This is the second in a series exploring the topics covered in the book You Are Not Your Pain [Amazon affiliate link]. See You Are Not Your Pain: An Introduction to learn more.
When I was my sickest, I went to bed most nights wondering how I would get through the next day. When she was in the hospital 30 years ago and in severe pain, Vidyamala Burch did not think she would be able to make it through the night. Then she had a thought that got her through the night and started her journey with mindfulness. Vidyamala describes that moment in the book. In my first reading, it struck me as almost magical and immediately life-changing. But that’s rarely how these things work. I asked Vidyamala to describe what it was like for her.
Where did you go from your realisation in the hospital that you didn’t have to get through the night, only the moment? Was there an instant change in your life or was it more gradual?
When I talk now about the realisation that I had in the hospital thirty years ago as a young woman –when I was lying there, in terrible pain and on the edge of despair, I truly believed that I wouldn’t be able to make it through the night. Then I had an insight; a voice came to me that said: ‘You don’t have to get through to the morning, you just have to get through this moment’ and this was the very beginning of my journey with mindfulness.
When I speak about that night with the benefit of thirty years of hindsight, it can sound as though it was a neat, clear understanding at the time. But it wasn’t at all. All I knew was that my life had profoundly changed and I had a very strong intuition to follow that insight and to go on to explore the deeper meaning of it.
At that time I had no idea where the ‘voice’ had come from. Now I think it was my deeper wisdom, something we all have in us and that reveals itself in different ways. I always say that if I was a Christian I would have said it was God, but I don’t believe in God, so I understand it as perhaps some part of my consciousness that was wiser than the part of me that was suffering.
In a way I don’t think it matters where the voice came from but it was a very strong voice and when I woke that next morning, I intuitively knew that my life had completely changed. I didn’t know anything beyond that – I was still extremely confused and extremely vulnerable.
The insight that I talk about today has taken me years and years of evolving in my mindfulness practice and as a person, to make sense of it and to process. I am still to this day continuing to try TO work on it, develop it and make the best sense that I can of it.
It was God, and He knows you didn’t know it was Him. You will someday. I pray myself through mine. Each second at a time, and I also admit to Him that I give it up to Him, and quit trying to fight this horrible monster all by myself. When, I do this an undescribable peace takes over and softens my pain. Notice, I said it doesn’t go away, but each second it is just a little bit less. I was once in a hospital with a two day migraine, and I really thought the Dr. Thought I was going to have a stroke. This was probably the worst I have ever had, and with God and my husband, Igot through it. I might add my husband is my savior during my worse migraine episodes. I am so thankful for him.