Coming to Peace With Pain

One of the essential requirements for true spiritual growth and deep personal transformation is coming to peace with pain.
Michael Singer, the untethered soul, page 99

Happy Easter Everyone! 

It doesn't matter if we identify as Christian or not ...Easter offers a wonderful reminder to all of us  of the importance of healing and waking up to a greater truth. Beyond suffering there is the Kingdom of God. " Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand."(Matthew 3: 2)

The Kingdom Within

Now I look at that a little differently than I did in my catechism years. "Repent",  I now see as meaning "Wakeup...notice what you have done, see the errors of your action, your thinking, your speech.  Choose differently."

The Kingdom of Heaven, I believe, is not something we have allotted to some unseen but designated location "out there" or in the future.  It isn't necessarily "up there" either. It isn't far away.  It is "at hand". Meaning It is right here, right now.   We just have to wake up to it.   

We can't see it because of our way of perceiving and thinking in this world that keeps us from experience our connection with  God in our present moment. When we don't experience this, we remain in pain.

Stuck in Pain

We don't like pain!  We tend to avoid it, stuff it, push it away at all costs.  We are desperate.  So we grasp, cling, strive, seek to control the world around us so it doesn't cause more pain.  We try to "fix" this present moment...to make it something other than it is.  We use it to fall back into past pleasant moments.  We get lost in our memories and we do what we can to recapture them.  Or we use the present moment  as a stepping stone to skip ahead into the future where we convince ourselves...some form of Heaven will be. We seldom settle in this moment and open our eyes to the Heaven that is within us.

Why Do We Not Open Our Eyes To Truth?

We are afraid to touch our pain!

Suffering does exist.  Many of us, according to  Brother Phap Luu in Establishing a Buddha Field
and Michael Singer  in the untethered soul have a dagger  or a thorn in our heart, in the form of a past trauma or painful memory we stuff away, cling to and protect so we do not have to "feel it". We end up causing more pain on top of pain with our resistance to what is.

Instead of just facing the pain and allowing it to flow through us, we push it down and lock it away inside of us.  We  close down the parts of us that hold on to this pain. This holding on and locking in forms the knots in our bodies and minds I wrote about the other day.   We may react to or avoid anything in life that may touch this pain, aggravate or remind us of it. 

Yet there are soooo many things that can trigger it.  We really cannot escape pain or its triggers. 

Eventually we realize this and give up trying to run away from it. We will decide we want to do as Christ advised in Matthew, what the Buddha advised in his teachings. We give up trying to find the answers to ending suffering "out there" and instead turn inside.  We decide to "repent" and wake up to the Kingdom of God in this moment.  We decide to envelope ourselves in the Buddha field. (Buddha by the way is just a name for awakening). We seek the Field of Awakening.


Will Not Find a Place Where There is No Pain

In this field, we will not find the end of all pain.  We will simply find the end of the need to push pain away, or  to deny its presence.  Eventually we will see that there is no need to judge , prefer or push away...that all things God offers us can bring peace. With this "Right view", this repenting...we put away our need for "right" from "wrong", "pleasant from unpleasant, worthy from unworthy discriminations and see that all Life offers us, all the moment offers us is worthy of our attention.

  Instead of running from pain, we learn to pay attention to it, to embrace it. From there we see how it is able to provide precious nourishment for our joy and happiness.  We see how our heart opens and the dagger melts so we can offer compassion to other beings. The world around us become a different place.

When you are comfortable with pain passing through you, you will be free...You will then be able to walk through this world more vibrant and alive than ever before.  you will feel everything at a deeper level.  you will begin to have truly beautiful experiences rise up within you. Eventually you will understand that there is an ocean of love behind all this fear and pain...Over time, you will form an intensely personal relationship with this beautiful inner force...Now peace and love will run your life.
(Singer, pg 106-107) 

This state of Love and compassion and joy is Heaven on earth...it is the Buddha Field.

How do we get there?  By turning inside, by accepting all that is, and by embracing our pain with tender hearted compassion for it is the mud that will allow our awakening to grow.

All is well.

 Plum Village (February 2020) Establishing the Buddha Field/ Dharma Talk by Br. Phap Luu.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E20CaTQ1fMA

Michael Singer ( 2007) Chapter 11: pain, the price for freedom. the untethered soul. New Harbinger/Noetic Books

Bible Gateway https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+3%3A2%2CMatthew+4%3A17%2CMark+1%3A15&version=ESV