Releasing emotional pain

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Today I would like to share a beautiful reflection by my friend Taiya Evras on releasing emotional pain. I feel sure you will inspired by it as much as I have been.

Heavy, smothering, exhausting, debilitating, pain. Yes physical pain can seem this way. I am speaking here of emotional pain. Letting go of pain can seem difficult, but why? When you have lived with a pain and ignored that pain for a long time, here you must determine what is a long time for you, it becomes familiar. It becomes a part of not only your soul but your very existence. Things you do each day, choices you make will reflect the “hanging on to” the pain. It becomes as a mate that in your mind you wish to be free of, but in your heart you would fear to lose it. It becomes comfortable, wearable, excusable. It is not.

Pain is something you can choose to hold in your hand rather than your heart. By holding it in your hand you possess the power to let it go and the power to grasp it tighter lest it would fall. Envision the pain you feel as this ball in your hand. It is as a ball of light. Look at it. Examine it. A part of it is beautiful, it has brought you to this place and to be this person you choose now to be. Perhaps this pain holds a great memory of something you love, or someone. Recognize that it has served it’s purpose to you. Perhaps it has guarded you from making choices that would have exposed you to more pain.

Now see the ball, the pain, a different way. See the darkness in the ball. What have you missed in your life, who has come to you and left while you held this darkness? You may even have had tangible opportunities that you passed up in order to continue to hold the ball.

Now it is time to do something that Society tells us never to do. It is time to drop the ball. I promise that if you drop this ball of perceived control over your pain, the world will not end. The Universe will not fold into itself and collapse. But your world, your Universe will change dramatically, well it can. It’s up to you how much, when and how.

This is not a rubber super-ball. It will not bounce back to you. When it falls, it falls endlessly into the cosmos below you. The only way to retrieve it, is to determine to bend down and reach and grab hold, to decide to hold the pain, to take it back. Do not make this choice once you have broken free. To pick up the pain and to continue to carry it with you, will never serve you well. You will never truly move beyond this place where your pain exists with you. Pain holds you and pain is not a kind or gentle lover.

Now look again at your hands. You have dropped the ball. Realize that your hands are empty, free now to hold something new. Perhaps it is even the hand of someone who was there all along. Perhaps, your hands may reach out to someone or something new. Rejoice that your hands are free!!

It is said that ‘Happiness is about giving up something precious to get something better’. I struggled to understand this statement when first I heard it said. Why, I wondered, having something precious would you let it go to pursue something you only perceive as being better? Then I realized that we can hold many things in our mind or perception as ‘precious’ without their being good or good for us. Pain can be revered as precious if it has been a constant companion. If pain has seemed to protect us, if it has become a comfortable way to live, we might be persuaded to believe it is precious. It is not made good however, simply by familiarity.

There is great fear in letting go of what is familiar, comfortable, safe….precious. Resist this fear. Push with great force against it and you will find how easily it will submit. You must walk toward what you fear to know that it cannot hurt you. Take this idea one step further. Walk through what you fear and in living you will know that what you fear cannot hurt you. Walk. It is an action verb. It requires movement, whether physical or intellectual or emotional. You cannot stand in one place and wait for a healing to begin. You cannot wait for what you fear to come to you. By ‘walking’ toward your fear you let it know that you are taking back control. You live your life.

To heal when one has experienced extraordinary trauma, takes time and patience and willingness. To participate in someone else’s healing process, takes time and patience and willingness. A healing person who has suffered a loss is most often lost themselves. It is difficult to find your way back when the path you believed you should walk has suddenly become dark, rough and winding. Your footsteps, once sure are now stumbling. Your eyes which once looked only ahead to the future, search frantically for focus, for something familiar, a stray beam of light which might mark the path. Some may stop walking altogether in a desperate act of self-preservation. They dig down their heels into the soft dirt and simply choose not to go on, they are without direction, without light, without hope.

Remember, you must walk toward what you fear to know that it cannot hurt you. You are stronger than any fear. You are brighter than any darkness. You have within you the power and strength to heal from any pain. When you are ready you will find around you the people, resources and love you need to support you on this journey.

Letting go of the pain does not mean that we forget, but rather that we remember so well that we no longer need to visit it everyday. To give it it’s due and move forward from this place is how we honor what is past.

excerpts from “Living With Intention” © Taiya K. Evras 2007 all rights reserved

Category : Inspiration, Uncategorized
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