A brief lesson on PAIN
I’ve been thinking a lot about all of the pain that I’ve been seeing in the world. Every day I consume the news about another earthquake, another disaster, another person suffering from disease or exploitation. Drilling into my personal life, seeing friends struggle with divorce, economic hardship, addiction, and loss. There is so much pain in the world and so little known about how to approach it proactively. I recently received a lesson on pain, from my teacher, and wanted to share it with everyone that I could. How we can reduce the process of pain in our life? Pain is inevitable, suffering is a choice.
It is inevitable that in the this world of personal transformation we will need to undergo darkness—pain—in order to reveal happiness. But at the same time, who said that we have to go through years of pain and darkness? We would love small moments of pain – which would bring happiness – and then we would go to the next level … and then another challenge and another pain. What is the factor that will help all of us to reduce that process of pain so that we can learn our lessons and move on to the next level instead of dwelling in pain? Sooner or later when the pain becomes too long, we become self-absorbed, we become negative, we develop resentment; we develop scars that cause fears later on. And it is a very unhealthy process. We would like to learn our lessons and come out of that pain or challenge as a winner and more powerful. How do we reduce the process of pain in our life? The same way that a woman who is pregnant does. She is going through the pain knowing that there is a great gift to be revealed. Very often we need to experience some pains—which is the only way that we will get shot with energy to neutralize our ego. What is pain, really? Pain is when we are so closed off from receiving the happiness and the essence and the consciousness that we want because we are attached to the desire to receive only for oneself alone … then whenever a major burst of Potential for good comes our way, the Ego translates that burst of Potential for the soul as a painful experience. To our ego, it feels like a painful experience; but in the real reality it is not a painful experience. It is Happiness coming to our soul. But the ego that controls our mind and our consciousness and our emotions in that particular area in life translates that scenario as pain. That does not mean that we are not in a lot of pain. Our ego – is in a lot of pain, but our soul is not in a lot of pain. Our soul loves every second of this world. But when we feel that pain, we cannot say: “It is just my ego.” We still feel it. It does not matter how you call it. It feels horrible to us. So by accepting with total acceptance that that pain is necessary to cleanse our selfish desire and by taking responsibility and questioning and trying to reflect on what our lesson is: “What do I need to be awakened about now?” By taking that responsibility as fast as we can, we are: 1) Accepting that the pain is a cleanser, in spite of what we are going through; and 2) Reflecting and asking: “Why did I attract it? What is my lesson? What do I need to change? What do I need to open?” There is always, according to the information of how the pain comes to us, some lesson about what we need to do differently. The faster we move away from being a victim to accepting the pain as a cleanser of our ego and cleanser to open our heart, then the faster we will go through the second stage, which is asking the question: “What do I need to learn from it?” All the faster the pain will go away, and we do not have to wait for the entire process of pain that usually would diminish our selfish desire, would break our ego, would open us up. It can be short. The fact that we began that pain and we are now taking the responsibility and growing from it IS AS IF we had gone through the whole pain that we deserve in order to cleanse negativity we had created before. That is the way to remove the process. We do not have to go through seven years of pain, and that is the lesson we have to learn. That seven years can be concentrated in one day – why not? The reason it takes seven years is because we reach a place where the pain was so bad that I had to stop and ask the question: “What do I need to change about it?” Playing the victim does not help us. We don’t have to wait all that time. If we just realize the pain is a wakeup to shift us, to cleanse us … and instead of letting our mind be directed towards understanding why we cannot stand the pain and what is wrong about the pain (and the pain always takes us to the future—worrying about the future—and to reflecting about the past and seeing how things should have been) … instead we want to embrace it, accept it … and then not blame ourselves. Accept that that experience is really cleansing you. In the same way that a woman accepts that going through childbirth and accepts that pain will bring the blessing—will bring the baby, will bring that gift to this world—you are not going to skip that process; you want to go through it. After the acceptance, do not blame yourself. Really recognize how you need to change in order for that pain never to come back again. “I need to remove some selfish desire. I need to act differently. I need to think differently. I need to be open differently. So what am I going to do differently from now on? What are the changes?” And that is the soul searching that you need to do. It is not scientific. You will not know for sure “1+1” … or “that is the cause and that is the effect”. It is enough, the fact that you are searching with an honest heart and you are trying to really identify a cause that you need to learn from that situation … or if you have been hurt so much by somebody … or if you are going through a major heartache, and then you realize: “Wow! What they did to me, I have done to so many people. I was so judgmental. I was so insensitive. I need to take upon myself the responsibility never to do it to others.” There is always a lesson to learn. It might be nothing to do with what really happened right there and then. We need to just let the pain be a wakeup call to learn the lesson. If not, we will have to undergo the process … because eventually pain does cleanse us, does wake us up. It does! When we are being pushed to the wall, there is no other chance. Within pain there is information … there is wisdom … there is intelligence that sooner or later will push us towards wakeup and growth and change. We want to proactively reach that spark of change and growth … not when there is no other choice. It is all about practicing choice. It is all about embracing that moment of choice in our life. When it is too long, when it is too late, when there is no choice about it, we are not really growing. We are not really taking charge of our lives. It is not easy. Some of us will just say: “Okay, it is an opportunity; let me wait.” No! We really need to be proactive. We really need to look at the wakeup before we reach the place where there is no way to return.
