Befriending Pain

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Whatever you do, don't shut off your pain; accept your pain and remain vulnerable. However desperate you become, accept your pain as it is, because it is in fact trying to hand you a priceless gift: the chance of discovering, through spiritual practice, what lies behind sorrow.

"Grief," Rumi wrote, "can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life's search for love and wisdom."

~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Our pain and struggle, if we face it and work through the challenge, can be the source of our gift to the world. This is what I was taught by a wise friend many years ago.

His sense of this was based on his studies of shamanism. In many cultures, the future shaman experiences a crisis (sometimes physical health and sometimes emotional health) that marks the calling to service. If the initiate answers the call and goes into the suffering, s/he is often healed and through that healing receives the gift of initiation. If the initiate refuses the call, s/he might die from the illness or be ostracized as insane.

If we choose to see our pain as a calling, we then can hold it as a teacher.

We can learn from all forms of pain -- physical, emotional, spiritual. If we take an even wider view, pain at any one level (say physical) is often experienced in the other levels as well. Spiritual pain can often manifest first as pain in the body, or even as a physcial illness.

If we open our hearts to our pain, in whatever form it first appears, and walk into its realm with clear intention, then like the shamans from other cultures, we too can experience the process as an initiation. We will be transformed and strengthened. If we learn our lesson well, then we will be gifted with a compassion that we can share with others.


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