Week 30
The Concept
"Enjoying Pain"
I love this week's concept because it reminds me that pain can be a good thing. At first, the idea that I could enjoy pain seemed absurd or paradoxical to me. Now, as I look back, I can see that pain has always served me, always made my life more wonderful - eventually - and so ultimately, I can enjoy it.
Pain Is Part of Life
I suspect we can all look back and think of times when we have experienced pain. By "pain" I mean anything from a mild "unfulfilled" feeling such as being "irked" to the deepest sense of "devastation". As we have discussed over the months (see Week 3 and Week 27), pain is as much a part of life as breathing itself. And so, our relationship to it can determine how connected or disconnected from our lives we are. If we fear it or try to avoid feeling it, we are literally separating ourselves from own lives.
Why Would I Want to Feel Pain?
As we discussed back in Week 3, pain can serve as guidance if we recognize it and act in response to it. For example, suppose I'm talking to my friend in the hallway of my apartment building and as we are chatting, I lean back against a steam pipe, which has a surface temperature of 240 degrees Fahrenheit (116 C). Would I want to feel that pain? Of course I would! Otherwise, how would I know to stop leaning on the hot pipe? So yes, I want to feel that pain because it guides me. This concept can be applied to all painful situations. Pain helps me understand what is beneficial for me and what is not; what works for me and what doesn't.
When I remember that pain is helping me navigate through life, it changes my relationship to it. Pain becomes my friend, my guide. This is truer than ever for those of us who have learned to recognize pain as information about the "metness" of our needs.
Suffering Is Optional
When I accept the painful experiences of my life as lessons, as life telling me to do something differently, my life inevitably gets more wonderful. I cannot think of a single incident where my pain wasn't trying to tell me something. I can, however, think of plenty of times where I avoided or suppressed my pain and increased or prolonged my situation. This can be seen as (or called) suffering. Suffering can show up in many forms: staying in a relationship that is not working, staying in a job that is not fulfilling or productive or eating food that degrades our health. If we are willing to feel and embrace our pain, we can avoid suffering.
So Why Don't We All Embrace Our Pain Right Now?
You may remember, back in Week 3, we discussed how many of us learned that pain served no purpose but to hurt us. Many of us have a lifetime of well developed habits of suppressing or avoiding pain, simply because it really didn't serve any purpose for us. Without the ability to connect pain to our needs and make requests or set boundaries, it really wasn't worth it for us to feel or connect to it. Many of us have learned to use anger and blame toward others to move our focus from our pain and onto something or someone else.
Our New Challenge and Opportunity
As we practice noticing feelings and connecting them to needs, all feelings, including the painful ones, take on a new and vibrant role in our lives. We can get to a place where there are no "bad" feelings - there are simply feelings, our guides to help us live a more wonderful life. And yes, it can be very challenging to remember that pain is guidance, especially when it is intense and we want to go back to our old habits of suppression or blame and anger.
As the saying goes, "If you keep doing what you're doing, you'll keep getting what you're getting". "Enjoying pain" reminds us that we can think and live differently.
More to come, as The Compassion Course continues...
