Painful Bliss

I've been thinking alot about pain lately, as I've been in some pretty intense pain for about five months. What goes through my mind, given the work I do, is primarily the questions about what this pain means, what my body it trying to communicate to me, where I might be blocked in my relationships or how I move through the world, and whether it really means anything or nothing. My mind likes to keep itself quite busy with all of the possibilities that might make my pain meaningful to it's greatness, and I say that tongue in cheek.

As I meditate and pray, process and dream, I begin to see patterns of thought I hold in mind that don't serve me. I also get "hits" or intuitive aha moments of seeing a way that I may have operated in my life that is obviously undermining what I intend for myself. I'm open to looking at these things because I hold myself gently with compassion. The more compassionate I am with myself, the more I am able to release old habitual ways of being that hold me back.

I think we tend to get stuck in holding patterns of negative circumstance when we judge and criticize ourselves, because the internal prosecutor is in charge and has us in a corner where there's a frozen standoff. If we realize that we can tell the prosecutor to shut up and sit down, we can replace him with a loving witness who remembers our humanity and our heart's innate goodness. The loving witness is a soothing balm and a kind ally who opens gateways of tremendous growth and enlightenment, melting the standoff in an instant. My own internal loving witness took years of meditation and hard work for me to locate. Hopefully by reading this, you'll hear yours sooner.

Yoga at the master level teaches us about mass consciousness mind that is just chatter that flows through all of us randomly, and once we realize this, we can see the innocence of everyone in this beautiful drama of life. We can see that our physical symptoms are an experience we chose before time, and hopefully allow ourselves to sink into a surrendered agreement of what is in this present moment.

In the present moment, I find bliss in the sensations of this pain I have held for these many months. I find that I can love that pain with an open heart, and hold it with compassion and gratitude. My pain brings more gifts than I can list here, but the biggest one is the gift of remembering the Infinite Presence that lives in every cell of my being.