Pain provides an opportunity to turn towards lessons and lessening or to adopt as a wounded state as a part of identity.
For sure, the wave of wound on the heels of pain can feel logical and essential. It may perhaps be needed in order to make a choice. The wound from pain can be like a riptide that is easy to get caught in…that can provide great struggle and even the potential to drown.
However, to ride that current, perhaps even begin to understand it’s make up and direction and feel more fully into it just briefly, produces the wisdom to release the struggle and be propelled to its edges by its own force.
Without resistance, the riptide has nothing to hold onto and pushes away what it cannot drag down.
In due time, the churning and swirling when met with curiosity, tenderness, and patience has the capacity to deliver an object once more to calm and safe waters.
It is in returning to this calm space where wisdom is found…the pain lessened and the wound converted to a lesson.
While woundnedness perpetuates a perceived lack of safety imposed externally, wisdom reinforces the notion that safety is created in the choice to experience but not drown in the wound.
While ideally the sea of life hopes to offer smooth, calm, clear waters, it also aspires to shape future landscapes and to never remain the same, retaining unintentially in its purpose the potential for pain.
And in this way, there lie endless opportunities to ride or resist, to learn or succumb.
Sometimes things may look old, rundown, plain or dreary as you dash quickly by. Whatever the condition of the outside, the edges of the frame you see, you can always find a space of light, of color, of beauty, alive in the heart.
To be the master of my domain does not mean to have ultimate power and be in control of everything. Rather, it is to live in complete balance with all that exists in and around me and be in harmony with everything.