Pain - A Great Teacher

I am reading a book entitled "Nothing Special" and it has really challenged every area of my life particularly dealing with life and the many things that make up life. One of those things being pain.

In the book, the author defines the challenges in our lives as rocks or rather rock diamonds placed along our path to help us deal directly with what we need to either eliminate or correct in our lives.

I consider myself a student on the path to enlightenment and sometimes I miss opportunities to use life and everything that comes with life as a teacher.

Recently, I was ill and in great pain. The pain lasted for eighteen hours. Rather than using the pain as a teacher at the time, I focused more on woe is me. I kept wondering how much longer is this going to last. I paced up and downstairs all night and found myself pleading with God to PLEASE put me out of my misery.

I attempted to use my meditation practice but it was so difficult just to focus on my breath.

Needless to say, the longer the pain lasted, the angrier and more miserable I became.

At one point, I wasn't even sure who or what I was angry at but I was fully aware of my anger, frustration, and powerlessness.

After trying everything I could to ease the pain, I just gave up. I had to. What choice did I have but to just accept it? And there it was, my breakthrough.

Of course I was exhausted from not having any sleep, but I had become used to the pain. That was so foreign to me. I was okay with the pain and if this was the way it was going to be, so be it.

Now that I am feeling better, I feel really silly for having been so focused on self. My practice teaches its students to learn to chip away at the self by observing one's self honestly. I see clearly now, how much self I still need to let go of and I have my friend pain to thank for that.

I am not saying that I want to go through that type of pain again, but I am thankful that it didn't kill me. It only felt like it at the time. It did however, make me more aware. It taught me just how much pain I can tolerate. It also taught me that I cannot run from myself.

In life we can choose to run away from our problems be it financial, family, or work problems, but we cannot run away from our own bodies when dealing with uncontrollable pain. Pain won't let us.

Pain is a part of our lives. Pain is and can be a great teacher.