“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding”

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.

     And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;

     And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.

     And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

     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:

     For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,

     And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears. 

-Kahlil Gibran From The Prophet

Analysis

This fascinating passage on pain has a lot to teach us. Let’s explore Khalil Gibran’s perspective and what we might learn from it, together with the insights of other great spiritual masters.

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.

This is one of the unfortunate truths of life: to grow, to expand, requires the breaking of the vessel we once lived in. This is equally true for a body as it is for a mind or a heart.

My partner is pregnant again, and I am becoming intimately familiar with the pains of this, one type of expansion. Every now and then she describes her experience. “I can feel my abdominal wall separating so that my uterus can expand,” she tells me. Judging by her tone, this is not a painless process.

Then there is the shifting of bones, the nausea that strikes like lightning, the stretching skin, and a myriad of other painful sensations associated with her very physical expansion.

All so that a new human can be born into this world.

Breaking the Clay Pot

In the very same way, in order to birth a new version of ourselves, we must go through the pain of expansion.

I once witnessed an Indian Sadhu in Varanasi break a series of clay pots, saying, “This is what you must endure on the path to true realization.”

The pots did not belong to him. But I did get the point.

The Sufis talk about Fanaa, or “annihilation,” as the greatest blessing on the mystical path. This is when the container of our personal ego is shattered and we are plunged into union with the divine. In the Christian mystical tradition, it’s known as the Dark Night of the Soul. Regardless of the language used to express it, it is universally acknowledged as an extraordinarily painful experience.

Nevertheless, it must be endured – even embraced – if we are to grow beyond ourselves and find freedom. The only way out is through.

Likewise, the smaller trials and tests of our lives can become passageways into versions of ourselves that are a little more compassionate, more surrendered, or wise. We always know when we encounter such a passage because it feels like walking through fire.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;

This is an astonishing instruction. The antidote to pain is to keep “wonder in your heart.” Not that doing so will eliminate pain altogether, but that it will “not seem less wondrous than your joy.”

As Christopher D. Wallis explains in Tantra Illuminated:

“When there is no story to turn pain into suffering, the pain of loss is a thing of sharp beauty. Fully welcomed by the clear and awake one as another form of her love. It passes through her without resistance and therefore does not get stuck and turn into despair or depression.

Christopher D. Wallis in Tantra Illuminated.

And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.

     And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

The Indian saint Sri Ramana Maharshi says something similar to Gibran.

Pain and pleasure alternate with each other.
One must suffer or enjoy them patiently without being carried away by them.
Always try to hold on to the Self. He who is indifferent to pain or pleasure can alone be happy.

Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talk 546

Both Gibran and Sri Ramana Maharshi point to the cyclical nature of pleasure and pain, and both urge us to experience them without becoming identified with them. Gibran asks us to “watch with serenity.” Maharshi urges us to “Hold onto the Self,” and be “Indifferent to pain or pleasure.”

How do we do this? Not by trying to be perfect at it. This kind of serenity is the result of practice. And practice begins now. It starts with accepting what is, in this moment.

The midwife Ina May Gaskin wrote in Spiritual Midwifery that she says the following to people giving birth: “Don’t think of it as PAIN… think of it as an interesting sensation that requires ALL of your attention.” 

While I’ve never given birth, I have used this practice many times when faced with seemingly intolerable physical pain. It works every time: I cease to identify with my resistance to the pain (which is what creates suffering), and I surrender to the experience itself. Paradoxically, in that place of surrender, joy sometimes arises spontaneously.

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:

     For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,

Here, we are again guided by Christpher D. Wallis’ extraordinary illumination.

“Most pain and all suffering is part of a feedback mechanism that the universe uses to warn you of a misalignment [between your view of reality and reality itself]… Mental suffering can be more acute and difficult to bear than physical pain because it points us to deep misalignments in our thought structures. As it turns out, most human suffering is mind-created suffering. That is, it arises from clinging to stories that are not in alignment with reality..

“Since all suffering, from a twinge of anger to agonizing guilt, is a feedback mechanism, all suffering is welcomed by the awake one as a gift and a blessing. Not in the artificial Pollyanna sense of ‘oh, it’s really okay, I’m fine. Let’s look on the bright side. Somehow it will turn out okay.’ But rather in the sense that no matter how much it hurts in the moment, it is part of a honing process that is perfectly calibrated to eventually center her in her unconditional freedom and love.

“It is a process that works insofar as we look into what the feedback is asking us to be aware of. Often, we do not. We just try to get past the suffering. In which case, it will arise again. And again. Until we look into the way we are being shown about the way we are holding reality. The moment you see clearly how you and no one else are responsible for your suffering, and how your view of things creates it, an irrevocable process has begun until it has brought to an end all mind created suffering.”

Christopher D. Wallis in Tantra Illuminated.

(If you wish to listen to an audio version of the chapter this quote came from for free, you can find it on Christopher D. Wallis’ blog.)

 And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears. 

The potter – God, as it were – has fashioned the clay cup he offers you “with His own sacred tears.” This beautiful passage has many layers, and I will speak to just one:

According to many Eastern traditions, God is not a separate being from ourselves. God incarnates as ourselves, and thus experiences everything in and as us. Thus, our suffering is God (or Gibran’s “potter”) suffering in us.

Let us end with this quote from Andrew Harvey in The Return of the Mother

“To be human is to be born into a dance in which every animate or inanimate, visible or invisible being is also dancing. Every step of this dance is printed in light; its energy is adoration, its rhythm is praise. Pain, desolation, and destruction in this full and unified sacred vision are not separate from the dance, but are instead essential energies of its transformative unfolding. Death itself cannot shatter the dance, because death is the lifespring of its fertility, the mother of all its changing splendor. If we could bring ourselves to open to this vision, we would undergo a revolution of the heart.”

Andrew Harvey, The Return of The Mother