I would
much rather believe that this excruciating pain is punishment from God for my
transgressions and that it has the effect of purifying my soul, thus washing
the karmic slate clean. Otherwise, I am to accept the pain simply as it is and
with no “productive benefit.” The medieval belief that one’s suffering purified
one’s soul and thus brought one closer to God and to Heaven helped to maintain
the status quo of the innumerable slaves of the masters who were consequently
accepting of their lot in life. The fat priests did their job of making sure the
populace were willing to keep their backs bent and their untold suffering
between them and the Lord, who was a great listener and who was waiting in
Heaven for them when they finally loosed the crushing yoke of their meager
lives. But they held their suffering and loss in this context and thus we able
to live good, even happy lives, even as they were being crushed. I only wish
that I could hold and believe that my profound physical pain held meaning and
purpose for me, that it was purifying my soul at the expense of my body. Does
this severe, crippling pain act on behalf of something sublime? Does it bring
me a certain understanding? Obviously it does—in one way in particular: it
severs my identity with my physical body, thus enabling me to be quite willing
to let go, to even look forward to it, when the times comes to pass beyond it.
This is one major benefit, for such physical pain puts one in a quite different
state of mind and being than the normal bodily state. And I suppose that this
being moved, almost against one’s bodily will, into a different, more “spiritual”
state of mind and being, is another way of explaining the benefit of such. To
be able to consciously disidentify with the physical life to a life beyond
that, more sublime, as it were, than that is a blessing, for the physical life
is inherently transitional and temporary, if not short and brutal (Hobbes?). To
disidentify with it enables one to make the transitional out of it so much
easier, and then to whatever follows so much easier as well. To be in the “proper
reality” is like being able to speak the local language and thus communicate
and relate oneself within it. To be able to speak the language of Heaven
enables one to belong in it.
Of course, I speak too metaphorically,
not literally, though some, perhaps many, would take all this quite literally.
I do wish it were as literal and as simple as the stories I have been told,
that the Loving Father will reach down and pick me, his child, up in his arms,
for we all know that he is a great giant and that we are as small dolls in his
hands, or perhaps even as grains of sand in his hand, though I knew a woman,
Roxanne, who suffered in Alaskan Outback as a child and had to beg for food at
the Salvation Army and various churches where she had to sing for her supper.
She had to sing, He’s Got the Whole World
in His Hands, but she knew she had fallen through between his great
gigantic fingers. Her younger brother, whom she took care of, stranded in a
cabin in the deep snow, where they almost starved to death, came to my
hometown, dressed himself as a clown, and went through the town putting a
nickel in the parking meters that had run out of time, thus saving the owners
of the cars from the impending parking ticket. He was soon arrested and jailed
for this act of kindness. I don’t know what became of him or of his sister, who
was a waitress and a poet of profound depth and beauty. Certain things, certain
people, certain stories stick with me, in my soul, in my heart, in my mind, and
become a part of me. Love demands this; love of our fellow human beings, who
are not only as ourselves but are ourselves.
So I seem to have answered my own
question as to what may be the benefits of this most severe pain in my body. It
may be that pain opens the heart so that the pain of others may be enabled to
flow into our own heart, that we may be able to see that there is not “your
heart” and “my heart,” but, in truth, only our
heart. When I finally had to accept that my daughter had “severe and
profound” autism and that she would be and she would be, the walls around my
own heart crumbled and I felt myself to be the father of every single disabled
child in the world. One’s heart does not usually open willingly but its walls
are destroyed by the missiles of whatever life itself brings. And so, I prefer
to believe that the gods themselves send those missiles to open us up to all
life and expand us to include all life, which, I believe, is necessarily a most
painful process since all that we have come to believe to be ourselves is
absolutely destroyed. And in our devastation, we are shattered, but learn how
to rebuild ourselves with the pieces we choose
to pick up and put together in a better way until the next time. So I find that
I am able to have this pain that is so in my body speak for itself here. I had
no idea that this would happen, though I was guided by that same pain to come
to my desk here, sit down, and write these words. In this respect, my pain has
direction and it leads me. I could speak of pleasure and that I have had a life
of profound pleasure. But pleasure wants more pleasure. Pain, I do not think,
seeks more pain, rather, pain seeks to express itself and tell us another kind
of truth about ourselves and our existence. I would like to say that in this
expression of pain through me, through this mind and these fingers, the pain in
my body has diminished. It has; I am less pained in this moment, in body and
mind and feeling. If only it were so easy as that. But time will tell.
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