Pain and Suffering

Master Osho said, "Pain is simply pain". I am sure he is not the only one who ever said this. But he is my reference at this point. I happen to agree. I always have agreed. People often belittle their pain by saying things like, "I'm sure this is nothing compared to what others go through." The thing is that there is no way to really compare pain. One person's pain is not more valid than another person's pain. Pain is, in itself, valid. It is a signal to us that there is something that needs to be experienced and healed.

Suffering in our lives is when we actually try to avoid pain. It comes from the concept that there should be no pain in our lives. It is the denial system of the mind that causes this. Quite often we are driven by our minds instead of flow with our hearts. The mind tricks us into thinking that our lives should be a certain way...namely, painless. We really don't need to should upon ourselves. If we embrace pain, we then communicate with our experiences and get through it as we heal.

I remember how painful it was for me to know that a relationship that I had become comfortably trapped in was actually coming to an end. The suffering that I experienced was not the ending of the relationship. It was a result of how I thought the relationship should have been in the first place, then the fear of the unknown of what was to come after the ending of the relationship. It was also wrapped up in the illusion of the pain I saw myself to be causing by ending the relationship. Yet having walked through it, the pain is much less than the fear and suffering was perceiving it to be.

It is also said that how we die is how we have lived. I remember how hard it was to watch my mother die. She did suffer a lot as the cancer spread and ate away at her body. But when I look back on this event, I also realize that she suffered a lot each day. She was not the type of person who would make radical changes in her life. Some of what she experienced was quite painful. But she also chose to try to deny the pain, and I think that in doing so she lost some of the opportunities to learn and grow and to heal the pain. Thus her death had much suffering, just as her life did. I hope that when my time comes to cross to the other side of the Veil, I do so laughing all the way. Yes, anyone who knows me knows that I laugh a lot. I can't help it. I have been fostered into having a sick and twisted sense of humour. I see the humour in most things that others would not see as funny at all. Yet there I am, laughing and totally enjoying the experience of laughing. I think that I have laughed more than I have cried in my life. For this I am grateful. There have been many tears. It is nice to be able to look back and see that the scales have tilted way over to the laughter side of things.

Yes, when we are in the valley and know that we have to ascend the mountain in order to find love within our hearts, it does help to have a friend there with us. We gaze at the mountaintop and wonder if this journey is going to be worth it. A true friend waits patiently beside us and encourages us to take it one step at a time and to know that he or she is right there with us, even though they can't take those steps for us. We have to make the effort. I feel so blessed to have had friends like that in my life. It has made the journey so much easier and thus tremendously decreased the suffering.

Blessed Be

Trent
www.deerhornshamanic.com

The Rose

"Our task must be to free ourselves from our prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." Albert Einstein.

One of my spiritual teachers once used the analogy of the Rose to explain compassion to me. I was having a very difficult time trying to feel loving toward those who were mean to me or to others. I would actually feel satisfaction when they in turn would then feel pain with some later event. When one of the bullies in high school lost his mother to illness, I felt it served him right. No compassion there whatsoever. But I also felt bad that I felt that way.

My teacher said to me that compassion is the highest form of love that exists. It is like a rose that grows in the moist soil. The seed needs to have the right amount of sun and rain in order to gestate and take root. Then it needs opportunity to grow up through the soil without being picked off as a weed. This is why the rose has thorns. It is a matter of self-protection. With the right amount of sun and rain, the leaves grow and the buds form. When the rose blooms it is magnificent to see and attracts all who see it. But the scent of the rose is the fullest expression of love, like compassion. It is not contained. It blows with the wind and is free to all who are in the general area.

At first I completely got the thorn thing. That is what I had to grow just to be able to tolerate the existence of the bully in my life. Then I realized that the sun and rain were about the good days and the bad days. Tears help us to grow, just as the rain helps the rose to grow. Too much sun and it gets scorched. Too much rain and it experiences root rot. I also then realized that through life experience we can realize that there is a difference between something looking beautiful and actually being beautiful. There are many that we encounter in life who look amazingly beautiful, but are severely damaged inside to the point of actually being hideous to be around for any length of time. We can love the physical aspects of someone, but that is just not enough for the duration of a lasting love. Then we experience those around us, like my teacher, who is like the scent of the rose. Love exudes around them and embraces all into its fold. They feed those around them with compassion and understanding. They see beyond the behaviors of people and into the human condition that motivates certain behaviors. With their insights and understandings, they are able to gently love even the most vile of individuals, and those individuals actually shift their consciousness as a result.

I hope that one day I will grow enough to be like my teacher was. In the meantime, I have learned to have compassion, even for that bully who lost his mom, and that there is no way of really comparing pain. Each person has their story and each person has their pain. Pain is pain. One person's pain is no bigger or smaller, more or less traumatic, or more or less important than any other person's. This is something that I have had to teach some whom I work with on healing pain because they think that they should not be feeling the way they do because there are so many others in the world who have so much more pain. Hogwash! Pain is pain. And the method of healing it is the same across the board. Compassion.

Blessed Be

Trent
www.deerhornshamanic.com