A World of Meaning » sciatica

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

A Pain-free Life – Part 1 of 3

Eric J Tischler — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:23:49 +0000

Physical pain is a big issue for a lot of people. We hear about many entertainers and actors who have admitted to becoming addicted to pain medication due to back injuries or other sorts of problems. Careful pain management is an important part of their recovery, and there are of course numerous approaches to both pain management and to healing the cause of the pain. Unfortunately, many people lack the time or money to obtain the best care and either end up with chronic pain, or drug dependency after the actual pain is gone.

There are many approaches to healing and dealing with physical pain. Medication is one, and it can make life tolerable in the short term. There are many sorts of physical therapy, and surgery, but unfortunately most mainstream doctors rarely know of, understand or believe in the alternatives that have helped millions. I myself have had great help at times with chiropractic, for example. It amazes me when I meet people who completely dismiss chiropractic without having experienced it, or because their doctor said it’s hogwash. I’ve used it for various needs for over thirty years and it saved me numerous times. Where a conventional doctor would have given me a pill and heating pad that would do nothing, my chiropractor did an adjustment and I was better in minutes.

There was however a time where my chiropractors ran into a challenge. In 2002, while at my brother’s for Christmas, I developed a case of sciatica on the left side that made the six hour holiday traffic drive home sheer agony. I had to stop every fifteen to thirty minutes to get out and stand just so I could keep from going crazy with the pain.

When I got back home to Las Vegas I went to my chiropractor, who gave me a stretching exercise, which was supposed to help in time, but after about a week there was a day when I stretched, perhaps incorrectly, and the pain got much worse and stayed that way. Needless to say I wasn’t happy with that chiropractor, and even a few more visits didn’t do much good. So I went to another, who was boasted of being the “sciatica king” but he just gave me the same stretching exercise that led to the worst pain, another who was okay, and another who made a little more progress, but as my funds were limited I had to limit my visits. Overall, I got little help from chiropractic in my case of sciatica. The real help came from within.

Let me note here that as you read you will come to see why these different chiropractors could not help me in this instance. They have helped me in many instances, and I still go to them when needed. But even at that, believe me when I tell you that I have seen nine different chiropractors over the course of thirty years and they are all different. Some are excellent; some are very much not, so don’t dismiss chiropractic based on one doctor or one story.

I even went to an osteopath, which is like a cross between a chiropractor and an MD, but unfortunately he seemed uninterested in really helping and gave me a prescription for Lortab, which worked a while, but when it expired after a week he wouldn’t renew the prescription because it could be addictive, and I was high and dry with my rather severe pain. When I called him a few weeks later he had closed practice.

Sciatica can be really bad. The pain I felt would usually be tolerable if I was standing, and a bit less so if I was sitting, but if I sat a while and stood up I would have a period of about five to ten seconds where I just about jumped out of my skin. At work I learned to anticipate this surge of pain and keep composure until the pain subsided. Again, I had no medication and this period of sciatica pain went on for about six months. Not fun.

This was going to be a trial, for sure. Being oriented to personal and spiritual growth I was prepared to look for important lessons with this powerful motivation. I found plenty. It was one of the best worst times of my life.

Next Post: A Surprise “Ending” to Agony