http://www.care2.com/greenliving/is-pain-really-yours.html
Is Pain Really Yours?
What if the pain that seems to be yours is really not yours? (And here I do not mean to belittle personal suffering, but only to offer a larger perspective that may help alleviate it.) The truth is that fear and anger exist outside ourselves. They are not yours or mine, unless we attract them.
When you learned as a young child to cling to my toy, my candy, my pleasure, my happiness, at the same time your ego started clinging to the opposite: my scraped knee, my broken doll, my sadness, my pain.
Absorbing an experience as “mine” was how you built your self up, developed a sense of individual identity. As we grew, we learned to see this self in a larger perspective, in the context of humanity. But when tragedy strikes, we often regress to this early state.
To counteract this, we need to find the spirit. For spirit can do one thing that your ego craves very deeply and can’t accomplish on its own. Spirit can help the ego escape that painful trap of I, me, and mine.
The ego wants the best for “me.” Yet there is another, subtler force that wants the best for all (which ends up being best for me, in the end). Allow this force to express itself, and you will discover that the walls of isolation are not as solid as your suffering makes them seem.
Spirit gives us access to an emotion that cannot be felt in isolation – compassion. Compassion comes from the root word “to suffer with,” and for that reason many people actually fear it.
Trying to keep out someone else’s pain comes from fear for our own safety; in the name of safety we retreat behind our own private walls. Yet the truth is that your pain and the pain of others are shared. They make you human together.
Adapted from The Deeper Wound: Recovering the Soul from Fear and Suffering, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books, 2001).
More from Deepak Chopra (522 articles available)
related stories
-
(14 comments)
-
(9 comments)
-
(1 comment)
Robyn
Melissa
Deepak
Eric
Dave
Dr. Brent
Isha
Susan
Delia
Michelle
Wendy
Megan
Hilary
Ann
Judi
Ronnie
Kelly
Lily
Terri
Betsy
Cait
Andrew
Jana
Annie B.
Veronica
28 comments
add your comment »i love DC's articles
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
Empathy asks to be used. The attachment to the pain around us is because it isn't being responded too.Taking the next step will free you from that pain;that is to put the sufferer in the embrace of the high (vibrational) self, the immortal angel self.That's all that is being asked of us. The sufferer is just screaming not listening to the answer. There's wild seas between us and the causal plain and though the high self is there and able it's a matter of translation into this mortal moment, finding the person not only where but when. By pointing the light of prayer it helps spirit find the person in the here and now and all you have to do is invoke, place him/her in it's arms,walk away.No need to ask permission to do this and really you aren't doing anything but lighting those flares on life's highway. The sooner noticed and acted on the sooner free and that applies to physical suffering as well as mental and spiritual pain.You'll find by doing this that empathy is truly a gift and you won't feel drained . If there's still some residue get in the shower and take a salt scrub with your shower brush. It will leave your skin soft not dry and you'll leave the shower feeling light. If you want to bless the salt that's fine but not necessary for it to work. I recommend that if your daily work brings you into constant contact with the nasty' that it becomes part of your daily hygiene, particularly in back where you can't reach. That's where those energies like to glue themselves.
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
DC's delights often call responses from us that are threads that take on another aspect of the original article. Nothing wrong with that. :)
The thread about being empathic and having a hard time sorting out what pain is mine and what pain is the pain that someone else is having (emotionally) is not always easy for me to do. What's worse, is that even if I do, I keep getting stuck to it like the rabbit got stuck to the tar baby in "Uncle Remus". But the rabbit is smart and eventually gets free. So I keep hoping. :)
I guess there are folks like Julia J's husband who seem to be able to not have empathy for anyone unless he is directly affected by their sorrow or misery. The rest of us seem to be able to jump right in someone's shoes and share their pain. Is that a gift or a "curse"?
I think the key may be to be able to have empathy and then use that knowledge to transform the pain with love. I have some ideas about how to do that but time is short for me this morning. I think I will be giving that theme some thought and to see what tools can be used to turn pain to joy for one's self and in the case of empathy, for others.
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
Yes Julia, I am sorry for your pain and suffering ( more than simply your physical). Some would have you belive here that this is some powers / Individual or UNIVERSE grand design for you while others claim its simply DESTINY. I know in my heart perhaps if a physical illness, this can be from natural cause but mostly from out of control MAN MADE toxins/Bio Hazzards/ organisums. In food, water, air. If accidental (trama) I do not feel it was destiny, but unfortunate placement I call it. Usually again created by a MAN MADE item of use. I.E. Car, plane, Train, bike, weapon etc. Many would have us beleive it was a Grand design for 100 people to die and 1 to survive. I always answer with if so, 1oo jump from the tallest buliding in the world and see who lives. Seems unfair? Not if we have a grand design watching us. Its not about not reconizing truth or climbing to the right hill top. I belive in this statement,"Luck will nearly ALWAYS see a man(woman) Through, if their COURAGE HOLDS". The power of life is within OURSELVES. NOT OTHERS. YES, we all need sympathy and Carring at times. SICKNESS and HANDICAPS are the worse times. EVERYONE is DIFFERANT/UNIQUE, this is 1 thing FORGOTTEN BY TODAYS GENERATIONS. Something we fought HARD to obtain from early bigots and judgemental tyrants. NOW it has givin way to GREED/LEVELS of IMPORTANCE based on material worth. After all if the POWERS to be are all forgiving, SO why is a design for you to SUFFER? Not everyone is gulity of horrible acts.
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
Lovely comments, Uma and David
“What we are lonely for no longer exists”
I've been through sentimental anguish: Going from a 17yr old girl in love for the 1st time and about to start naturalist training to being indefinitely chained to a wheelchair. I spent the next 4 yrs in self-imposed limbo, claiming always I'd “do that when I got better”, that “I'll pick up where I left off, when I get better”. Always my one goal was to get back what I had lost (not just with my body, but with my life). My biggest fear was that I would never get it back. Then one day I woke up and wondered where 4 yrs had gone. I knew I would never get it back. Now I know I'll probably be stuck at 17 for the rest of my life, but at least I feel...awake, now. No longer drifting though life like its a dream. But I was always sentimental to the past. It was one the central tennents of my being. There was always some lost period of my life that I longed for.
I'm an empath but my husband is the opposite. He can't feel sorry for someone he's never met. He can't put himself in another's shoes unless he's very close to them. It's just so foreign to me since my life is spent understanding others' feelings, be they real or ia character. Emotion is the current and currency of my life. Those he does care about he's fiercely loyal to, so it's hard for me to understand how he can feel so deeply for some and not at all for others. Do you know anyone lie this, Uma? As an empath, is t
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
This story would have been more effective if a distinction were made between physical pain and other kinds. As an empath I know that we carry emotional and mental pain that isn't our own, and it is good to determine whether or not the pain you feel is yours or another's. Either way, the best way to deal with it is to cleanse the energy, which quite easy. Visualize a white orb of energy sucking up all of that negative energy, then send the energy out of your body, along a thin white cord, down into the center of the earth. There, visualize the negative energy (changing into pink and green positive, healing energy. Bring this energy back along the same cord and into your body. Hold your hands above your head, take a deep breath, then visualize releasing any exess energy back into the universe, and keeping what you need for yourself.
This way, when you realize that certain pain is not your own, when you discard that pain it does not find its way back to its original owner. Instead, you end up sending healing energy to this person, even if you don't know who they are. And you do something good for yourself as well, because all of your energy is also cleansed.
Physical pain belongs to the suffer. The sharp stabbing of the crushed never in my leg is mine. So is the constant dull ache in my back, that becomes a throbbing stab without pain medication. So is the feeling you get when you cut your finger. Though I wish thee was, there is no way to share physical pain with anothe
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
i cannot agree with this, as you are referring to our behaviours and beliefs as being a consequence of our old programming, having compassion to the point of allowing another person's pain to enter our lives is unhealthy. yes we have compassion, but i call it 'support'. we have to keep our boundaries as to who owns what, and what do we own. i do not own another person's pain. that is their property and they are responsible for it. i do however, support a person in their finding recovery for pain, but it is essentially their responsibility. we do not take on what is not ours, for our own sake, for the sake of our mental and emotional health... IMO.
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
I put my comments here:-
http://www.createculture.org/profiles/blogs/is-pain-really-yours
Pain belongs to everyone in the present, relative to past and future events.
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
My old father and I are experiencing this anguish as loneliness but what we are lonely for no longer exists.The compassionate presence that understands it's not necessary to solve the problem because there is no solution in this world; that understanding presence is enough to assure us that we are not alone ,isolated,between one life and another,that we have living company in the world we are in.Only personal experience with suffering allows that compassionate understanding to exist. Humans usually have extended sensory perception. Some of us are empathetic. I am and it preconditions me to feel other's feelings as if they were my own. I have to deliberately withdraw myself not to feel them.I love being an empath because I can experience the beautiful things more. If I love something I have my first pleasure in it then it is over. If I give it to someone who will be delighted with it I have my second pleasure taking part in their delight and so forth. My nature is extended beyond my species and I can experience the feeling tones of the whole creation. I can experience full communication with all creatures who not using abstract thought communicate through feeling tones. Though not telepathic or clairvoyant if I am with someone and I hear their thought or suddenly see visions I know they are because my empathy lets me feel their talent. Psy-talented people are my favorite company because of how it extends my perception.I like people knowing me on that level, It makes me secure.
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
MY TAKE:
Many ears bend in a direction to hear or read stuff that is not sane. Thus can it be said that some that go that way have just made the wrong choices?
Not that they a bad person at all. But their persuasion for more mediation and seeking some one or some thing higher than us GODS Greatest Creation becomes for them a hard hill to climb.
And what makes all that worse for many and me too. Is that trying to lend a helping hand to those of that persuasion is simply not to be found.
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
Facebook account: