The Cure for Pain?

 What hurts us is what heals us.

Paulo Coelho

Up most of the night. Worried about others again. Worried about unhealthy choices they have made or are still making.  I am worried about the consequences of those choices. Worried about all the other people indirectly affected by those choices. I am worried about what "I need to do" if anything to assist and support, to disenable, to offer my love unconditionally.  I also worry about my part in their suffering. Is there something I did or didn't do in the recent  or distant past, something I am doing or not doing now, a tiny ripple I started with my own unconscious behaviour or a tidal wave maybe, that contributed somehow, that was one of the many ripples or waves that led them where they are? Is there something I should be doing now? 

Man...this feeling sucks.  It really does but I will not run from it or close up to it.  I will just watch it and sit with it when I can. 

I feel it as a heavy weight in my chest.  I feel it as a liquid pain originating from my heart and  flowing  in and around old knots, releasing and unraveling some  buried pain,  then carrying that energetic debris to my eyes where it comes through so easily now. I can feel the cleansing warmth  of it trickling down my face, especially when I meditate. I am definitely still experiencing  the pain of it all in clumps of unpleasant feelings and difficult emotions but I am also feeling the healing that comes when we turn toward pain rather than close up to it. 

I find myself saying to God, Life, this moment, or the breath (I am not really sure what I am saying it to) , "Please make my heart big enough to hold this too!  And this!  And this!..." 

Sigh! 

All is well! 

The cure for pain is in the pain.

Rumi