Becoming Intimate with Our Pain: an Invitation to Greater Wholeness

By Nira Lall

Guest Writer for Wake Up World

Illuminating our life’s purpose and living the reality of who we really are is a beautiful, freeing concept. Many of us devour personal development books, articles and podcasts to help us stay grounded in the knowing that we are powerful creators. In reality, getting and staying on this path can be overwhelming, dark, and at times miserable. It’s important to acknowledge and embrace the darker aspects of our experience, including our pain, as a vehicle for learning and deeper understanding.

This “pain” can show up as sorrow, despair, feeling stuck, need for control, anger, perfectionism, the voice of our inner critic, physical ailments, our wounded child self, and so one. There are countless faces of pain in our lives and it’s important to get intimate with all of them.As a culture and within the pop psychology movement we often deem our pain as bad, which is just another act of chipping away at our personal self-worth. Making any part of oneself “bad” can be felt as an act of deep betrayal by the psyche.

This article is not a call for us to live in our pain for a prolonged period of time…