Pain, suffering or Dukha! The mere mention of this word is met with resistance and non acceptance. It’s a pledge we make with ourselves, to get rid of this affliction. It almost becomes the life purpose of every human to overcome pain and suffering. But do we avoid pain or transcend it?

The Yoga sutras speak of pain as a response to the obstacles on our path of deliverance. Sutra 2:15 of the Yoga Sutras is an oxymoron where Maharishi Patanjali says that actually pleasure is painful just like pain. 

Yoga Sutra 2:15: “pariNaamataapasaMskaaraduHkhairguNavRuttivirodhaachcha duHkhameva sarvaM vivekinaH”

What causes this pain is our resistance to change, the anxiety associated with it and our habits. We find it hard to let go of good times and live in constant fear that we may lose it someday. 

But it’s not pain that is the problem, it’s our outlook towards it that needs to be addressed. The moment pain knocks on our door, we need to introspect our intentions as we receive this guest. Are we reacting from the gallows of fear and resistance or are we willing to allow ourselves to be open to the lessons that pain brings us?

Life is a teacher. Right at the onset of my advanced yoga teacher training, I was met with the pain of a spinal injury that limited me and almost forbade me to perform most asanas, some even for life. I’m not sure what was more painful, the injury or the inability to perform the asanas. What kind of a yoga teacher would I be if I could not demonstrate a headstand or do a golden backward bend? And right around that time we began to  discuss “Pain” in Sankhya Philosophy. “Disagreement to any sensations is pain”, said the teacher. It was like receiving a practical training on the subject of pain. “To overcome all kinds of pain is the objective of Sankhya Philosophy, through discriminative enlightenment”,  I learned. 

So I asked myself, what was my disagreement to my current situation? For one, my expectations didn’t line up with my reality. So in effect agreement to pain would be my solution to no pain!!! This agreement can also be called acceptance. So I allowed myself to fully be absorbed in the sensations of this pain. Just like Sidharth Gautam allowed himself to fully encounter pain and searched for the meaning behind this turbulence that he experienced within. Like Rumi who allowed himself to fully drown in the grief of losing Shams-e-Tabriz. 

Victor Frankle puts it so beautifully when he says, “there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.” “In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.” And what is this sacrifice?  To me it’s the sacrifice of our egoes. 

The aham or “I’ is the root cause of all the discord and separation in this world. And pain is the result of this discord. But pain is also the catalyst on our spiritual path that if we allow it, can drop us from headspace to heartspace. 

It is the subject of pain that got Sidharth Gautam on the path towards enlightenment and transformed him to BUDDHA. It is pain that pried out the songs of love from the depths of Rumi’s soul. “The wound is the place where the Light enters you”, he mourned. 

Some say mystics are born as mystics. But I choose to disagree. Mystics are ordinary people like you and me who embrace pain and let the emptiness of grief transform them to become beacons of LOVE. That is the beauty of pain. It has a midas touch, to transform you from an ordinary container to a GOLDEN Vessel of LOVE.

The alchemy of pain is that it transforms us to the vibration of LOVE!