By Cameron Day

Every person on Earth has lived through painful experiences.  Pain and emotional suffering seem to be unavoidable on this planet, but what purpose do they serve?  Is it possible that we actually choose to experience pain and suffering in order to overcome them?  If that is so, then how do we overcome our pain and what will life be like without the emotions tied to our past holding us back?  Hang on tight, because we're about to go down a quantum rabbit hole, and if you make it all the way to the end, you'll be glad you did. 

Evolving through pain

An examination of the spiritual teachers throughout recorded human history shows they all went through periods of intense suffering prior to achieving a state of full enlightenment.  Jesus, Buddha, Osiris, Horus, Krishna and many more all have extremely painful experiences and even physical death as part of their recorded histories and legends, yet they overcame these adversities to become greater beings.

"We all have our cross to bear" is a common phrase in western countries with strong Christian influences.  What this means is that every person is dragging around large amounts of unresolved pain, but it also hints to us that our own divine nature can transcend this pain, just as Jesus transcended his. 

Painful experiences cause us to question our lives and the reality we are experiencing.  If we question long and often enough, we may come to the realization that there is much more to us than our physical bodies, our ego minds, and the physical world.  These realizations usually only come about because of a disruptive (painful) experience that causes us to question reality as we know it.  By contrast, people who have lived lives of relative comfort, ease, wealth and physical gratification are normally not likely to question the nature of reality.  Why should they, when everything in the physical world goes their way?

When viewed from this perspective, we can start to understand that painful experiences help us to grow.  Don't worry, you probably don't need to experience new pain to stimulate your evolution, because we all have enough pain in our past that we can grow from if we choose to.  With this in mind, let us examine the role of pain as a catalyst for evolution, and the issues that arise when we resist and try to cover up the pain from our past.

What you resist persists

Resistance to any aspect of our selves, or against any past or present experience, creates judgment and painful emotions within the psyche.  When we judge ourselves or the events of our past as being "bad" or "wrong" and then suppress those aspects of ourselves, we create a division within the psyche where the pain is stored. Because our true state of being is wholeness, love and joy, any pain that exists within us must be addressed and "loved back home" so that we can once again be whole within ourselves.

Unfortunately, our egoistic desire to only view ourselves in a positive light and for others to always see us as "good people" automatically prevents us from admitting our own pain and limitations to ourselves.  Our desire to "not feel that pain anymore" creates a resistance point that will subjugate the memory of that pain into a "second class thought" that we attempt to banish from the kingdom of our minds.

This refusal to acknowledge our pain, faults and shortcomings prevents us from truly healing ourselves and our minds.  Most people automatically bury these thoughts as they try to rise to the surface of the mind for contemplation and analysis, choosing instead to rationalize "bad" behavior (self-judged, of course) or push away painful memories because "that's in the past and I have to move on" or because they believe that "dwelling on the negative" creates more "negative" experiences.

If we can instead have the courage to allow painful memories to rise to the surface of our consciousness, then without judgment set the ego aside and allow ourselves to truly *feel* the emotions that are associated with the memory, an opportunity occurs to transmute the emotions of pain and suffering, which only exist due to judging the memory as "bad" and resisting it.

What does it mean to transmute an emotion?

All human emotional states are variations on two master emotions:  Love and Fear.  When a person judges an event in their life as bad, they begin to develop a fear of similar "bad" experiences in their lives.  This fear is attached to the event in the psyche of an individual, and every time they remember the experience, the judgment of the situation as "bad" and the fear of it happening again come immediately to mind.  This fear triggers unconscious self-protection mechanisms that suppress the memory so that the feeling of fear will go away and they can return their minds to thoughts about pleasurable things.

This innate desire to move away from pain and towards pleasure is an effective tool for preventing us from experiencing bodily injury -- when a hand touches a hot stove, for example.  However in our own minds we must push past that reflexive protection mechanism and embrace our inner pain if we want to heal it. 

Every time we resist and suppress a memory because it triggers painful, fear based emotions, we use a portion of our own innate energy resources to "seal off" that emotional-memory complex so that it can't easily return to our awareness in the future.  This compartmentalization of the mind increases over time to the point where most of us are putting more energy into suppressing and hiding from our pain than we are into daily life.   This state of fractured and suppressed self-consciousness is why people manifest disease, hardship and continual pain, which they attempt to "seal off" in the hope that if they just focus on the positive that their life will improve.

We transmute pain, suffering and fear back into a neutral state of energy by allowing a painful experience and the associated emotions to come fully into our awareness without judging it, resisting it or trying to bury it.  When the full light of our conscious awareness is focused on a limiting emotional-memory complex while we are in a state of total acceptance, the energy we have put into the pain and the resistance to the pain transmutes back to a state of pure energy that we can reintegrate into our consciousness.

The unknown vastness of Being

Our inner state of being is incredibly vast, although most people are only aware of the very small aspect of waking consciousness and daily life perceived through the 5 senses.  However, as every single sage, mystic, master, shaman, mage and spiritual teacher throughout human history has told us over and over again, we are infinite beings capable of infinite experiences, and we are, in fact, divine beings existing in multiple levels of reality simultaneously.  Most esoteric traditions also teach that we have a "Higher Self" or divine aspect within us that connects us to the nonphysical realms of existence.

Most people who hear such teachings only form a mental, ego concept of the divine aspect that is within each of us.  The ego imagines a cosmic big brother that will give us all the material "stuff" that we want if only we can figure out the right way to ask for it. This is a limited belief that must be transcended because the higher self isn't really interested in our material comforts -- it simply wants us to make contact with it so that we can consciously evolve.

Reconnecting to our own higher Self simply opens the doors of perception so that we can explore the vastness of our own consciousness.  Our higher self, once we establish contact, can be our personal guide on this journey of self-examination and self-healing.  (Go to page 2 for much more)