Avoiding Pain

This unceasing desire to avoid pain is quite possibly the single most painful thing we do to ourselves as humans. It's like we hardwire ourselves to avoid it at all costs - even at the cost of the most incredible pain. And somehow, just so long as it is not the original pain we feared, we deem it appropriate or ok.

But it's not. Pain is pain. It is a feeling that we may or may not experience, but, like all feelings, it is something that comes, and then goes. Except when we hold on to it. Except when we obsess over not feeling that pain ever, and so immerse ourselves in an endless sort of pain.

Love is a great, great risk. It's HUGE. To love ourselves so much that we can sit in our skin and feel comfortable? That's big. To love ourselves so much that we trust ourselves and and trust ourselves enough to know that this, too, shall pass? That's gigantic. And, yes, a huge risk. And yet, fear is the alternative.

So why is it we choose the fear? I am afraid of feeling abandoned, so therefore I will cling in pain to something that does not fit, does not work and/or is unhealthy for me? I am afraid of being betrayed, and therefore I will live in the pain of never opening or trusting, ever? I am afraid to be hurt so therefore I choose not to ever experience love? These are insane decisions - you look at them and you think, "no way, that's a crazy way to act and think," and yet how many of us make exactly these subconscious choices because we are, deep down, afraid of such things.

Being a human being in you own skin, owning yourself for exactly Who You Really Are is the most gorgeous, most authentic, genuine and sincere thing you can be. And in that place of genuine confidence you know, that nothing is worth the fear, and that the love is worth everything. EVERYTHING.

If you can convince yourself of anything in this lifetime, convince yourself not to fear pain, to recognize it as something that may or may not happen, but as something that, too, shall surely pass. Remove those chains of fear that cause years and years of even more pain than feeling pain in the first place would have. It is the most liberating and exhilarating experience when you just feel that original pain, and then let it go.

Your life is worth so much more than the excessive pain of fear and avoidance of pain.

Blessings.
- Darshan


© 2010 Darshan F Jessop