Living, Understanding and Transcending Pain

She has never experience a state like that. The pain is excruciating, yet it is as much part of her as she is beyond it. Sure, she has experienced unbearable pain before, the time her parent divorced, or the time when she briefly became the outcast at high school. But none of that compared with what she was going through now. It was more a come and go, an on and off. She literately seemed to have the ability to step out of it, but just like clouds passing, she had no control over this process of transcendence either.

Suddenly she had a vision. She saw herself lying naked on the floor being curled up in a cocoon. She scratched her skin and it peeled off. She pulled and pulled, and it didn't seem to hurt at all. She scratched and scratched until she saw an opening in her body. She felt a new being leaving this old and stale body. She floated into the air and saw her old, naked body just lying there; she had no idea as yet how her new being would look like, but she had a feeling she would be beautiful.

What do we make of this story?  Every sadness, every lingering pain has the potential to set us free. But we have to be one with it without fighting it. Our soul understands why this pain is necessary and why living through it is part of our spiritual awakening process. What do you do when you experience pain? Play or listen to music? Perhaps you write like me, or you share your pain with close friends; perhaps you go on nature walks when the going is tough? The trick is to be one with the pain without fighting it. The spiritual traveler in our story mentioned two traumatic events in her earlier life, the divorce of her parents and the time when she felt alienated at high school. Those psychological cuts happen for a reason. They sent you on a life journey and got the ball rolling and helped you becoming who you are today.  But when you revisit these old wounds in the healing process, you experienced the pain very differently. You repressed or blamed others for your pain in the past, but today is different. We don't repress, we don't project the blame onto others. Today we have the priceless opportunity to be one with it and let go.

Becoming a butterfly must be a scary process for the caterpillar. But it is subconscious for the caterpillar, whereas we experienced painful transitions in a semi-conscious state. Open up to life completely and bring everything that comes your way into consciousness. Just keep going and set yourself free.