Peaceful and Pain

A question was asked recently: “Hi..why does feeling peaceful feel unnatural and pain spiritual”

Here’s a portion of the reply:

About “feeling peaceful.”

I suppose one reason that feeling peaceful feels unnatural is because it doesn’t happen very much.
I remember feeling peaceful a few times in my life. But not many and certainly not recently.

One of the reasons for this is that for some bizarre reason I have accepted the definition of “feeling peaceful” to include being peaceful in all centers and aspects of my self.

I have definitely experienced peace in certain centers. In fact at the moment I am feeling quite peaceful at my core. But, my body is is going ape shit (pardon my use of technical terms) as evidenced by a persisting urge to crawl out of my skin.

Which means that at the moment I am experiencing both peace and extreme agitation. They just happen to be in different centers.

So, when it comes to peace I suspect one would do well to acknowledge that multifold nature of our experience and be a little more specific about what type of peaceful feeling we might be referring to.

About “pain being spiritual.”

This I cannot speak to. Maybe this comes from a particular type of religious education. Not sure. For myself, I have no association of pain with spiritual.

Yes, it is true the spiritual experiences often have a variety of side-effects that one could label as painful. But, really these could be labeled as simply “unusual” or “novel”. And they don’t have to be interrupted as pain.

Maybe this notion comes from the fact that for me a spiritual experience is the polar opposite of “comfortably numb.” Yes, it’s possible for your heart to feel like it is breaking or you might need to explode into a million fragments or you might have sudden sensations akin to an overstuffed sausage. These things happen.

For me these things are not center stage. When I play guitar there are sensations on my finger tips from pressing the wire strings on the guitar. That happens. But, it is not central to my experience of guitar playing. Shit happens.

“Having a spiritual experience” is never my goal. My goal is to do my work — my spiritual work. My striving to do my work takes along various highways and byways — a path that traverses many different experiences. Some of the experiences along this path could be labeled as spiritual. They are never the goal. They happen while I am journeying. It can be fun, cool, interesting, reassuring, disturbing, or many different things. I don’t ignore these experiences. They are simply not the goal. They are something that happens while endeavoring to endeavor. :)

In conclusion.

I would recommend that you drop the notion that pain is spiritual. Even if there is some small truth to this, I believe it sets you on the wrong path. The world does not need more flagellants.
There is often pain during childbirth. Pain is not the point. The birthing is the point. And really, with proper preparation and support this pain can be minimized or transformed.

When it comes to the notion of peaceful, consider the following: In every moment there is a piece of peace. Yes a portion of the experience is peaceful. Maybe this portion is small, or large, evident, or difficult to find. Just take as an operating hypothesis the notion that somewhere in the mix is a bit of peace.

Hope this is of some benefit.