There is No Such Thing as a Pain-Free Spirituality

Often times when we’re seeking–a partner, a passion, a savior, a guru, a quick fix–we just want the pain to go away. ?Impossible.

Pain is your birth right. ?Literally–as you passed through your mother’s birth canal to come into this world, pain was right there. ?Your mother labored for hours–and for 9 months before that–to birth you into being. ?You likely cried as you moved from the darkness of the womb into a brightly-lit world.

There is all this talk of light in the culture of spirituality. ?It is often equated with consciousness, awakening. ?The word enlightenment is just that: illumination. ?Bringing forth the light.

Many believe enlightenment brings eternal bliss and an end to all pain. ?But who ever said light isn’t painful?

Our greatest source of light on earth comes from the sun. ?At that level of pure light, there is intense heat (10,000 ?F or?5,600 ?C). ?Just to look at such an intense degree of light is painful and damaging, let alone to come close to it.

Because that’s what light does: it burns. ?Its very source is a chemical reaction, is change. ?It purifies, it nourishes–every time you cook with fire from a stove, the heat burns away impurities and bacteria. ?To stand bare in the light, to really be a source of light in this world, you have to be willing to burn, to change, to ache, to sear in the intensity of aliveness. ?Pain is part of the deal.

And darkness? ?Darkness is that vast emptiness, void. ?Darkness is the absence of light. ?If light burns, darkness freezes, paralyzes, numbs.

The word “Guru” means to dispel darkness. ?A Guru is considered a source of light for all, an enlightened being. ?The sun, then, is the ultimate guru for us all, casting forth enough light to fill our hearts, homes, our neighbor’s homes, and then some. ?Each and every day.

Only light has the capacity to dispel darkness; darkness cannot do it alone. ?If you have ever had a part of your body go numb and regain sensation, you know the pins-and-needles feeling that follows. ?Painful, isn’t it? ?That pain signifies the restoration of sensation, of awake consciousness–of light–into the body.

Listen. There is no such thing as a pain-free spirituality.

That which plunges you into the depths of your pain is that which will give you wings and keep your chin raised in those same moments. ?Your fear of incompetence, your fear of failure and crushed dreams, your broken heart–that is your same drive to be everything you wish to be. It is that very strength and aliveness in you that becomes afraid, sad, frustrated, and in pain.

Pain unveils our masks and opens us to the truth of our vulnerable humanity, that open wound of being alive. ?Pain has the potential to awaken even the numbest and darkest places in us,bringing forth the voice in us that begs only for the light.

Listen to it; soothe it with your love, and let it carry you to the sweet surrender of your becoming.

Pain is a form of prayer. ?Pain gives us no choice but to be fully present; pain brings us into our bodies. ?On the other side of pain is our strength, power–the single thread that carries us through the deepest of wounds. ?For pain burns away all but our essence, light itself–the very source of life, of breath.

As long as we live in a body with all its senses, there will be pain. ?And there will be pleasure.

In our willingness to stand in the fire of our love and be burnt in aliveness, we discover that pain and pleasure are not as separate as we believe. ?Diving deeply into one, we come out the other end and meet the other. ?Pain is pleasure, and pleasure is pain. ?They are brother and sister; they are of the same source.

In darkness we transform; in the light, we grow. ?We need both.

Your grief for what you?ve lost lifts a mirror
up to where you?re bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
here?s the joyful face you?ve been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
if it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence is in every small contracting
and expanding,
The two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.

~Rumi