One of my favorite passages on pain is what Kahlil Gibran writes in his classic, “The Prophet”:
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must …
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Nice reminder. Me thinks the line you want to cut might be understood as our “non-personal” unconscious mind. Initially, I want to tell KB to piss off with babble about self-chosen agony.
However, this “Self-choosing” of pain seems to relate to an unconscious process–at least partially distinct from conscious and a simplistic understanding of unconscious processes.
Rupert Sheldrake has done an exceptional job depicting and describing this zone of experience.
Just a thought as one immediately prepared to request a chat with KB on people choosing agony while you prepare to remove apparent drivel.
Maybe the line makes sense when followed by the others (you are the physician):
Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility
I understand some of what he is saying, but I wonder how much pain he actually had. As someone who has had more than my share of emotional pain and is a patient with a debilitating neurological pain disorder (rare) that never stops, I can say with complete confidence that it is without WONDER.
Gail – Is it possible to create a separation as the spiritual masters say ? To look at the body with its physical pain and the mind with its emotional pain and you are the witness to both, not owning those pains. Just a pure awareness looking at them.
I love all of his poems, and it’s true he himself, suffered a great deal in life, as I recall mostly bouts with depression.
However, when he speaks of Pain he is speaking of the Higher self the soul, which creates the need to suffer pain on this level.
For when we suffer and overcome by the suffering, even as Jesus did, the glory is what Edgar Cayce once called, “The Crown”. To receive the Crown requires the thorns to be felt first.
In all my suffering, I’ve never been able to put words to my pain. When I read the first line of the poem it felt like a burden had been lifted. Finally, someone got IT! What a tremendous insight into pain! What an awesome explanation as to why my pain is necessary. Pain is like being birthed with progressive levels until the day we receive our crown of glory!