Pain Is A Great Teacher

Pain is the great teacher. I woke before dawn with this thought. Joy and happiness are what we take and do not question. They are beyond question, maybe. A matter of being. But pain forces us to think, and to make connections, to sort out what is what, to discover what has been happening to cause it. 

And, curiously enough, pain draws us to other human beings in a significant way, whereas joy or happiness to some extent, isolates.

May Sarton Cited in Prayers for Healing

It might be one of the least favorite statements of truth we encounter in our lives. That pain is a great teacher. We humans would so much more prefer that pleasure would reinforce all the positive steps that direct and guide our spiritual and moral development as men and women.

But as Sarton observes, those positive emotions are hard to share, as they are often intensely personal and not easy to replicate. 

Pain, out of its nature and its necessity, acts distinctly as a warning. Its very purpose is to call us to attention and then compels us to act. Often, it is accompanied by our empathic urge to care or to be cared about, and that attentiveness will create and foster the connections between people that go beneath the surface and that touch our essential being. Maybe in some unmeasured amount of time we can welcome the pains of life as acute yet disguised blessings.

Pain can be a bonding agent that brings you closer to God. Those acute feelings can compel us to go deeper into our hearts, and find the source of self acceptance and compassion that is necessary to fill our lives with more meaning.

In my early metaphysical training, I was given axioms of consciousness to ponder and to use them as instructive guidelines that would accompany my meditative and experiential practices. One of them was a lecture on human behavior that declared that “[You get just as much karma as you need!’] 

We will get a necessary amount of karmic lessons from our actions, and from the pain of those consequences. We are urged, directed, and implored to learn from them, adapt to them, or acquire the knowledge that will serve to permanently change our interpersonal behaviors.

We get just the right amount of painful disillusionment, disgust, despair etc., that we need to let go, or to work through the dilemmas and challenges of identity and relationship that are or that have been so painful for us! 

No one, at least none that are generally regarded as being in their right mind, wants more pain. Yet, pain is one of the experiences in life that might be an excellent and unavoidable teacher! It remains, for me, an awful truth that pain can be chosen or consciously elected, even when you see the “red flags!” It means that I have not gotten enough pain to wake up!

Even when it is consciously chosen for some risky material reward, the meaning of pain can teach us something– even if it is in pure hindsight. In those circumstances, and in so many ways, pain can be a doorway to growth and change.