Feeling bliss through pain

Resisting a situation makes it worse. When you embrace it, for what it is, the pain that comes with the situation, does not cripple you. It is there. You can feel it. But it does not affect you anymore.

This is as true for all situations as it is true of all emotions in Life.

There are times when you will have that gnawing feeling within you. You know that the way things are going is not right. You fear a grave situation, a crisis coming up. You don’t want it. But you are helpless. In such a state, the normal human tendency is to prevent the situation from happening, from coming up. Then, when you understand that you can’t stop it from happening, your next reaction is to wish it doesn’t have to happen. But wishing never helps in Life. Soon, the situation is upon you. And you are still feeling helpless. But now you are also feeling miserable. Now, examine the sequence of events. Did you start with feeling miserable? No. You started feeling anxious. That anxiety gave way to helplessness. Both anxiety and helplessness thrived even as you made an attempt to avoid the situation. So, there was a conscious effort on your part. When your efforts failed and the situation was upon you, that’s when you started wishing it hadn’t existed in the first place. So, clearly, the wishing led to the misery, the suffering – not the situation itself. Or simply, a headache does not cause you suffering, your wishing that you had no headache is what makes you miserable! Instead, try replacing your wishing with acceptance of the headache. Lo and behold! The headache will still be there, but you will not feel miserable having it!

Apply this thought process to any situation that you have faced in Life or to any suffering that you are currently experiencing. You will find it applicable in all contexts – with anyone, with anything that you are having to deal with. You will find that in each of them, with each situation, when you don’t resist, when you accept, the misery, the suffering, magically dissolves.

Remember: accepting a situation, and the attendant pain it brings with it, does not mean avoiding misery. You are not running away from the situation. By stopping to wish that it didn’t exist, by accepting it, you are letting your suffering becoming something meaningful. Something beautiful. This beauty has to be experienced and understood. Words cannot describe the feeling you will experience with accepting pain. That feeling is also called bliss! As Osho, the Master, has said: “Don’t escape from pain, don’t be afraid of it. As you go through pain and are no longer afraid of it, you no longer feel miserable and great happiness arises from it.”