And a woman spoke, saying
Tell us of Pain.
And he said:
Your pain is the breaking of the
shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break,
that its heart may stand in the sun,
So must you know pain.
- Kahlil Gibran
“ All of western medicine is built on getting rid of pain, which is not the same as healing. Healing is the actual capacity to hold pain.”
- Gabor Mate
“When we are training in the art of peace, we are not given any promises that, because of our noble intentions, everything will be okay. In fact, there are no promises of fruition at all. Instead, we are encouraged to simply look deeply at joy and sorrow, at laughing and crying, at hoping and fearing, at all that lives and dies. We learn that what truly heals is gratitude and tenderness.”
- Pema Chodron
The Gift of Deepening
The deepest place on Earth is not a physical place, but the stillness we enter at the bottom of our pain, at the bottom of our fear and worry. The stillness we enter there opens us to a spacious state of being that some call joy. When we put down our dreams and maps of memory, precious as they are, we can feel the pulse of life.
- By Mark Nepo