Inspired by “This Pain Has a Purpose” – Watch the video here
There’s a reason I found this video today. I don’t believe in coincidence—not anymore. Not when something in me, something deeper than the mind, seemed to guide me to this message about suffering, pain, and awakening. And if you're reading this, perhaps that same something nudged you here as well.
Because maybe, like me, you’ve found yourself not just bruised by life, but broken open. Maybe everything collapsed—your plans, your identity, your illusions. Maybe you’re in a season of loss, despair, illness, or isolation. And in the midst of all that, you might be asking: “Why is this happening to me?” or “What did I do to deserve this?” or “Where is God in all of this?”
I've asked all those questions, and I’ve sat with silence in return. But now I see that silence was not absence. It was presence in disguise.
The video that sparked this
reflection—a remarkable, compassionate nondual teaching—reminds me of
something Sri Ramana Maharshi once said:
“Your own Self-realization is
the greatest service you can render the world.”
And what begins that realization? Often, it’s pain. Not comfort. Not philosophical brilliance. But the gut-wrenching collapse of all that is false.
I’ve come to believe that pain is not a punishment. As the video says so clearly: “Pain is a catalyst. A messenger.” When we are too deeply identified with the ego—our roles, stories, beliefs, and fears—pain comes not to destroy us, but to liberate us from those identifications. It’s not cruel. It’s precise. It dismantles everything we are not, to reveal who we truly are.
Yogananda teaches, “You do not have to struggle to reach God, but you do have to struggle to tear away the self-created veil that hides Him from you.” And isn’t that exactly what pain does? It tears the veil. And yes, it hurts.
It reminds me of when Lalleshwari wrote:
“Whatever I say, I say from experience. My every vein has opened its mouth, like a beggar chanting prayers.”
In my own journey, pain has opened those veins. Every cry, every sleepless night, every hopeless breath has become a chant—a desperate plea to return to something real. And somewhere within the fire, I’ve begun to taste stillness. Not as an idea. But as what remains when the false “me” begins to dissolve.
Nisargadatta Maharaj said:
“There is no need to sort out
good and bad, but to see the false as false, that alone is enough.”
And pain, I’ve found, is often the most mercilessly efficient tool for that seeing.
I used to pray for comfort. Now, I pray for truth. And I accept that sometimes truth arrives as devastation.
“But I don’t understand why I had to go through this,” the mind insists. The video offers a poetic answer: “The seed doesn’t understand why it’s being buried in darkness. It just breaks open.”
That breaking is the beginning of real growth. Sri Yukteswar taught that “truth is exact correspondence with reality.” And if reality right now is pain, then meeting it fully—without resistance, without story—is the doorway to liberation.
The peace I’ve found in these moments
isn’t from escaping the world, or fixing what fell apart. It’s from
recognizing, as Adi Shankara taught, that:
“Brahman is the only truth, the
world is illusion, and there is ultimately no difference between Brahman
and Atman.”
In the fire of suffering, the illusion burns, and what’s left is not nothing—it’s everything.
So I’m learning not to pray for the pain to end, but to let it do its sacred work. To let it strip away all that no longer serves the evolution of my soul. To let it prepare me for something more authentic, more silent, more aligned.
As the video says: “You are not the one who's suffering. You are the
awareness in which suffering appears.”
And when I really sit with that, something shifts. I remember: I am not my
history. I am not my wounds. I am the one who sees.
Rumi, the great mystic poet who speaks
directly to my heart, once wrote:
“Don’t turn away. Keep your gaze
on the bandaged place. That’s where the light enters you.”
I used to turn away. Now, I look. And I let that light in.
If you’ve read this far, perhaps something in you is breaking open too. I want to say this clearly, not as a cliché but as a lived truth: You are not alone. You are not forgotten. And this pain—it has a purpose. Maybe not one the mind can grasp. But one your soul already understands.
Let it move through you. Let it empty you. Let it reveal who you've always been.
And if this post speaks to you, watch
the full video that inspired it:
👉 “This Pain Has a
Purpose – A Deep Spiritual Awakening Teaching”
Let this be more than words. Let it be a turning point.
Your awakening is not an accident. It is the unfolding of something sacred, something eternal.
Stay with it.
Stay here.
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