Have you ever had pain that appeared slowly, over time, where you weren’t sure what you did, how it happened….
….but you find yourself hurting, overwhelmed, and practically all attention directly on the pain.
I’m talking physical pain, but, this can happen with emotional pain as well.
All you can think is “get me outta here!” or “where’s the pain killer!” or “OK, OK, you have my attention!”
Many will think of these moments as decisive. Something cracked, they couldn’t take it anymore.
Perhaps a dreadful sense of destruction–it’s over, done, finished.
Recently, something changed with my easily-healing hamstring injury from last year.
Oh sure, there were moments in the past six months when I felt I might have overdone it on the dance floor, or pushed a little too hard at the gym….
….but this was different.
A squeezing, deep, strange nerve-like clutching pain starting in the hamstring I hurt and beaming up into my ribcage.
Several days went by. It got worse and worse.
I finally took motrin, and called the doctor.
And went to a chiropractor, and followed the next simple instructions for what was advised since being pain-free was desirable.
We’re very interested in being free from pain, especially when it really hurts.
We get motivated to move towards whatever “pain-free” looks like.
But what if, no matter what you “do” there is no “pain-free”?
Whew. Dang.
Then what?
This is broken. It can’t be healed. I hurt. Ouch.
Who would you be without the belief you absolutely MUST find, do, fix something, even in the middle of excruciating pain?
Who would I be?
Strangely….someone hurting physically….but somehow, without the discouragement, or sadness, or dramatic images of doom.
Movement happens.
I move towards researching what helps, who can help, making decisions, collecting more information.
Simply doing everything with an open, don’t-know mind.
And how very odd…..
….Here’s what I am amazed to see: it hurts but I am not upset about it.
No fear, no urgency, no sadness….unless there is.
No trying to ignore it.
“I pour hot tea from a kettle into a cup, and I don’t see the cup is cracked, and the hot tea spills out onto my left hand. Ow! What an adventure! Even as my hand starts to throb, I’m aware that waht I’m watching is absolute perfection. How can I believe that my hand is not supposed to be scalded when it is? Why would I move from reality into a fantasy of what my hand should be? When inquiry is alive inside you, thoughts don’t pull you away from loving whatever happens, as it happens. Pain is always on its way out; it’s the story of a past. All the pain we have ever suffered, all the pain that any human being on this planet has ever suffered, is gone in this present moment. We live in a state of grace.” ~ Byron Katie
Love, Grace