"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional." Is this not a constant choice we make every day?
When I choose suffering, I identify with the labels and beliefs that I superimpose on my pain. Then I need to talk about it, even if there is no actual pain at this moment.
But when I carry pain gracefully, I do not make a concept or belief about it. I don't identify my pain as "me" or "mine." There is no compulsion to tell a story about my pain. Therefor, no suffering. For suffering is not pain: suffering is a story we make up about pain, creating the past and future.
I am not liberated from pain. I am liberated from my story about it. I am liberated from identifying pain as who I am.
Then I can embrace pain as part of the seamless whole of energy, the energy-field of body, earth, and stars. This brief pain, just as it is in this moment, mingles with the pain of other creatures, just as this joy mingles with the joy of other creatures. "No man is an island," no particle is separate from the field.
Do feelings have boundaries? Do bodies have edges? Pain and pleasure are waves of one ocean, made of one water. By grace, we allow both pain and pleasure to dissolve into particles of bliss, waves of bliss. Into ananda, the labels "pain" and "pleasure" disappear.
This only happens when I am fully Present, with the melting away of past and future, the dissolution of beliefs about "me." No, it is not a philosophy for intellectuals, but a survival technique for those who choose life instead of suffering.
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