Pain As Messenger, Love as Healer

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Just as the stone of the fruit must break, so that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain. And if you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy. If you accept the seasons of your heart, as you have always accepted the four seasons, you would watch with serenity the winters of your grief. Much of your pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. Therefore, trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility. For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen.  - Kahlil Gibran

It is as old as Job's lament. Why is their suffering? How can we believe in an omnipotent, omniscient God of Love when so many people are in pain and suffering? How can a Compassionate One stand idly by while its offspring cry out in despair? And why is it that we go through painful experiences time and again. Where is the end of the lessons, the end of suffering?

Lately, I have been suffering in my human experience. Once again I've been wrestling with a familiar nemesis - an inner Judas that sabotages my self esteem and brings deep pain.  This seeming enemy of my spiritual growth and well-being drops in on my awareness through a variety of guises and forms. Its message however is unflinchingly constant with a malevolent mantra of "not enough!" Most specifically and personally, "you are not enough."  It usually appears at the doorstep when life is not showing up as abundantly or successfully as I would like. It is masterful at citing those appearances in order to reach a pathological conclusion as to where the problem lies ---with me, it says. Do you understand this mind syndrome that eats at the gut and wrenches the heart? Its refrain is let there be guilt on earth, and let it begin with me! 

Because I've been in the ring with this character for so long I've learned the ropes, so-to-speak, on what does not work in defeating this seeming adversary.

Logic fails - I can't convince this voice that I'm more worthy than its lowly assessment.

Shouting fails - I'm not able to drown out the critical babble with loud affirmations of Truth.

Cornering it fails - There is no corner of my mind where I can contain it.

Sitting on it fails - Suppression, denial, or repression only makes it stronger and usually brings more aggressors into the ring.

I've gone through enough agonizing rounds to discover that doing battle from my dogged resistance to the pain of this nagging voice is ultimately useless. Besides, fighting this mental character is counterproductive. When I fight or resist it I give life and substance to the idea that I could be diminished or harmed by something that exists only in my mind. When I do battle with this voice, I only make it more real. However, when I can see it as a "season of my heart" - a part of my soul's journey to discover its wholeness and true worth, then I can simply be with the pain. I can put down the sword, and bring non resistant awareness to the pejorative thoughts and the ache in my gut.

Ironically, presence turns out to be the most formidable response. Moving closer to the hurt actually prevents the pain from up scaling into all out suffering. As I sit with the experience, and welcome the pain as a messenger that reveals the illusions I hold about myself, a bigger self emerges and well being usually returns.  This is Big Love in action - our God given capacity to bear all things - so that what is unreal loses its grip on our hearts, and we can know our true essence once more. 

It is as old as Wisdom itself, that only in dying to self are we born to the Eternal self. May wisdom open our eyes to see our pain as messenger and open our hearts to allow Big Love to heal us.