FW: DailyOM: When Pain Comes Our Way - Honoring All Experiences 12/24/10

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December

24, 2010

When Pain Comes Our Way

Honoring All Experiences

Honoring the experiences

we have in our lives

is an invaluable way to

communicate with life, our greatest teacher.

Honoring the experiences we have in our lives is an invaluable way to

communicate with life, our greatest teacher. We do this when we take time at

night to say what we are thankful for about our day and also when we write in a

journal. Both of these acts involve consciously acknowledging the events of our

lives so that they deepen our relationship to our experiences. This is

important because it brings us into closer connection with life, and with the

moment. Only when we acknowledge what's happening to us can we truly benefit

from life's teachings.

It is especially important when pain comes our way to honor the experience,

because our natural tendency is to push it away and move past it as quickly as

possible. We tend to want to brush it under the rug. Yet, if we don't, it

reveals itself to be a great friend and teacher. As counterintuitive as it

seems, we can honor pain by thanking it and by welcoming it into the space of

our lives. We all know that often the more we resist something, the longer it

persists. When we honor our pain, we do just the opposite of resisting it, and

as a result, we create a world in which we can own the fullness of what life

has to offer.

We can honor a painful experience by marking it in some way, bringing ourselves

into a more conscious relationship with it. We might mark it by creating a work

of art, performing a ritual, or undertaking some other significant act.

Sometimes all we need to do is light a candle in honor of what we've gone

through and what we've learned. No matter how small the gesture, it will be big

enough to mark the ways in which our pain has transformed us, and to remind us

to recognize and value all that comes our way in this life.