Bearing Light, Bearing Pain

I maintain a regular practice to foster my spiritual well-being. At one level, I do this to feel better:  I want to feel more peace and less stress; I want to heal, to feel less pain and discomfort.

These are valid desires and spiritual practice helps bring these about, but they are not the primary reason I practice. They are wonderful by-products of the deeper capacity I am cultivating. In my aspirations, I strive to be a bearer of light, one who brings kindness, wisdom, belonging, understanding, and healing to my daily interactions.  

Paradoxically, walking this path often increases the anxiety, distress and pain I feel. If I am chasing pleasant sensations and pain relief, my spiritual practice is only playing at the surface – it cannot truly heal.

In order to grow, we have to reach those parts of us that are stuck in the past and coax them forward, the parts that froze because we didn’t know how to cope at the time. We all have wounds we’ve suffered along the way. Some are relatively minor, like being bullied or not receiving the attention we wanted from our parents; some are traumatic, like abuse or assault. Both can mark our psyche with searing pain that remains embedded until we examine it and integrate its lessons.

We stuffed our feelings at the time because their intensity made us fear for our emotional survival. We did the best we could with the internal resources we had. Now that we are more mature, we have the wherewithal to face the pockets of pain we locked away and bring them to light. If we don’t, they fester below the surface, erupting like periodic volcanoes. 

Bringing its raw pain to the light can cleanse the wound, allowing the natural process of healing to work its magic. To heal is the normal direction life wants to go, but we have to create the right conditions for healing to happen.

I find it helpful to think of creating those conditions with these three steps:  recognition, turning toward, and welcoming the feelings.

• Recognition happens when I can see my reaction in the moment. The irritation, or craving, or hurt, or shame, or flash of anger, or desire to lash out, are the types of reactions that can trigger my recognition. If I am aware, I can see that I have touched one of my frozen pockets and catch myself before I act out of my blindness.

• Turning toward is the opposite of our normal reaction. We typically turn away from painful feelings by suppressing them or blaming them on someone else. Turning toward shines the light of awareness on the wound. I might ask myself, “What is this? It seems unusually strong and misplaced. Where is this coming from?”

• Recognizing the reaction and turning toward are huge, but the last step takes real courage:  welcome the feelings. Embrace them. Feel them. Allow them to stay in your awareness and experience their fullness. It can be like inviting unruly children into your parlor, tracking mud. Or, it can be like standing in front of a tsunami of daggers that is about to crush you and not running away. Take it gradually, in steps if necessary. But each time you stay with those feelings, they have a little less power over you. As you practice, you realize you are stronger than you think. There is a deeper well you can draw on.

There’s one more thing – we are not doing this alone. More than just individuals healing our separate psyches, we are part of a greater consciousness, shimmering through the world, yearning to heal the collective. Humanity has been stuffing its trauma for millennia. Your psyche is connected to the whole, and these same three steps can create the conditions for healing the wounds of history.

Does that sound too big? Mountains of cruelty too vast to conceive, too painful for a human soul to bear?

I guess for me, I would say no. This is what a bearer of light does:  bring awareness to pain and transform it, relieve suffering, heal the planet. It’s in the job description. To be a bearer of light is to be a bearer of pain.

It’s what I’m here to do. Learning to bear is the point, it’s the superpower we are developing. And I’m in league with many, many others who are doing the same. When I lift my head, I see the thronging crowd that joins me, an ocean of compatriots who are also bearing light, turning toward the pain, welcoming what comes.

Photo by Getty Images for Unsplash