Beyond Pain

I’ve been in one kind of pain or another for most of the last two years. Most of it is sports-related. It started with a case of "tennis elbow," that lasted about four months. Once I healed, I stretched a tendon in my left shoulder. After that came injuries to both Achilles tendons, then plantar fasciitis, and most recently a nagging lower back and hip pain that's been coming and going since last October, shifting from one spot to another.

Last Friday, after dropping off my son at his Spanish class in Buenos Aires—he’s here for a three-week course—I decided to run some errands before picking him up again. I had a lot of walking to do, and as I made my way through the city, I started to feel a burning sensation in my lower back and a dull ache in my left knee.

When this whole sequence of injuries began, I was frustrated. I made myself miserable thinking, This shouldn’t be happening to me. Until then, I’d never experienced chronic pain. Naively, I thought I was immune to it—or that if it ever did happen, I’d be mentally tough enough to bounce back quickly.

But the more I fought the pain, the more present it became. Before long, it started interfering with my everyday life. My days became tinted by how much pain I was in.

Looking back now, I can honestly say this experience has been humbling—and oddly helpful. I wouldn’t trade it. If I’ve learned anything over these two (very physical) years, it’s this: the more I resist pain, the more it hurts.  And the more it defines me. My focus has shifted from trying to heal the body to withdrawing my identification from it.

While at times I take steps to ease the pain with medication —what A Course in Miracles calls “magic”—, I’ve found I experience far less anxiety when I simply accept the pain. After all, I am identified with a body. Pain and discomfort, whether physical or emotional, are part of the deal. The key to loosening my identification with the body has been watching the pain arise and pass without resistance or judgment.  I'm beginning to see a difference between pain and suffering. 

As I wandered through the narrow streets of downtown Buenos Aires that day, the pain intensified. My back throbbed. My knee ached. I was limping. I didn’t even make it a full block before ducking into a café and sitting down.

There, I watched my mind go to war with the pain, then slowly let go as I slipped into peaceful acceptance. I remembered a line from Lesson 135 of the Course (135:18-1): “What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good?”

The Course often uses anthropomorphic language to meet us where we are, obviously, a non-dual God doesn’t really have a “Plan".  Still, there is a curriculum for each of us. It is simply, exactly what happens in our lives. Each situation can be seen as a lesson in a perfectly crafted curriculum. Our life can be free from suffering simply choosing to accept our reality instead of arguing with the lessons.  There are no mistakes. 

Sitting at the café with a warm café con leche, I observed the pain come and go. If you’ve ever watched yourself think or feel, you know that once you see yourself doing something, you’re no longer fully identified with it. You become the observer. And in that moment, as I looked at and experienced the pain without judgment—that’s what forgiveness is according to ACIM—I glimpsed something deeper. I saw that this aching body isn’t who I am. 

I laughed out loud.

In the middle of one of the worst pain episodes I’ve had in a while, I felt... calm and at peace. The pain didn’t go away, but it stopped being the center of my awareness. My mind was no longer consumed by suffering. Looking around the café, everything appeared slightly veiled, less real, less urgent. The joy I felt came from the awareness that I wasn’t defined by this pain.  The "I" that I had constructed; the one that suffered; the one that argued with the reality of the physical sensations; was no longer there. I remembered a title from a Ken Wapnick's seminar: “Finding Joy in a Joyless World,” where he quotes from Chapter 6 of the Text (6-II:6): “How else can you find joy in a joyless place except by realizing that you are not there?” 

I finished my coffee, walked out of the café, and picked up where I left off. The pain was still there—but my mind wasn’t entangled with it. I walked for another full hour until it was time to meet my son.

That afternoon gave me a deeper understanding of what true acceptance is: allowing the body to feel what it feels while mentally withdrawing my identification with it. My body is free to ache—but it has no power to separate me from joy or peace; only the mind can cause suffering. 

Later that night, I picked up A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle and came across this passage on page 78:

“What is spiritual realization? The belief that you are spirit? No. That’s a thought. A little closer to the truth than the thought that believes you are who your birth certificate says you are, but still a thought. Spiritual realization is to see clearly that what I perceive, experience, think, or feel is ultimately not who I am, that I cannot find myself in all those things that continuously pass away.”

Yesterday, I woke up pain-free. Will the pain return? Probably. But right now, it doesn’t seem important. The lessons has been useful and I am willing to revisit it again, should it re-surface.  Real healing is always of the mind.