Hold your attention on what you want to create
Sad but true: for many us, much of our lives are spent dealing with pain and trying to get rid of it. There’s pain in every sphere of experience — physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually — but rather than being a beacon that helps steer us clear of suffering, pain often seems to be a powerful magnet that draws even more suffering our way.
Many of us find ourselves in a weak position relating to health and a victim to pain. We focus on the elimination of pain as if that’s the magic key to health and happiness. But it’s clearly not. Often our common methods of relieving pain are temporary patches at best.
Certainly, we should be practical and seek to relieve our pains with effective methods, and we can use whatever works best for us at the time. But, if the same type of pain keeps returning, then we know that while our “temporary patches” may be good for quick relief, they are not touching the roots of the problem.
Interesting stories about pain
Janice, a former model and actress, has suffered with severe neuropathy in both her feet. Sometimes the pain is so bad that she feels like cutting her feet off. Walking causes extreme pain and as she shops, going from store to store is a chore. She’s treated by many doctors — allopathic and alternative — and they all agree that her neuropathy is a major problem and they offer little help. Yet, amazingly, a few times a year she finds herself in a place where she is asked to dance … she rises to her feet and dances for hours, all the while her feet feel perfect and are free of pain.
Al had suffered with depression and chronic fatigue syndrome for years. He believed that because he had a virus in his body, his ability to feel well was compromised, and healing would naturally be slow. Al was far more interested in the spiritual side of his life than his everyday existence. He hated his pain and limitations; in fact, he resented having to deal with his body altogether.
David holds himself to an unrealistic standard at work and home. He wants to avoid conflict in all his relationships — even when doing so costs him fulfilling his dreams. He had pain in his shoulder, and despite various treatments, relief was limited and short-lived. David started to fear that pain was just something he would have to live with.
You can see a common thread to the stories above: a major part of the issue of pain, is our relationship to pain, itself.
If we find that our attention is on the feelings and issues of pain much of the time, then we are left with very little time and energy to focus on the things that we truly care about — the things that bring us joy, well-being, hope and love. The things that make us feel good and make life worth living, are the very things that stimulate our own powerful self-healing energies.
Why are ordinary treatments so often ineffective?
Pain is a signal that something is out of balance in your present state of being on the physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual level of consciousness. Suppressing, masking or leaving pain unresolved increases the imbalance. Finding the confluence of factors that has contributed to the problem, and returning those factors to states of balance, enables you to become free of pain and keep it from returning. Sometimes this can be done immediately and sometimes it takes a peeling away of layers (and correctly balancing each layer) before the process is complete.
Why are both traditional and alternative treatments so often ineffective with recurring pain? Most treatments do not go to the roots of the problem. They look at the symptoms as if they are the real issues when most often they are not. Pain that appears at a single site is often rooted to factors out of balance in several physical areas of the body. Or, to eliminate pain, it may be necessary to alter the influence that non-physical factors — including the conscious mind, the subconscious mind and the soul level — have on your body.
For example, we often use pain to help us avoid the real issue. We may experience neck pain, instead of dealing with the conflict in our relationship. Or the depression that zaps our energy might be brought into manifestation so that we’ll not be able to compete in a sport with a much loved friend, to avoid any hard feelings such a situation may bring.
As long as we fix the pain (whether physical or emotional) without handling the underlying issues, we are more likely to re-create the same pain in our future. We sometimes even choose to focus on the treatment itself to avoid the underlying issue. We concentrate on diets and supplements, instead of dealing with the way we think, or get over-involved in our therapy and “inner child” instead of changing our lifestyle.
Even when chronic pain seems to be a result of an accident, repetitive motion, a serious illness, or surgery, it usually involves other factors that have contributed to the problem. If there are contributing factors behind the scenes that are not resolved, then they remain active in the individual, inhibiting the flow of self-healing energies.
What’s a person to do?
With pain it’s important to do a multi-faceted assessment. Is there something that needs medical attention, perhaps immediately? Then you must consider all levels of consciousness and their interaction with each other to remove root causes and facilitate healing. Don’t fall into the trap of deciding that all medical treatment is bad. There are times that the appropriate treatment includes surgery or a medical protocol.
It’s incredibly valuable to learn to shift the patterns of energy that are holding your pain in place, in the here and now, including the everyday stories about our selves and others. Our stories hold the energetic patterns that affect every aspect our being, and our personal relationship of our spiritual life. Altering, editing, and healing the stories that you hold in your mind and body, can stimulate your self-healing energies and change your life.
As for the people in our stories:
Al is feeling really good! Dealing energetically with the issues of his relationship with his body and spiritual life, Al’s depression, fatigue and physical pain started shifting almost immediately. He learned to energetically correct the patterns from old issues that weakened him. In a few weeks time he improved greatly. Al learned to integrate his energy, free blockages and to ground his spiritual energy without becoming weighed down. The new way he uses his energy has now become natural, and he’s changing his ideas about what it means to be a spiritual being in a human body.
Janice, although initially believing that she was destined to suffer, came to accept that since she was able to feel dramatically better in certain circumstances, there was hope for positive change. Janice now sees that it’s possible to frequently access the same energetic states that she enjoys when dancing and really improve the condition of her feet and her life.
David was surprised to discover that underlying his shoulder pain, were his unresolved relationship issues. Correcting the associated energetic patterns, his shoulder felt better right away. To improve his life on every level, David worked with his everyday story about how things should be; he became less judgmental about the issues in his life, and thus more open to recognizing and dealing with them before they resulted in physical or emotional distress. On the rare occasion that he gets a twinge, David gets the message right away and looks for any issues that need to addressed.
Handle, Don’t Dwell
Ultimately, it’s important to live in the vibrational sphere that you want to create. While you must handle both the practical aspects and the underlying causes of pain — don’t dwell there. If you want to feel good, place your attention with that vibration. This can be done simply. Sometimes it means thinking about a vertical line running down your body, from your chest through your trunk, or a beautiful colored circle. Other times it means putting your attention on things that make you smile and feeling what your body feels like in that situation. As you do this, your pain and your life transform.
