How to Comfort Our Pain.

Someone posted recently to my timeline that love and despair were mutually exclusive; that they could not exist within the same space and time – as one caused pleasure and the other furthered our pain.

At face value, we assume this to be true. And, yet – though they are unique, there is a commonality between…as each invokes a compassionate release.

As a new mother, I would rush to comfort my crying son. I’d hold him tightly into the wee hours of morning, rocking gently and secretly pleading for it to end. Until one day when an old woman counseled me, “Let him cry, dear. This is his way of allowing the energy to dissipate.”

When I first committed to this spiritual path, I – like so many others – read books, practiced meditation and attended an unprecedented amount of lectures all in the hopes of releasing my pain. I learned the techniques, yet failed to reason.

I assumed that mindfulness required a lessening of reaction. While certainly a benefit of the longer-term haul, no amount of lecturing can ever obviate the necessity of release.

To feel pain, does not preclude our ability to feel and respond to love. Rather, together they help to deepen our awareness.

“I feel pain” is often a catalyst for pulling away. Something hurts, we wish it to end – quickly and by any means possible.

Racing to comfort my infant son was a natural and rightful reaction – though, my motivation then wasn’t clear. In my naïveté I assumed that in stopping his crying, the pain would go away. But, that’s not often the case. Isn’t it better to allow the energy to settle? That the comfort extended should serve as a benefit to this process?

Someone once shared with me that we should respond to our own pain as a ‘mother comforting her little one’ – with patience, willingness and a boundless compassion.

Yes, there is pain – but there is also love. As one recedes, a gentle nurturing effects its growth.

And, in the end, we are made whole.

As Jack Kornfield writes, “You hold in your hand an invitation: to remember the transforming power of forgiveness and loving kindness. To remember that no matter where you are and what you face, within your heart peace is possible.”

In peace, my sweet friends…

Namaste ❤️

About

Tara Lemieux is a mindful wanderer, and faithful stargazer. Although she often appears to be listening with great care, rest assured she is most certainly‘forever lost in thought. She is an ardent explorer and lover of finding things previously undiscovered or at the very least mostly not-uncovered.

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