Transcendence in and through Pain

A couple of weeks ago I had a pain relapse from my herniated disc. It returned to the debilitating state as it was when it all started in October 2007, and for a few days I could barely move or go to work. So on Thursday, January 10th, I had a minor medical procedure called "facet blocks" to cauterize some nerves along five sets of vertebrae that were channeling pain signals to my brain from the "slipped" disc. Mercifully, that procedure was largely successful, as the worst of the sharpest, stabbing pain was greatly reduced or eliminated. I don't feel 100% perfect now, but at least the situation can be endured and I can go to work and do some regular activities.

Not a day has gone by since October when I have not thought about pain, how to respond to it, how to fix it, and how to make sense of it. I have certainly had my days of frustration and anger and sadness. More and more I am getting the impression that Western medicine really doesn't have all the answers, or a quick fix (other than pills), and many of my experiences with doctors have been quite negative. Not only do treatment recommendations differ from one doctor to the next, but most doctors I have met (so far) were complete jerks (to put it mildly!), lacking even an ounce of compassion or humanity. Over and over again, I have also run into people who have dealt with back pain through surgeries, medication, and all the other usual Western methods, and it seems like one horror story after another. Many times the treatment only serves to make the condition and pain worse, or leaving the patient a veritable drug addict. I am currently really at a fork in the road when it comes to knowing where to go from here. My faith in Western medicine has never been lower (not that I'm not thankful for the facet block procedure, which was really minor and the least invasive action I could take, but it seems like my options from now on could lead to a lifelong quagmire of surgeries or experimental guesswork). Ultimately I think it rests on me to keep a positive attitude and cultivate a larger, spiritual meaning to make sense of this experience and to live with it. There must be a way to endure this positively and constructively. I do believe in the power of the mind to heal the body. I do believe things happen for a reason and that there is much for me to learn from this pain.

From a spiritual standpoint, I have found some new and beautiful ways for understanding pain. The following is a quote by Hazrat Inayay Khan, a Sufi mystic and author, from his book The Unity of Religious Ideals:

In reality God is within you, and as He is within you, you are the instrument of God and through you God experiences the external world and you are the best instrument of conveying yourself to God.

I also found a similar perspective from reading Willigis Jager: the idea that not only is God within us, but He is living through us and experiencing our lives in and through us. God is living through this pain with me; I am not alone in enduring it. It is like the idea of Christ's cross: that we each have a cross to bear in this world, but that it is imbued with even more significance if we can see it through Christ's sufferings. The experience of Christ is a mirror image of our own. If we can follow in His footsteps, pain can really become something that helps us evolve to a higher state of being and consciousness.

The Buddhist concept of karma also adds another dimension of meaning, and I really think it is not much different than the Christian idea of surrendering to divine providence. The following is an amazing quote from Ken Wilber:

I’ve dealt extensively elsewhere with the concept of karma and illness—in Grace and Grit, for example, and more recently in Excerpt A of volume 2 of the Kosmos Trilogy. But it remains one of the most confused areas of understanding imaginable. I’m not going to get into it at any length here, but just let me make a few very brief points. Many people hear of situations like this, or perhaps suffer similar ones themselves, and imagine it must somehow be retribution for some horrendous crime in one’s past. But keep in mind that karma doesn’t mean that what happened earlier in this life is finally catching up with you; the orthodox doctrine of karma actually means something that happened to you in a previous life. According to the doctrine of karma, in this life you are reading a book that you wrote in a previous life. Many people draw the erroneous conclusion that because, e.g., they used to yell at their spouses, they now have throat cancer—but that’s just not the way it works.

As a matter of fact, from at least one angle, the “bad things” that are happening to you now actually indicate a good fruition—it means your system is finally strong enough to digest the past karmic causes that led to your present rebirth. So if you were reborn—that is, if you are alive in a body right now—then you have already horrifically sinned, and unless you work it off in this lifetime, guess what? You’re coming back. Illness itself does not cause more karma; your attitude towards illness, however, does. Therefore, if you are undergoing some extremely difficult circumstances right now, and you can meet those difficulties with equanimity, wisdom, and virtue, then you are doubly lucky—the causes that led to your being reborn now are starting to surface and burn off, and you’re not generating any new karma while you burn them (as long as you meet them with equanimity and awareness).

I only mention this because all too often, people undergoing difficult circumstances of one variety or another add a type of New Age guilt or blame to an already difficult enough circumstance, and truly, that’s not only inappropriate, it’s inaccurate. If you would like to pursue some of these concepts in this more integral fashion, please check out Excerpt A. In the meantime, if you’re undergoing some sort of truly difficult or even horrific circumstances, please don’t kick yourself when you’re down. That, indeed, would create bad karma. The good news is that you are finally ready and able to burn off the karma that led to this rebirth, and this is good news indeed—if you meet it with love and openness and a smile.

From this perspective, the endurance of pain and suffering, and one's positive response to it, can become a very noble action, setting things right in the world, making corrections for past wrongs, turning a negative into a positive. This also seems to be the same message one gets from reading the lives of saints, Catholic or otherwise. Pain and suffering are facts of life and ultimately unavoidable. It's how we respond to it and make constructive use of it that make all the difference. We could either see ourselves as helpless victims of random chance, bad luck, or fate, or we could see it as a great opportunity given to us by God for a reason.

I will have much more to say on all of this in later posts. I am currently reading an analysis of Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence.