfortable, but it is trustable and ultimately benevolent. It isn’t here because you have done something wrong or because life is against you. It is here because pain is your teacher. As author and spiritual teacher, Stephen Levine, once said to me, “Pain grabs your attention!” If you change your relationship to it from one of resistance to one of curiosity, it becomes a doorway into the healing you long for.
I ran away from my pain, including fear, sadness, loneliness, and despair, for a good deal of my life and it only made it worse. I was such a bundle of pain in my twenties that I didn’t want to live anymore and tried to kill myself three times. Since I couldn’t seem to live with my pain, but I also couldn’t seem to get away from it, I asked myself this question: What is this pain all about? In just a matter of months, my first teacher came into my life who taught me one of the core skills of awakening – In the seeing is the movement. When you can give yourself your own undivided attention during uncomfortable times in your life, in that simple ‘seeing’ – in that willingness to be fully present for what you are experiencing – is the movement out of that experience!
The Tibetan Lama, Trungpa Rimpoche, goes to the heart of what we are exploring together when he says:
If there were no confusion, there would be no wisdom….
Chaos is workable…not regressive.
Respect whatever happens, chaos should be regarded as extremely good news.
Respect the upsurge of energy that is emotions, no matter what form. Nothing is rejected as bad or grasped as good.
We grapple only because we feel they will overwhelm the basic posture we have deemed ourselves to be.
Go towards the emotion, then there is no resistance. Let yourself be in the emotion, go through it, give-in to it, experience it. Then there is rhythm.
Transmutation involves going through such fear.
Your radiance and potential have been imprisoned by your resistance to the deep wounds you have carried your entire life. Resisting your pain gives great power to that which you hate and fear. To be present for it dissipates the darkness like the sun burning off the morning fog, and the pain then can move through you, leaving gifts in its wake.
It is important to understand that to just be is not about becoming powerless. It is not about being out of control. Even though at first glance being seems like passively letting life do with you as it will, it is the exact opposite. It is a passionate engagement with life as it is right now. You then live from response rather than reaction. Cultivating being is a very active place where you are alert, listening and learning from every experience you are given.
So, start small. Allow yourself during the day to pause, opening to a long, slow out breath and then truly notice your Life. Notice the shapes, the sounds, the colors, the shadows and light. Notice your body, becoming curious about what sensations are dancing through it right now. Allow your mind to become interested in this moment. This moment is different than any other moment in your whole life. Even though your mind will probably take over quite quickly, even a few seconds of actually being here for life matter! Slowly, these moments accumulate, and you find your way out of the maze of your mind, back into an alive, curious, heartfelt relationship with life.
If this topic of befriending your pain resonated with you and you’d like to explore it further, I invite you to listen to my upcoming radio show on Dreamvisions 7 Radio: Does Pain have to be so Painful? It will air on Thursday, February 27th at 5am and 5pm HERE. After the 27th, it will be available on demand, along with every other radio show I’ve ever done HERE. Please feel free to explore my catalog and listen to topics that call to you.
Offerings:
Free Live Call with Mary:
You’re invited to join us for the next Free Live Call: How To Be Empowered in this Time of Chaos! We will be meeting on Tuesday, March 11th at 5:30 pm PST for an hour and a half. We will continue to meet every two months, so keep an eye out for future events!
Here is a snippet of what we will be talking about:
So many heartaches happening on our planet…. Wars, wildfires that consume whole cities, aggressive politicians, and all the while the earth is crying for help. How can we not get lost in reactions? How can we become a part of the healing that is at the heart of all of this chaos? Join Mary in discovering it is possible to, as Stephen Levine would say, “Keep your heart open in hell.” And it is possible to make a difference in this challenging time.
Don’t forget if you can’t make it on the day, you can still participate by sending your questions and enjoying the recording after the call at your convenience. I hope to see you there!
Click HERE to learn more and register!