Pain is an Old God.
{Photo via Vintage Everyday}
By Sarah Needles.
We are obsessed with light, with happiness and lightness of being.
We strive for perfect happiness in our relationships, our careers, our self-image. Our ideal is oneness of being: all-encompassing love and laughter divorced from the underbelly of life; the unsightly, used-up, cluttered fragments of unmaking that are as essential to life as creation.
Destruction and suffering is a gateway to wisdom. We have forgotten this. But there is a path to relearning it: we must walk through the gate that opens only through pain.
The ancients knew that pain was a powerful vehicle for self-knowledge. We now shy away from it, skittering for pills or food or drink to numb our bodies and minds.
We would rather drink the waters of the river Styx and inhale the poppies of Elysium than spend even one moment in a place where Pain is ruler.
She is an old god, perhaps the oldest known to us. She is not evil, simply beyond human concepts of morality. Pain is an equalizer, for suffering is an essential element of the world.
We can choose to accept her gifts or spurn them, but in the end she will always have the last laugh.
Pain will find us through heartbreak, through tragic death, through maiming injury, through needles under the skin. She will catch us with the blistering burn of shame, or the bitter cold of disappointment and failure.
Fleeing only invites the chase, and Pain will wait until we are exhausted, gasping and thirsty, and then She will leap onto our backs. In struggling, we only tear our own wounds deeper.
If we are not careful, Pain will kill us with misguided love.
We must remember that She is not looking for our deaths. She seeks to make us stronger, and when we run from Her, we only prolong our own initiation. We squirm and scream in the dark, unable to see that she is dragging us towards the Mystery.
When you encounter Pain, you must not flee. Gather your trembling heart to your breast and turn to face Her. She will assume the shape of the thing you most fear.
Do not look away, for She will grow larger out of your vision. Keep your eyes fixed on Her and do not blink.
When She tears into you, the venom in Her bite will be as fire in your veins. Scream, cry, but do not back down. Her poison will lace through you, challenging you to die.
You will fall to your knees in the end, gasping in the blood-laced dirt, driven mad by the fire. Surrender, know yourself bested, and let Pain’s venom do its work.
Pain will roar in a thousand voices of the dying and the dead. The sound will shake your very bones. Summon the dregs of your courage and withstand it. Cover your ears if you must, but bear it, bear it, until the breath of ages past has blown you out of yourself.
This is the purging. All beliefs born in vanity, all good deeds secretly weighed in the heart, will be scorched away and you will be left with nothing but yourself.
Naked, shivering in the dark, offering your unworthy self up to Her mercy. The tears pouring down your face are the wine, your fear rising up like incense smoke. Humility is a feast for old gods.
Pain will smile a terrible grimace, and you will know yourself forgiven. In that moment, you will know that the only crime is to deny Her existence. She will absolve you of your falsehoods.
She is the great leveler, She who crushes the powerful and raises the weak. If you have the courage to surrender to Her will, She will find you worthy.
She will leave you, mewling in the dirt, and sweep away in a howling of wind and salt-spray, off to seek Her next acolyte. Your tears will dry and you will find yourself languid in the wake of her love.
Examine your scars. They will burn with an unearthly light, reminding you of your truth. Trace their pattern and renew your gratitude for life.
Embrace the light, and be reborn. Live as best you can.
Until Pain once more sets you in Her sights and the hunt begins again.
*****
Sarah Needles is a writer living on Vancouver Island, BC. She blogs about books, gender identity, queer culture and chronic illness. You can find more of her work at her blog.
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