Thursday, June 13, 2024
I wish I could keep you away from suffering and pain, but avoidance of pain causes more pain. You will often find yourself in harm’s way. The word harm is from Germanic origin and means grief or sorrow. You will get pulled into the grips of painful experiences multiple times, but the way out is not to fight or to avoid. The way out is to recognize how you got in, in the first place. You must recognize the bully in your head, know it for what it is, and then the torment lessens. Torment means to twist, in Spanish tormenta means “storm.” Calm the storm by first seeing how you’re contorting yourself towards pain, and then relax to let it go.
Don’t brace yourself against the storm, but embrace what’s happening now. Embrace comes from Latin in- ‘in’ + bracchium ‘arm’. In other words, when you find yourself in the throes of harm, throw your arms around it and take responsibility for it.
Harm becomes harmonious when you familiarize yourself with the cause. Make it more like family – which is another way of saying cooperating. Repeated, painful patterns come to those who turn people and situations into enemies. People don’t recognize that they are the root cause of their pain.
Harmonizing with harm turns it into a burning catalyst for growth, not a contentious fuse for more explosive pain. The secret is to diffuse it, not to inflame it. Cognize – to think; re-cognize – to rethink. It’s all about the reharmonization and recognition of what first appears as the enemy or bully. Recognize the enemy when it comes as soon as you can, diffuse it by seeing what you’re doing to yourself, and get in harmony with what it’s teaching you. Pain isn’t a fight. When you get your arm out of a twist, it becomes a teacher of healing and wisdom.