Pain: The Messenger

After years of struggling with physical pain and other uncomfortable sensations such as vulvar burning, rawness, and itching, I felt exhausted. I was so sick of pai
I wanted to give up, somehow, or run away. I longed to jump out of my own skin and just escape. I was going crazy dealing with the pain, and I really hated it, feared it, and obsessed about it. My whole life centered around this terrible thing called pain. (And itching - let's not forget that. Anyone who has suffered vestibulitis with itching knows the madness involved in that sensation.)

Instead of going bananas, however, I ended up following my Inner Healer and discovering an amazing woman named Kathleen. I've spoken of her before, because she taught me how to elicit a relaxation response from my body and immediately snap out of panic. Before my first appointment with Kathleen, I had reached the point where I actually wanted to go bananas. I figured insanity would at least bring with it blessed unawareness and thus relief. What I didn't realize was what I really sought was awareness, or consciousness.

Kathleen introduced me to awareness, which I found so inviting I studied it in depth and found an entirely new career as a result. Awareness is simply the ability to step outside of your own thinking long enough to separate yourself from your thoughts. Eckhart Tolle discusses this in depth in A New Earth, and this is truly the key to releasing the despair around pain. The most incredible notion about pain is this: pain is pain. It is something that occurs in the body, and nothing more. When we are unaware and involved in our thoughts, we believe many things about pain, such as "pain is horrible, pain is the worst thing that's ever happened to me, I can't stand this pain, I can never live a normal life again, my life is ruined," and on and on. It's easy to see, as someone looking at these thoughts rather than believing them, that these thoughts escalate anxiety and panic.

With awareness, you can step away from these thoughts and see pain for what it is. Pain is a messenger. It is a way for your body to communicate with you and help you stay alive. It tells you to remove your hand from the hot stove. It sends you to the emergency room when you have a severe illness that needs immediate attention. It lets you know you've broken a bone so you can seek a doctor for help. Pain is on your side. Hating pain is not helpful at all on the road to healing. Looking at pain with clear thinking actually invites you to learn about yourself and reach emotional equilibrium.

Once I saw my pain as a messenger, I began to listen to it and question it. Clearly, it wasn't there to save me from death, as my condition was not going to kill me. So I literally asked it why it was in my body, sometimes with a journal in hand and other times while in a relaxed, meditative state. Every time, it responded with this enigmatic answer: "I am here to teach you. I will go when you have learned." I did not make that up mentally - it simply came to me. At first, I felt very confused. Teach me what? I wanted to learn it quickly, whatever it was, so the pain would go.

Of course, that was the whole point. It was there to teach me how to listen to my essential self, my inner healer, and stop resisting everything in my life. It was there to teach me how to become aware, to see my own thoughts as separate from myself. It was there to teach me how to follow my North Star and discover my purpose in life. It was there to teach me how to find joy, calm, peace, and love. It was there to teach me how to truly feel good, confident, strong, and alive.

I became so entranced in the learning process I forgot about my teacher. I ceased to focus on the pain, and my attention turned to the material I was learning. I fell in love with awareness. I studied Martha Beck, Dr. Sarno, Pema Chodron, and a host of other writers' works. One day, I woke up and realized I hadn't felt a symptom in months. Yes, it's really true. I actually forgot about my condition and ceased to focus on my symptoms entirely.

Instead of escaping through unawareness, I lived in my own skin with absolute awareness. I learned from Pain, my Teacher. And when I truly understood, my Teacher left, as promised. Never in my life have I had such an effective learning experience. I have a PhD in my essential self. I will never stop studying, because I know I can learn more, always. And truly, the joy is in the learning.