| Living With Guidance: Pain |
| Written by Talyaa Liera | |||
| Sunday, 16 May 2010 11:14 | |||
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[Blog (Non-channeled) May 2010]
When I returned home I continued to feel remarkably good, so I took less medication. Didn't think I needed it. Was even "over it," maybe. Monday night I felt great and even danced; Tuesday was less good, but I felt I had overdone Monday and was paying for it. Wednesday things really went downhill. In the hospital they ask you to rate pain on a scale of 1-10. By Wednesday I was back up into 7-8 territory. I had scaled back taking medication when I felt better because I had a limited amount of it and my linear mind told me that healing happens linearly; that if I felt good on Monday I should be feeling even better on Wednesday. A should! I knew I’d find some in here. There are plenty of shoulds connected to the concept of pain for me, and they’ve all come up this past week. Most of them – like most shoulds – are pretty unreasonable and filled with ego, but they are present nonetheless.
Shoulds are the result of unreasonable core beliefs. Most of us try to hide them. Look how well I hid mine. I found out I am horribly afraid of pain. It’s to the point now where I am stressing about something that hasn’t happened yet, a visit to my surgeon. I had been looking forward to it because I was assuming he’d assess my healing and we’d start planning my next surgery so I can Get On With Life and Get Past This Unpleasantness. Then it dawned on me that he’d have to take the dressing off to actually see what’s underneath, and that process is unfairly excruciating. Ten minutes of torture. I have now grown to hate my doctor in my mind because he has begun to symbolize more torture. I am afraid of pain. I want to avoid it as much as possible. Did you notice how my shoulds are all about making the pain go away? Last night I heard inner messages to meditate every time the pain was so uncomfortable that I couldn’t sleep. Which, predictably, was every three hours. So I meditated, setting my mind adrift and releasing any thoughts of pre-planning or worry. Early this morning I journeyed again, asking specifically what to do about the pain. And there has been a shift since then. I’ve been saying for a while that resistance isn’t something to be surmounted but instead is an invitation to look more deeply. Certainly I have been resisting pain. What else is in there for me? Fear, of course. There are many fears connected to this pain.
Hmm, all of these fears seem to really come down to loss of control. I hit that one right away. Loss of control. I know, in part, why the feeling of control is important to me. It is connected to a variety of dynamics we talk about elsewhere on the site, in convenient Michael teachings terms like Self-Destruction, Arrogance, and Martyrdom. They’re all there, and they are all dynamics I have within me that I work to be as aware of as possible. This physical pain brings them to the forefront in a really visceral way. Loss of control. I’ve been working to be WITH my fears more instead of working against them. Walking down the emotional road of the potential reality of anything we have fears about is a hugely opening exercise. I have a fear of heights so I went skydiving. I have a fear of pain so I’m … what am I doing? How are we touched by pain? Intense pain creates a shock to the system to the Be-ing that we are. We all have learned ways of compensating when there is pain we can’t deal with -- covering it up, denying it existed, erasing the memory. But the shock of the actual trauma is still there in cellular memory, affecting our reactions to a suggestion of a similar occurrence in the future.
I can picture it: a huge white rhinoceros, his hard scales a tangible connection to his ancient past, thundering down the halls, scattering nurses and doctors left and right. He snorts and paws the ground a bit, lowers his head and charges again…
Related Articles Comments (4)
  written by Temmie, May 16, 2010
I'm not sure what I want to say. When I was in pain ... surgical pain, or post-surgical, sometimes it felt like radiating ... vibrating energies. There were times when it almost felt like the pulsation of heat or fire, and when I met with the Shaman my MD recommended, he pulled back his hand as if he'd been burned. Ouch. I think he might have actually said “ouch.” He invited me to do a journey in which I invited my Power Animals to dismember me, that I might be "remembered" whole. I used all kinds of pain meds. More often than not, I suppose, because I didn't want to be awake. Yet I do think that the nature of pain invites us to turn inward. To let it move through us ... like when I was little, I would rather endure my mouth being stretched wide and teeth drilled ... inhaling all that dust of disintegrating calcium and phosphorus, than to put up with a needle or shot … or when I told a friend during a particularly cold New England weather, that we could be immune to the cold, if we just lessened our resistance, and opened to letting it move through us. There are so many kinds of pain. Pain like heat. Pain like cold. Pain that is dull, and that which is piercing and throbs with each pulse of the heart. Maybe pain is the body's way of reminding us we are in physical form. Or again, that we need to turn inward, as you have, and see what it is speaking to us, or where it wishes to take us. Into the abyss. Into the darkness. Into the separation from all that is sublime. Into a state of fearlessness and being willing to endure, or to examine ourselves at deeper levels of beingness. I don't know. I suppose as so many of the clouds and shapes I see in the artwork on your website, which are beautiful, by the way, it is a shifting and amorphous thing that is indefinable. But that surgery is an insult to the body -- there is no mistaking this. I remember going to watch a lamb be slaughtered when I was young, because I wanted to know where my food came from – and although the professors at this particular “muscle biology lab,” insisted all that kicking and jerking was just a nerve response – I know it was the powerful reaction to a trauma that was … frightening … is all I can say. Terrifying. (And that, no matter what they said, this lamb was fighting with everything it had). That it is a trauma ... there is no mistaking this. I think, in all our suffering, be it emotional or physical, pain gives us the opportunity to experience more of what it means to be in physical form, and also, to engender a sense of authentic understanding and compassion. So that when we meet another who is suffering, and say, "I know," or "I understand," it comes from a powerful and giving place of honest, ardent, and authentic truth. And that perhaps really big injuries, at least in my experience, invite us to live with the fullness that we always intended, and to become that which we always aspired for, and to straighten, and stand a little taller, and to push against the things that hurt, and to keep moving forward. It is such an invisible thing. An event that requires both courage, and one that does not go unrecognized by the Unseen who love and support us. Courage, that even though we may walk among those who do not know, and do not see, and do not understand, and who quite literally, might actually be walking alongside us, asking that we move a little quicker, or whatever it may be – that we know: We are all stepping as long, and standing as tall as we can -- and pain is a gift that brings us great dignity.
With love, Temmie  written by Radsoul, May 17, 2010
Ditto on everything in the "should" list. Mine usually ends with words that could make ears curl!
Thanks for sharing every step of this journey as openly, honestly, the highs, lows and without the guilt of "gotta be tough and face it on my ownsome lonesome". Knowing that you're making a profound difference in my life won't take away the pain but hope it makes you feel better.... 
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There was a reason why I kept hearing my inner voice telling me in the hospital to accept all the pain medication I was offered. It felt odd, like I was telling a not-truth, because I felt remarkably little pain then. I was almost sure the nurses were looking at me skeptically, but they continued to give and I took. I kept hearing that it would help me rest and heal.
I have an opportunity now to learn a different response. My response to pain thus far has been to pull back, get small, retract, go inward. What would happen if I did the opposite? If I invoked the totem energy of one of my outwardly powerful power animals?
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I nod along as I read your writing, yes, yes, uh-huh, good...
And then you take it past the point that (I think) I already live the concepts, to another level that just reminds me of how little crumminess I really experience (and other, deeper realizations.)
Thanks for the reminder that my pain (ow, a tangle! Ugh, cramps!) is a big ol' NUTHIN in contrast to what you and many, many (most?) others are dealing with... And I'm a wimp so I have no interest in learning first hand, believe-you-me!
So thanks for sharing the fears, the reactions, the counter and the balance with us... it can't be easy, but I'm sure it's a huge service (to more deserving kids than me!)
(Anesthesiology, anyone?)
~TheGirlPie