As long as the West was Christian, the Gospels acted as intermediaries between heaven and earth. To every solitary cry of revolt, the image of the greatest suffering was offered in reply. Because Christ had suffered this, and voluntarily, no suffering was unjust any longer, every pain was necessary. If everything, without exception, from heaven to earth, is given over to suffering, then a strange happiness becomes possible.
Albert Camus, The Rebel
When our body is in a state of grace, in full bloom, our inner mind tends to live in a state of apartheid, of segregation; a silent surrender to what the outer mechanics order and coordinate with such mastery.
But the mind has its worst enemy of all lying in wait; they call it pain, but I call it the good demon of our existence.
Pain is the door
It is the knot in the handkerchief that reminds us we do not always win
It is the violent storm at sea that dares us to find the shore
It is the doorway to what we could not see before
It is the rule against all rules It is the logic gone mad by which pain
Is the greatest gift
When we live through a physical affliction, we learn to know it, at first as the worst of our enemies. In time we learn to listen to it, even while still failing to understand it. More time still and we begin to anticipate its behavior and pay attention to our own reactions to it. Even so, we still consider it an enemy.
Then there is a moment, an instant made of hours, days, or months, in which it happens to people that they surrender, and it does not matter how they do it. That is the instant in which pain is no longer anything more than a property of our body. In that exact moment we understand that we are ourselves, and that the best of teachers has been walking beside us all along. We disagreed with him for so long, and now we even understand why he was there.
The door is open now. We can enter.