GRATITUDE FOR YOUR PAIN

From the book: "Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings"
by Rob Brezsny

Describe your signature pain. What is the nature of the torment that
chronically upsets you most? This is the first step in graduating from the No Pain, No Gain School of Tortured Progress. You can't be healed unless you name the tweaked karma that needs to be healed.

Step #2: Figure out what it is about your problem that's so appealing.
Consider the possibility that you have it at least in part because it
perversely entertains you or keeps you from being bored.

Meditate on the theory that maybe you unconsciously don't want to give up your dilemma because it prevents you from reaching lofty goals you're too afraid or timid or lazy to strive for.

Contemplate the notion that you're secretly proud of your distress--that it's so interwoven with your identity that you wouldn't feel like yourself if you had to live without it. Do you ever find yourself bragging to others about the difficulties you have to endure? Are they essential to the construction of your self-image?

Consider the possibility that you use your nagging agony as an attention-getting device, or as a way to gather love. Isn't it true that some people are more likely to shower you with sympathy when you're miserable than when you're blandly well-adjusted?

Muse on the seductiveness of your hurt, and on all the unacknowledged reasons that maybe you are attracted to it and hesitate to give it up.

Step #3: Simply feel your suffering. Don't judge it or repress it. Don't
come up with reasons about how it's beneath you to feel it or how you
should be over it by now or how you can't believe you still let it have so much power over you. Let the pain ripple and flow. Allow it to break your heart apart. Give it room to wail its truths. Marvel at the fullness of the emotions it stirs.

Step #4: Leaving all your preconceptions behind, meditate on what
lessons your pain is asking you to master. How is it inspiring you to grow in directions you've been unable to accomplish by any other means?

Step #5: Put yourself in a state of mind wherein you can feel gratitude for your pain. Be thankful for its teachings, for its chewy mystery, for its command that you build a soul resilient enough to do the work you came to Earth to carry out.

Thank you Hubble telescope for showing us that life is miraculously beautiful