In one of the STAR TREK movies, the fifth one I think, "THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY," there was a rogue Vulcan who could use his mental powers to relieve a person of all their psychic pain. He could take away your long-held grief or chronic fears or self-doubt with one simple Vulcan mind meld. Quite desirable, yes? Not to Captain Kirk. Nope. He refused the treatment, defiantly saying: "I need my pain!"
Kirk goes onto to explain to his weaker comrades that our pain is part of who we are.
Kirk: "Pain and guilt can't be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away!"
Well, Kirk does border on the masochistic there, and from my perspective, he still needs to work on his psychopathy, but his point is well-taken, nonetheless. Avoiding feeling pain (or having it "magically" - i.e. falsely - taken away by drugs or distractions) does not serve our life purpose, which is to become fully ourselves.
This morning, I found an excellent piece on the Huffington Post on this subject entitled:
"Pema Chodron: Reality Hurts? Relax. Use Your Discomfort." by Jesse Kornbluth
Here's a great quote from it:
"Life is hard. Don't wait until you 'get it together' to work at being your best self."
I have said this to many people many, many times. Our issues, our "problems," our pain and fears, do not have to stop us from having an evolving and expansive life and doing what we love to do. In fact, our problems are not our problem. Our judgments of our problems are our problem.
Including our judgments about our pain and fear.
Many of us react reflexively to pain, sadness or fear, as if their presence in our body or psyche automatically means something "bad" is happening. But no. Nature built in the capacity to feel those feelings, just as our ability to feel joy and pleasure are innate and instinctual. We have tear ducts, remember? There are times when we need to cry to release a build-up of sadness from a loss, for example. It's totally natural to do so, as natural as needing to urinate from a build-up of fluid in our kidneys.
Likewise, pain forces us to focus on a part of our body or a part of our emotional life that requires attention. Again, nothing bad is happening.
And as far as "getting it all together" before proceeding to seek out the love, abundance and creative expression you desire? Forget it! You'll never be perfect... because you're alive! Perfection is an illusory, static state, not real and not attainable, except to the degree that you can realize that you are already perfect in your imperfection!
Remember, I'm not talking about passive masochism here, folks, or oral laziness. Accepting your pain is not the same as creating and attracting pain from a character structure, and relaxing is not the same as collapsing. Take action regardless of your current struggles is what I'm saying. You never have to be paralyzed.
As I laid out in my piece from my classes on character structures, at the core of our distortions are the gifts of our Higher Self that we came in with, that we're meant to actualize. (See ALL OUR HIGHER SELVES by PL)
I'll give the final word on that to Jesse K:
"What you hate about yourself is just the flip side of your specialness. Yeah, your life is an interesting, smelly, rich, fertile mess - and that's what makes you human."