Hello there ...
It takes about 3-seconds flat upon coming into this life
to realize that pain is a part of life.
And yet, no one wakes up in the morning and says:
"You know what? Today my goal is to have a really painful day!"
In fact, most of us spend our entire lives trying to avoid pain -
that's our entire prerogative.
Take a look at our lives ...
While there are some things we do specifically
cause we're following our joy,
the bulk of things we do in our life we do specifically to avoid and escape pain.
We go to school and then work,
so we can guarantee we won't feel the pain of being broke
We try to be as careful as possible in selecting a partner who is a safe bet
so we don't have to feel the pain of heartbreak.
We get married so we can guarantee we don't feel the pain of separation.
We take that pill so we don't have to feel that residual pain
of previous traumas in our emotional body.
We put money in the retirement fund
so we don't have to feel the pain of working forever.
We watch this very video on the meaning of pain,
specifically so we can learn how to escape our pain.
Take a look at your life.
Take a look at how your life is designed, specifically, to avoid pain ...
This is not your fault.
You are wired, just like every organism on this planet,
for the continual and perpetual movement
away from pain, and towards pleasure.
This benefits your survival, obviously,
if you weren't programmed to avoid pain and to go gain pleasure,
you wouldn't live very long on this Earth.
This is not in and of itself, a tormenting process,
until painful meaning is added to the pain we experience.
Until we make the pain mean something ...
This causes us to resist Pain.
And what do we know about resistance?
Whatever we resist, persists.
Most of us are absolutely terrified of pain.
because of what we have made Pain mean.
So right now I want you to ask yourself
(and answer this question as honestly as possible):
"What do I make Pain mean?"
Here's an example:
To one person, pain might mean
that they did (or are doing) something 'wrong',
and therefore they need to correct something or change it instantly
or else they are unlovable, not good and unwanted.
which leads to being rejected and forsaken.
The physical Human (being a social-group species)
equates being alone with death.
In truth, for many of us, being isolated is worse than death,
so we would prefer death to being alone.
If this is the case, pain becomes a worse fate than death.
If we are this person, we will become terrified of pain.
If we are this person, we have made feeling pain wrong and therefore, bad.
We will be desperate to get out of pain the second we feel it.
We will chronically ruminate and worry,
our life will be a futile desperate attempt to control
external conditions so we never feel pain.
and we will be in more pain than the average person because of it.
This is in fact, what most of us think.
We think that pain is 'bad' and 'wrong'.
In other words, we think that when we feel pain
something has gone terribly wrong.
And nowhere is this more apparent
than in the Spiritual Community of today's world.
See, the modern Spiritual Community has figured out something critical,
and that, is that your emotions are like a compass.
They function like a guidance system.
Whereby positive emotions keep you in-alignment
and negative emotions are an indication
that you are out of alignment.
When we begin to subscribe to the idea
that we create our own realities...
our negative emotion becomes the indication
about whether we are focused currently
at something that we want to create
or whether we are focused currently at something that we
don't want to create in our reality.
Suddenly negative emotions, and pain, becomes Enemy #1.
Pain becomes conceptualized as ERROR and pain becomes 'wrong'.
So what are you supposed to do when that's your mindset,
and you're in pain?
~ Laughs ~
Okay - what we need to do, essentially,
is to drastically alter our perception of Pain
and what Pain means.
Let's begin ...
Pain is not 'wrong' or 'bad'.
It is an indication that you are alive.
Numbness is an indication that you are not alive.
Pain is also a multidimensional experience.
Pain exists on the physical, emotional and mental level of your Being.
And regardless of where you perceive this pain starting,
whether that's physical, emotional or mental ,
it will involve the other two aspects.
So what is the purpose and function of pain?
It calls the attention of our conscious presence.
This is the real reason why Suffering has been the main doorway
to enlightenment for so many thousands of years.
The presence of your consciousness transforms suffering into awakening.
Because of this, to try to make it go away shouldn't be our goal.
We need to let the Pain show us what needs to be shown and known.
It alerts us to where we are out of alignment.
It is a crucial aspect of healing.
What modern medicine will eventually figure out
is that pain, in fact, triggers repair mechanisms
that are not triggered without the pain.
It alerts us to the aspect of ourselves
that needs to be brought back into alignment
so that we can become Whole.
In fact, a while back, I was teaching a bunch of healthcare professionals
and one of them shared a really beautiful idea with me.
It's that the letters in 'Pain', P.A.I.N.,
can stand for 'Pay Attention. Integrate Now.'
Pain prompts you to re-evaluate and change your life.
Now, the purpose of life
is that it facilitates consciousness becoming conscious of Itself.
It is the catalyst for self-knowledge.
It wakes us up from our unconscious slumber
and as such, people who experience pain,
are provided the opportunity to 'wake up'.
It is a bio-feedback system telling us about ourselves.
It is a messenger calling us to ourselves.
All too often when we think pain is 'bad',
we shoot the messenger.
Pain calls for presence.
When we go into Pain, it puts others in the position of providing their presence
often in the form of assistance.
It unites us in this way.
It equalizes us and forces a shared-experience.
This has powerful implication as it applies to ourselves as well.
Pain calls us powerfully into the present moment.
It causes us to be fully with ourselves.
So much of our affliction on this planet
is the fact that we try to escape ourselves all day, every day.
we're never fully-present with ourselves or present in the now.
So Pain calls us into the profound spiritual practice of becoming present,
which is the opposite of self-abandonment.
Pain is the catalyst for universal expansion.
Universal expansion takes place as a result of personal expansion.
And how do we Expand?
We form Preferences.
Pain alerts us to what is unwanted.
So that we have acute awareness of what is wanted
and thus can go in the direction of that very thing,
and thus, we Expand ...
The entire process we call evolution is in fact the by-product of pain.
Discomfort triggers wanting
and that wanting triggers an evolutionary process
by which we align with our desires.
Pain creates an empowered person.
Each time we feel pain,
we must search for the cause.
By looking for the cause we have to face
the fears that are inherent within our body and our being.
We have to face what we are trying to avoid.
By doing this we become more and more non-reactive.
More and more present with ourselves.
More and more comfortable with facing fears,
until the things we fear lose their power over us.
We develop a kind of graceful 'immunity'.
Pain is contrast.
We need contrast to understand anything or to become aware.
We need 'white' to understand 'black', we need 'black' to understand 'white'.
The contrast of pain is absolutely necessary
for us to even comprehend the concept,
or experience, of Joy.
We could never experience pleasure without knowing pain.
In this way, pain enriches positive emotional states
and increases our capacity for pleasure.
To the degree that we have suffered
we are capable of the opposing-level of joy.
Pain is also the seat of compassion.
We must know pain to recognize it in another.
We must know Pain to care enough to create a world
that is free from suffering.
Pain is the catalyst to improving all of your relationships.
Your relationship with life.
Your relationship with other people.
Your relationship with the Universe at large.
And, your relationship with yourself.
Pain becomes suffering when pain is not responded to with presence.
When we try to deny, suppress, disown, reject our pain.
And also when we add painful 'meaning' to our pain.
Suffering is about perception.
It's about you adding painful meaning
to the experience of the painful thing that you are experiencing
or the pain Itself ...
To understand how meaning changes pain into suffering,
I want you to watch my YouTube video titled:
"Meaning (the Self-Destruct Button)".
It is well known that the meaning of pain
causes people to experience pain differently.
For example, in World War II, many of the soldiers
who had operations done,
had to have those operations done with little-to-no anaesthetic
but many of those soldiers were able to do that
and reported experiencing very little pain because
of the 'meaning' they assigned to their wounds.
They took pride in them,
and as such, their pride in their wounds
caused these particular soldiers
to not feel the experience of suffering,
relative to those wounds.
Treat pain like a teacher and learn from your pain.
You can visualize your pain.
See it in your mind.
What color is it?
What texture is it?
When did it start?
When, by your experience, do you expect it
to stop or decrease in intensity?
How big is it?
Where does it exist?
Where does it not-exist?
Explore the edges of your pain.
If this pain could speak to you what would it say?
What does It need?
We need to be willing to choose to be present with our pain
and surrender to it, to use pain to transform ourselves.
See the truth of that it is a companion for improvement
rather than an adversary.
To understand how to be present with your pain,
watch my YouTube video titled:
"How To Heal The Emotional Body".
We often become completely identified with our pain.
This is especially true if pain in your life is chronic,
something that you undergo on an ongoing basis.
When this is the case,
you lose track of the fact that your pain is not you.
you are more than your pain.
Pain is like a ripple on the top of the lake.
It is something that is occurring within the lake
but it is not the totality of the lake.
If we have identified with our pain,
it may benefit us to completely disidentify from our pain
To disidentify with our pain
we imagine it as a completely separate entity.
So when we begin to feel pain,
we're aware of the fact that it is this 'pain-entity'
that is being 'charged' or 'electrified' in that moment and not us.
We can observe it from that state.
When we experience chronic pain it means that pain
is no longer an experience for us.
We have not used the pain to create the change that It is telling us to make
and instead, the pain has 'become' us.
It is our reality, it is our identity.
The Ego has now identified with It and
thus sees it as crucial to its own survival.
We need to ask ourselves honestly, the following questions:
"What bad thing would happen if I sat with my pain and allowed it completely,
'instead of trying to make it go away?'
'What would it take, or what would have to happen,
for me to completely allow my pain?'
'What bad thing would happen if the pain truly did go away and, for good?'
To understand more about disidentification,
I want you to watch my YouTube video titled:
Disidentification (The Practice of Non-Attachment)
We have been programmed by our current society not to feel.
We've been programmed to believe that if we feel pain
something has gone terribly wrong.
That we have to correct something. That something's bad.
This could not be farther from the truth.
This attitude fuels all kinds of addictions
by convincing us that we must escape the pain as fast as we can.
It causes us to resist pain and thus feel even more pain.
Next time you feel pain remind yourself,
that Pain is the catalyst
for the true alchemy of life change.
Pain is one of the best things that can happen to you.
Nothing has gone 'wrong'
anymore than something has gone 'wrong'
when you feel the pain of birthing contractions.
Pain is an indication that you are in the process of expansion.
You are becoming conscious and aware.
You are evolving into the life that you are meant for.
Pain has entered your life
so that you can step fully into the life
you were meant to live here.
You are becoming self-actualized.
Have a good week.
Subtitles by: David Soh & Tanya Duarte