Hazel: Pain: that red hot knife slicing through my heart

Today nApril 25, 2010 at 3:33am


I sing of happiness and love. But what of pain - that sharp, intense reminder of the human situation on this planet.Is it what followed the Eden curse "Thou shalt bring forth thy progeny in pain?" If the very act of bringing forth progeny is soaked in pain and if the natural response of a progeny at the time of brith must of necessity be crying, then can we really escape pain as a part of our definition.? Said the great Romantic: "Our sincerest laughter with some pain is fraught/ Our sweetest songs are those that tell us of our saddest thought." And Said Bacon:"It is as natural to man to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, one is as painful as the other." We know pain in its sublimest form purifies. And some of the greatest souls of this universe have actually courted pain -- not as a masochistic indulgence but as a gateway to understanding. But will someone please define pain for me? I know I have always been uplifted by pain to suprme heights, something very close to what love makes happen. In fact, love makes it happen becasue it walks so perilously close to pain's territory, making it possible for us to experience the othe extreme -- eternal happiness. Love -- that soul connecting force between agony and ecstasy, and both live deep in the heart of God. I invite a landscape of pain but I still want to understand its colours and the brush that paints it. Saints know pain is a treasure, but not all pain; just extreme pain born of love alone ---which is what I am going through since yesterday. It feels like a red hot knife is slicing down my heart.I pray I may be spared from pain born of desire or ego or possessiveness. I seek pain born of love, but having sought it, I find it unbearable. Did Jesus say on the Cross: "O God, do not put me through examinations?" Was it his pain breaking through poetry and love? Surely, the pain of Jesus can not be bron of desire for happiness. Surely, his drinking of pain on our behalf was not the same as our pain. Surely, the pangs of Meera, of Mansoor, of Guru Arjun, of Sacatese were not the pangs I feel when a pleasure or ego-boost is denied to me. Surely, its an experience I need to understand yet. Pain cleanses, yes, but not all pain. But what is pain really?