Pain - A Blessing in disguise
27th September, 2015
Gurgaon, Haryana
PAIN - A BLESSING IN DISGUISE
Often in our lives we would miss out the things which are of great value to us because we are not trained to look at them the way they should actually be looked upon. And taking them the wrong way in fact prevents them from doing the good to us that they were supposed to and instead they end up ruining us and we take no time to blame saying “Yes, this is what did this to me”. It’s you who didn’t let it serve its purpose for you. You didn’t have the patience to stand it. The biggest human folly is that we want that a medicine should be sweet and the effect should be seen overnight. We have an attitude of an escapist, who just wants to get rid of something that his mind isn’t comfortable with.
But what is it we are talking about? We are talking about a blessing – a hidden one. We are talking about an experience we all have to go through at various moments of our life but unfortunately we don’t like it because we have always failed to understand its real purpose in our life. And that experience is that of A PAIN. Pain is bliss. Yes, it’s a blessing in disguise. Want to know how? Let’s explore it.From the past few days I have been dealing with cases where people have reached out to me saying, “I am not able to take this pain any more, please end it for me somehow. Please help me get rid of it by hook or by crook”.
From all the strange things I have encountered in my lifetime so far, what I found strangest is that a person would fear taking something through which he was born – PAIN. Do you have even a slight idea about how much of pain did you or your mother go through when you were being given birth. You were born as a result of pain and today you fear it the most. Pain is the last thing that anyone would like to have across the globe (although I can’t comment upon aliens living on the other planets for I don’t know them).
Pain means transformation. Pain means a new birth. Pain means new beginnings. You need to understand as to why you feel this pain. Pain involves a breakdown, breakdown of old patterns, of old lifestyle, of old barriers. And breakdown is what is painful. A butterfly resting in a shell (pupa stage) has to struggle and has to go through the immense pain while breaking down the shell around and when it’s done, what emerges out is a beautiful creature with wings and freedom, to whom the entire sky belongs. Here’s a story to illustrate this. Once a small boy roaming around in a garden saw a butterfly struggling to come out of its shell. The boy could sense the immense pain that it had to go through. He felt compassionate and went closer and intervened the process, helping the butterfly come out. And he was successful and having done that he felt proud of himself. But to his surprise what he found was the newly born butterfly after having flown for a few odd minutes actually fell on the floor and died. And he was shocked. After some time his grandfather came to the place where he was and he couldn’t help sharing the entire happening with him. He was upset and wanted to understand the reason for what happened. Having heard to his grandson the old experienced man said, “My dear while a butterfly is struggling painfully to come out of its shell, that painful process actually makes it stronger physically. This strength developed during this process helps it survive into a brand new set of conditions in which it has to live. The pain has a purpose to solve in its life. By making it skip that very integral process of its life cycle, you actually deprived it of the strength it needed and hence it couldn’t survive and died”. Now you understand, why at times even after having prayed to the divine for sparing you from pain a number of times he doesn’t do that just because he doesn’t want to be that boy who instead of doing good did a blunder.
Pain gives you depth. It takes the charge of taking you from where you are to where you should be in your life. It’s the flame which burns away all the unwanted impurities from your life leaving behind only what is useful to you. And trying to escape this is like trying kill your cleansing process which would eventually lead to becoming your more and more incompetent to survive in this tough and dynamic world. What do you want to happen to yourself? The choice is yours. So the way out of pain is not by going around or over it instead by going through it. For the pain will sustain till you learn what it has to teach you. The longer you refuse to learn, the longer the pain is. The longer you try to escape it, the more often it will visit you. Embrace it, go through it, learn whatever it has to offer to you and it will vanish sooner than you thought it would. Feel the pain 100%. That’s the only way out of it.
Pain is a sign that you need to overcome something. It’s to make you understand that there is something you should give up or let go of. It’s a sign of imperfection which needs to be removed now. And pain plays that role of removing that imperfection from you. The only day you’ll not feel the pain is when you are free from all the imperfections and your journey from imperfections in you to a perfect you is complete. Also, pain is a sign that you are alive. It’s only the dead or non living objects which don’t feel the pain and hence can’t grow anymore in their lives. So if you feel the pain, that means you are alive. And ALIVE IS AWESOME.
The more the pain in your life, The dearer as a student you are to the Divinity. Now that doesn’t mean you stand up and bang your head against the wall to get the pain because it transforms. May be after that transformation you get a head of steel. I assume hereby that the reader is aware enough to distinguish between the pains one is bound to go through and the pains which could have been wisely avoided. It’s very easy to misconstrue wisdom. Rest assured pain, be it natural or self-invited will teach you something and will change you for all the times to come.
Questions are most welcome.
With Love and Best Wishes
Ankur