Pain is Powerful Teacher - Humbling and Generous

I have spent the last several months, since November, to be exact, dancing off and on with chronic pain. First with sciatica (which has now healed, thank you Goddess!) and for the last 4 weeks, with an abscessed tooth which I wish on no one, ever.

This, too, is finally on the mend (yay!!!!) through the grace of a gifted and caring oral surgeon, antibiotics, prayers from friends and, in no small way, the love and patience of my husband. Throughout this journey, I have been tasked by my Soul to look deeply at my resistance and unwind pieces of egoic constructs of a conditioned mind that have been overworked and overused for decades. My Team (in the etheric) helped me through dreams, many aha moments, wise counsel and the surfacing of memories long suppressed. There is a tenderness that is indescribable in meeting these isolated, lonely pieces of myself, once again. I'm profoundly grateful for this re-connection, from this place in their future, in this now. It makes me cry just to write this.

I spent most of my life running from the deeply uncomfortable parts — difficult childhood, youth and teenage years, followed by my first years in college and conservatory — not to mention all the rest which was then built upon this foundation. Trapped in my body, surfacing as pain, were layers of perfectionism, shame, arrogance, jealousy, competitiveness, depression, despair, guilt and fear, all clamoring for my attention. And now there were arms to fully welcome them, instead of pushing them aside and away.

Some things just take a long, long time to simmer before they are ready to boil.

Throughout these months, I reached out to music for the sweetness it brings me. Long hours of sitting, playing my new therapy harps and singing, or playing my bowls and toning, letting the tears come and the anger/sadness/grief pour out of me like lava running down the mountain.

Our pain is a powerful teacher. It is humbling and generous. It gives us the opportunity to relax and let go, over and over again, reminding us to be kind and gentle with ourselves, no matter what, because in that moment, there is nothing to do except be with what is without resistance.

I wish I had easier news for you. I wish I could tell you "oh, play a crystal bowl and you will be fine!"

That may be true for a moment or two or three, but there is no panacea for the deep work, no shortcut.

All you can do is go down into the valley, plop yourself on the ground and sit with your demons, one by one, until their faces and yours, begin to shine with tears of loving acceptance and forgiveness. Listening deeply to all they have to say. Holding space for their pain and offering forgiveness and compassion for every thought, feeling and belief, expressed as well as unexpressed, that make up the pieces of where you find yourself, now. All those pieces that have been waiting (sometimes for decades) for you to say "yes, I see you, and I am here for you, all of you."

Make no bones about it: it isn’t easy and it isn’t always fun. But it is the light beyond our pain.

Bless this day and the gifts that we are given. Our pleasure and our pain, walking side by side, hand in hand, under the sun of God's unlimited Grace. May we all be healed and in so doing, remind each other that we are, indeed, manifestations of the miraculous, waiting to be revealed.

Love love love to you all. You are miracles in the making.