Musings: The Blessings of Physical Pain

“The wound is the place where the light enters you.”
~ Rumi

After 10 months and 10 days on medication for shingles, I was so happy to be able to get off of them. And I tell this story in order to boost any reader out there going through any sort of physical pain.I have never been a pill taker, and this was a difficult time for me. Even so, I worked hard to keep a good attitude knowing that the pain would not be forever. The shingles have not – after a year – gone away, but they are bearable.  They intermittently show up for a few minutes a couple times per day. And then they subside.

While I was taking the paid medication Naproxen (a heavy-duty Aleve) it masked my lower back pain. Over the years, I suffered with low back pain as a result of a bulged disc between L4 and L5 with referred sciatica. While on medication I experiencing no back pain and probably overdid lifting and lugging luggage. As soon as I got off the pain medication, my back pain returned, and the last two weeks have been very tough. I can take 5 to 8 mile walks (short to long), yet I can’t sit for too long. With all my flying, the constant sitting is potentially responsible for the back pain. I am leaving for Seattle and Vancouver tomorrow, and I must say I’m a little nervous. But even with all these life struggles, I’ve been able to remain positive.

What is the secret? One is using affirmation: “I let loss lead me, opening me up to new awareness of my spiritual place in the Universe.”

Loss led the famous Persian mystic Rumi when, as the story goes, he lost his friend and teacher Shams. Instead of avoiding the pain of loss, he grabbed a standing pole and spun around it, going deeper and deeper into his grief. Soon words of poetry came from him and his students wrote them down. Through the birth of the “whirling dervish” ritual, came the truth that beauty can come from loss and suffering.

Pain is unavoidable in life however suffering is avoidable. The difference is attitude. Suffering is a choice while pain often is inflicted upon us by the Universe to mold us and get us on our spiritual purpose.

As Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl said, “What is to give light must endure burning.”

There is a beautiful story in The Prophet by Khalil Gibran – within the poem on “Joy and Sorrow.” We feel pain with the same faculty we feel joy. Both of these emotions expand our capacity to endure pain or experience a higher quality of joy. In this poem Gibran gives the example of an artist sculpting a masterpiece from clay. He is so in love with his masterpiece that he actually wets the clay with his tears. But after the masterpiece is complete, he has to put into an oven at 2300 degrees Fahrenheit so the clay can become porcelain and radiate its beauty.

So as you go through pain, the Universe is molding you to expand the faculties to experience more joy and express more of your radiance.