The pain you don’t feel, you can’t heal.

For some, this comes as a relief and becomes a deep-rooted strategy and orientation towards life.

Inside they say, “Let me do what I can to bury my pain, so I don’t have to feel it, so I don’t have to do the work of healing it.”

Alcohol. Substances. Fitness regiments. Relationships. Money pursuits. Fame. Political conquest. Domination. Some forms of religion and spirituality even.

All of these things and those like them have the effect of pulling us outside of ourselves and trap us in the win-lose game. We get busy trying to win (or achieve) and avoid loss. So busy that there is no time, until around the time of death, to look within.

The win-lose or happy-sad game, after awhile, becomes intolerable. You sense there is more to life. You sense there is an inner world in need of attention. You tire of all the work for what amounts to a temporary high that comes, stays for awhile, and then goes… leaving you in need of more, perhaps compromising your dignity in the process.

The pain you don’t feel, you can’t heal.

For others, this becomes a mission.

First, to eliminate all the avoidance strategies pulling us outside of ourselves. We understand we must open the inner floodgates to let all that we’ve been bottling up find the light of day and path to exit.

This, similarly, can be an intolerable experience but, like the healthy purging of a toxin doing damage to the system, you know you will be better off on the other side.

We can take comfort in knowing that we are never given more than we can handle on the healing journey, which is the journey of becoming whole, undivided, and pure.

Sometimes we worry, “When is this going to end?” Understandable though this question may be — as nobody wants to live indefinitely in a compromised and vulnerable state — to the sincerest adepts among us, the question is righted by the higher understanding, “This ends, when it ends. In this moment, I am perfect, whole, and complete. Every need brings what is needed. I will not be forsaken.”

We find the resilience to soldier on.

The greater the trial of healing, the greater the reward of self-realization, whose fruits include abiding peace and bliss.

We might wonder, why prefer lesser trials?

Why not go all the way?