The Purpose of Pain
Through love all pain will turn to medicine.
—Rumi
We find our power in the same place as our pain.
—Aaron Shepard
With all the addictions we have in our society— shopping, gambling, sex and love, over and under eating, alcohol and drugs, work, television and so on—we need to look at what we are running away from so fast and furiously. For one thing, I think our society offers us very little true understanding, or time and space, for learning from and resolving our emotional pain. Society is especially hard on boys and young men who are told to “buck up” or “pull it together” or else suffer the ridicule of being called weak and unmanly. Society also accepts many judgments about emotional pain as true, such as associating it with weakness, immaturity or craziness. Therefore, we’ve been taught that pain is a condition that we must avoid. In actuality, pain is our ally that helps guide our steps on our journey to our heart.
Almost all of our pain-inducing beliefs about ourselves began in childhood and went into our unconscious mind because we were too young to know how to handle or resolve them. At that time in our young life, shelving those beliefs was actually helpful to us because that allowed us to move forward, grow up and gain the strength and knowledge we’d need to eventually resolve them.
When we don’t resolve our mistaken, self-blaming beliefs, they will create emotions such as hurt, shame, anger, jealousy, envy, greed and humiliation.
HURT comes from the belief that you have done something wrong. It can also be experienced as anguish.
SHAME comes from the belief that you are bad, less than, not good enough. It can also be experienced as humiliation or embarrassment.
ANGER comes as a defense against feeling hurt. It is sel