"Pain is never permanent."
 - Saint Teresa of Avila -

I selected this quote selfishly as I've been experiencing a lot of pain the past few days.  Whether we like it or not, pain is a part of the human experience.  It rests quietly on the other side of the wonderful pleasure we feel, and when it shows up, there's no mistaking it.  Most of us would never dream of robbing ourselves of the opportunity to experience life's pleasures, but we're often in a hot hurry to avoid, deny, numb, ignore, or run away from that dreaded flipside.

Pain is multilayered.  As if mental, emotional, and spiritual pain are not difficult enough to endure, extended, unattended periods of any of these can manifest physical pain on top of it.  Physical pain is often a message the body is sending to get our attention about something that needs tending in our lives that goes beyond physicality.  Money worries, stress, inflexibility, anger, guilt and all of life's "heavies" have the power to manifest and fuel painful and often critical conditions in the body.  It happens all the time.

While pain is uncomfortable and sometimes downright agonizing, there's always some gift in it.  In all of its irritating, stabbing, clamping, chafing, distressing, exhausting, searing, wearing, tearing, tearful glory, pain always has something for us if we choose to lean into it and look.  It takes willingness and courage to BE with our pain, to see what it has to say to us.  Experiencing pain is a part of being fully alive.  Even in the hurting, we get to feel what it is to be a spiritual being in a human experience - it's yet another way we get to have it all.

Are you experiencing any form of pain in your life?  If so, it's time to get really curious about it.  Feel the pain and look for the gift.  Ask questions, listen for answers.  Is your pain subtle or chronic?  Under what circumstances does it show up?  How is your pain serving you?  What, if anything, would you like to do about it?  Lean into it and see where it takes you.

And as you're exploring the other side of pleasure in your fully alive experience, take a deep breath and remember the words of Saint Teresa.  Sometimes it's comforting to remember that in the big picture, everything is temporary.

Gail