What our pain has to teach us

Learning what our pain has to teach us is so important; so that on the other side of it, we’re less likely to experience the same pain again.  The mind that led us into hell to begin with is always more glad to welcome us back.   How odd that we spend so much time treating the darkness and so little time seeking the light.  The ego loves to glorify itself by self analysis, yet we do not get rid of darkness by hitting it with a baseball bat.  We only get rid of darkness by turning on the light.  In searching for God we do enter darkness but only in order to expose it to light…. we must retrieve the scattered pieces of our unintegrated self.  And from that act of love, we bear new life.  When we emerge from times of deep sorrow and pain, something more significant occurs tan our simply being happy again.  Having glimpsed the deepest darkness, we seek the light of God more clearly.  Truly, if God is anywhere, (she) is with us on our darkest days.  And when our darkest days are no longer with us, we do not forget that HE was with us when they were.

Your torment during this process is not a just a cold and clinical occurrence, but a holy process leading not only to the end of your pain, but to the beginning of a new sense of self.  You will suffer, perhaps, but in time you will heal.  A new chapter of your life will emerge from the ashes.  “God himself will wipe away all tears.”

Our civilisation has an immature and neurotic obsession with always trying to be happy.  And yet sometimes it is through having cried our tears that we can see at last our blessings.  In the words of Ernest Hemmingway, “The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.”  The real question for anyone who suffers, is whether we want to be one of those who are strengthened by the experience.  

To say “I know this is a terrible time.  But it is not without meaning, and I am committed to finding out what that meaning is.  I am committed to opening myself to the lessons to be learned here.”  And the lesson is always, in some way, the expansion of our capacity to love.

There is only one real problem in life: that someone turned their back on love.  Yet no matter how intense the ego’s demonic hold on the mind – from mild annoyance to outright evil – God’s love is so great, and Her mercy so infinite, the she will always have the final say.  The universe is always ready to start again, to send another opportunity for love in a never ending wave.   The universe of love is incapable of exhaustion.  

Marianne Williamson, Surrendering to our Sorrow, Tears to Triumph Spiritual Healing for the Modern Plagues of Anxiety and Depression.