Recently during a bad period of serious acute pain I made the decision to stop taking all the narcotics ( morphine etc ) and just do the marijuanafor pain relief. I did that, i started to just accept the fact that pain was probably not going to go anywhere fast and the sooner I could make friends with it the sooner I would be more at ease with this type of pain in my life. The dope was basically putting a barrier of cotton woolaround the stabs of pain, it didn’t make it go away but it did certainly make it easier to be with. Yet at the same time I was having a real struggle with being stoned 24/7. Basically my routine was to take the dope when I woke up in the morning and again as soon as the pain was present. As the pain was mostly 24/7 I was basically smoking quite a lot of dope to just try and alleviate the pain.

Yet through all this I was not enjoying the cloudy, foggy, stoned state that was mostly what my waking state would be. I decided I would really try and go to the next level of weaning myself off the dope and welcoming the pain just as it is. Regardless of how bad it was. This was the second phase of the process. It took some trust and gradual practice as I was basically afraid that I wouldn’t be able to sleep and would just get exhausted all the time. My intuitive sense was that things would work out OK. I just needed to trust the process. The process of welcoming pain. I did gradually just stopping the dope altogether. Each day I found I could gradually be with the pain with more openness, and less resistance. I still would find myself getting completely exhausted, just going from my bed to the toilet and back again was a big deal. Lying on the bed was also painful and difficult. Over the next few days and weeks things just gradually seemed to get easier and easier. The pain lessened and seemed to find its own way through me.

Yet what I am really very curious about and interested in, is that as soon as I started to allow the pain to be here, another intelligence seemed to get activated. This intelligence seems to have a life of its own, and when I respond to it and follow it, it does its thing. In this case its thing was to guide me back to the pain practice that I have shared with many people over many years. That when we welcome in our pain, when we allow it to be, when we make friends with and accept that if may just be here to stay, it too can be a path, a portal and a transition point to a whole new way of living with pain.

Then my life becomes a journey of how to live in Freedom with Pain rather than how to get free from pain. This simple shift in orientation and the practice to breath it in when it is here, is completely trans formative, and can and actually does have a direct impact and effect on not only my own pain, but also can bring me into contact with a deeper wise intelligence that can help me make sense of the pain, even when it doesn’t make sense!