Pain, the great teacher (another Facebook repost)

In 2011, I was in a pretty desperate state. Emotionally, physically and spiritually drained, I was pushed to the edge of my limits, and eventually beyond them. I couldn’t sustain my version of a reasoned existence based on my experiences. My wife was dying, and I was trying to maintain a lifestyle that included hope and security, work and play, ambition, fun, whimsy and notions of artistic creativity. 

As my world became narrowed, and my focus was pushed solely toward responsibility, the artist, the creator, the dreamer in me – died in a pitched battle for survival. My ego was seen to be the problem, and all of my ideas about fun and creativity became scapegoats under the banner of a self-loathing ideology. 

“How dare you have fun, freedom, personal time or a life, when your wife lies sick and is deprived of these things?” Insert your own words after the “when” in that sentence, and it may be relatable to some of you with regards to your own personal happiness and what you see going on in the larger world, as brought to you by your newsfeed of choice.

Anyway, it was around that time that I experienced what I saw as the first crack in my world-view. I was driving to work in tears, having left my bedridden wife supplied with whatever necessities I could provide, knowing that at any time, I might get a call about some emergency that would require my attention, derailing whatever plans my employers or I had for the day. 

Work was demanding, but my home life even more so, and there was no refuge or escape, one from the other, just an endless wheel of suffering to get to the next thing.

As I drove past the 4-way stop on Loma Rica Road, passing the church and the Gold Eagle Market, a solitary thought came into my head: 

“It’s all a game.” 

That was it. No explanation or interpretation, just a brief post-it from the Universe. I didn’t know what to make of it at the time, and frankly, I still don’t, but it was enough of an interruption of my thought loop to stop my crying for a time.

Later, or earlier, I forget the exact timeline, but for sure in 2011, I stumbled across an audio CD in a customer’s car, “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle. I was intrigued by the title, so I made a mental note to find a copy and download it. I did so, and I found many other similar books as well. I found myself listening, as I did chores or while driving to work, to Alan Watts, Adyashanti, Deepak Chopra, Yogananda – anyone and anything I could find. 

I stumbled (or was led, whichever you prefer) down a spiritual rabbit hole filled with “answers” for the earnest seeker in my perpetually confused, spiritually starving brain. Ideas about existence, non-duality, eastern philosophy, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Advaita, and even some Christian Mysticism thrown in, a veritable buffet of New Age eclectic woo-woo. 

Bear in mind, I had come from a background of a juvenile agnostic à turned Bible thumper cult member à back to hedonist à to now just a beat down human, struggling to make sense of a world that conforms to none of these paradigms. So bring on the new spiritual template, I thought, let’s find one that fits. That’s where I was, and possibly still am, as my butterfly of consciousness hasn’t yet alit upon the perfect belief system. 

I feel like I’m in a self-imposed time-out. I’m drawing the blackout curtains because I want more than anything to go back to sleep, to dream of a better existence without the work of actually building it. But light is creeping in through the cracks, and try as I might, I can’t close my eyes. And there’s work to be done.

The words of the great teachers of the ages have been hanging in the corners of my mind like sleeping bats. They were waiting for the twilight because they function best in the fading light and in total darkness. They are the anti-biotic that sits in the cupboard until you are sick, is prescribed for a specific ailment, and then discontinued when the illness has abated. You don’t need a flashlight in the daytime, and you don’t take medicine when you are healthy. 

Well, it’s getting dark, the world is sick, and it’s time for the bats and flashlights to come out.

OK, my metaphors are getting unwieldy. I’ve really got to rein them in. But you get the point. 

Yet we can’t rely on old spiritual tropes, or political ones, just like we can’t reuse last year’s flu shot. We have new problems, and we need new solutions. Not slogans, not knee-jerk reactions, but some kind of mechanism that includes all the parts working together. You, me and, dare I say, our long-lost MAGA friends, who don’t think they are lost but think we are. 

“We’re gonna need a bigger boat.” 

I can work that quote into just about anything. But really, we need a boat that includes a space for everyone. Maybe we have some rules of conduct on this boat, so it doesn’t capsize, but we can’t have as our goal the exclusion or eradication of others. Rehabilitation, perhaps, but not in a re-education camp sort of way, but more of a “let me help you figure out how to not continue to destroy yourself and the planet, brother” kind of way. 

There’s enough pain in the world to go around without us inflicting it upon one another. Violence begets violence, and hate breeds hate. You can’t bomb your enemies out of existence, but you can love them into irrelevance. Be the person you want them to be, not the other way around. We all rise or fall together. That’s the only way we’re going to shift this timeline.

And we have to be open to looking in the mirror. The first thing someone will do when confronted with some flaw in their thinking will be to deflect, to shield themselves, turning your laser focused weaponized ideals and ethics back at you. “What about…” So be prepared to be humble, be precise, be willing to admit gray areas, make concessions, be firm, be flexible, show empathy and accept that people learn at their own pace. 

When asked by a co-worker, I believe it was around Thanksgiving 2011, what I was most thankful for, I told him without reservation: 

“My pain,” I said to a look of unbelief.

“Why pain, Sparky?” Pao asked me.

“Because pain has been my greatest teacher,” I told him.

I stand by that statement, although I much prefer carrots to sticks these days (hint, hint, Universe).

And so, in that spirit, I want to take a moment to thank Donald Trump for being a magnet for of all that hateful, negative energy. Also Steven Miller, Russ Vought and the whole Project 2025 crew, Kristy Noem, ICE, Elon, the entire Republican congress – so many players volunteering for team evil – for providing such a clear marker of division between what we want to see and don’t want to see in the world. As things become more visibly corrupt, lawless and cruel, it doesn’t take a flashlight or 20/20 vision to see that this is not where we want to go. 

Collectively, we seem to be headed for a whole lot of pain. It seems to be our path. We may not be able to avoid all of it, but I’m hopeful. The sooner we figure out what we’re doing to perpetuate the cycle, the quicker we move on to something else. 


OK. That’s enough preachy-preach out of me for today. Rant off. 

Have the best day you can imagine!