Pain
"The lessons of Love are learnt through Pain."
Introduction
Defining Pain
Pain is defined here as a sensation of discomfort experienced on the body or in one's mind.
The cause can be external: walking into a tree branch, sitting on a chair too long, exercising, and so forth.
It can be internal as well, for instance, from experiencing anger, fears, impatience, stress, and so forth.
In this article, we will explore the spiritual messages behind the sensation of pain and how to unravel and understand it so that one can use it to create greater happiness in life.
Pain In Depth
To most, the experience of pain would be undesirable.
But that is the purpose of pain: to create an undesirable sensation!
Pain is a way for the Body and Mind to signal to The Self that something is wrong. Without the experience of pain, one will not be able to comprehend the extent of harm they are inflicting on their mind and body. For instance, to not know the damage a hammer can cause when struck to the head. Or to know the stress one is placing on the mind through overworking.
One can even meet an early death if they don't have the ability to feel the pain of their feet being caught on fire!
Thus from an universal design point of view, the ability to experience pain helps one to survive their physical experiences here for as long as possible so that they can live and experience life to the fullest. Without pain, there would be less fear, which would make people more reckless with their bodies.
From the spiritual point of view, the experience of pain is also a great catalyst for one to learn lessons about love. Through pain, one can learn to take better care of their body and mind by learning what actions and states of mind are harmful and what are beneficial, and through the repeated experiences of making wrong choices, the lessons of love are consequently learnt.
So the experience of pain can be understood as the study of what to do and what not to do—lessons about how to Love.
Thus, there is no need to see pain as something like a monster that we all have to run away from. It's simply a signal guiding us to see that there is something that needs to be addressed.
However, because one has the free will to make choices, one can choose to ignore one's pain rather than explore the cause of it and the messages behind it. And this is what usually happens whenever we experience pain in life: we can try to find a quick pill to stop the pain; tell ourselves that it's not worth bothering about it; or distract our mind with other things, thinking that it would go away with time.
Realize that ignoring one's pain in such a way will not address the pain at the roots. When pain is ignored, it will only exacerbate it with time; like an annoying teacher, the pain would persist until until its messages are heard.
Listen to the messages behind your pains!
Path Of Creator
Pain In Relation To The Path Of Creator
On the journey towards greater happiness, pain can be used as a Catalyst to accelerate the journey.
Firstly, one can use the experience of pain as an indicator of potential health issues.
For instance, if one is constantly experiencing pains in one's back, then it may be that our back pains are calling us to address something about our lives. Perhaps we need to reassess the way we sit in front of our computers or that we need to readjust the way we sleep. Perhaps we need to move more, exercise more, stretch more. Perhaps there are emotional causes that need to be attended to as back problems can often be a metaphysical sign that one needs to support themselves more in life, i.e. to stand up for themselves.
Thus, if one is experiencing some type of pain, one can see that as a signal for something to change.
The practice of meditation will greatly help one to become aware of their pains and their causes because through the practice one will be able to develop their awareness so that even the subtlest pains that are happening on the body can be detected.
Meditation can also help one to Still the mind so that one can see the harmful habit patterns that one is repeating in their life. It can be difficult to see such patterns when the mind is always thinking as it will always find reasons to justify old habit patterns, even if they can cause great pains.
Through meditation, one will also learn to look inwards more, helping one to become aware of the pains that are happening deep within. And this will take one to discover their Suffering States of the Mind—the bringers of inner pain.
Improving Your Life
If one finds it difficult to develop awareness of what is causing one's outer and inner pains, one can simply try their best to improve the quality of their inner and outer world.
This can be about exercising more and meditating more, improving the cleanliness of one's room, making better friends, eating better food, and so forth.
The more you improve the quality of your life inside and out, the more your pains will gradually disappear. This is because the more you learn to love yourself, the more you will be addressing the deeper causes of your pain, which will always revolve around the lack of Self-Love.
Better to improve one's life now so that the future could be less painful rather than wait until some greater pain comes into our lives to remind us of the need to love ourselves more.
Pain as a Catalyst for Self-Transformation
In terms of transforming the mind, pain can be used as a catalyst to accelerate the process. To do so, one can go towards the experiences that can bring out one's inner pain so that one can study and know it more. This can be about facing one's fears, doing something uncomfortable, trying new experiences, talking to strangers, and so forth.
However, without meditation, doing these things can be challenging because the an Unstill mind can often make experiences seem worse than they are, making one fear going towards such experiences.
That is why the practice of meditation is strongly recommended!
One can also use pain to develop even greater Stillness. For instance, one can try to meditate for long periods of time to bring out the outer and inner pains, which can then be used as resistances for one to develop even greater Stillness within.
The destination is towards exploring and understanding the messages behind our pains. Once one has learnt to love The Self unconditionally, one's pain will disappear, for it would have taught us all the lessons of love we need.
Know and Transform The Self!
Reading articles helps with understanding, but to transform the mind, one realizes the truth from experience.
For such an enlightening journey, the Self-Transformation Course has everything you will ever need!
