19/ the power of pain

I encourage you to listen rather than to read this episode. I got goosebumps while recording it.

Today, I am sharing with you an excerpt of a social media post of a friend who suddenly found himself in hospital. It is a powerful account of how everything is put into real perspective when you are not well and therefore goes to show how much drama our minds create when we are well.

My mind is not interested in finding joy in life but constantly looking out for what’s wrong. Until something is so wrong that it forces me to recalibrate, like getting really sick. My mind is just doing its job therefore I proactively need to take charge and put it into its place because the stories my mind makes up about life are fiction. The moment I realise that I can embody that wisdom without having to undergo pain to gain that insight. Though physical pain will drive that point home every time again.

That is what my friend is conveying to us through his account of suffering. He wrote this on his fourth day in hospital after having been first misdiagnosed and been moved between three different hospitals. As a result, he might loose one of his kidneys.

In these four days I have experienced some of the most intense pain one can experience. There were times when the pain was so severe that I had hallucinations and uncontrollable spasms all over my body, and even morphine was not enough to quell them.

However, in between sharp pains, I occasionally found moments of peace. Sometimes even for a few seconds, I felt immeasurable pleasure: the relief of being able to take a breath without pain.

At that moment I realized how important it is to live without suffering.

Yet, each of us constantly lives in a state of suffering, a suffering that is not physical, but generated by ourselves, our heads and our thoughts.

One day someone asked the Buddha what nirvana was. He answered simply, "the end of suffering."

There is much suffering in the world, but the greatest is the suffering that each of us inflicts on ourselves.

It is that voice in our head that never quiets down and keeps judging, worrying and planning. It is that voice that keeps us constantly in a state of apprehension, anxiety and fear. Because the present moment is never enough. We always have to think about what the past was like or make plans for the future.

That voice that, when we are enjoying a delicious meal, says "yes but last week I ate better at that other restaurant."

It is that voice that when we see a person immediately adds a judgment to them. We never see the person, we see the mental image we have of this person and we miss their true essence, their true value.

And so it is with our life. We almost never see our life as it is, instead we see our mental image, the mental projection of our life, and we miss the most important thing, the life force within us.