The God Slot: Changing our attitude towards pain

On a very basic human level we all think we should be happy. When life becomes difficult or painful, we feel something has gone wrong.

This wouldn’t be a big problem except for the fact that when we feel something’s gone wrong we’re willing to do anything to feel well again. We may well go to our counsellor or spiritual director to try to get a route out of our problems. However we forget in our pursuit of happiness that Jesus said in Matthew 16:24 “If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself, take up his cross every day and follow me. For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it.”

We have to face the fact that difficulty is inevitable in human life, and we cannot avoid pain. We cannot avoid the reality of aging, or illness of not getting what we want, and of getting what we don’t want. These difficulties and setbacks, to name but a few, are facts of life. What really causes us misery is always trying to get away from the facts of life, always trying to avoid pain and seeking happiness – this sense of ours that there could be lasting security and happiness available to us if only we would do the right thing, find the right person read the right book or attend the right course that would “fix” things.

We need to turn this way of thinking upside down.

Suffering has a great deal to teach us. If we use the opportunity when it arises, suffering will motivate us to look for answers. Many people come to the spiritual path and experience a lasting spiritual breakthrough precisely because of suffering – something they would never have experienced in calmer and more pleasant days. Suffering and pain can also teach us empathy for others who are in the same boat. Furthermore suffering can humble us. Even the most arrogant among us will be softened by the loss of someone near and dear.

Yet it is so basic in us to feel that things should go well for us, and that if we start to feel depressed, sad, lonely inadequate or out of sorts, there’s been some kind of mistake or we’ve lost it. In reality, when you feel depressed, lost, lonely, overwhelmed, or any unwanted feelings you may have, this is an important moment on the spiritual path. This is where real transformation and change can take place. Did not Jesus also say in Matthew7:13 “Enter by the narrow gate, since the road that leads to perdition is wide and spacious, and many take it; but it is a narrow gate and a hard road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

As long as we’re caught up in always looking for certainty and happiness, rather than honouring the taste and smell and quality of exactly what is happening to us, as long as we’re always running away from discomfort, we’re going to be caught in a cycle of unhappiness and disappointment. What’s especially encouraging is the view that inner strength – the power of the Holy Spirit – is available to us at just the moment when we think we’ve hit the bottom, when things are at their worst.

“There is nothing I cannot master with the help of the One who strengthens me.” (Phillipians 4:13). But it means total surrender to Christ who has once for all carried all our traumas, pain and suffering and transformed them. It means giving up our attempts to fix anyone especially ourselves or others. There is a Greek word for this, kenosis, meaning absolute surrender and availability to the grace and working of the Spirit within.

We can ask ourselves, “Can I touch the centre of my pain? Can I sit with suffering, both yours and mine, without trying to make it go away? Can I stay present to the ache of loss or disgrace – disappointment and pain in all its forms – and let it open me to a Source beyond all this which alone has the power to save me.” But first I need the rawest of raw courage to sit with all that blows me away, and little by little we learn that there is a greater Power holding and sustaining us in all of this.

Simply stay open to the difficulty, to the feelings you are going through. This is a revolutionary step. Becoming intimate with pain is the key to changing the core of our being – staying open to everything we experience, letting the sharpness of difficult times pierce us to the heart, letting these times open us, humble us and make us wiser and more brave. Don’t resist. Richard Rohr, a contemporary spiritual master wisely tells us, “What we resist, persists.”