What if I told you pain isn't only a messenger but has transformative properties...
People suffer because they don’t know this about pain… You need to embrace your pain and not resist it…
Before most people experience physical injuries or illness, they experience emotional pain. Maybe they are just not happy with life, maybe they have depression or anxiety.
Unfortunately do you know what the average person does? They do their best to numb that pain with everything they can. They use weed, coffee, movies, alcohol, sex, porn, etc.
Or they will use a more insidious form of escape, one they can justify because it has a surface social value. What are these you ask? Well, saving others, working long hours, exercising, travelling on family trips, etc. Anything as a means to not be present with your pain but feel “justified doing” so.
But what if I were to tell you that avoiding your pain is the thing that causes illness and causes more suffering? I invite you to change your understanding and your relationship with pain.
A good metaphor here is an earthworm, it moves forwards by eating and excreting but if you touch it, it stops and coils up. Is this not similar to us as humans? When we are triggered by an emotional pain it stops us in our tracks, stops our forward movement in life, stops our personal growth and development.
What if I told you pain isn’t only a messenger, but it has transformative properties. This is the key that people miss. If you actually sit with the pain and feel it, don’t avoid it. Be present with it, you will actually hear the messages. As you are feeling it, just keep asking yourself the question “Why?” ”Why do I feel this way?”
Keep in mind you don’t need to wallow, just be with the pain, don’t resist it but move through it and be with it…. Then an answer will come to you, and you keep asking, you must keep asking. Most people get one answer and stop, feeling justified in their wallowing. But I invite you to try something different…
For example:
Question: “Why do I have such fear and anxiety all the time?”
Answer: “Because I’m stressed out.”
Question: “Why am I stressed out?”
Answer: “Because I can’t relax.”
Question: “Why can’t I relax?”
Answer: “Because I have to make everyone happy all the time.”
Question: “Why do I have to make everyone happy?”
Answer: “Because I only feel calm when they are happy.”
Question: Why do I only feel calm when they are happy?”
Answer: “I feel that they won’t love me or will reject me if they are not happy.”
Question: “Why do I feel this way?”
Answer: “I can’t take the pain of them not liking me?”
Question: “What happens if they don’t like me?”
Answer: “Then they will abandon me and I will be alone.”
Question: “So why are you afraid of being alone?”
Answer: “I don’t think I can handle the world by myself.”
Question: “Why do you feel that way?”
Answer: “I feel I’m weak and need others to survive.”
Asking questions while you sit with your pain is the key to hearing the message and helping you transform. Pain isn’t something to avoid, it is trying to get your attention.
Most people want to heal without feeling the pain, they don’t understand that pain is your friend. It is a messenger that you’re not happy and you need to change course before things get any worse.
With time you will realise that we have been led to a belief system that is like a hypnotic trance that you are operating under. Think about this, most beliefs that cause us suffering are our hypnotic trances…
Your pain is telling you that it’s time to let go of the beliefs that are hurting you. Listen to them and you will find the messenger will go once you get the message. Because once you get the message you will bring these hypnotic beliefs to your conscious awareness, allowing them to release.
Avoiding your pain is like being constipated, but wanting to poop without dealing with the smells or the sounds. So you just hold it in because at least you don’t have to encounter the perceived ugliness of pooping.
A colourful analogy yes, but you need to wake up now and stop avoiding the things you need to heal.
Remember the discomfort is only temporary, you are the only one dragging it out by not being present with it. Discomfort is simply information which can lead to understanding and release.
Something else to consider; what if you included gratitude in your pain. Where there is resistance, try replacing the resistance with "thank you", "thank you for my anxiety", "thank you for my depression". It becomes an exercise, flexing your gratitude muscle fills the space of resistance, opening you up to different possibilities which first showed up in your life only as pain but can now be experienced from a new and different perspective.
If we can re-wire our brains to understand that pain is our friend we would live our lives with a sense of freedom instead of fear.
Credit: Shakti-Life, Breathe, Anonymous
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