A World of Meaning » pain

Healing Inner and Outer Pain – Part 3 of 3

Eric J Tischler — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:29:38 +0000

I am always doing inner work in other areas, too, so it wasn’t just the sciatica motivating me, but it did give me more concrete motivation. This inner work, rather than chiropractic or anything else, actually led to the greatest improvement in my pain condition.

The greatest reduction of my actual physical pain came when I was sitting in contemplation and there came a moment when I was able to forgive my father for something – I don’t recall what – and my sciatica pain immediately dropped by about seventy-five percent. Immediately! This supports the age old teachings that essentially all suffering is born of some form of unforgiveness of grief and grievance. All that goes on in the body is something that has its origins in the mind. Our unkind and frightened beliefs have us at war with ourselves and others and our bodies, relationships and lives in general pay the price.

If you think about it, any time you are holding onto a grievance or are judging another, which is just not forgiving them for being the way they are, you are causing yourself pain. We are taught to complain and judge as if that would solve our problems. We think that judging others for their faults or differences gives us a higher social status, even when nobody really ever knows who we are judging for what. Think about that for a minute. You are up, they are down. People with a more open heart know this is painful, and their compassion prevents them from judging.

Those who don’t see the pain in it don’t really see their own pain, but it’s there. I have seen the difference between being in what I would call an everyday sort of judgmental state, and suddenly letting go of all judgment. I recall one day when I had been doing prayer-mantras, thanking God for healing my mind. After a while I noticed that everything I was looking at as I drove the freeways and roads of Las Vegas on my errands that day had a sort of screen of negativity over it, but I could see it was my own negativity. I was judging everything is a subtle way.

Noticing this I next found myself able to just stop the judgment and just see things as they were. The difference was amazing. On, off, on, off; I saw both sides. Again, it was amazing. When I let go of judgment I felt really good, happy, and everything I saw as I drove looked okay. It was peaceful. In the judgment mode I found I was indeed in a subtle but clear state of mental and emotional pain, and I could see that it was all my doing.

Observe yourself in this way. When you look at things and people, are your perhaps maintaining a low grade disdain or disapproval of them? As I sit here and look at my messy desk I can see that I have a bit of a judgment haze going on still. I have to ask myself what does that do for me? Does it get me to neaten up? No. Does it excuse it to others, winning points for me because at least I’m expressing disapproval of it as they may be? No. Does it make me happy? No.

Judgment is painful. Judgmental people are a pain. Nothing good comes of it. I would have to say that ending judgment and learning forgiveness are essential to a pain free life.

So this post is primarily testimony to you that the pain of the pain you are in is your own creation. What you do with this information is up to you. For those suffering physical pain it is certainly a massive challenge to transcend the experience of pain in this way, and a major achievement in one’s personal psychology. Yet a broader application, that of looking at the distressing situations of your life and finding yourself able to be at peace, even happy in the face of them – and especially to forgive them – will transform you life forever.

It takes determined practice to change your life long responses to pain or displeasure of any sort. One has to change core beliefs and behaviors that depend on the idea of being helpless and crying out to others to fix things in your life. While it’s fine to ask for help when you need it, a deeper understanding of the ego tells you that all of its emotional distress is based on getting others to fix things, or around pinning the blame on them for what went wrong. What you will face in this very worthwhile task is a brain that has grown neuron connections to support the ideas of blame and helplessness. Yet by practicing other ways of thinking you grow new neuron connections and those that are disused are gradually reabsorbed.

Don’t let the challenge discourage you. Think of it like learning anything you have learned before, such a playing a musical instrument, typing, dancing, lines for a play, a language and so forth. All you are doing is training yourself to do something new, and something that is really closer to your heart. In fact, underneath the learned negative behavior is your true nature, which is loving, forgiving, peaceful and strong. So you are really just learning to be who you really are. Take heart. There is great hope. Don’t beat yourself up when you see you still have more to learn. Feeling bad would just be more of the same old way of thinking. Just keep practicing. Be happy you know what to do.

PS: I did, after several months, discover that Advil worked perfectly for my sciatica pain, without addiction or high cost. No other medication did. I did at times have to take three pills, but it worked. Even so, I didn’t discover the ibuprofen trick for a while, and as you can tell, that was certainly an education, one for which I am grateful.

A Surprise “Ending” to Agony – Part 2 of 3

Eric J Tischler — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:27:05 +0000

One all important experience occurred on a day off from work, when my pain was so severe all I could do was lay on my bedroom floor in agony. I think I was laying there for over an hour, trying to position myself in such a way that the pain would perhaps be less. It seemed nothing I could do was working. It tried all sorts of positions, both physical and mental, enduring, feeling forgiving, crying and even begging God. Maybe that helped.

After laying there for a while something occurred that illuminated my whole understanding of pain of all sorts, both physical and emotional. Suddenly, as I was lying there, the pain just stopped bothering me. Or rather, I stopped reacting emotionally to the pain. No, I didn’t go numb, nor was I even trying to ignore it, yet my mood became totally peaceful, unconcerned, and almost happy, as if there were nothing wrong. The physical pain itself had not changed at all, and was amazingly just as intense, yet I felt no distress or anguish. Perhaps I had somehow just stopped trying to do anything about it, having exhausted my efforts in all other directions, although it wasn’t apathy, surrender or passivity.

What happened? Looking back all I can say is that I had stopped complaining about it or interacting or fighting it. As I (will) write elsewhere, I have come to understand, from long observation, that all negative emotion, including agonizing over physical pain, is a deliberate action, not a “natural” reaction as some are fond of saying, which is hoped and believed to bring a remedy from someone else. It can be automatic, as many people live their lives as if unconsciously re-acting automatically to stimuli rather than consciously choosing to act.

Pain, anguish and other negative emotion is essentially a cry for help or mercy. Either you are asking for someone to help or defend you, or you are pleading for mercy from your attacker, or both. However, if one could operate on a purely logical, rational basis regarding pain, understanding this would make it possible to simply not react to it emotionally and to be able to function even cheerful while still feeling the physical pain, even without medication, including during surgery, which some are reportedly able to do. We have heard of yogis and other “dare devils” of physical stunts who undergo things like body piercing and such by mental discipline or force of will to not feel or react to any pain involved. They call it mind over matter, but really it’s logic over emotion.

What did this experience tell me? It proved to me what we have all heard at some point that all of the distress of physical pain as well as psychological stress is purely a personal reaction. Yes, this is NOT new to the field of psychology at all. I haven’t discovered fire here, but I have experienced the truth of this fact first hand, and it’s an important thing to understand.

I am grateful that in the course of my life I’ve never been in any sort of extreme physical pain other than this sciatica. I’ve been blessed with good health and physical integrity, but the sciatica came and stayed and didn’t leave until I had learned a few things. And I do truly believe that everything happens so we can learn and become healed inwardly and more whole spiritually, as follows.

One thing I learned was to have real compassion for people who are in severe pain. Due to the peer abuse I was subject to in my teen years my natural compassion for others got buried under a callus of unforgiveness for those abusers, a learned veneer of “toughness” a lot of men learn as teens to appear not soft. Yet compassion is one of the most important qualities and it ends judgment and opens the door of the heart.

Over the years I have managed to heal a great deal of my feelings from those events and have rediscovered my buried love and forgiveness, yet sometimes it takes a more solid experience to drive a lesson home. I believe being immersed in this pain was an unavoidable lesson brought to me by the Creator, a merciful challenge to reawaken my compassion. As there was nothing I could do for the pain I had to rely on this inner purpose. I knew I needed to truly wake up and open up my heart that much more.

Next post: Healing Inner and Outer Pain

Compassion: A Gateway Virtue

Eric J Tischler — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:11:29 +0000

In our times we may feel like we are finding more and more need to do something inwardly to remedy the increasing pressures and stresses of our outward life and world. As spiritually oriented persons we understand the need for change within ourselves so that we may live in more peace within our own lives and also to contribute more peace to the world. We see our own issues and know we need to forgive and love more. That is the task of our lives: to love and accept love. Yet we find there is a barrier or gap we must cross in order to get there. Our recalcitrant egos don’t seem to want to easily let go of grievances and grief. We need some way of getting through.

The trials of our lives bring us often to react in pain and resistance. It’s natural for the animal self to want to attack the problem, but the animal self is at the far end of the consciousness spectrum as we have projected ourselves into materiality and matter-based identification. Separation-mindedness leads us to think the problem is outside of ourselves, but we must learn that separation is born only of judgement and is there for an illusion. We must use our minds to pull us back from believing in separation as a reality, to reach a point where we can hear our hearts again. Many people think that thinking doesn’t help, but as ACIM states, “changing concepts is salvation’s task.”

One idea we must get past is that attack helps. With a little thought it can be easily seen that attack/judgment is part and parcel of separation, and we must accept that there is another way that is different and leads to the peace we want. When we have and troubles that hurt us there is a powerful gift buried within them. At first they may make us think that the world or certain people within it don’t care about us. Healing begins when we note that in our own hurt we really recognize that the message here is not that the world doesn’t care, but that it needs more caring added to it. That naturally begins with us.

What do we want most when we are hurt, or when we have been caught in hurtful errors of our own? Understanding, which means really compassion and forgiveness. We want to feel safe. As the Law of the Universe and of Consciousness is “what goes around comes around” we need to take then next spiritually rational step to see that we ourselves must add that compassion we would see in the world, so that it can be shared by all, can be learned by all, and eventually come back to us as well. And in this giving we receive the greatest gift, which is giving the high virtues that are in our heart.

I call compassion a “gateway” virtue because it helps us get past the barrier our own feelings of hurt, anger and defensiveness put up. When we sincerely look within we can see and feel in our own pain or embarrassment what is must feel like for others who are suffering the same, or have behaved in similar, less than enlightened ways. In our ordinary society we are tempted to judge others who err or who have seemed to hurt us, but looking at our own errors we can feel what they felt like, both the stresses and ignorance that led to our lacks or faults, as well as the shame, defensiveness, embarrassment and perhaps denial, as well as the stress of trying to change and become better than we were.

Here we can turn our own pain into a gift for others, and see that we indeed cannot judge them. This opens the gate to forgive them, to have compassion and refrain from judgment. And as we give this to others we learn to accept forgiveness and compassion ourselves. Innately knowing that we have increased our own virtue with compassion and forgiveness we feel better about ourselves, and so grow all the other virtues that we seek to embody. We become more loving, more kind and peaceful and more willing to give and receive goodness in our lives.

Compassion turns us around and lifts us out of our pit of despair or anger. We say, “Yes, I know what that’s like. I’m no different.” We all have human foibles, and we are all learning. Remember that it’s easier to learn from a kind teacher than a cruel one. End your judgment by passing through the gate of compassion. You will both learn and teach better than before.