Healing Happens on the Spiritual Level

Another key moment impacted me years ago as I heard Chaitanya Charan das, a spiritual teacher, speak about our active choice to live IN pain vs living WITH pain. When we live in pain we allow the pain to control us. We go down that rabbit hole of suffering and believing there isn't any relief to be had. When we live in pain, we get stuck in negative feedback loops and often ask the wrong question. How many times when you're in physical or emotional pain do you ask, "why is this happening to me?"

That question catches us into a feedback loop of victimhood, of life happening to us, of being controlled by what appears to be beyond our control while blinding us to the many ways we have capacity to take back control.

When we shift from being IN pain, or being immersed in life's tragedies to living WITH pain or moving with life, we enter into the spiritual realm of self-awareness, responsibility, and acceptance of what is. We begin to ask different questions. "What is the lesson I need to learn? How can I do my part to optimize what I can? What if I drop the hammer of lamentation and take up the wand of acceptance?"

Often our greatest suffering comes from believing that we should be living life differently than we actually are. Our greatest suffering comes from the interpretations we place on our various circumstances, disease processes, and events that come to wake us up. If we aren't willing to wake up, we will get caught in loops of blaming the circumstances, seeking cures from the outside world, and suffering from resisting what is.

I fully accepted the fact that I put myself into a situation that led to my being in the ER in a foreign country. The moment I accepted responsibility is the moment I tapped into deeper lessons and wisdom that these circumstances held for me as I embark on new life stages that will require me to protect my energy and stay in alignment with my body, mind, and spirit as much as possible.

The more we belong to ourselves, learning how to work with not only our minds and bodies, but also with life's ever changing events and circumstances, the greater opportunity we have to tap into a sense of wholeness and joy of being fully present in the moment. We stop reaching outside of ourselves and instead listen to those subtle inner cues, adapt our actions, and maybe avoid the shutdowns a little more quickly.

This is a journey that feels like a spiral rather than a straight line because, after all, we are imperfect in our human nature. Lessons repeat themselves until we adapt. Life doesn't magically shift until we are prepared to put in the effort. If we want something different that what life is giving us now, what are we willing to change to get there?

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says, "The manifestation of the mode of goodness can be experienced when all the gates of the body are illuminated by knowledge." All the gates of the body are illumined by knowledge...the first step towards healing what ails us is becoming present and aware in the moment where our inner knowledge can guide our next steps.

When we become present and open up to curiosity, magic tends to follow. Doors for exploration appear, new ideas come to mind, or we just might find the answer coming through unlikely sources.

It's amazing how much my body and intuition are able to guide me when I settle into a slower pace and ask, "my dear (body, mind, or spirit), what do you need in this moment? How can I treat you with loving kindness and compassionate care?" It takes practice to become still enough to hear the whisper, but when we do, it almost feels like an immediate release and a moment of serendipitous magic!