This morning’s meditation was like a chest day at the gym, it left my heart space feeling a little wobbly, but some really good strong stuff was built!
One of my goals not only for the new year, but for the rest of my life, is to continuously work on growing this never ending, sort of escrowed, treasure of love and compassion, but without plans to hoard it. Love and compassion, unbeknownst to some, aren’t things that we accumulate and collect, rather they are like interest gained on our goodness, meant to be scattered and shared. My goal is to be a love and compassion gazillionaire, feeding the world.
So in the stillness of my morning, in the quiet corners of my soul, I sat with myself, with my feelings, with my fears, and especially with my pain. As we all gathered together, the council within me presented a new perspective.
My inner being, asked me to think of words like toxic, crazy, codependent, mean, inconsistent, unfeeling, narcissistic; words we often throw around to describe others (words that surely could apply to our own selves at times), and to imagine people in my world that I may have labeled with these words, and then to replace all of them with one word: UNHEALED.
It led me to think of being unhealed physically, I reckon because for some reason, we as a species tend to have so much more acceptance for the results of unhealed physical pain than we do for mental and emotional unhealed suffering. We all recognize and understand physical pain. We do not all recognize and understand emotional pain.
Sometimes un-healing is due to a lack of awareness of the wound. Think of a diabetic patient with neuropathy in the left foot who wore a shoe that was a bit too tight. That shoe caused an irritation that led to an ulcer. The diabetic didn’t even realize the problem, and because of the condition, his body didn’t have the means to heal. So the ulcer turned into a deep wound, with necrosis, affecting other parts of the body, affecting blood sugars, affecting the person’s life, all stemming from a lack of awareness of the problem.
Now think of a woman with severe abdominal pain. She is aware of the pain, but she is too busy to deal with it so she pops a few ibuprofen with a big swig of iced coffee and goes about her day. She mentions it to her male gynecologist and he assures her it’s just part of being a woman, she probably needs to lose a few pounds, get some exercise, and it may just all be in her head. She is either undiagnosed or misdiagnosed, but that doesn’t change the pain. So she shoves it out of mind, attempts to soothe it with pills, maybe wine, probably a couple days a month in bed, feeling hopeless. The pain affects her life, her demeanor, her relationships, her work, it twists her very being into someone she doesn’t recognize, or even like.
Or a cardiac patient, a little tingle here and there, light-headedness at times, episodes of breathlessness and anxiety. An aspirin a day, some blood pressure medicine, encouragement to get some exercise and avoid eggs and a follow up in three months. A bandaid on the problem, ordered and covered but ultimately left unhealed, a time bomb waiting for the full on collapse of the heart. Thoughts and prayers and metoprolol.
Back pain causing so much dysfunction that a woman is unable to perform activities of daily living. The kind of pain that shrouds any joy and happiness with a darkness that can only be met with some cheap vodka and the constant verbalization of her pain and hopelessness to anyone who will listen.
Migraines, shoulder pain, knee pain, gut issues, sciatica…we can see and we can relate to the suffering that physical ailments cause our fellowman, so perhaps this is why we can offer a thread of compassion, maybe even some unsolicited advice; if only she would do this, or he just needs to try this.
We’re all walking around, navigating life, with feelings, fears and pain, what if we could actually see THAT about each other!
What if we were able to see the suffering caused by the mental and emotional turmoil that we are all dealing with on some level. Unresolved childhood traumas. Assaults, physical and emotional. Neglect. Sense the capacity to see the pain and suffering that someone experiences from chronically not feeling good enough, from being born different, from feeling like you’ve never belonged, from feeling like you’ve let down the world.
Imagine if we walked around, bleeding, dripping and oozing our guilt, shame, thoughts and traumas. Would we then reach out and offer a hand? Would we then have a bit of understanding and acceptance for our fellow sufferers?
Maybe a billionaire could hire a team to develop a pair of lenses that would allow us to see the unhealed emotional suffering within others. On the other hand, groups would shout in protest that it’s a new kind of porn to see the raw and naked vulnerability of others. And besides, we need flying cars.
I’ve been exploring my own pain a lot lately. I’ve been experimenting with leaning into physical pain with tools and techniques, positing the same outcomes with these tools and techniques when used with emotional pain. I’ll keep you posted.
In the meantime, what if we changed our diagnostic vernacular and instead of stamping others with psychological profiles, an exercise way out of most of our scopes of practice, and we just saw the world for what we are, unhealed. Better yet, what if we committed from here on out to work on our own unhealed parts, what if we tested methods and recorded our outcomes and when we found something that healed us, with no side effects, with positive outcome
and the wisdom and hope to
use these methods as needed in the future,
and then we shared them with others.
Awareness. Acceptance. Tools, techniques and healing mechanisms. Practice. Application. Exploration of outcomes. Commitment to effective methods. We all have an innate capacity to heal and evolve, it’s what we came here to do. It’s time.
Compassion, acceptance and love for others comes from first having it for ourselves.
So as I work on my own unhealed parts, as I explore and experiment with my own pain and suffering, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically, I hope to create an abundance of compassion and love for you, and you, and you and you and them and me, until I become what I was sent here to be, a pain relieving potion for the world.
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