“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.”
~ Kahlil Gibran
Pain is one of those four-letter words that encompasses many things. It means different things at different times, triggers an assortment of feelings and emotions, and, ultimately, teaches — always. This is the nature of contrast.
Fear and pain are somewhat synonymous, though the former is psychological and conceptual, while the latter is certainly primarily physical. They are, at their core, forms of resistance, spiritually and metaphysically speaking. Resistance is spurning to flow; it’s anti-life; unconscious actions; egoic persistence, rather than heartful constancy.
Our world in this reality is somewhat engulfed with fear, pain, and their derivatives. A certain numbness rules this day, for we are primarily in the space between; we are unsure of what is worth holding onto and bringing forward, while newly aware of what urges us to elevate our interdependent existence, to embrace ease, grace, lightness, unity, authenticity, and the deep, naked knowing beckoning us out of our shadowy, self-sustained caverns.
Opposite pain is, understandably, virtually unknown. We have to learn to trust again. Hundreds of generations have predominantly relied on pushing, pulling, fighting, forming, factoring, mapping, manipulating, and being manipulated.
Every eye you meet knows the terror they can’t yet voice. We’re more polarized and compartmentalized than ever, yet I believe this to be the archer’s bow being drawn, the slingshot being stretched, and the catapult being cranked tight. This evolutionary conflux is steadying us, purifying us, and about to propel us far beyond the clumsy constructs we’ve accepted and half-heartedly integrated. We are so much more, and the river is about to burst through the dam.
Opposite pain is openness. It is tangible and for the partaking. It is that breath that reaches from your soul. It is the knowing and acting in accordance with excitement, gratitude, flow, faith, and foresight. It is the vortex that’s been amassing the universe of your desires, passions, and the unreasonable.
It is accepting that maybe there’s nothing wrong with you…
You can feel it, right?
Solvitur ambulando