The next time you experience any kind of pain — an irritation, a flash of anger, a twinge of resentment — you can do something that will turn it into a new and different experience. Inner-life master and author Vernon Howard explained an amazing method… he wrote that when the pain comes, we are not to think about the pain as we always do. Instead, we are to do something different, and that is to say, “I don’t understand the pain.” Each time you catch a pain, admit that you don’t understand it. You thought you did. You believed it was caused by another person or some event that thwarted you. As a result of those beliefs, you did many things to get rid of the pain, but it always came back. So now, admit that your beliefs may be all wrong, and simply say, “I don’t understand the pain.”

This amazing method works by changing our fundamental relationship with both the pain and the Truth that can set us free from it. It means that we see that we’ve fought one losing battle after another with the pain, none of which has done anything to resolve it. We know our failure was due to our complete misunderstanding about the pain. So, now we will do nothing about it. In essence, by turning our pain over to the Truth, we’re asking the Truth to show us the facts about our pain, which is the same as inviting Reality to rid us of it. And it will.

What a relief. Now we don’t have to pretend anymore that we’re wise or strong. Now we’ve turned the pain over to the right department and it can be handled by something other than our old, pain-based solutions. What an amazing revelation this is! It puts us in the right relationship with Truth. When we tried to handle everything on our own, everything we did perpetuated the pain. All we succeeded in doing was fueling its life with our own. Now we don’t want to do that anymore, but we know that our old mind doesn’t know any other way to respond to the challenges we meet each day. So, we stop making the familiar response and just go silent. We turn it all over to Truth. It alone can show us that we never had to do anything about the pain because it never had anything to do with who we really are.

So, for now, just remember this: admit that nothing you’ve ever done has brought you the peace you say you want. The pain always returns. Therefore, maybe you don’t really understand its cause as you thought you did. To find out the truth, just stop doing everything the way you have been, and instead simply say in full honesty, “I don’t understand this pain.” Then wait for the exciting revelations that Truth will show you. Don’t listen to the false voices that try to accuse you of taking the easy way out. It’s just the opposite. We take real responsibility for our pain when we stop trying to deal with it in the old way, and instead try to understand it in a new way… [to be concluded in tomorrow’s blog]