Pain is almost always the messenger telling us something needs to change — too often we try to kill the messenger with medication, drugs, or distractions — instead of just listening to its message… Until you make the change pain finds a way to remain.
You know if there is one universal experience, pain is it. No one is exempt.
Challenge: understanding pain’s message: spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically! *(SEMP)
Solution: intuitive sensing and listening to pain’s message, letting the message come in to your realm of awareness. Anything outside of your awareness is outside of your control. If it is outside of your control how you can change it?
“Pain doesn’t play games, and neither should you.” Karla McLaren author of Your Aura & Chakras
*P: Pain carries information to the brain, the mind does its thing to make the pain better or worse. What we think, what we believe, and our emotions may have a tremendous impact on how much pain we feel from the physical sensation. Your perspective is your reality.
For example, if you shift your focus off of your pain it tends to hurt less but if you focus on how much it hurts it seems to hurt even more. Pain can be magnified by your thoughts and its message is not always easy to understand even when you hear or feel it loud and clear! We can be obedient to the feel of pain and still miss its main message.
Remember those movies where the firefighter is encouraging someone to run through the open door to safety (even though there are flames around it)? Sometimes we have to run through the fire in order to not, get burned up. Many people are so frozen with fear that the firefighter has to go in and get them and bring them to safety. Pain can be exactly like that, the pain seems too great to bear so we get stuck in it and consumed by it.
Painful experiences need to be remembered as well as joyous ones. The memories of either can help you make clear choices and shine light on darkness. Pain is as valuable as joy – each is a part of the same coin; the head (pain) and the tail (joy). Pain allows us to appreciate the treasures and pleasures of our life. We need both sunshine and rain.
Balance: when pain is in control joy waits its turn and when joy is in control pain waits its turn. Let the painful experiences be teaching tools. If I asked you to come up with a joy-filled memory and a pain-filled one, nine chances out of ten you will think of a pain-filled one first. You don’t have to dwell on the pain but remembering it as a teacher can help bring clarity to future choices and release you from past voices and choices.
Pain can become a habit, we often train our mind and body how to respond currently to a past pain. For example, both my knees were injured in a car wreck and four years later I still expected the same pain. I trained my body and mind to expect the same level of pain even though in reality, it had changed. My body acted as if there is knee pain and my mind did its duty by supplying mental pain to match the phsyical pain. As pain settles in the body but we forget that we are more than our pain and we are more than our body. Living in your body is not always easy but it is necessary.
It is too difficult to heal your body when you’re not completely in it.
Remember when you got an ouchy as a kid and your mom would kiss it and make it better? Well today you have to mother yourself. I truly believe that the best gift you can give to your loved ones and others is the best you – SEMP! Certified Master hypnotist, spiritual advisor, and my friend, Randee Scheinin says, “Self-first is not the same as selfish.”
That ouch can manifest spiritually, emotionally, mentally,and physically. Some days without trying we allow the pain to take over our realm of awareness and other days without trying we don’t allow the pain to even come in, because our focus is on something else.
Caroline Myss author of many best sellers and international lecturer in the field of energy medicine and human consciousness says, “Pain is a touchstone of spiritual progress.”
*S: When we are in spiritual pain we often feel scattered, flighty, off centered, and isolated. We feel like we are fighting an invisible force, nothing seems to go right. Spiritual warfare is very real. We can have a sense of not being within our own body as if we are viewing life from above or below eye level instead of being behind our own eyes.
As spiritual beings here on earth having a human experience – we often forget that we are more spiritual than physical and that we are so much more than a being in a body. As a spiritual mid-wife I get the privilege and honor of helping others remember who they are on a spiritual level.
When we forget who we are eternally we grapple with questions like: what is my purpose here, why am I going through this, what is the true meaning of life, or vision what the bleep is that????
*E: Emotions definitely influence how we perceive pain whether physical or emotional. Emotions are chemicals that travel throughout the body communicating their message. Some of those emotions get stuck in different parts of the body like a rest stop until we release the pain. Have you ever noticed when your heart aches so does your body and vice versa?
Our emotional issues often defeat us more than our physical tissues. Your internal state premeates your whole state. Ever wonder what is harder to heal internal or external pain? I know that you cannot heal what you cannot feel.
*M: Mental pain – there are many forms of mental pain; today let’s talk about cognitive dissonance. It can be quite painful and difficult to resolve. Cognitive dissonance is when a person has conflicting thoughts about one event, place, person, or thing. When the cognition causes extreme discomfort something will be done to ease that discomfort.
For example, an addict believes with all her heart that her drug addiction is self-destructive but she continues to consume her drug of choice. To ease that conflict and discomfort she begins with ration-lies (rationalize) why she must continue on this destructive path.
Finding the energy to move beyond the pain is not always easy but is always necessary.
“We suffer our pain as often as is necessary for us to learn how to break and how to heal.”MarkNepo poet, philosopher, and author
In order to live— to thrive and not merely survive, we have to allow our pain to become our teacher, our turning point, but not our master. What we go through becomes what we grow through, yes pain and all!
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