Pain and Love

A dear friend shared a true story sometime ago, as part of a deep sharing online... I love the story and the poignancy it exudes...

" Four years back in Delhi I was standing in my balcony on the 8th floor, and watching a crowd gathered below as a young woman who I had seen as a child, refused to enter her maternal home. Everyone was trying to coerce her into home. Each time her father came close to her she ran away. Then exhausted all stood aside. She sat on the street tired and fallen apart. I went down to her. Quietly I sat next to her and asked her, "Is there anything I can do for you." She had diluted pupils, was breathing heavy, I could see her heart pounding out of her chest, her lips were dry and chapped. She said, "Just sit here with me, I have no idea what is going on, just that I don't want to go back home." So I sat there for a long a time on the street with her. She was married in Mumbai for over a year and something really terrible had happened, that completely shattered her trust in the adults around her who were supposed to protect and love her. She kept wiping her lips and saying, "My lips are are dirty, I need to clean them and I don't know how. I know what all has been happening with me since I was a child. They think I don't understand." I tried to hold her hand, she flinched. After some time I went back home. I called my mentor and told her about this. She told me, "Just tell that family to not take her to a shrink and let her go through this, and also see why this has come up to your consciousness. There is a message for you, a very important message." In the night they managed to get her home. I could see her room from my room. They had locked her up..and she kept crying out with a stick in her hand..I went to see her two days later. She was resting in the balcony with winter sun on her. No body ever told me what had happened. I inquired later whenever I saw her mother. She acted 'normal'..Today after four years, when I was in Delhi, I met her mother again, she told, "she is back with us and divorced and carrying on with life."

Another friend asked this question in response to this story -
"Is there a friend-face of the darkness or dark side of love? Which may be hard for us to see?"

Both the story and the question touched me deeply. I could relate with the story, as I have been in a similar state (but for different reasons), many many years ago. That is another story which I am writing about slowly, taking small baby steps...I will share that later when I am ready.

But for now, what this stirred up in me besides memories of some turbulent times, was the question that was asked by this friend.

I would like to share my thoughts and feelings here, trying to put in words, some deep emotions and stirrings that I often feel, when I sit with my pain. Pain has often brought out love....more love...somehow I have always felt most comfortable and in touch with myself when I am deeply hurt or in pain. Sitting with pain has often made me see the "friend-face" of it ...without pain, I feel one would not know love. When I sit with pain, I feel like Life is taking off some skin-tight clothes off me, to reveal love with all its fragility, vulnerability and strength. The root is love....and so I feel that when there is an experience that brings out a lot of pain, and I sit with it to see all its faces, I make a choice that is rooted in love.....it is not a choice that I make then in haste, at the heat of the moment, to get out of or away from something and find relief....the relief for me has been that when I got battered, bruised, and broken (most often by my own mind playing the role of a villain of sorts) I finally saw love at the root of it all. My action then was born out of love.

What is Pain then? Is it another face of Love? How many faces does Love have then?

I have often pondered over these questions in the midst of agonizing pain and felt love spilling over at some point. It makes me feel that Love is a many headed being - all connected to one source or root, and all expressing the same essence in myriad ways. Much like a temple that has many doorways, all leading to the inner sanctum, these are our many doorways to access and see Love in its purest form. What other reason can there be for all of us to take so many different forms when we are each an embodiment of the formless, intangible thing called Love? I haven't found any.

Pain is life-giving and life- changing in many ways. It has been for me. What we often see and experience is the destruction and devastation that pain leaves behind. And then, we move on. Most often. But if we wait a little longer, for the lava and embers to cool down, if we sit with the pain a little longer, we will see that the scathing lava has created the most incredible landscape that we stand on and look at with wonder. Soon, there will be trees and plants, animals and birds that make the barren landscape come alive. That is the power of pain. If only we can wait....wait, for as long as it takes...

Pain and Love are the warp and weft of the rich tapestry of life. Without the intricately woven and choreographed warp and weft, Life would be one long, lifeless, endless bundle of thread, prone to break or get tangled. We have to come to know deeply that we are held with love even when we are in the midst of unbearable pain. Sitting with pain without a plan or a course in mind, makes one get to that knowing. It happens when you let yourself be engulfed completely by the pain, without fearing that you might drown.

"Surrendering is not a giving up but a giving over to what is true in the present moment. And the moment I accept  what is, something begins to shift within me." - Oriah Mountain Dreamer from The Call

  

When you are in pain, you have a choice to stay with it or move away from it. I have seen with my pain, that when I tried to move away from it, it often came back and harder at me each time! I have also felt often, more intuitively than anything else, that whatever be the choice we make NOW, which becomes the path we tread, we will or often reach the same place that we were meant to, once again, until our choice is born out of love and compassion. It is a deep feeling. I can think of or give no examples. So, we will in a sense "carry on with life" until we are given another chance to make a choice out of love. 

I wonder what would have happened in the story, if that woman had made a different choice...

Where would life have taken her and how? 

What is your story of pain and love?