The Pain that Heals

Misfortune strikes unexpectedly. When it does it draws us up with a start. The customary blind and heedless way of the barely conscious person is summarily interrupted, and a new focus of awareness is thrust, brutally and unceremoniously, before him. At one moment life appears to be agreeably limited to the pleasantries of surface concerns, while at the next a battle for survival has to be faced. The enemy may present itself as an illness, disappointment in relation to long cherished hopes, agonising news, or the maniacal fury of an assailant. If life's pain serves no better purpose, it at least makes us realise how little control we have over our own destiny and how greatly we are at the mercy of vast, untamed external forces - to say nothing of our own divided consciousness.

The human condition is not so much one of self-absorption as one of habitual preoccupation with a purposeless façade of ill-formed thoughts, charged with a variable emotional content, coursing ceaselessly through the mind. Most people would identify themselves simply with the individual whose life history they can record on an application form for new employment or for a passport. Many people's self-knowledge is limited to their physical body, which is their focus of identity. Their centre of consciousness fluctuates moment by moment, depending on the satisfaction of their bodies. This in turn depends on outer circumstances and the mood the person finds himself in at a particular moment.

The spiritual teachers of the world's great religious traditions frequently describe natural man as being in a state of "sleep". This is closely related to the concept of ignorance that is especially emphasised in the Hindu-Buddhist way. The human being often functions simply as an intelligent animal - sometimes not even a very intelligent one - until an unpleasant event disturbs the shallow equilibrium of his waking consciousness. It is one of the fundamental contributions of pain to make people wake up to a deeper quality of existence and to seek evidence for meaning in their lives beyond the immediate sensations that arrest their attention. But pain is not only a great awakener. It is also a leveller of human beings by its effect in dispelling the childish illusions to which we cling in order to confirm our own importance.

The pain of the world has, however, deeper implications for us about the nature of reality. We cannot escape the duality of good and evil in the face of suffering. In the creation myth described in the third chapter of the Book of Genesis, the fruits of human disobedience to the laws of life are suffering and death. These follow inevitably when man assumes a god-like role as supreme arbiter of the knowledge of good and evil although he lacks the transcendent omniscience of the One who alone is truly real. To the woman Eve God said: "I will increase your labour and your groaning, and in labour you shall bear children." To the man Adam He said: "Accursed be the ground on your account. With labour you shall win food from it all the days of your life. It will grow thorns and thistles for you, none but wild plants for you to eat. You shall gain your bread by the sweat of your brow until you return to the ground, for from it you were taken. Dust you are, to dust you shall return."

This is an accurate account of natural man's life story. He traverses a mosaic pavement of light and darkness, of joy and woe as Blake puts it, but his end is predictable and irrevocable and his passage is, as Psalm 103 reminds us, as transient and inconsequential as that of the grass or the flowers of the field. We plan and wait; we strive and build; we collect possessions and seek to dominate our invironment, only to perish into oblivion. Those who follow us care little even for our memory, and it is in the nature of life that fools tend to succeed wise men so that the noble edifices of the past are brought low. All is consumed in futility. And this, let it be noted, is the typical history of a person whose life has not been especially tragic. It follows then, as the Book of Ecclesiastes shows so clearly, that the natural human condition is "vanity". Human life, though it may have periods of surface glitter, is essentially dark. Until human consciousness has penetrated the veil of sensual satisfaction, which is the peak of materialistic aspiration, life itself is suffering to the one who sees clearly. Perhaps the Buddha has stated this fact most starkly, but it is not foreign to many of the world's spiritual teachers. This fact alone emphasises the necessity, indeed the inevitability, of the spiritual quest for people aspiring to an understanding of the meaning of life. Yet the spiritual quest intensifies our response to suffering until we are racked with the pain of all creation that was summed up in the life of the One who was crucified on the cross of universal ignorance and pain. Terrifying as this may appear, it nevertheless illuminates the human path with nobility of purpose and clear vision. It gives us the promise of a light that lies beyond the gathering darkness.

The first experience of suffering that most of us have to endure is the pain that racks the body. None can escape its advent, for even the most insensitive person cannot ignore the calls and demands of the body. It is commonly said that physical pain is beneficial to us in that it serves to draw our attention to the source of disease within us. The message that something is amiss in a part of the body is transmitted to the brain which interprets the information in the form of pain, breathlessness, nausea, cough or some other unpleasant sensation. If this were the whole truth about pain, we would be justified in regarding it as essentially an ally with which we should learn to live quietly. However, the facts of disease are less simple than this. It is, for instance, the less serious complaints that are often particularly painful - a good example is the excruciating pain produced by a decaying tooth that has become inflamed and developed an abscess. Removing the tooth at once relieves the pain and cures the condition, which is, in any case, a testimony to the person's neglect of his dental hygiene. The condition would not have arisen had he paid more attention to the demands of his body. But the more serious diseases are usually painless until they are far advanced, at which time they may be beyond effective treatment. A particularly compelling example of this is cancer, which is notoriously silent during its formative period, but may cause severe unremitting pain later in its course when it has spread throughout the body. If only the early disease were equally painful when it was still localised, the attention of the patient would probably have prompted its investigation and treatment at a time when cure was feasible.

Furthermore, the pain of incurable disease may be so intense and unremitting as to deaden all normal human responses. Severe, continuous pain ceases to serve any useful function, since the disease is by this time so well established that no one can be oblivious of its existence. The patient becomes increasingly, necessarily dependent on pain-killing drugs which, except under the most expert use, tend to dull his sensitivity and awareness. This can be particularly unfortunate when death is approaching in that the patient is denied the important healing experience of the soul's transition into the life beyond death, its passage from the unreal to the real.

Severe pain of this type, if it is prolonged, is not to be commended as a way of spiritual growth. It cannot but concentrate the victim's full attention on his ailing body to the exclusion of all other considerations. This is indeed the immediate effect of any symptom of bodily disease, be it pain, breathlessness, or the disturbance of a function vital to full communication with the outside world, such as sight or hearing. Pain certainly enlightens the rather smug type of spiritual aspirant - whom we all contain within us - as to the superficiality of his dedication to God and his fellow men. As Satan said to God concerning Job, whom he was testing: "Skin for skin! There is nothing the man will grudge to save himself. But stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh and see if he will not curse you to your face." While few of us would go to the lengths of actually cursing God, we would be sorely tempted to the corresponding negative action of turning our faces to the wall and dying without a struggle. Death is easier than life, and often more reassuring if you are one who rejects the possibility of survival of the personality after death, and believes in its total extinction when the brain perishes. In Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, the hero says: "Call no man fortunate who is not dead, for the dead alone are free from pain." To me even this statement shows a degree of unwarranted optimism, for I am persuaded that the dead can know the agony of total rejection that I find more terrible than anything we can envisage on this side of the grave. It is clear that we will never transcend the agony of pain until we have set out to learn its deeper lesson, the lesson of healing.

No matter how terrible the intensity of physical pain, it can at least be communicated to others. There are few who can stand idly by when an animal in pain whines and groans. The agony of the human counterpart pierces all those who have feelings of compassion. The Parable of the Good Samaritan is possibly the only teaching of Jesus that has been fully understood by His disciples, since its message is clear and the experiences described in it are of universal application. The heartlessness of the priest and Levite who passed by on the other side was, in all probability, a reflection not of malice but of unawareness. They were going about God's business, as they saw it, so officiously that they were blind to Him in the person of the victim of a brutal assault. They were asleep, as were also to be fair, Jesus' three closest disciples, at the hour of His most intense agony. But how many of us have the inner awareness to divine the agony that ravages the heart of someone whom we actually claim as our friend?

Mental agony, with its appalling emotional overtones, is far more terrible than physical pain because it cannot be communicated to anyone - except the rare person who has himself traversed the darkness and emerged as a changed individual into the new light of understanding. Such a person is rare, because the worldly-wise avoid personal involvement with truth, preferring to listen to the smooth assurances of the spiritually blind leaders of society and the glib quoters of texts. These hide behind the barricades of their particular authority so as to be protected from a solitary encounter with the storms of life. Few people can bear more than a little reality - as T. S. Eliot remarks. But there is a time when we have to confront the full reality of our life, indeed of all life. This is when something we held dear is being removed from us. It may be a treasured possession, an ambition on which all our energies and hopes were centred, a deep personal relationship that is about to be severed by betrayal or death, or a metaphysical speculation that masqueraded as a living faith. Suddenly we realise that our lives have been devoted to an idol which we have mistaken for a reality. All that is left is an inner emptiness that seems destined to remain unfilled forever. We are identified with the void within us. This is the moment of truth, the truth of our fundamental impotence. It can lead either to death or else to such a regeneration of the personality that a new life blossoms from the ashes of a past materialistic illusion on which we built the house that collapsed. But who can deliver us from the body doomed to death? St Paul sees that it is God alone, acting through Jesus Christ, who can do this. But how much do most of us know in our lives of God and Christ, even if we are sincere believers! Even our faith has to die every day if we are to tap its living springs, lest we confuse the faith with its source.

A particularly terrible part of mental pain is connected with its moral component. Perpetual awareness of guilt brings us to confront the judgement that is a vital part of the experiences of acceptance in a larger community. While some guilt is clearly morbid and due to manifestly psychological disturbances or baneful influences that derive from the person's childhood period, there is also a deeper stratum of guilt that is based on the overwhelming awareness of sin that is at the root of all separative existence. Sin reveals itself in the tendency of a person to fail to live up to the best he knows to be within himself, to fall continually short of the mark in personal relationships. It results from an ignorance about the truth of one's own being and of God, Who is the end of all our strivings. Jesus' commandment that we should be perfect in love and goodness as our heavenly Father's goodness is boundless, is an implicit indication that the knowledge of God is deeply placed in the soul, which can be defined in practical terms as the true self that shows itself especially during contemplation and at times when a moral decision has to be made. It is the inner organ of the soul, which is called the spirit, that has a knowledge of the divine; it informs us of our inadequacy and causes inner disquiet. Until we have acknowledged our failings, the worst wells up inside us in paroxysms of unbearable suffering that will continue until time, as we know it, ends. The greater the person's sensitivity, the more acute is his suffering. It is indeed a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Another factor that leads to mental pain is unrelieved fear. Fear is a terrible cause of human suffering, especially the fear of rejection, for it provides a glimpse of the possible self-annihilation that all sensitive people must experience as part of life's test. I refer to the realisation of complete destruction that, at least rationally, may accompany death. The fear of rejection shows itself in earliest childhood in our response to punishment, especially that administered with apparently impersonal anger by an unloving figure in authority over us. It hovers over even the best of us in the ever-present fear of the loss of a loved one. Nor does life's race always go to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; "bread does not belong to the wise, nor wealth to the intelligent, nor success to the skilful. Time and chance govern all" (Ecclesiastes 9:11). Fear breeds jealousy when we compare our lot with that of those apparently more fortunate than we are. Jealousy is the cancer of the soul; it eats away all compassion and concern for things other than oneself, until it dominates the whole field of consciousness so that its victim is obsessed by one thought only. Indeed, the most destructive effect of pain lies in its tendency to evoke intense resentment towards other people, society at large, and especially God.

It should be said, however, that fear like physical pain, serves a beneficial function inasmuch as it promotes awareness and caution in the face of the bitter experience of past errors. The fear of God is indeed the beginning of wisdom; the love of God is the end of wisdom, and the whole purpose of life is to know that transformation of fear to love which is the gauge of the spiritually realised person. But the fear that saps the root of human consciousness is a dark negative force. It gnaws away at the joy of each present moment, sullying our personal relationships and destroying the fundamental unity that should be our experience in each instant of self-giving bliss when we stand outside the narrow confines of the person. It would seem that man's high calling to be a son of God brings him to an intimate knowledge of the realms of destruction and death, where he learns life's great truth in the depths of despair.

The human condition, seen in the light of reason, is a lonely one. Those to whom we attach ourselves emotionally soon pass from our sight as time and death fulfil their course, and our feeling of security proves to be an illusion swept away by the bitter events of life. As the Buddha saw so clearly, all that awaits us is ageing, disease and death. Suffering is the end of all life lived on a purely personal level, directed by the ego for its own satisfaction.

So long as man is limited to himself, he will be imprisoned in pain, the pain of the mounting loss of all that is dear to him which culminates in the agony of the awareness of imminent disintegration that prefigures annihilation.

Give me the awareness, O Lord, to see beyond the surface of the people I meet in daily life and the compassion to share their deeper anxieties and frustrations.