Pain
Seal into your heart and mind all of the pain of this lifetime. Make of it a treasure that you revere like the holiest of your possessions. Make of it your prize. Make of it the sweetest thing that you will not part with. Bring that pain into your heart and into your mind and let it be a fire that you need, the bath that you are craving, the transformation that you have waited too long to behold. If you are letting that pain go, if you are dismissing and discarding it, if you are ignoring and abandoning it, then you have released, in fact, your sweetest joy and your dearest hope. For pain is what will make a lion of the smallness that you have now, it will make you multiply, it will purify all you thought you were so that you can, at last, be what you truly are. We are vessels for this pain, each of us a near-infinite series of containers, and the universe fills them all with some, or other, type of pain. And that is our gift, that is what is bestowed upon us so that we might come through every beautiful experience so whole that we no longer need to question our own wholeness. Pain is the lovely fire of our every breath. Our heart has it, our minds have it, our bodies feel it in every way imaginable, and every single experience under the sun has, as its ever-permeating characteristic, some exquisite pain. And so, if you will live, if you decide to draw breath here, if you wish this for yourself, then treasure all that pain and do not seek to escape any of it. We are deeply uncomfortable here, but that is only the avoidance of living. Pain, in its full and total experience, is not a discomfort, not a disappointment, not a way of being dissatisfied; it is the heart and soul of life itself, and it is deeply, purely, and potently satisfying. Experience everything, and let your own pain show you the hidden magnitude of things, the secret greatness, the pure and total joy that is being alive. Pain gives you yourself back, and, in that, it loves you more than anything else ever will. Be glad for it. Be blessed by it. Love it as it loves you. Your life will be over before you feel you have even begun, unless you make pain your dear companion. And then the pure depth of it, the depth of that life you can lead, will more than make up for its shortness in years, and it will be as if you have eternity just because you have your own exquisite experience, the experience of your own pain.
01.23.16