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Our brain is built to move away from pain and discomfort. Both the physical kind, and the emotional kind. However, discomfort can be an important Messenger, and one that we need to learn to honor and listen to. This is brilliantly described by Rumi in his poem, The guesthouse.
This human being is a guest house, every morning a new arrival like a joy, a depression, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor that he welcome and entertain them all. Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house emptying it of its furniture, you still treat each guest honorably as it Maybe clearing you out for some new delight. Even the Dark thought, and / or shame, meet them at the door laughing and invite them in. be Grateful for whatever comes because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
This poem really gives us a great instructional framework with how to deal with discomfort and with all difficult feelings: greet them at the door! Welcome them in, and offer them a place to sit down and a cup of tea and see what the discomfort has to communicate with you. Let’s use an example that we can all relate to, consider a headache, what most people do when they experience a headache is they take brophen or something to that effect, the pain goes away for a little while. But if we invite a headache into our guest house of awareness that would perhaps get some valuable information. What does this headache have to communicate with us? Maybe we’re dehydrated. Maybe we’re overthinking something. Maybe we slept funny and our neck is out of alignment. And so on. And so forth.
All of this actually is valuable information that we would miss if we just took a bropfen and pushed away the headache.
So the mindset shift is this. Learning to shift from wanting to avoid discomfort to the perspective that discomfort and pain and uncomfortable feelings are actually allies and are actually messengers that if we learn to listen to them they have valuable information to share with us.
