Instead of going bananas, however, I ended up following my Inner Healer (see previous posts) and discovering an amazing woman named Kathleen (see the Barratt Breathworks link on my blogroll).  I’ve spoken of her before, because she taught me how to elicit a relaxation response from my body and immediately snap out of panic.  Before my first appointment with Kathleen, I had reached the point where I actually wanted to go bananas.  I figured insanity would at least bring with it blessed unawareness and thus relief.  What I didn’t realize was what I really sought was awareness, or consciousness.

Kathleen introduced me to awareness, which I found so inviting I studied it in depth and found an entirely new career as a result.  Awareness is simply the ability to step outside of your own thinking long enough to separate yourself from your thoughts.  Eckhart Tolle discusses this in depth in A New Earth, and this is truly the key to releasing the despair around pain.  The most incredible notion about pain is this: pain is pain.  It is something that occurs in the body, and nothing more.  When we are unaware and involved in our thoughts, we believe many things about pain, such as “pain is horrible, pain is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, I can’t stand this pain, I can never live a normal life again, my life is ruined,” and on and on.  It’s easy to see, as someone looking at these thoughts rather than believing them, that these thoughts escalate anxiety and panic.

With awareness, you can step away from these thoughts and see pain for what it is.  Pain is a messenger.  It is a way for your body to communicate with you and help you stay alive.  It tells you to remove your hand from the hot stove.  It sends you to the emergency room when you have a severe illness that needs immediate attention.  It lets you know you’ve broken a bone so you can seek a doctor for help.  Pain is on your side.  Hating pain is not helpful at all on the road to healing.  Looking at pain with clear thinking actually invites you to learn about yourself and reach emotional equilibrium.

Once I saw my pain as a messenger, I began to listen to it and question it.  Clearly, it wasn’t there to save me from death, as my condition was not going to kill me.  So I literally asked it why it was in my body, sometimes with a journal in hand and other times while in a relaxed, meditative state.  Every time, it responded with this enigmatic answer: “I am here to teach you.  I will go when you have learned.”  I did not make that up mentally – it simply came to me.  At first, I felt very confused.  Teach me what?  I wanted to learn it quickly, whatever it was, so the pain would go. 

Of course, that was the whole point.  It was there to teach me how to listen to my essential self, my inner healer, and stop resisting everything in my life.  It was there to teach me how to become aware, to see my own thoughts as separate from myself.  It was there to teach me how to follow my North Star and discover my purpose in life.  It was there to teach me how to find joy, calm, peace, and love.  It was there to teach me how to truly feel good, confident, strong, and alive. 

I became so entranced in the learning process I forgot about my teacher.  I ceased to focus on the pain, and my attention turned to the material I was learning.  I fell in love with awareness.  I studied Martha Beck, Dr. Sarno, Pema Chodron, and a host of other writers’ works.  One day, I woke up and realized I hadn’t felt a symptom in months.  Yes, it’s really true.  I actually forgot about my condition and ceased to focus on my symptoms entirely. 

Instead of escaping through unawareness, I lived in my own skin with absolute awareness.  I learned from Pain, my Teacher.  And when I truly understood, my Teacher left, as promised.  Never in my life have I had such an effective learning experience.  I have a PhD in my essential self.  I will never stop studying, because I know I can learn more, always.  And truly, the joy is in the learning.         

In Martha Beck coaching, we coaches have a question we love to ask our clients.  When they are facing a something they find unpleasant or frustrating, we ask, “Why is this experience perfect for you right now?”   

It’s a question you have to really think about, but after it bounces around in your head for a while, the answer just comes.  There are so many experiences in life that we don’t want to have, and illness tops the list.  We don’t want to be sick.  We don’t want to feel discomfort or pain in our bodies.  Yet, if we are feeling pain or discomfort, wanting desperately to feel good instead is such a painful mental place to be.  We want what we don’t have, and that is all we can think about in each moment.  The reality, however, is that we are in pain in the present moment.  We are uncomfortable.  To want something that is not our reality right now, and to believe it won’t happen, makes us feel horrible.   

Fighting reality never feels good, so it can bring instant mental relief if you are able to stop resisting the current situation and look at it in a new way.  Strangely, releasing resistance often opens your eyes to new options, creative ideas, or new ways of thinking that eventually solve the problem. “Why is this experience perfect for you” moves your thinking into a different place, allowing you to release resistance and become unstuck. 

This question and its answer gave me incredible freedom when I was living with vulvodynia and IC.  In a way, it answered the despairing “why me” I threw out to the universe pretty much daily.  I hated living in pain and discomfort.  I hated the whole vulvodynia experience.  I hated how my life had changed because of it.  Then, Kathleen, my breath and relaxation instructor (see previous posts) asked me that question.  “Why is this experience perfect for you right now?”  I even hated that question, at first.  Then, as though moving into daylight from a dark cave, I could suddenly see my life stretched out behind and before me, my past and my future converging at this excruciating moment called Now. 

It was perfect because through this experience, I was discovering incredible new worlds, opening my mind to life-changing new ideas, and becoming very spiritually grounded.  I was finally expunging painful memories and coming alive in a way I could never have imagined before the wake-up call of life-stopping pain.  I was forced, through this illness, to learn to be still and relax, to stop running from my own thoughts and feelings, and to truly live in the moment.  I discovered gratitude.  My whole entire life was re-shaped thanks to this experience, from the inside out.  So I knew, even as I was still in pain, why the experience was perfect for me.  I knew I would become the person I longed to be, in harmony with myself, for the first time in my entire life.   

Seeing the amazing reasons for my experience gave me a completely different focus.  I relaxed.  I accepted the reality of where I was, but I expected to move forward to health, at whatever pace was right.  I let joy into my soul and began to like my own self.  I felt so incredibly good, despite the physical pain, that I simply knew everything was going to be fine.  And soon enough, the physical pain diminished, gradually, gradually, until I noticed one day it was no longer the perfect experience for me anymore.  It was gone.  I had moved on to new and different perfect experiences, new and different classrooms in the university of life.  Pain was my teacher, and I accepted my place as student.  When I had completely understood what I needed to learn, I graduated.   

Why is this experience perfect for you right now? 

I’d love to hear your answers, so feel free to comment.  It would be fun to start a little discussion about what each of you is experiencing and why it’s perfect for you!