Pain is Information

Pain
            Getting to the cause always involves pain. I heard it said once that pain is inevitable but suffering is not. Why pain? Pain can be the friction that happens with a change in direction. Pain can be focusing on the symptom and not the cause. Like many other concepts pain is information that something is out of balance. Pain is the feeling that comes when you touch a hot pan. It is important information that you need to stop our your hand have even worse physical problems. If we numb our hand we can touch the hot pan. We feel no pain but still get burned. A burn is a thing separate from the pain felt when burning takes place. Our nerves that allow us to feel pain are very important to our health. Simply by knowing what pain is we are able to know what it is not. 
            The goal of change cannot be to avoid pain. Avoiding pain is often the reason change cannot take place. The goal of change must be to avoid suffering. Suffering is long term pain doesn't have to be. Being enslaved to in addiction is suffering a long drawn out ache that doesn't go away. Pain can be a quick jolt, a shooting pain that makes up jerk away from something. The longer we avoid the pain that comes with change the longer we will suffer. ​

I have been thinking a lot about pain lately. It seems that pain is connected to fear. I recently heard it said "it can't kill you but it can convince you that it can kill you" For me the worst part of pain is the fear that it won't ever end. Some of this come from the fear based eternal damnation programming I got a as a child. In truth nothing lasts forever and our bodies are trying to acclimate all the time. We become desensitized to pain some even find pleasure in it. They like the sensation. it reminds them they are alive. I have been giving myself small controlled pains to grow. Exercise, heat, cold problem solving. Short pain to avoid long term pain.  The solution is built into the problem. Pain is unavoidable but we can use it to our advantage...not easy but needed. if you don't do it the universe will.