Pain

We all face times in our lives when the pain of existence seems too much to bear. For some of us, these experiences rarely happen, and when they do, the pain is relatively mild. But for others of us, excruciating pain can weigh us down and make the slightest comfort difficult to achieve.

The pain you are going through is not what will determine your future; your future will be determined by who you are as you go through your pain. You will not dissolve your pain by keeping it in the dark, but by exposing it to the light.

All of us yearn for happiness and love, and sometimes we find it. Yet most of us are visited at some point by sorrow as well. A relationship, a job, a particular circumstance brought us happiness, but then something went wrong. At other times, we can’t put our finger on why, but we feel no happiness and we feel no love.

Life is not always easy, and handling the space of deep sorrow can be very hard.

However deep your suffering, please don’t reach immediately to numb the pain. Why? Because your pain may have something to teach you. In coming to understand your suffering, you often come to understand yourself more deeply. Perhaps you’ll see ways you have contributed to your own disasters. Perhaps you’ll see that other people’s feelings are as important as your own.

Sometimes we end up looking back on times of deep emotional pain as having been the turning point which showed us the truth of who we are.

What is difficult is not always bad. We might see something that needs to change within us, how our patterns are ruining our lives, and what amends we need to make.

Everything that needs to be looked at must be looked at; and everything that needs to be understood must be understood. And this can take time. A period of suffering can be what we need to move through, in journeying to the place where we suffer no more.