Is my chronic pain a spiritual punishment?
Sometimes it can feel that way, like we are being punished for not being “good enough”, or not “strong enough” to dissipate emotional or physical energy before it gets stored up and turned into pain. This is not the case! Being human is an incredibly vulnerable, raw, difficult experience.
There is inherent pain in being alive. But there is also inherent resilience, strength, joy, and beauty. No one can withstand the onslaught that life brings to us, without needing to store up some energy to be processed later. We just can’t do it all. So it is very natural for some storing to happen. But the wonderful thing is that no matter how many lessons we have to learn, or how much emotional energy weighs on us, there is always a way to learn and grow from it, and to let it go.
There are two beautiful truths about life that inform the way I see pain: 1) life includes some kind of pain, no matter what, because we are human. 2) life guarantees an opportunity for transcending the pain, no matter what, because we are human. It’s up to us to choose it.
Why do bad things happen to good people?
The idea of soul contracts is an interesting story for why we sometimes go through very difficult and dark times. The basis of the story is that before we are born, we sign up for lessons that we need to learn, and then after birth, life finds a way to teach us that lesson, no matter how difficult or dark it gets – but the trick is that we have no memory of signing up for these lessons. Life can feel like a struggle, but this is the manifestation of the lesson.
The end goal is to be a more enlightened person in the sense of understanding that there is always something to be taken from every experience. It was given to us for a reason, to reach a new understanding of the nature of life.
What percentage of the population and what percentage of doctors believe in God, and how does that affect your care for chronic pain?
A surprising number of doctors believe in God, though it may be in their own words, in their own way. They believe in the inherent capability of a human body and mind to heal itself, which is the work of God. The most important thing in finding a doctor that is on the same page as you is finding someone with an approach to wellness that resonates with you.
Are they letting you speak your whole truth, and getting to the root cause? Are they willing to go to emotional and spiritual places with you, or are they staying totally on the physical plane, saying that all physical pain only has a physical cause? It’s often said that healers can only take a patient as far as they’ve gone themselves, and this can be seen in the courage that some doctors have when they’ve gone through the dark night of the soul themselves.
