Claiming My Voice: From the darkness, the light emerges.

I’ve heard it said, or maybe written, that pain is mandatory but suffering is optional. Well I’m here to tell you that historically I neither do pain nor suffering well. As a young person, emotional pain tipped me over regularly. It was my inability to cope with pain that sent me into the arms of men and made alcohol and meth so attractive. Sure, my “cure” for pain often created a new set of pains but usually these “cures” worked for a moment at least so I kept doing them. Then I got clean and sober and stopped sleeping around, and realized that if I dealt with the emotional pain in the moment, I could mitigate some of the consequences those “cures” entailed. It means standing still in the face of discomfort, looking it in the face, calling it by name and feeling it. While I am not great at it, I try and I’m getting better…at emotional pain.

Then a few years ago I started experiencing physical pain. At first I denied it. I thought, ‘Meh, its just a little something something. It will pass.’ Some things did but some things didn’t. Some things got worse…very possibly because I ignored them. So now I live with physical pain on a daily basis. Some days are better than others. I have some solutions that help and have have some things there are no solutions for. Some days I scour the internet looking for cures only to discover there are none. Some of my stuff is just aging. Some of my stuff has options I’m not really keen on doing. So yep, some of my pain is a choice.

For a couple years now I have been meditating on the idea that I can have pain without suffering. I’m not sure its working but I’m trying. Then there are the Buddhist Five Remembrances (if you haven’t heard of them, check them out. The idea here is that if we acknowledge truth/inevitability, we don’t have to suffer):

1. I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.
2. I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape having ill health.
3. I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
4. All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
5. My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.

Honestly, these give me such peace when I do them as a mantra. They do not take my pain away, but I become more accepting of the pain that is evidently not going away.

So the other day I’m walking in the woods with my dog, Finan and suddenly he gets all skittish (which isn’t really abnormal…he’s kind of skittish) but I see him staring at something in front of us so I look up. At first glance all I can say is that what we were seeing was a hooded Druid off in the distance. Once I shook myself, it was clearly a broken tree (we had a huge ice storm earlier this year and some trees just snapped and this was one of them). Liking the idea that it was a Druid, I followed the path to where it stood and put my hands on it. I asked It if it had a message for me. Inside my head, clear as a bell I heard, “Pain is OK.”

Finan and I stood with the Druid a bit longer (Finan is such a good boy! He just hung out there quietly while I did my forest thing with the Druid) and then we moved on. As we walked on, I thought about what that message meant. In the simplest of terms I think I just want to be OK with the pain. Going forward, I will only do what I feel OK with doing to mitigate/remove the pain and live with the pain as is instead of spending so much time thinking about it and fighting it. Today I will embrace the physical pain as gracefully (or ungracefully) as I try to embrace my emotions.

I supposed this is all just part of life and I want to live all of it exactly as it is.