I have an ear infection and it hurts.  The lip of my ear near my TM joint is swollen and I feel it every time I open my mouth.  It itches.  It has distorted my hearing out of that ear and I feel off-balance.  I think I am talking funny - sometimes louder and sometimes quieter.  It makes everything I eat and drink taste wierdly poisoned.  And it makes me feel grouchy. 

This is entirely my own fault as I know better than to be fooling around with Q-tips in my ear.  As I have been repeatedly told recently (you know who you are...) nothing smaller than my elbow belongs in my ear.  Yes, I realize what that means!!  But every once in a while I can't help it... and now I've gone and annoyed things in there.

As I reflect on this small hassle of life I am aware that I do not want to feel the pain in my ear.  I test it every now and again to see if it's getting better, and then when I find it's still aching I tense up and take off somewhere else.  Even though wherever I go my ear goes with me.

We don't want to feel our pain.  Not physical nor emotional.  There seems no point and it's painful dammit!  If we can't fix it we don't want to know about it.  We get mad at it for being there or at ourselves for feeling it.  We fear that if we really feel it we might get lost in the pain.  We might be overwhelmed.  It might get bad then get worse then never end.  So we avoid.  We shrink away and run away.  We obey the old command to just tune it out.  Come on!  Suck it up and pretend it isn't making your drinking water taste like caca.

But I know better (although I knew better about the Q-tips too and look how far that got me...)   And you know better too.  We cannot be whole if we split apart from ourselves.  If we are ignoring something we are not taking care of it.  And anyway, wherever you go your ear goes with you...

So what happens when we avoid our pain?  Well of course we spend less time feeling the worst of what is going on.  Good news right?  Right! But at a cost...  Do you know what you pay for the luxury of not tuning in to the ache in your ear or in your heart or in your soul?

1) Grouchiness: you are in conflict with the truth of what is going on.  It takes energy to not listen to yourself and to tell yourself something else - "la la la la, this isn't happening" - and that is tiring.  As well, when the truth occasionally breaks through into your awareness (as it inevitably will) it bugs you...  And then other things sem to be bugging you, like the cat barf on the carpet that usually you accept with equanimity...

2) Disconnection from self: you are out of touch with the pain (hooray!) but in order to do that you are also tuning out of other things too - like the fact that even with a sore ear the birds at the peanut feeder are singing their little hearts out and it sounds like magic, or that despite the barfing you really do love the way the sunlight shimmers on the little monster's fur coat...

3) Can't take proper care: our deepest self is talking to us with our pain, and if we will not listen we cannot be informed by the wisdom of our bodies and hearts and souls...  If I don't feel my pain I can't know that I need time or space or rest or a good cry or some eardrops.  If I don't listen to my ear I am likely to unconsciously dig in there with a backhoe again...

4) A smaller self: when I avoid myself I live as though I could not survive being in the truth of all of me.  So I stay small.  I prevent myself from finding out that I am larger than the pain.  I am larger than any one thing that I have lived through, larger than any single experience I have.  I am the one who walks beside me, and I am the one who cares.  I am the one who holds me even as I have my experience.  Having and holding, holding and having.  Larger and more spacious each time I circle around myself.  

And so I tune in to my aching itchy ear and my heartrate goes up and I want to avoid and I feel the urge to distract myself and I feel a bit irritable and I think this is silly and I feel antsy and I notice my throbbing hot sore ear and I exhale slowly.  And nothing bad happens.  And I do it again.  And nothing bad happens.  And I slow down and massage the sore place and it feels worse but really nothing bad happens.  And I notice my heartrate has gone down and my thumbs are not tense and there is a little smile on the corners of my mouth.  

I matter.

And so do you.  

 Photo Credit:  ELB Photos