Is the burden of pain a blessing?

[Guest guest]

When we are lonely, when our expectations are frustrated, when our

potential is unrealized, when our deepest self is prevented from

expressing itself, when we react in anger and fear, in fragmentation

and conflict, in all this is pain. When people tear our opinions

down, when there is a sharp clash of views, when others sit in

judgement upon us or misunderstand us, there is pain. When our

surroundings test our patience and endurance, while our self image

gets bruised and battered, when our wants our thwarted and we become

prisoners of circumstances we cannot change, there is pain. Pain

hurts, it causes us to recoil, to turn inwards, to withdraw, to seek

alternatives, to think. Pain is inevitable, all of us face it in

various ways, in varying degrees, in various situations, for various

reasons. It is inevitable and a part of being human. Can pain enrich

us? Can we learn from it? Is the burden of pain a blessing?

 

 

 

What causes pain? There may be innumerable reasons for physical pain.

Illnesses, injuries, various bodily ailments. These are cured or

endured, as the case may be. These are not under our conscious

control. What about the pain due to the death of a beloved one, due

to some misfortune, a handicap, some adversity that life offers us?

Can we see the burden of adversity as a blessing and be enriched by

it? Can we actually uncover the blessing in adversity and pain? Can

we recognize how the adversity can enrich us, although painfully? Can

our pain be a blessing?

 

 

 

Our expectations, our desires, our wishes, our demands, our notions –

all these can cause pain. Pain results as a conflict between the way

things are and the way we wish them to be. In this conflict, there is

pain. Why do we desire what life does not offer us? Can we not

quietly accept life as it is, every moment as it is, can we not

accept people and events as they are? Can we remain in a state of

passive observation and just allow things to be the way they are?

 

 

 

I do not refer to a state of inertia where we sit idle and do

nothing. That state is stagnant, lazy, inattentive, in a stupor. I

talk of the possibility of being passive, neither reacting nor

resisting, but being totally attentive, totally observant of the

event, circumstance or behaviour that is being perceived as a problem.

 

 

 

First, we become aware of pain, then we become aware of ourselves as

we seek to flee the pain or to fight it, we watch ourselves as we

seek an exit from that pain or seek to fight with the source of the

pain. We seek to get rid of the pain either by avoiding it or by

fighting it at its very source. Often, we seek escape in alchohol,

sex, food, drugs, socialisation, spending, talking, any diversion

that can withdraw our mind from the pain. Often we seek to drown the

pain in anger, a fury that can overpower the pain. We either seek

escape or we struggle with the pain to overcome it. Pain by its very

nature makes us act - to avoid or to overcome.

 

 

 

Can we refrain from both and merely observe the pain? Can we be in a

state of total attention, neither avoiding nor fighting the pain? Can

we be in a stillness, watching the pain with complete attention and

observation? We restrain ourselves from fleeing, we also restrain

ourselves from reacting and fighting the pain. We merely remain

still, in a complete focus. As the pain takes hold, we allow

ourselves to feel it completely. We surrender to that pain. In

surrendering to the pain ,we allow it to come without resistance and

struggle. As the pain dominates and takes hold, we remain in a state

of complete attention.

 

 

 

We are in great pain. This pain is a fact. The fact of loneliness, of

frustration, of disappointment, of conflict, of betrayal and a

thousand other thoughts, feelings and emotions that may affect our

lives. Since pain is a fact, can we face facts? Do we have the

courage to face facts as they are? Often we deny. In denial, the pain

returns to us compounded. Can we face and accept our pain? Can we

allow it to be, as a fact of life, as an inescapable fact as we

completely observe the pain and our own response to it? The mind has

a pattern of expectation and action. When circumstances force us to

deviate from these patterns, there is pain. Can we uproot our own

notions of happiness? Can we remove the preconceived notions that

make happiness conditional and seek and find happiness in the midst

of pain?

 

 

 

Pain comes as a blessing in disguise. It comes as an opportunity for

a fundamental change in our deep rooted patterns of thought and

action. Since our own attachment to our learnt notions, prevents and

aborts the possibility of change, pain comes as an inevitable

outcome, to force us to perfect ourselves, to force us to change. Our

own resistance to the facts as they are, our own resistance to life

as it is, dynamic and everchanging every moment, this resistance of

our attachment to our own fixed notions, our wishes, our

expectations, our demands, this returns to us as pain.

 

 

 

A violation of the law of oneness causes pain to us. We inflict

violence on others but think we can escape its consequences for

ourselves. We foster division and conflict outside and think our

minds are immune from it. Actually, every thought and action sets up

a pattern in our minds. A sufficiently ingrained pattern can then

attract circumstances that it represents. Thus, we can create our own

reality by choosing to be violent or peaceful, disciplined or

wayward. In all these, we are likely to attract and actually create

the situations that our minds dwell on.

 

 

 

The focus of our attention and intention creates our realities. This

often goes by default, by the force of habit and conditioning. We

often abdicate our choice with reference to our responses in any

situation. In our stubborn attachment to our own demands, our own

desires and wishes, we often fail to accept things as they are. We

also fail to choose an appropriate response to the facts as they are.

In this snowball of mindless repetition, we abort our own awareness

and sabotage our ability to be happy regardless of the circumstances.

 

 

 

In a skewed focus on what we want, we fail to accept what is, the

facts as they are. In failing to accept things as they are, we

attract pain as a natural consequence. The force of facts cannot be

denied. Since we are blind and foolish enough to deny them ,we suffer

pain. To compound our foolishness, we seek to escape from or struggle

to overpower that pain. Our escape and our resistance breeds more

fear and more pain. Our illusions of control, our powers of thinking,

our imagination, our expectations, all these cause pain if they are

not in acceptance of what is, the facts as they are.

 

 

 

By pure perception, complete observation, total attention, on the

facts as they are, free from the screen of our fears and hopes, our

notions, desires and prejudices, from the memory mechanism and the

lens of conditioning, we shall arrive at an understanding of the

inevitability, the meaning and the significance of our lives. In this

insight, we shall also understand the significance and the

inevitability of our own pain. In this tremendous understanding, in

this pure perception, the burden of our pain is understood and

dissolved. The insight and the understanding transform the burden of

pain into a blessing of timeless wisdom.

 

2003 Ashok Gollerkeri

 

http://www.ashokgollerkeri.com

 

If you wish to know more about Ashok's first book " Freedom from

Thought-Book.1 " click the following link:

 

http://www.truborn.com/FREEDOM_FROM_THOUGHT.html