The Way Through Pain
El camino a través del dolor
A reflection on how the impulse to avoid pain generates identity, and how meeting pain directly dissolves the suffering built around it.
The Way Through Pain
A reflection on how the impulse to avoid pain generates identity, and how meeting pain directly dissolves the suffering built around it.
That is the breakthrough. It is the breakthrough out of the mind's strategies for avoiding what is here, which is a sensation of pain. Frustration, life challenges, but at the core of it: it is frustrating, and there is pain.
The victim as pain management
Then you begin to see that you have been attached to a way of seeing yourself through that pain, a way that puts you in the position of a victim. This is a very powerful mechanism for managing pain. It is extremely powerful. It is heroin-level powerful.
Withdrawal and rehab
What is happening now is something like withdrawal. It is withdrawal from the attachment and addiction to a way of coping that has brought you this far. And now you are, in a sense, in rehab. These are just words to frame the experience, so do not take them too literally. Think of it as a reflection that validates the process you are in, what you are doing.
Through the pain, not around it
This is the way through. All of the non-duality promises of peace do not arrive by going around the pain; they arrive by going through it. Whoever has reached a truly profound realization without going through pain, I have never heard of such a person. I am sure there are some beautifully karmic beings who have had that experience. I am sure it is possible. But it is not what I know. It is not what I know of anyone I have met, or read about, or encountered in any way.
It is through the pain. It is, in fact, by meeting the pain so directly that everything becomes okay, because all of the suffering was in how to avoid that pain.