The Pain of Transformation

In my work with people…it seems that everything is based on emotional gratification that so many human beings strive for with all of their energies in this world. If they are getting the proper amount of emotional satisfaction, then all is well in their life. Most people believe that they are living right when they are emotionally fulfilled! They believe that they have found the place of true happiness when everything in their world is going well. They think they have the tiger by the tail, which usually has to do with an easy lifestyle and comfort of living that appears to be in control as a matter of daily routine.

On the other hand, people typically believe that they are unhappy if, through their emotions, they are receiving signals of some sort of emotional depravation in their current living or believe that there is some sort of restriction coming their way. To them, this means something is wrong and they must batten down the hatches and ready themselves for an emotional storm or loss of some sort. And add to the mix here that for many people, emotional gratification can also include some sort of negative experience that fulfills their belief that they are just losers in this world. This is all so convoluted!

So with all of this said, I want to talk with you about the presence of PAIN in our lives and what it could mean to actually mature through pain.

These petty emotions and passionate fears are how our society has grown so very immature. Learning how to live with and through any kind of pain changes us, it can even transform us.

A Zen master once told me there were two types of pain. The first was the type that seemed to hurt forever and the second was the pain of transformation that opened up new doors to living.

Pain is nothing more than fingers pointing to the moon. The object of pain is to look where it is pointing without biting the finger, which is only there to help us recognize where we are and where we are headed. Learning how to live with pain in order to become clear and present in our awareness is a very intelligent way to process living.

Reacting emotionally to any kind of pain and assigning some sort of moral assessment to it as being unfair or wrong only prolongs the pain and makes us believe that we have been persecuted for no just cause. This is NOT at all the way Life works.

The effort is to HEAR THE MESSAGE of pain – not from a moral or emotional premise, but from a place where we can realize that following our emotions creates very painful events in both our outer world and, more importantly, the inner space within ourselves.

Learning how to devote our attentions to what is happening in the innermost self is the art of an authentic spiritual practice. Then to simply stop doing what we have been doing to ourselves no matter how pervasive and persuasive our emotions may seem.

To do this we must truly recognize what is happening from within, and be determined to enable a metamorphosis into Love.

We mature when we realize the futility of living in the ruthlessness of our emotional cruelty, recognizing how it boomerangs back at us over and over again. Once this is understood, we simply disengage from attachment to anything in the form of flesh, thought and emotion.

To mature through pain is to self-realize through remorse – to no longer live as an act of selfishness, pride and judgement. Remorse means: I RECOGNIZE THE FUTILITY OF CONTINUING TO INDULGE IN ENERGIES THAT DO NOT ALLOW FOR AUTHENTIC LOVE. It is that simple.

Walk into the water…move into the Ocean of the INTRINSIC and come home. Here pain only helps you mature into the ability to recognize the Love that you are.

Enter the water…

As did the Salt Child, move into the Ocean of the INTRINSIC and come home. From there, pain only serves as a means to mature into the ability to recognize the Love that you truly are.