What Can Pain Teach You?
TRANSITIONS
Q: What Can Pain Teach You?
A: I’ve been exploring this question viscerally. It isn’t the most pleasant of processes but definitely one of the most important for me. Also, we have transitioned into Autumn. The shift between seasons, just like the moment between yoga poses or life chapters is a very delicate stretch of time. It is said that during these changes is when we are most vulnerable, in our health, emotions, and mental stamina. For example, most yoga injuries occur in the transition between different asanas and people generally catch a cold when temperatures drop during that in-between zone of warm and cool weather. Every portal between seasons has its unique flavor. How do you experience the transition from summer sun into fall leaves?
For me, this is a time to slow down. This year in particular I am feeling the deeper call to attend to my self-care in a new way. With a summer like this past one, which hardly felt like a typical summer at all, I have no other choice but to seep into a slowness of profound review of where I have traveled as of late. With Mercury retrograde upon us, I sense the gift of this period is to go inward and re-evaluate the circumstances of life within and without me.
I have been sharing with you in recent journal entries the depths of the internal terrain I have been navigating, not in grotesque detail, but raw emotionality. Needless to say, I am still venturing forth into this dark night with little more than my faith and internal resources. Luckily, this plus some really dear friends who love me is all I truly need.
PAIN FROM A PREVIOUS LIFE
The journey continues, and now my inner tumult has manifested in the flesh. As a Taurus moon, I know the visceral process flow of life very intimately through the body. Today I am diving deeper into new realms of physical pain to listen to what my body is sharing with me. Due to my years of training, I can find objectivity to observe from, knowing I am not the pain itself, yet I am experiencing it at the same time. My subjective self is suffering immensely, but what part of me is suffering the most?
I am hopeful that this recent episode of healing is a bit of a climactic culmination of years of dealing with chronic pain that erupted just over 5 years ago when my previous life “fell apart”. I had been in a very unhealthy and dangerous dynamic/relationship that was literally an experience of prison on earth. Psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and physically, I had given myself over to a man who did not have my best interest at heart. Not only that, he was manipulating thousands, convincing them that he was the necessary intermediary between them and God. I believed him too.
When the veils parted and I could see that I had been intimately relating with a con artist who even had the Dalai Lama endorsing him no less (a very useful tactic used by many), I escaped with my life, my dignity, and some intense wounds. As I walked away from that life, the left side of my body simultaneously seized up and protested the years of oppression to my feminine power. I’ve been navigating this pain ever since.
FREEDOM
Right now I sense that I am unearthing the roots of this anguish, carving out the core elementals that have caused the susceptibility of the imbalance. Nothing about this is easy...but irregardless of ease, I am free. I am free in my heart and free in my mind from the previous illusory false paradise I had fallen into. The spectrum of liberation is vast, yet I cannot deny that I am one thousand times freer than I was. Isn’t that worth a little pain? I’ll take it, as nothing comes for free and freedom itself is actually an “expensive” path.
RETROGRADE CITY
Today as I write this, six planets are retrograde as we enter Libra Season. It is a time for true review on the various areas of the psyche that Mercury (Mind), Jupiter (Philosophy), Neptune (Spirituality), Saturn (Structure), Pluto (Transformation), and Uranus (Rebellion) represent. Reflections on our partnerships, friendships, ally-ships, and all areas of relating will be checked and balanced.
Be well in these transitions friends, take good care of you. May you find the answers you seek deep within this retrograde parade of inner exploration. May pain and suffering be transmuted into the gold of understanding. May you rise from the arduous empathetic collective swirl into empowered solidarity. And may you find the true joy of your pure heart with utter enthusiasm and in profound gratitude for this precious life, indeed.
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