"Perhaps everything that frightens us is something
helpless that wants our love." Ranier Maria Rilke
Despite running to PT massage even chiropractic and
acupuncture I feel whipped. MRIs confirm the objective
facts But there remains a deep gap between the pictures
and my experience of the pain.
Yet I was trained to treat other’s pain so expertly! And daily
go about listening for the specifics of their disease Years
and years of listening to pain then diagnosing and making
differential diagnoses What it might be what it could be
ruling out this or that... then To decide where and when my
intervention might alleviate their suffering. But for my own
pain, despite the knowing! Powerless!
So what is this disease teaching me? You may ask. Slowly
it dawns on me that despite the knowledge of the pain It
still will not go... the pain continues... As if had I gone to a
psychoanalyst and heard the root cause for my emotional
disorder That in itself, the very understanding of the
process and etiology of the disorder Will NOT make the
neurosis go away! One needs years of analysis!
So what will make this go away! Maybe, just maybe The
incarnation of the knowledge IN THE BODY A kind of body
awareness, not mind awareness The way the pain and
illness was originally incarnated into the soma Into the
symptoms, into the very corpus I call my body So too the
healing must come from the body and be released from
the body Letting go of the pain in the body.
I cannot do this alone. I can only accomplish this by
surrender. The little 10 year old, arrested in his or her
development must be taken by the psycho- analyst in the
above example, By the hand, loved and caressed despite
the behavior and neurosis... What we call “transference”...
and allowed to mature over time, ever so slowly In the
safety of the therapeutic relationship.
I think here too my pain must be allowed to be felt fully, to
ripen and mature And be surrendered to (see my essay on
mesiras nefesh and Rabbi Akiva)
This is the Higher Power we call divinity This is what
prayer is about Surrender and turning this pain over to
Him. King David’s Psalms are full of pain!!!! (Psalm 23
attests to his utter surrender despite the pain) And of
course, lest we forget
The psalms are meant to be sung! The rabbis wonder as
to why some of them are called psalms at all!! rather call
them dirges! Some of them! Yet the paradoxical answer is
that it is precisely in the pain That David sings to God Of
his pain and of his pursuit by his enemies and his hunger
and thirst Of all this he sings!!!
So here is my answer too To sing of my pain, paradoxically
To surrender to it Not fight it Not medicate it But listen to
the crying child inside who wishes to be heard Listen to his
message Above all, listen For being ignored is worse than
death for this little 10 year old.
And God said to me, Go forth: For I am king of time. But to
you I am only the shadowy one who knows with you your
loneliness and sees through your eyes. He sees through
my eyes in all the ages.
-R. M. Rilke, Book of Hours
