Pain–and any obstacle that you may encounter on your path that leads to pain–is often a blessing in disguise (when you develop the eyes to see beyond the illusions and distortions of this world).
Pain can help you to fortify your inner strength and deepen your spiritual connection by clearing away impurities of ignorance, attachment, and other distortions that can get you trapped in future suffering if you are intelligent enough to overcome and/or clear your pain on a purely spiritual level–meaning eternally connected to undistorted Truth–as opposed to only temporarily soothing your pains superficially with the changing distractions and incomplete–constantly changing–systems of the confused and distorted world.
As you know from Sutra 2.1, pain is useful for your purification.
When you can consciously move through painful experiences with grace and full awareness, you will have truly learned self-mastery and learned to let go of the animal impulses/reactions that make it so that you behave in ignorant and attached ways that keep you stuck in perpetual cycles of destructive Karmas and suffering in the world. When you engage with any pain that you encounter as an opportunity to gain deeper wisdom, insight, and strength, you do not run from pain nor behave ignorantly because of it, and this naturally prevents any ignorance within you (that is tied to destructive coping mechanisms and Karmas) from growing into further obstacles and issues on your path/in your life.
Pain that leads to suffering reflects lingering attachment and ignorance of one form or another, while pain that leads to purification represents understanding that supports you to consciously engage with your inner discomfort and/or turmoil in a mature way that enables you to use what comes up to purify your mental and other conditionings and blocks (ie. ignorance, etc) to attain freedom from suffering. As long as you ignorantly overidentify with your body-mind-ego complex and temporary life experiences (among other impermanent things of this world as if they were eternal), and react to pain accordingly, you will suffer. And neither physicality nor psychology can truly liberate you from this or any other suffering either. Only true spirituality can set you free from sufferings since “you” are not limited to your body or your mind beyond your temporary form.
When you can bear your burdens with strength and humility, not clinging to the obsolete and fleeting distractions of this world, and overcome your inner hurdles without falling into arrogance and the same ignorant ideologies/behaviors (consciously or unconsciously) that caused you pain to begin with, it is a sign of growth and inner evolution.
Life will bring you pain as long as you live in this world amongst dysregulated homo sapiens who wallow in the muck of ignorance and disconnection from their true Self and nature (some of whom will get together in groups and “normalize” their hatred, ignorance, and wickedness).
Once you gain self mastery, however, you remove yourself from the tar pit that would have otherwise kept you trapped with others in the perpetual cycle of misery tied to pain avoidance and pleasure seeking in the world. Once you move beyond ignorance and can rest peacefully in your nature that is above and beyond animal clinging and overidentification with form and its accompanying illusions, you become free.
Thank you for reading.
If you enjoyed this post or found it useful, please be sure to like, comment, and share.
You can also connect with me on Instagram and Pinterest for ongoing inspiration on your Yoga and Meditation journey.
And if you have a question that you would like answered in a blog post or video, please submit your inquiry here!
