At the beginning of learning to smile with pain, we will find that there are often times where we just don’t feel like smiling! We feel much more like screaming, or  yelling, or collapsing, or fighting, or hating, or just simply blanking out the pain.

In the process of learning to live well with pain, we do the smiling practice anyway. Regardless of how we are feeling we just smile.  Even if we don’t feel like it .

When I climb with pain, or when I do my fitness work, and my body is in pain or real discomfort, or when I experience severe pain, I certainly don’t feel like smiling. If I took how I feel to be my guide I would not be living in freedom with pain.

There is a dimension of ourselves that is deeper than our feelings, this dimension we use as our guide. We follow that. An inner smile connects us to that part of ourself that is deeper than our pain. It connects us to God at the center of our Being, it connects us to  Essence, to our depth, to ourselves  as a presence of mystery.

Try simply smiling anyways. Regardless of how we feeling. By smile, I don’t mean in some pseudo smile way, but in simple recognition. Acknowledge the fact of your experience in the process of smiling. Accepting that fact that we don’t feel like smiling. Include that in the smile.  Or even scream, shout, let the steam off a little, then smile.

Inner smiling is like leaning forward into the pain. Leaning  with a smile into the actual experience as it is. In real pain, accepting  the pain by gently smiling into it, the pain  changes, it shifts, it takes a new form,  when a smile is added to it. Its like a door opens to another room. This room just has more space than the room we where  in before. This room is a room where a smile is here, and pain is here.

Smiling with pain is a powerful practice to learn to live in freedom with pain.

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