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Releasing the Pain: The Illusion of Suffering


I have had a profoundly difficult and yet transformative few weeks. In the midst of pain, both emotional and some physical, my spirit seemed to absorb a sublime message that I struggle to grasp, much less convey to you in mere words.

It started with emotional upheavals that left me sobbing so hard my body ached. Some of it was rooted in things that occurred years ago, some months, others within the last few sleepless hours of struggle. (I had a very bad childhood and later a two-decade co-dependent relationship that I managed to leave four years ago.)

It has taken a lot of effort to heal and that deep work is far from completed. In recent years, when suffering enters my life in some form I try to seek the root lesson or cause. I try to embrace the pain, listen to the meaning behind it and return to my center.

Although difficult, it has always created more awareness and peace even when my outer circumstances made me feel like I was assembling some crazy jigsaw puzzle with the pieces all popping and an out of view.

This time when the pain grew I reached out for help, calling on my closest friends and others on a similar path of peace. Then I packed my spiritual bags and went on an inward journey, calling up each struggling emotion and embracing them one by one.

I would take each emotion and ask it how I might learn from it. What was the karmic lesson? How could I seek to grow from it and to release the energy back into something positive? If I was mad, I allowed myself to feel it and then let it go. If I was hurt, I hugged that pain, looked at it and then released it as best I could at the time.

I used a form of the Hawaiian Kahuna shamanistic practice of ho'oponopono to help me break the negative karmic bonds and to send peaceful healing to both myself and others. It is based on the idea that none of us is separate from others. Pain around us and pain within us must be healed by seeking the core of our shared struggles.

If, for instance, someone or something kept tripping me up, causing me to feel angry or sad or the need to defend myself, I would mentally reach out to that person.

I would thank them for the lesson, whatever it was (even it was just not to be like them) and forgive them. I would send them love and ask for healing for them.

Then I would mentally speak to my own inner child, telling her it is okay, that I am here now and that she is loved completely I tried to accept each moment, to be present and to allow it all to unfold without judgement. This is not an easy practice, but I have been doing it rather methodically for five years now.

Yesterday, as I was meditating and releasing, it happened. A gentle knowing, a sweet sense that there is a vast and intricately connected ocean of being pressing on my skin, brushing just past my yearning fingertips, yet somehow ever present and more real than anything I have ever known rose up within me.

I felt as if the world faded and the beautiful cords of love, the truth beneath the mirage began to emerge, pulsating with meanings too deep for me to comprehend.

It has faded now, the muddy waters of everyday things still rises around me. I still hurt. I am still tired and yet, I know now that everything is a giant illusion and we are all in on it.

I share this story because it may be exactly what you need to hear. We are love, crafted into bits of slowed down light. There is no us versus them. You and I and everyone else are part of the same whole.

You have the ability to overcome your pain, but not with the same energy or thought patterns that created it. to overcome you must seek only love. Love for yourself and love for others. If you do you will grow to understand that everything, and I do mean everything is a lesson in some way.

Love is the only message you need to hear, not because it is an option, but rather because that is all there is. You are eternal. This is all just a test. You are loved. You matter and regardless of what you are facing, it is always and ever okay. Namaste bright soul. I salute you.

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