“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.”
~ Kahlil Gibran
We are all walking contradictions, caught between the pull of what we’ve known and the call of what we’ve yet to become. Each moment is a fracture in time, a space where the past whispers and the future beckons. In this delicate balance, we find both the weight of what holds us down and the lightness of what could lift us. The tension between these forces is where we learn, where we grow, and where the deepest truths of our existence are revealed.
. . .
Pain is one of those four-letter words that encapsulates many things. It means different things at different times, triggers an assortment of feelings and emotions, and, ultimately, teaches — it always offers a lesson. This is the nature of living in a reality defined by duality and contrast.
Fear and pain are closely intertwined, though the former is psychological and conceptual, while the latter is primarily physical. At their core, both are forms of resistance — spiritually and metaphysically speaking. Resistance turns us away from the flow; it is anti-life, unconscious action, egoic persistence instead of heartfelt constancy.
Our world is steeped in fear, pain, and their many derivatives. A certain numbness pervades our time, for we largely dwell in the space between. We are unsure of what is worth holding onto and carrying forward, even as we awaken to the call to elevate our interconnected existence. This call urges us to embrace ease, grace, lightness, unity, authenticity, and the deep, naked knowing that beckons us out of our shadowy, self-sustained caverns.
What lies opposite pain is, understandably, almost unknown. To reach it, we must learn to trust again. Hundreds of generations have relied predominantly on pushing, pulling, fighting, forming, factoring, mapping, manipulating — and being manipulated.
Every eye you meet holds the terror they can’t yet voice. Though, as a society, we’ve become more polarized and compartmentalized, I believe this moment is like an archer’s bow being drawn, the slingshot stretched, the catapult cranked tight. This evolutionary conflux is steadying and purifying us, preparing to propel us far beyond the clumsy constructs we’ve accepted and half-heartedly integrated. We are so much more than this, and the river is about to burst through the dam.
What lies opposite pain is openness. It is tangible, ready for the partaking. It is the breath that rises from your soul. It is knowing — and acting — in alignment with excitement, gratitude, flow, faith, and foresight. It is the vortex that has been amassing your desires, passions, and the unreasonable dreams you’ve dared to imagine.
It is accepting, perhaps for the first time, that maybe there’s nothing wrong with you.
Can you feel it?
Solvitur ambulando