Accepting the Pain of This Existence

In 2001 my brother-in-law died after a sudden, brief illness. He was only in his late forties. In 2003 my mother died suddenly. In the winter of 2005 my life-partner and I had to put down a beloved dog and my father and sister were diagnosed with cancer. My sister had surgery and recovered; in the spring my father passed away. That autumn my life-partner’s mother died. Last year my life-partner’s fibromyalgia became disabling and she has gone on disability. A few weeks ago my parents’ house finally sold after being on the market for a year and a half and the loss of this tangible reminder of them has hit me and some of my siblings like a ton of bricks. It is as though they just died. Yet finally this last loss seems to free me to finish my active grieving and move on.

There was a time when a series of years like these would have left me devastated, anxious, depressed and self-pitying. I probably would have viewed the world as a dark, frightening place. I may have felt like a victim of God or “fate”. Instead I have had passing bouts of sadness and depression. I have also experienced deep peace and joy, not from anything in the world, but from my connection to God. My spiritual awareness does not mean I don’t experience loss and pain, but rather that I accept that this is the experience of this existence. Pain is what separation from God means. You cannot be in the world and escape loss and pain. But you don’t have to suffer.

These last six years are not the darkest of my life. The darkest days were in my early years as a student of A Course in Miracles when I fought against painful experiences by fleeing them or denying them. I wanted to use my spirituality to avoid all pain. I wanted my experience to be only pleasure. In essence I was trying to make my experience of this world into God. Only in God is there no loss; only in God is there real pleasure. I tried but couldn’t connect to God in those days because God must be experienced where I am – not where I am pretending to be.

When I finally accepted that this existence is painful and allowed myself to experience it I was able to connect to God. I learned to bring God with me into my painful experiences rather than pretending I am not in pain. This is what mitigates the pain of the world for me: The pain will pass; so will the pleasure; so will this existence. But God is constant.

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