Earlier I talked about how emotional pain is the result of words, words meant to hurt, to abuse, to cut down a person’s character, which set up conflict within belief systems of the body regarding who you are, and that conflict activates a cascade of chemical flows that corrupt the internal messaging of the body. Over time the onslaught of such words sets up an inflammatory process whereby the corrupting energetic messaging causes imperfect operation of the cells and a breakdown of physiological functioning. My advice was to move away from the source of the injurious words.
Now I want to explore the nature of pain. It is a process of warning. It sounds an alarm in the body that is either listened to or ignored. When it is generalized pain, meaning, pain which is diffuse in the body and expressing as malaise, listlessness or depression, it can be misinterpreted as mental illness. It is not mental illness, it is pain. It is the signal for change, change in circumstances, change in outlook, change in life plan.
Each of us has a life plan. We intend to live out a life here on earth for specific reasons. They can be for basic learning such as how to survive as a human being, individually or as a member of a group or tribe, or for complex emotional learning, such as empathy and compassion for others without judgment. We each design our own life down to the specifics of where we will be born, to whom, and what we will wear as a composite of hair, skin, body shape, gender, affect and proclivities. These specifics as to how we present ourselves and interact with others around us, define our life lessons, our desire or dictate to gain certain experiences. Pain may be a part of that plan.
Experiencing pain is necessary in order to understand pain. How could we possibly sympathize with or attune to someone in pain if we ourselves have never experienced it? The truth is, we couldn’t, all learning is experiential. We think we can understand experiences intellectually, but the Mind isn’t capable of marking the concept in the brain to elicit, for instance, the emotion of sympathy. We must have recognition of the experience in order to have an emotional reaction, and it is the emotional reaction, which conveys the sympathy. Sympathy is an emotion. The Mind carries no emotion, it is set up as a computer. Therefore, in order to mature emotionally, to reach the pinnacle of true sympathy or empathy toward others, we must ourselves have the experience of pain, and feel the experience emotionally with our bodies.
We are programmed to experience life emotionally. Now you know why. We are programmed to learn simple emotions first, like hunger and thirst, and progress to more complex emotions like lust and need and eventually to love. Like kindergarteners, we learn how to sit and take orders, like third-graders we learn to share recreational equipment and play together nicely and like freshmen in high school, we learn to handle complex social and reproductive urges. As we mature through this emotional education, we learn about friendship, loyalty and duty to self and others. Pain is a part of this emotional education.
Pain can come from an overzealous coach or unrelenting teacher. Pain can come from a compromised parent or bullying brother or sister. Or it can come from the very body suit you are wearing—the skin color, the nose shape or physical malady that you were born with. It can come from self-loathing, developed over time, from mental or physical abuse. Pain is in residence for a reason, it is a necessary part of your education. When is enough pain enough pain? When you feel you have learned enough from the experience. Sometimes that represents a lifetime, sometimes several lifetimes. We don’t get to learn about pain until we ourselves are ready to understand pain in others. We go through many, many lifetimes inflicting pain on others and then get to experience that pain we inflicted on others ourselves—happy day! We become the tormented. We stop being tormented when we have learned first-hand, pain.
So why did I suggest to you to move away from the source of pain earlier? I suggested this to you because when you are ready, when you have learned enough about pain, you will hear me. You will know when that time is.