Don't Seal Off the Pain

Life is hard enough as is. But when it serves up events like the Haitian earthquake and the Gulf oil spill, the pain it causes ripples throughout the human race.

It makes us realize a simple fact -- all life is interconnected. What happens to others (or to our planet) also happens to us. These events give us a great gift, allowing us to feel that connection and change how we relate to the world we live in, and the other beings who inhabit it with us.

Unfortunately, when that connection is opened, their pain becomes ours, and many are so overwhelmed with it that depression, anxiety, and a sense of helplessness can run rampant, making it hard to function with any sense of normalcy in our own lives.

These empathetic feelings not only allow us to suffer right along with those in the middle of the problem, we can get so overwhelmed by the intensity of the connection that we shut down. In effect, our pain can become so great that we seal it off, and we shift into a place where we almost become numb to the situation.

This doesn't mean we don't care; it only means that we're unable to deal with the intensity of the pain and emotions triggered by the situation. So we wall it off and try to go on about our affairs.

Nevertheless, that pain remains within us. Scars form deep in our psyches, making it a little harder for us to connect to our fellow beings, much less break down the normal barriers we use to keep ourselves apart.

It's not like we're free of these scars anyway. They are part of each of us. It's just that these events so shock us out of their hold that our scars begin to dissolve, in the process allowing us to remember that we are indeed connected together as part of the great community of life.

If you find yourself vicariously experiencing intense pain from these or other horrific events, don't ignore it, don't wall it off, and certainly don't pretend it doesn't affect you. It does, and such actions only build your inner walls a little higher and wider, locking you in and the rest of the world out.

Instead, try to acknowledge it and recognize it is there to invite you to open even wider and find the common threads you share with all of creation.

Use your pain to grow into more of what you truly are.