Making Peace with Pain
And my newest interview: Raw Resilience
My initial idea for this post was to share wisdom from a recent installment of my own personal journey with physical pain, but then the cold blast set in everywhere and I thought it might be more helpful to post about a “Raw Winter” theme. Then, before I could sit down to write, the fires in L.A. broke out and I was checking in with friends there and hearing of their terror and loss. The video footage of the fires brings back images from our Florida hurricane wastelands, and for others, the destruction of war. We all are certainly being exposed to plenty of pain all around us these days! So today, I am going to write about pain after all, and my post about tips for staying on a raw path in winter will come soon.
Sometimes I talk about ‘pain-free living,’ and what I mean by that is really an invitation to work with pain in such a way that, even though it is an inevitable part of being alive, it does not have to be a dominant emotional experience. Acute pain (such as injury, the onset of illness, or any type of immediate trauma) must be felt acutely - I don’t think there is any way out of that experience. But chronic pain (lasting long beyond the initial events, or recurring for no apparent reason), whether physical, emotional, mental or spiritual - is usually a result of where we are putting our attention and focus.
It seems normal to focus on the pain we are feeling, especially when we are surrounded by a pain-vibration and constant messages of pain in our society, culture and communities. But it is not natural to keep our attention on experiences of pain. Certainly when you or a loved one are in the midst of a true crisis, relatively short-term pain will be a primary and necessary experience, and may indeed be quite intense for a time. Then there will come a point when the acute crisis has passed, and there is an opportunity to choose how to experience our energy going forward. There is an opportunity to take a breath, and remember the high vibrations of our true innermost nature - the energetic vibrations of love, compassion, gratitude, joy, peace.
This is when the healing can begin….or, if we don’t honor our higher wisdom which wants to bring us ‘home’ to our naturally calm and joyful center, the trauma can be prolonged. I will use my recent body pain as an example for illustration, since on that subject I can legitimately speak from my own unarguable experience. In the stress and hustle of getting my home ready to sell, every day for a few weeks I did a number of out-of-the ordinary physical tasks (such as climbing ladders while hoisting heavy bins, lots of extra yard-work and cleaning, etc., etc.), and somewhere along the way I felt my unstable reconstructed left knee complaining, and soon after, a big twinge in my left hip. Acute pain set in that night, and migrated quickly into my back.
For two or three days I could hardly be distracted from the pure physical agony, and I was forced to stop all my action (interestingly, the big pain did not appear until I had completed what was needed for a first Open House, when it was sort of okay to collapse!). Once I managed to surrender to the experience of pain, and consciously stopped resisting it in any way, I was able to calmly meet the pain, and the acute fiery flare subsided shortly after. In my experience, making peace with pain is all about surrendering to the reality of it, intentionally releasing all resistance to the experience, reminding myself of its impermanence, and allowing space to simply BE with it while it is present. I have to consciously let go of trying to ‘fix’ it, ‘make it go away,’ or in any other way attach to any particular outcome.
When I do these steps, and also catch and re-orient any victim-stories or fix-it stories that arise in my mind, my whole system can begin to surrender to the pain in the most relaxed way possible. It may seem counter-intuitive, but in my experience it’s the quickest way out of misery, and back to my natural peace. When I release my need to change the pain itself, I become available to get curious about the pain, and I begin to discover ways to gently work with it, and hear what meaningful messages it may have for me. I settle into the realization once again that this IS the journey, and I inspire myself with my desire to embrace all of my experience, and grow through it.
Physical pain (usually relatively mild) is still a recurring part of my life-journey, but lasting or debilitating emotional pain is not. I am grateful for what I have learned about meeting the pain instead of resisting it, and for how I have grown my capacity to maintain (or at least quickly return to) my experience of my naturally peaceful, quietly joyful, permanent innermost Self.
As long as we perceive our well-being to be dependent upon ever-shifting outer experiences in life or in our bodies, we are vulnerable to frequent or lasting misery of one form or another.
There are certainly times for dealing with a crisis - see a previous post about this here:
and then it is time to tap into our higher wisdom and let it guide us back to our naturally harmonious true inner state. The challenging journey of life feels much more doable and enjoyable from this place of our core truth.
I’d like to share a relevant interview I did this week for my friend Kevin’s youtube channel. Enjoy!
Victim and fix it stories abound when it comes to getting out of pain. Thanks Ellen! 💗