Pain as a teacher

Last night, I had a bout of heartburn, and even after taking medicine, I was in pain for over an hour. I finally went to bed, propped up by many pillows, intending to go to sleep as I knew eventually I would despite the pain, and later wake up without it.

I recollected how I had a flare-up of heartburn episodes last year not long after I moved out of my old house. At that time I had felt moved to focus on my solar plexus chakra and what it symbolized: personal power and individuality. I thought perhaps that I need to pay attention to that again with this heartburn. After all, heartburn pain is literally right at the solar plexus, a tight ball of burning pain in the center of self. And last night I thought, then instinctively said out loud, “Pain, you need to get out of my body and into my mind so that I can know what I need to deal with.” The physical pain in my lower esophagus immediately went away. I was very grateful but did not have an immediate epiphany or thought of anything at that time. It was this afternoon, talking with a friend, that I realized that the pain had done exactly what I asked: gone into my head to show me where I need to work.

Today is the start of my three-day weekend. I love that I get three work holidays within the space of a month: the Christmas, New Year’s, and Martin Luther King Jr. holidays, and this year it translated into three 3-day weekends. However, I have been a bit nervous that I would ‘waste’ my time off like so often I feel I do. I need to rest, so I rest, and then I feel guilty about it later. I have a long list of things to do that compete for my attention, and feeling overwhelmed, I procrastinate and feel guilty about that too. I’ll get some of it done, and say to myself “but I didn’t get that done.” It’s a damned “damned if I do, damned if I don’t” mentality. So that is how my weekend started: first with a girl’s night—which was great but perhaps in the back of my mind I was feeling guilty about not getting something on my list done, an episode of heartburn, and this morning the overwhelmed-ness and not knowing where to throw my energy first.

And, I realized, these feelings of guilt have been with me a very long time. They stem from low self-worth issues which I have long worked on. Somewhere along the line I made an agreement that my worth is tied up with what I do or don’t do and that has been reinforced in my life. And I have reinforced it with my inner conversations. It is time to change my thinking. I have dreams, yes, and I need to work towards them, yes, but whether or not I accomplish any part of them does not make me any less wonderful. “Give yourself a break,” is something I have repeatedly heard over the past few years from my friends, my therapist, and my own inner guidance. And why have I been hearing that, over and over for a few years? Evidently I still don’t believe that I deserve a break. I am still too hard on myself. I am still seeking that balance between doing and being; that place of enjoying each moment, every moment. Without the guilt, thank you very much.

So thank you, pain, for revealing where I am out of sync with Truth.