Why It’s So Important to Be at Ease With Discomfort

Being at ease with discomfort fulfills the need for safety, security and connection.

Embracing pain and growing your capacity to be at ease with discomfort opens possibilities you wouldn’t have expected because you’re no longer braced against the discomfort or trying to avoid it.

Welcoming the discomfort helps you surrender to the Divine, as it opens your heart to life.

A client recently shared that she feels calm and grounded when she welcomes her uneasy feelings. Despite the turbulence, raw emotions, and health challenges in her life, she sees recognizes that her presence in the world has value.

With her permission, I am sharing a message she sent me that expresses the rich beauty that comes with the willingness to feel and sense more and ultimately be present with discomfort in all areas of one’s life.

I remember the first time I spoke to you on the phone, four years ago. I was walking up and down my alley, declaring what I wanted and needed, asking you and the Universe to help me walk through a door I didn’t know existed. I was so broken and void of hope, believing I had lost my greatest love. I could never have imagined being who I am today, committed to a journey that has woken some of my deepest pain and trauma, healing and living through life’s challenges. I would never have believed that I could lift myself and realize that my love for myself is the greatest love I’d ever know. – P.S.

Heaven on Earth

We can lift ourselves and one another by embracing the pain, or in other words, by loving all that is, which opens us to spirit – to the sacred.

Most people don’t usually think of embracing pain as divine. Instead, the common interpretation is that divinity is heavenly, sweet and sublime.

There are spiritual tantric practices dedicated to such pleasure. However, a true master of tantra knows that pleasure can awaken trauma. And, when trauma is activated, the love-making shifts to healing, which is about being present with the pain.

We must be willing to receive the pain – the suffering, fear, hurt, sorrow and anger for healing to transpire.

How can there be any healing or well-being when emotions are shunned, suppressed, ignored, or overrun? It’s impossible! True healing and happiness are supported by opening one’s heart. The picture that comes to mind is a blossoming lotus rising from the mud unblemished, representing purity, renewal and inner strength.

How can the hurt, shame, fear, and upset be purified if perceived as unworthy or wrong?

We must be willing to feel the discomfort for it to be soothed and transformed. When we hold the pain in loving arms, the pain begins to ease, repair, heal, and finally surrender.

The many shades of discomfort

Interestingly, discomfort is not only instigated by pain and past trauma. We are not only discomforted by heartbreak, loss and grief, or the suffering in the world; we are also incredibly uncomfortable with grace, beauty, affection, attention, and even joy. Even our desires can be unsettling.

Someone’s generosity can leave us feeling indebted. Care and affection may ignite our distrust and bring up feelings of unworthiness. Beauty and grace can also be painful. For instance, we may witness the closeness between friends or spouses and feel left out. The sound of children laughing can prompt memories of loss. In the past, happiness may have come at a price; it may have been taken away, rendering us helpless and feeling abandoned. So, in the present, we will do anything to avoid feeling that pain to the point of denying our needs and tolerating unhealthy situations.

Therefore, cultivating an intimate relationship with the discomfort is necessary so that we develop the capacity to receive the fulfilment of our needs and desires. Otherwise, we remain stoic, distant and unyielding, ever struggling against reality and pushing away love.

How to welcome the many shades of discomfort

First, you must acknowledge your avoidance, the side-stepping and downplaying of your feelings or the feelings of others.

When your mind is active, strategizing, explaining, justifying, and comparing, stop and ask yourself, “what am I avoiding? “… “What deeper feelings or awareness am I working so hard to not feel or engage with?”

Maybe you learned early in life to minimize anger, hurt or even your desires, especially if your anger was made wrong, hurt dismissed, and desires ignored. Then, you would have established survival mechanisms to mitigate the painfully unmet needs by instinctively pretending that you were not angry, not hurt and that you didn’t need anything or anyone.

So many people I work with first come to me unaware of their needs and have developed copious methods of hiding their needs from themselves and others so as not to feel the hurt and not be disappointed. Therein lies an inherent problem. A guarded heart cannot receive love, and the closed-off body cannot be replenished and healed.

Channeled Message

Masiandia, “You can only receive love and be replenished and healed when you naturally and unequivocally expect it. And, you can only fully expect to be blessed, supported, cared for, and nourished when you have become the person who welcomes the gift of life – when you have become the person who receives you in the world.”

“If you are the person who rejects you at every turn, disapproves of your less than perfect traits and hides your feelings and needs, how can life reflect your utmost value? How can life nourish you?”

“The shape of your life directly reflects what you expect it to be. If you expect life to let you down, then that is what it will do.”

“Conversely, if you expect life to shower you with praise and success and yet refuse to evolve your capacity to take care of yourself and others, then life will reflect your lack of virtue. Inevitably, you will encounter setbacks, health issues and loss of real intimacy. That is divine order, or in other words, the echoing of the quantum energy field of the Universe.”

“Please understand that when life does not line up as you wish, it’s not because you’re undeserving or unlucky or that there is anything wrong with you or the universe. It’s because your unconscious beliefs and conditioned expectations play a more significant role than you realize.”

“For instance, if you are afraid of failing, being punished, ridiculed, or let down, you work doubly hard to compensate for those deep-seated fears; you go to great lengths to avoid failure, penance, scorn, and disappointment. However, instead of safeguarding yourself from the manifestation of what you fear, you walk right into it because that is where your energy is focused.”

“When you’re afraid of getting hurt, you brace against the hurt; therefore, your internal compass points towards pain, not joy.”

“Now, if your energy is fixated on denial, avoidance, and minimizing the fear, then you never become deeply acquainted with the limiting beliefs and conditioned expectations that keep you afraid. Think of these underlying expectations as belonging to your childhood and representing unmet needs and deep wounds. As a result, the inner child not only feels alone but is also unskilled and thus coping, not thriving in this beautiful sacred world.”

“Maybe you don’t believe the world is sacred and that life is precious.”

“If you don’t believe, what is there to live for?”

“If you don’t believe in magic, in harmony, in the blossoming of what is benevolent, how can you manifest the glory of your divinity?”

“The shape of your life directly reflects what you believe. Please understand that this doesn’t mean you can make yourself change your mind and only have positive thoughts. It’s impossible to make yourself measure up to an idealized version of who you think you should be or how you expect your life to unfold.”

“Life can only amaze you when you perceive it through an expanded lens – a lens in which you welcome everything with utmost curiosity, willingness and openness.”

“Our dear friends, what is there to reject? Can you not see how magnificent you truly are?”

“We see you. We see you.”

“Maybe, you can let us help lift you – help you realize that your self-love is the greatest love you will ever know, and it is the greatest love you will share with the world.”

“As we channelled in our book Mystical Intimacy, ‘To witness life without defences is to be more vulnerable than most of you allow yourselves to be, though it is what you long for. You naturally long to give and receive love freely, to be unfettered, opened and whole. You are here in this world to love and be loved completely, not restrict its flow. This longing for wholeness originates from your soul; it is a call from within to complete yourself, to be an open channel filled to overflowing with love,’ which begins my embracing you in all your aspects so that you can embrace others too.”

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Mystical Intimacy is available in print and e-book
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and also at Banyen Books in Vancouver

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Featured image by Merlin Lightpainting