Ten Spiritual Questions I Ask My Pain
And The Answer I Received
I have left shoulder bursitis. Or a torn rotator cuff. Today I will have an MRI to determine which it is.
The experience of it is sharp intense pain that shoots like electricity from my left shoulder down the outside of my arm when I make the wrong move. It is hard to determine exactly what is the wrong move but it generally has to do with moving the arm upwards.
How do I deal with it spiritually? That is what I asked my spiritual team (who I define as all the resources of wisdom and love I can imagine while sitting still). I listed ten different ways to cope or respond and I asked my guides to lead me on the right road.
1. Accept the pain. Don’t resist it. Listen to it. Pay attention to each increment of pain, each place the pain appears, each before and after, each increase and decrease, as though it were interesting music playing on the radio, decided by an unknown disc jockey. Or imagine the colors as they flare and fade.
2. Actively investigate the physical cause of the pain. Seek to understand the prior experiences that may have led up to it. How did I cause this? For example — I could have asked for help when moving into this apartment instead of trying to do it all myself. Or maybe I should not lift my toddler grandchildren when they want me to pick them up.
3. Send love to the painful area without interrogating it. Imagine love as liquid or as light. Focus on the tiny spaces, appreciating each blood cell that flows through those vessels, the muscles cells that work together, the repair factories of my body that are busy trying to fix it. Appreciate the magic of the body. This is the opposite of cursing that part of the body for hindering me.
4. Ask the pain what lessons it is here to bring me. What can I learn from you? Can I learn compassion for others from this, for example? Or can I learn to let go of useless activity that may be contributing to the pain? Are there changes I can make in my diet? What are the metaphors here? Isn’t it beautiful, for example, how the one hand helps the other without question or complaint because they experience themselves as one whole?
5. To seek medical attention and accept (and pay for!) their treatment.
6. Identify with the painful area and focus on accepting all the nurturance and protection that my human is sending me. How she is using alternative movements, searching for the best sleeping position, tempering her to-do list with an understanding that I may be limited? Fully receive all the love she sends me. Relax in her embrace.
7. Explore emotional trauma that may have led to this condition, in this life or past lives. Look at my emotions and thoughts about the pain. The pain is on my left side, and other pains have been more pronounced on my left side. That is the receiving, feminine side of the body. I review the traumas to my sensitive feminine self. Psychologically, is this arm a victim of a conflict going on inside of me?
8. To appreciate the situation as an opportunity to experience and learn about my body, about pain, about aging. See myself as a spirit having a human experience, an incarnation I chose for the sheer joy of maturing.
9. Give in to my sense of victimhood. Why me? This isn’t fair! Allow myself to feel sorry for me. Cry.
10. To focus on the positive side. Literally shift my attention to the right side and appreciate that my right arm works. I am still able to perform most of my daily functions of caring for myself, do housework, type, cook, drive, carry groceries with my right arm, play guitar, draw and paint. I am still useful to others; I can babysit the grandkids. I can chew, my teeth still work! My body is capable of many functions; many people need help just to go to the bathroom or are bedridden.
So, you may ask, how did my spiritual guides respond? What did they say? Which is best?
THE ANSWER
My guides, in their amazing wisdom and wry humor, suggested I write all this up and upload it on Medium.com.