Pain and Suffering

 "We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses." -- C. G. Jung

It has been said that pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.  That sounds glib, if you are suffering from chronic pain of any kind.  As a sufferer from rheumatoid arthritis, I have personal knowledge of this truth.  However, because I have been a practitioner of daily prayer and meditation and a seeker after the Beloved for many years, I have learned the difference. 

So:  Pain is an experience.  Suffering is a perception.  If I hurt, I hurt.  I can choose whether to suffer.  I can choose to make my life about the pain or not.  I  can choose to accept that pain is a part of my life, but it is not who I am.

I can take whatever palliative measures are available to me in accordance with my doctor’s instructions and get on with my life, or I can make my life (and the lives of those around me) miserable by focusing on my pain. 

This is true whether the pain is physical or psychological.  I may have lingering scars from a crappy childhood.  I can make that an excuse not to grow up, or I can do my therapy and get on with it.  I will never have the perfect childhood, or the perfect relationship or whatever I may be deluding myself will “make me happy.”  First I have to learn how to be happy just exactly as I am. 

How do I do that?  Oddly, it is by staying in the moment with the pain and discovering that it has edges and limits and that there are many things I can do in spite of it.  It is by realizing that I do not have to be the pain or even be about the pain.  Instead, I can be “about my father’s business.”

The secret weapon I have against suffering is that because I am loved by the Beloved, my life is not about me anymore.  It is about God.  It is about love.  That is where my focus lies when I am in what I think of as “fit spiritual condition.”  I stay in that condition by doing whatever it takes to maintain my conscious contact with God.  And that contact only happens in the present moment. 

Yeah.  Sounds impossible.  Sometimes it is.  If I need to have a little private “pity party” I just go to bed and have it.  Sometimes RA or any other pain is so exhausting we are left with nothing but self-pity and tears.  That’s okay.  I just do that until I am tired of it.  Then I get up and do the next thing. 

So, yes.  Suffering is optional.  Choose happiness.  Every time it crosses your mind, choose the Beloved.  Choose love.  Be happy, joyful and free!