August 22nd was the last time I posted anything on this blog and the only excuse I have is that there is just to much on my plate plain and simple!
I think of my blog here daily because it truly is my release, my journal of sorts for me....
I was fortunate this year to reconnect with Stephanie, my very, very, very *BEST* friend that I have ever had. Stephanie and I had not talked or seen one another for what seemed like an eternity and then one day she contacted me...
What brings me to this post today is that after receiving a message from Stephanie on Facebook last night stating that she was going to quit FB because of how mean the women were being to one another and to her....I did my normally spiel and of course was able to turn Steph's thinking around and to not give these insenstive women her power! Women are mean today and think only of themselves. No one is a lone as I too have experienced this pain. When my marraige ended 3 1/2 years ago what I thought were my friends turned their back on me at the time I needed them the most.... the combination of the end of a realationship that I thought was going to last my lifetime and my only friends turning their back on me was more then I thought I could bear at the time...
I now know that *ALL* of that pain was a gift and certainly part of my journey!
That brings me to this post that I found this morning here...
I know that there are no accidents and the moment I started reading this, I knew I too had to share the message....
31 Reasons To Be Grateful For Your Pain
by Asatar Bair on June 15, 2010
When we’re in pain, we tend to feel sorry for ourselves, and focus on the pain in a self-pitying way, which of course, makes it far worse. If we can shift to feeling grateful for the pain, we open ourselves to the lessons that the experience has for us. So here are 31 reasons to feel gratitude for pain.
- Pain is a great teacher. Life is so intoxicating, that we often miss the lesson life is giving us. But pain gets our attention like nothing else can.
- Pain makes life interesting. Life would be much duller without pain.
- Pain lets you know you’re alive. There is only a brief period in the life of the soul where we get to experience pain. Before we come to earth, there is no pain, nor is there pain after we die. Pain is the privilege of living on the earth, the price of admission for the manifestation of your being in all its glory.
- Pain reminds you of the fragility of life.
- By bringing your mortality to your attention, pain reminds you that life is a great opportunity. How are you seizing that opportunity today?
- Pain means you are going through rapid growth. We often forget this, because the larger design of our life is unclear to us.
- Pain matures you. People who have experienced a lot of pain seem older. Will that experience translate into wisdom?
- Pain gives you sympathy for others.
- Pain is an experience that all living beings share, and it can connect you to the experience of the whole of life.
- Pain softens your heart.
- Pain is an opportunity to be brave. Among some of the Native peoples of the Americas, it was seen as a loss of face for a warrior to be captured in combat. To show a captured warrior kindness, his captors would torture him to death slowly, leaving the marks of torture on his body for his tribe to find. This restored his honor, giving him a place in the lore of his tribe, and was called ‘showing brave’. This is an extreme example, but it may help you to deal with your own pain to think of it as an opportunity to handle it with nobility.
- Pain clears the way for inspiration, like a draft of cold crisp air clears your lungs.
- Pain deepens the experience of joy. Just as light and shadow are both necessary to perceive form, joy and pain give meaning to each other, enriching the experience of life.
- Pain teaches you to be grateful for the little things. I injured my floating rib once doing martial arts, and it hurt a lot during the day, when I was laying down at night, and at lots of other times. It really makes me grateful for the times when my body feels strong and whole.
- Pain that you experience over time teaches you patience.
- Pain helps you to surrender. There are many times when we must endure a pain we cannot control. What a beautiful opportunity to surrender to the will of the One Being.
- Pain teaches you acceptance. Sometimes the pain will go away when we have fully accepted it.
- Pain can teach you that you are in control of your experience. If you anticipate and fear the pain, you make it worse. If you tell yourself the pain is beneath you, it gets better. If you tell yourself the pain is merely strong sensation, it becomes so.
- Pain breaks open even the hardest heart.
- Pain lets you know where your wounds are. All of us have sensitive hearts, whether we are aware of it or not. We may try to cover it up or protect ourselves, but our hearts feel pain and receive wounds. These wounds bring us pain, and its an opportunity to create healing.
- Feeling pain is much better than feeling nothing.
- Pain teaches you the value of sacrifice. Giving up something that is dear to you because of something else that is more important is one of the greatest of human qualities, and the key to accomplishment, friendship, and love. Sacrifice and pain are bound together; without pain, sacrifice would have no meaning.
- Pain is a loyal friend, one who will be there even if everyone else went away. Life has so few constants. It’s comforting to know that pain will be there.
- Pain causes change, and there is no change without pain.
- Love brings pain, and the greater the love, the greater will be the pain.
- The pain of love creates the opportunity to be healed by love.
- Pain brings the opportunity to triumph over self-pity.
- Pleasure lulls you to sleep, but pain wakes you up. In the continual awakening of life, pain is the alarm clock.
- Pain allows you to confront fear. With every painful experience, you have the opportunity to work with your fear; you can endure this, what’s so bad about whatever it is you fear?
- Enduring pain builds mastery.
- Pain connects you to some of the greatest human beings who have ever lived. Jesus could not have become Christ without the pain of the crucifixion. I have great admiration for Joan of Arc, Mansur al Hallaj, Noor Inayat Khan, and for the countless others who suffered pain, torment and death for their beliefs. If every pain I experience brings me closer to these beings, it’s worth it.
It is a kind of poetic irony that I wrote this article, and then lost it to a computer crash, which caused me some pain; this reminded me that I’m a student of what I write here.
The theme of the list above is about what pain could be, about the opportunities that pain brings with it. How do you actually take advantage of that opportunity? What has been helpful for me is to cultivate an attitude of embracing my pain, and to use my breath to experience the pain fully, as exactly what it is, not trying to pretend the pain isn’t there. Finally, and most importantly, it’s helped me to make my breath rhythmic, deep, and focused on my heart.
What pain are you grateful for today? I am thankful that RSW broke my ♥ into a million pieces has it taught me more lessons then I could ever imagined have learning......
And what pain do you struggle with?
