Here's a cold hard reality:
Human existence involves pain.
I exist as a human, therefore I feel pain.
Here's a further, even colder, even harder reality:
Human existence causes pain.
I exist as a human, therefore I CAUSE pain.
The reality of pain
Even the most well-intentioned good-hearted person causes tremendous pain in their lifetime.
If nothing else, when we are physically birthed into this human existence we caused our mother tremendous pain during her labor process.
Beyond that, when we inevitably die we will cause heart-wrenching pain to our beloveds, including the children we've left behind.
And in between, as children growing up, we innocently cause pain to our parents. As parents doing our best, we naively cause pain to our children.
Any relationship that has an element of love as part of it inherently has an element of pain in it. The path of love is paved with heartbreak.
You might be thinking... ugh, well that sucks.
And to that I'd ponder... hmm, does it?
Let's start with some basic philosophy about pain. To understand how to navigate this reality of pain, we must first examine its fundamental nature.
Pain is unavoidable
In Buddhism, impermanence (annica) is considered a fundamental aspect of existence. And suffering (dukkha) is considered a fundamental aspect of existence. There are two types of suffering -- the suffering that is avoidable and the suffering that is unavoidable.
They consider the first type to be getting hit by the "first arrow of suffering" -- the pain that comes with living this human life (loss, illness, death, etc). The second type happens when we respond to the first arrow with shooting ourselves with a "second arrow of suffering" -- the suffering that comes when we resist our pain, when we make it bad or wrong, when we defend against the pain. We can use this metaphor to differentiate between plain pain (the first arrow) and suffering (the second arrow, or even third/fourth/fifth/etc arrow) that is created by our mental reactions to the initial pain/arrow. These reactions often stem from our attachments.
As humans we love, we enjoy, we appreciate, and therefore we get attached. Since all things are impermanent, we inevitably lose what we are attached to. If we resist losing what we value, if we cling to our attachment, then we suffer. If we accept the loss, grieve and let go, we feel pain and forgo the suffering.
Waking up through the pain
Resisting our pain leads to remaining stuck in a past that no longer exists. Counterintuitively, resisting our pain causes us to hold onto it. Whereas feeling our pain allows it to release. Welcoming the heartbreaking pain of our loss is excruciatingly painful, but allows us to move on with minimal suffering.
When we resist our pain we suffer. And we stop living our lives.
When we feel our pain we experience a death, but this gives birth to our new life.
I have experienced this rebirthing firsthand through heartbreak awakening experiences. The first time was after months of resisting heartbreak -- I finally allowed the excruciating pain of my heartbreak to annihilate me, and within moments found myself basking in unconditional boundless love on the other side of the death. Which led to one of the most profound Satori experiences of my life, waking up to the fact that this painful thing I'd been avoiding my whole life -- heartbreak -- was actually a direct portal to what I'd been seeking my whole life -- greater love, freedom, and empowerment. Suddenly my aversion to heartbreak became a deep welcoming. I was eager for the next experience of my heart breaking wide open.
With this newfound relationship to heartbreak (which is a term I generally use to describe emotional pain), my whole life changed in an instant. I found myself moving through my life with greater ease, clarity, and empowerment -- simply because of my increased capacity to be with my own heartbreak and the heartbreak of others. Yet I still felt the uncomfortable limits to my capacity in relating -- I could not yet deeply welcome being the cause of pain/heartbreak in others.
Causing pain is unavoidable
Only much later did I find the clarity and capacity to welcome the heartbreak of causing others heartbreak, the pain of causing other people pain.
To be clear, I'm not talking about sadism, which is taking pleasure from inflicting pain on others. I'm talking about the everyday well-intentioned human who makes choices and takes actions that result in people around them feeling pain. For me, this often showed up in the realm of love and attraction -- the natural flow of my love and eros would feel challenging and painful for my beloveds. And because I couldn't bear to cause my beloveds pain, I would stifle myself, my love, my eros. Which meant I wasn't actually living my life. I was living a limited life based on what others expected and thought they needed from me in order to feel comfortable and safe. I was putting myself in a cage with walls made of my beloved's pain.
Waking up through causing pain
Extending the Buddhist metaphor for arrows of suffering, just as we cannot avoid experiencing pain in our lifetime, we simply cannot avoid causing others pain. This unavoidable pain we cause in others is us shooting them with the first arrow of suffering.
If we judge their pain as bad or wrong, or judge ourselves as bad or wrong for causing their pain, then we're in resistance to what is and we shoot them with a second arrow of suffering. We also shoot ourselves in the process. Whereas if we can remain beyond judgment, beyond guilt, blame, and shame, we can simply be with them in their pain, and be with ourselves in the pain of having caused pain. And we discover that remarkable intra- and interpersonal connection and intimacy comes through this experience of pain.
Even more remarkably, our undefended care and loving-presence may provide conditions for the person who felt hurt by us to experience healing of past wounds that were inadvertently touched by us. We may bear witness to and actively support someone's evolution towards greater wholeness and resilience.
Pain can be a birthing
Imagine the process a caterpillar goes through to become a butterfly. In its chrysalis cocoon, it entirely deconstructs and melts into goo. It experiences death and destruction. Thank God, because this gives way to the new butterfly that forms.
As the butterfly is emerging from its chrysalis, it struggles and strains against the structure that once served to protect it. It destroys the home it had once created for itself to transform. This is an important struggle for the butterfly. If you deprive it of its struggle by helping it out of its chrysalis, you will find the butterfly unable to fly. Its struggle is crucial for expanding and hardening its wings by pumping blood through them.
From direct experience through my personal pain in this lifetime I have come to appreciate pain as part of my birthing process. Life is in collaboration with me to metamorphose me into even more beautiful and free versions of myself. Every disappointment, every heartbreak, every pain, every wounding can be used to fuel my expansion, my resilience, my capacity, my beauty.
Like Kintsugi art, I create beauty from my brokenness, from the painful wounds and the scars of my life.
Welcoming the pain
So beyond unresisting the pain (resisting it just causes more pain and suffering), I've come to deeply welcome the pain that comes with living. This isn't to say I am masochistically seeking pain, but rather that I'm simply not trying to tiptoe through life to avoid pain. Avoiding pain leads to my living a more limited and fragile-feeling life.
To be honest, I was more of a masochist in my younger years when I was desperately trying to avoid pain, especially pain in others. So I would endure pain within myself so as to not cause pain in others. Because for younger me, and even present-day me, it is so much harder to accept causing pain to others than it is for me to endure pain myself.
But ultimately I realized that my preventing others from having to engage in their struggle was akin to helping the butterfly out of its chrysalis. I thought I was caring but I was actually caretaking them, which was fundamentally disempowering for them as well as myself. In a way, I was depriving them of their opportunity to expand and cultivate their ability to fly.
I realized that truly caring for them would be choosing to see them as empowered and capable in the face of meeting their pain, and to sometimes go ahead and cause them the pain.
Fore more, consider reading "Part 2" of this post: Just cause me the pain. Unapologetically.
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