Are Fear and Pain Making Your World Smaller and Smaller?

Trapped In A World of Pain

Do you remember as a child, when the world seemed endless, and every stone was full of possibility?

And whatever we knew of the world, was only a beginning — a glimpse of endless knowledge that we could only dream of.

What happened to that world?

It seems so far away.

Do you feel that some or all of the possibility of youth is gone?

Has your inner world become full of pain?

Has it grown small, hard, and closed?

Do you feel at the mercy of a hundred little forces that move you to act in ways that you’re not proud of?

You’re not alone.

Injury and Healing

When an area of the body is injured, it often swells to contain that damage, and accelerate healing. That swelling is a temporary protection.

If an area of skin is irritated, again and again, it can’t heal. Instead, the body builds up thick skin, a callus, in that place. The callus is stronger than regular skin, but much less sensitive. The body gives up the sensitivity, in exchange for strength.

Something similar happens with our emotions.

We suffer emotional injury.

But sadly, we’re not very good at healing emotional pain.

Many of our emotional injuries remain open wounds.

We continue to encounter situations, people, and challenges that strike at our emotional injuries, and revive or increase the pain.

Often the strongest pain comes when we face our own failures, contradictions, hypocrisy, and lies.

Unable to heal our pain, we try to hide from it.

We hide from the things that expose, and deepen our pain.

And from situations that remind us of parts of ourselves that we would like to forget.

We develop a network of mental and emotional habits which form an armor or thick skin to protect an ever-growing collection of sensitive spots.

We become harder, colder, and less sensitive.

We become less thoughtful about who we are, what is possible for us, and how we are ignoring that possibility.

As we stagger under the weight of our emotional pain, it seems sensible to build up armor against the world’s dangers, and against pain. Through the cloud of our pain, the world’s extraordinary possibility seems distant. We are ready to abandon that possibility to escape our pain.

But our armor fails us, falls away, and our sensitive spots are exposed.

We are haunted, by our contradictions and lies, and the extraordinary possibility within us.

The thicker the armor, the more we hurt when the weak spot is irritated. It feels to us like someone stuck a needle in an infected wound.

Is it any surprise, as we strike out to protect ourselves, that our emotional reactions are wild, negative, and cruel?

Beyond Pain and Comfort

As a machine is used, it inevitably collects dirt and grime.

As we grow old, arteries get clogged, and organs weaken.

And as we age, we collect limiting and destructive habits and beliefs and fears.

Someday science will learn to clean and rejuvenate our bodies. Until then, physical decay is inevitable.

But even today, the common personal decay within us that crushes possibility is not inevitable.

This decay of the spirit can be stopped, and even reversed.

But, not through hiding from the pain, and pretending that it doesn’t exist.

When we feel emotional pain, we often seek comfort.

Sometimes that comfort is the comfort of sleep — erasing every pain, and every challenge.

At other times, we are prepared to live with our pain.

But we look for another sort of comfort. We want to find meaning in that pain, or at least meaning somewhere else in our lives.

We look for meaning through relationships, children, success, community, religion, spirituality, etc.

I have to find something outside of me that seems more important than I am.

I need to find a big something that I can call myself a part of.

If I can find that meaning, then all of the pain might be worth it.

Forever Young

The search for meaning is a wonderful quest.

But is there meaning only outside me?

Where is the meaning within me?

I believe that our greatest opportunity to live a meaningful life is born when we choose possibility over pain.

The love of possibility overpowers the escape from pain.

This is the road to personal development.

Can we love the truth again?

Can we find the courage to accept what we have done with our lives so far?

Can we release an inexhaustible thirst to see where we are, and accept our pain?

When we find that thirst, the little habits of mind and heart that bind us, lose most of their power.

Opening our eyes means that we will be confronted with our personal history.

At first this is troubling, as the pain of our history seems to overshadow everything else.

We need to see clearly where we have been, so we can see where we are.

And seeing our history clearly is only a small part of what we want from clear vision.

I want to look to a place that now seems far away, at the edge of a strange world.

I want to look for the full measure of who I can be.

It may have been a long time since I was willing to see the endless possibility that lies deep within me.

My eyes may have grown weak from living in a place far away from light.

The endless light may seem blinding and frightening.

Whatever I think I am, is only a shadow of what I can be.

My inner self may seem old and weak.

But deep within me, my light and my possibility, and my ability to become someone great is forever young.

That possibility will not be denied forever.