We know that we all suffer from pain sometimes, that life presents us with experiences that are not always easy to assimilate, and pain is one of them. The truth, you will think, is that this is unavoidable, and that is true. It cannot be avoided. There is not one single person in the whole world who does not know physical or even emotional pain. To a certain degree we are all familiar with that experience.
We have all felt physical or emotional pain sometimes, but this is not a punishment. If you see it like that it is because you are tired of feeling it and this has distorted your vision.
Now, if the intensity of the physical pain does not lessen as the days go by, this greatly undermines our quality of life and it saddens us very much, to the point that sometimes we may think that there is something bad in us, as though perhaps we had failed in something and this were a kind of punishment, but that is not real. Those thoughts are often a response to the extreme tiredness produced by the pain which, as we all know, may distort the way we see life.
Medication often does not serve to mitigate the pain. Indeed, on occasions it worsens it, creating addiction to the substances, with the well-known side effects.
Do you want to overcome the moments of pain? It is not easy, because some pains are really persistent, and they do not disappear solely and exclusively with medication. Moreover, this sometimes creates a great dependency in the organism which generates a degree of tolerance in the body, so that there comes a time when not even large doses alleviate the pain and, what is more, you have become an addict and you are tolerant to certain substances, which in addition will cause you a series of significant side effects.
Persistent or chronic pain cannot be removed all at once. It is necessary to move away from it in a different way, as though you were watching a film in which you detach yourself from the hero and everything he experiences.
If you want to relieve pain all at once, I warn you now that there is no solution. Pains, whether physical or emotional, are not eliminated so quickly if they have a measure of perseverance or have become chronic in the organism. What we must do with the pain in these cases is to move away from it a little. Look at it with perspective, as though you were not going through it. It is as though you were watching a film; you decide how much you want to identify with the characters, whether you reach the point of feeling the same as the hero, or whether, on the contrary, you are indifferent and you do not really care, because you do not particularly identify with him, and it is as though yes, you see it, but it does not really affect you much, and perhaps you do not even understand or empathise with the character, owing to which the film loses interest for you, as well as emotional weight.
Never flee from pain, or it will be worse. What you must do is to submerge yourself in some physical or mental activity that distracts you so much that you forget your pain for a good while.
Now, how can I move away from my own pain if I am experiencing it in first person? Distracting yourself is a good way. Do alternative things with which you can clear your mind and change the focus of your attention. Do not try to flee, that is worse in the end. The idea is simply to distract yourself. You will see that, by changing the focus, suddenly you do not remember the pain, and it is as though you no longer felt it. If somebody interrupts you and asks you how you are, you will suddenly see that the pain has not disappeared at all, but at the same time you will be surprised upon realising that you had forgotten it. To reach that point, the entertainment must be a physical or mental activity in which you become immersed. An immersion that makes you feel that nothing is really so important, not even the pain, that it can distract you from that activity.
Thanking the pain, whether it is physical or emotional, is something that may help. Some people already know that pain cleanses our karma so that we can live better lives in the future.
Another thing you can do with pain is to thank it. You will tell me that nobody is capable of doing that, but yes, there are many examples. There are many people who are really very well-versed in gratitude and they thank God, the Universe, the Source, whatever you understand as something extraordinary or divine that surpasses you, you and the earthly world, and this makes the pain diminish if that feeling of gratitude is sincere and real. And how do you thank pain? It is very easy. We have all heard of divine recompense and things of that nature. We need to think that we can be recompensed for pain. For example, those who believe in reincarnation will know that we all come with a karma that it is advisable to cleanse, and that it is here on earth where it is cleansed. Well, thanks to pain, this cleansing eliminates karma easily, so that we will have less in the next life.
To cleanse karma you need to act disinterestedly and from the heart. Good works cleanse karma only if they are done with real love.
Karma is something very particular that people do not understand. It is purely and simply the debt for our actions, but not only our personal actions; they may also be those of our family, of a nation, of the earth, and even of our galaxy. We have karmas that we share with each other. The karma that we suffer from is not only the result of our personal actions, but it may be the result of collective actions, therefore doing good without considering who we do it for is the best way of reducing karma if that help is real and does not have selfish connotations. Thinking “I’m going to do something to reduce karma,” in itself generates more karma instead of reducing it. The action must be disinterested, because it must come from our heart, but yes, pain is a way of reducing karma very easily.
In other religions pain cleanses you from sin and carries you higher in heaven. In any event, never repudiate it, or it is sure to increase.
In other religions pain may be seen as a way of cleansing us of our sins and raising us higher in heaven. This is another way of understanding it but, in the end, it is the same. The basic idea is that pain has a meaning above and beyond what we imagine, which is not always connected to punishment, not by a long way, but, on the contrary, with something from which we can benefit. But of course, if what you are doing is to be bad-tempered because of the pain and angry all the time, then instead of being reduced the pain is increased, and therefore serves no purpose, it does not reduce karma, or carry you higher in heaven, or anything. On the contrary, we lose points with He who has truly created us and has made us have this earthly experience.
If you feel pain, do not blame anybody, ask for help without abusing or becoming hooked on anybody. But, moreover, do not torment yourself by blaming yourself for anything. Be understanding with yourself and with others.
If you want things to improve in your life, be humble. Do not try to blame anybody for your pain or compromise other people’s lives because of your pain. Pick up your pallet and walk, says the Bible. And so it is. You must get up with that pain and, to the extent possible, live as full a life as the pain permits. Love others, ask for help without abusing or becoming hooked on anybody, and try to endure things as best you can. Now, never punish yourself for feeling pain. Neither God nor anybody punishes with pain. They send it to you with an aim that is good for your soul, not to harm you on purpose, gratuitously. Never doubt the love of God who knows what is best for you.
If you treat yourself badly for feeling pain, you should do the opposite. Love yourself, go easy on yourself even though you are angry, and embrace your great humanity.
Now, if you are punishing and penalising yourself for your pain, the only thing I can say to you is that it is not fair to treat yourself like that. You should love yourself a little more. The ten commandments say that you should love your neighbour as you love yourself, but we seem to forget to love ourselves sometimes, and that is not fair on anybody. On the contrary, everybody around you will suffer more because of that. What you must do is to love everybody, and yourself too. That is what heals the heart. You must be patient with yourself. Even if you are angry, go easy on yourself. There is a rhythm to transform things and many tools to achieve it. Do not forget that God, the Universe, the Source or whoever you consider surpasses you, truly loves you. And if you do not believe in anything, I warn you that it will be more difficult, but all is not lost.
If you do not believe in divine recompense, do not lose heart, there are options for you too. Embark on a cause to help people like you so that we all suffer less, that way you will find a mission that you do not need to seek, as it will find you.
Are you somebody who suffers a great deal of pain but you do not believe in anybody or anything and you have lost hope in everything? There is something I can say to you. Do not lose heart. Life will offer you the same thing but with a different reading. For example, perhaps you feel involuntarily the desire to help others who, like you, suffer the same pain, but you do so with no particular intention, but because it stems from your heart. You will see how this mission soon embraces you with love and your pain is reduced. Do not worry, you do not have to seek it. Allow the mission to find you. It will find you, sooner or later.
When you have the mission to help others in their pain, the main thing that you must do is to love those people, because love heals everything. Put it into practice and you will find great relief, despite the malaise.
If what you want is to help others to reduce their pain and thus be rewarded with a love that leads you to heal your own pain, you must know that it is necessary to love the people you help one hundred per cent. That is how you will find meaning in the mission. You are not really going to remove their pain 100% and forever, but you are going to improve their quality of life with the love you give them. I have always heard that love heals everything, and that is true. Love heals many things, including pain. Furthermore, some healing processes are accompanied by pain. It is curious how we sometimes accept pain willingly without feeling hurt at all and then we are surprised how we reject more minor pains outright, with total irresponsibility, without knowing the damage we are doing to ourselves.
Remember that there is pain in life that we happily accept, such as that of cosmetic surgery. You need to know that suffering is the subjective part of pain, which magnifies your concept of it.
¿Have you ever had laser hair removal treatment? Have you perhaps undergone cosmetic surgery for breast enlargement? All of these things, and many more than you would think, sometimes generate intense physical pain, which we accept very willingly because we know that we will then be more attractive, so it does not bother us in the least. However, nobody knows that this physical or emotional pain that you have now is not, in reality, very different from the other, but you suffer for it. Pain may be objective. Suffering is the subjective part that you add to that pain. What you need to do is remove the subjective aspect, and to think that this pain is there for a reason. Yes, for sure. Perhaps you are going to learn an important lesson in life.
Emotional pains are a very interesting way to transform errors. If you feel guilty about something it will always be a sign that there is a great heart within you, although of course it is necessary to heal the guilt.
The majority of emotional pains are there for us to learn lessons in life. If you have ever felt guilty about doing something bad, it is clear that this emotional pain is very apt and positive. It is a natural response because you are a good person. If you feel guilt over having done some kind of real harm, it is clear that there is a lot of heart in you and that in reality you can overcome this crisis very easily and emerge strengthened. Even unhealthy guilt, arising from an idea and not from the reality of having done something bad, is also a symptom of a great heart, because in reality you place the focus on the other person, on his or her pain, and you want to help in some way even if you have not been the one who really hurt them although you sometimes think so.
Emotional pain is the antidote that always indicates where we are on our path to self-development. It is interesting to know what it means. Sometimes it is a good sign, sometimes the opposite. Analyse whether that pain comes from the forces of good or bad. I will explain better below.
In short, emotional pain is really very interesting. It is as abundant as physical pain, or more so, and it is really a kind of thermometer that speaks to us constantly and guides and drives us. If there is pain, there is something on which you should reflect. A friend of mine, who is a nun, once told me that when a good person feels pain it is perhaps because they are going wrong somewhere, because if someone is already on the path of living life with love, it is normal for them to feel happy. If they do not, it is because the person is being harmed externally, or because they are taking the wrong road and need to go the other way. Perhaps you have taken a bad decision that you must change. Now, if you are somebody who has not yet found fulfilment in life through love, it is very possible that this emotional pain is a symptom that you are doing well or that something is improving. If, for example, you are a lazy person who does not want to work and you are therefore on the wrong path, and suddenly one day you feel ashamed because you do not work much, that emotional malady will be a clear example that you have returned to the path of goodness. It is as simple as that. But if you are hardworking and are on the right road but one day you feel bad about resting, then you are making a mistake, and that emotional malaise indicates that you are going the wrong way. I hope this simple example has made it clear.
Lost souls are those that do not feel pain about anything, even murder, but they will be led to great suffering and darkness, from whence they will only be able to emerge with frankly intense pain, because the Universe keeps accurate accounts and all evil caused is returned to its origin.
The people most lost in the world are those who hardly ever feel emotional pain. They are even capable of killing somebody without feeling remorse and, if they feel it, they hide it. Those people without pain are a clear example of lost souls who sooner or later will experience horrendous suffering, more than anybody, because every action is countered with a reaction of the same quality. If somebody makes many people suffer enormously and, instead of experiencing remorse, feels indifference and the desire to amass power and/or money or any other real or unreal benefit from it, what is clear is that that person at the end of time will be sent to hell and darkness, from which it will be very difficult to emerge without great, great pain in future lives, because the accounts kept by the Universe are always very accurate, and we will all receive what we need to be led back to the road to happiness, which is to live with love.
Pain has explanations that are difficult to find. Never interpret anybody’s pain or you will err easily and you will only harm the person, and yourself, more, because all bad caused, especially consciously, is returned.
Pain, in short, serves us all, and its meaning varies from person to person. When you see somebody suffering from pain, whether physical or emotional, do not magnify or minimise it. Accompany that person, try to understand them and nothing more. Do not make judgments in that respect. Never give them an arbitrary explanation of the reason for their pain. In reality, all the interpretations as to why somebody is affected by pain or suffering are no more than imagination, because nobody knows for certain 100% to what that problem is due. People never know the underlying reality, the ultimate and absolute reality in the eyes of God or the Universe or the Source, as to why anybody suffers from anything. Nobody really knows. Therefore, save yourself all those explanations, do not provide solutions and explanations, sometimes flippant, as to what may happen, however good they may be or appear to be, especially if you do not know the case in depth.
To understand pain, you must delve deeply, that way perhaps you will find your truth, but bear in mind that, if you are not happy, there will always be something that you must change.
Only the person who is actually living with that pain can investigate in depth regarding herself, and in the majority of cases, not even they will know why it has happened. Especially with physical pain, because emotional pain is easier to track and doing so is really very interesting. A psychologist once told me that, every time a patient came to his consulting room, he asked them during the first interview: “Are you happy?” If they were not, then for one reason or another they really needed psychotherapy. If you are happy despite difficult moments, perhaps you just need support and to be listened to and nothing more, and for that a friend or a relative who truly loves us is better than a professional therapist.
Pain should not be rejected. Instead, we need to understand ourselves, to be patient and love ourselves a lot in those circumstances.
In short, as you can see, pain in the end can be good luck. You will think now that, in reality, it humanises you, and it tells you very interesting things about yourself. Never reject pain outright. Do not suffer more than necessary, especially if the pain is physical. Yesterday a friend had a physical pain and she called herself a coward and treated herself badly in many ways. That is not the way, the way is to love yourself with open arms. Imagine what you would do if someone you love suffered that pain. Would you call them a coward or would you simply love them with an open heart, wishing with all your being that they would heal? That is what we must observe in ourselves to realise whether we truly love.
Pain is not only transformational and a great help on our path to self-development, but furthermore in the divine experience of love there is always pain, like a father who suffers if his son loses his way.
But returning to pain, do you believe that feeling pain is the best thing that can happen to you? Well, it is. In the majority of cases, when you experience it, it is the best thing that can happen to you, and it is the only way to transform many things. Pain is very transformative, and I think that I have already explained it in many ways, so I am not going to repeat myself. But there is something I have not said and that is that pain may be a truly divine experience. Because in love there is always pain. People do not believe it, because we think that God never feels pain but that is not true. God feels pain when we lose our way. There is pain in loving. A father who loves his son, if the latter loses his way with drugs and other things, suffers horribly, and who is to blame? God? No, God never sends pain. He merely allows it. And it is used to redirect things towards what is good. Everybody who loses their way suffers and all those who find their way again heal. That is how it happens.
Being born and dying always cause pain. We cannot escape from it, we can only reduce it, but it cannot disappear. If you love you must pay serious attention to that pain and try to reduce it, but without deceiving yourself, the pain will disappear when it is ready and not before.
Now, that pain in loving is very real, just as one day when we die and one day when we were born, we suffered physical pain. The moments of greatest physical pain are birth and death. Nobody thinks about that. Everybody wishes for a painless death. That does not exist. It is an illusion. There is always pain on dying, shorter or longer, but it is always present. None of us can escape from those moments of great pain. However, we all engage ourselves more with other pains that we sometimes do not want to take seriously and which are symptoms that something is really happening that requires us to pay honest and loving attention. That is all that we must do. Provide the means for the pain to truly disappear, if that is within our reach. We must never resign ourselves to it, or even become used to it, we must always try what is most indicated for each type of pain, and care for and protect ourselves to be well.
What pain does is to humanise our earthly experience in the world and help us to understand the changes we must make to be truly happy.
I know you now know that pain is, in reality, something very natural in everybody, but that you had never seen it in that way. Well, now you know, it is something not only natural, but also very necessary. The most important things have been created with physical pain, and the most beautiful transformations in individuals have almost always been made with emotional pain. And suffering is the subjective aspect that we give to pain, to make it grow one way or another. This is almost never necessary, but what is clear is that suffering should also be healed with great affection and patience, with much understanding, with tolerance, respecting our rhythm, to accept some things and change others. Thank you for understanding pain. It just remains for me to tell you that pain, in the end, is a great blessing that redirects us to better states. Thank you for understanding this and for caring for yourself. The person writing loves you, knowing that you, like me, have suffered both physical and emotional pain.