Purposeful Pain

It has been said that in order to have faith you first must encounter a situation big enough and disorienting enough to require that you find it. Likewise there are certain thoughts and awarenesses you get to that can only be arrived at as a result of passing through a significantly large enough disruption of your current way of thinking. Translate that disruption into pain, because the ego/mind likes its way and resists - tooth and nail - anything that disrupts its current course of action or thought pattern.


I have begun looking at pain - physical and mental - as a portal to insights. In fact for a few years now those who know me have heard me say that I got my disability in my left leg because I was not in dialogue with my pain. I had internalized coaching from my earlier years ("no pain no gain" "pain is weakness leaving the body" - yea, I liked that one too!) so that when I felt the pains in my leg and lower back I just pushed harder. Now that that is no longer an option, courtesy of a severed nerve, I must listen - and deal with it.

But least you think I am just talking about physical pain (which is just a convenient metaphor for the real stuff) what I am referring to is the kind of pain that we call mental anguish or what Carolyn Myss calls "spiritual madness." This is the place where due to the assertions of my conscious mind, I seem to have lost contact with god. (just to note: god never loses contact with me - it is when I lave lost the connection) In those dark nights of doubt and skepticism I must turn to what I see most missing - faith, trust and an unquestionable constancy. The paradox of this type of learning is that what I miss most is that which I am called on to provide (otherwise I might not be missing it). Have you ever been in one of those meetings where you just know the truth is not being spoken - but somehow you are the only one seeing it?? It thus falls to you to speak that truth. Well it is the same way here. When I am sorely missing my faith, I must call on it; when I hear no voice of god I must trust on it; when I doubt my own leadership I must speak it out loud and step forward and lead. It is backward and counterintuitive, but is the way god and the universe teach. And pain? Well that is the beacon light of learning - pain signals big things a-coming!! Bring it on!