Turning Towards Pain: Suffering, Presence, and the Rhythm of Life

The Natural Rhythm of Pain & Suffering

It all began with a simple invitation. A question posed to the Selfcraft circle I hold space for: What would you like to explore together? 

From that openness emerged a collective yearning to explore pain and suffering. What followed was not just a conversation, but a deep unraveling. A sacred witnessing. People began to share not just thoughts about pain, but their lived relationship with it.

And in that space, something beautiful happened. Pain became a thread of confusion, connection and clarity. A movement we were all a part of. Together, we didn’t try to solve it. We tried to stay with it. And that shifted something in us. 

The group explored suffering not as a personal failure, but as a universal rhythm, something that moves through all living things. What moved me most was the collective realization that suffering has a pulse, a cycle, a wave-like motion. Like trees shedding their leaves. Like the ache of longing in a bird’s song. Like the black river Mary Oliver speaks of:

Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.

“In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver 

 

It became clear to me that suffering, like all things in nature, has its own intelligence. It is meant to move not be blocked, denied, or turned into identity. Pain is a messenger. It carries a rhythm. And when we allow that rhythm to express itself without resistance it transforms.

Resistance is what creates suffering out of pain. It’s what prolongs it, personalizes it, makes a story of it. But when we meet pain with presence, it shifts. Maybe not into joy, but into curiosity. Into clarity. Into peace and depth.

Part of meeting pain is trusting the rhythm of life by returning to the wisdom of the body, of the breath, the tightness, the trembling, the burning, the fatigue, the numbness, the grief, the longing. These are not symptoms to manage, but doorways to listen through.

When we connect with our body with sensation, emotion, and all that quietly rises underneath  we become intimate with the present moment. We enter a deeper conversation. One not shaped by fear, but by curiosity. And in that curiosity, we start to sense what the body already knows: that life moves in rhythms. That healing does not come through force, but through tender allowing.

The body, like nature, knows how to process, metabolize, and restore  if only we give it space. 

Pain is like the tide, it rises, it recedes, it leaves its imprint in the sand, but it never stays still. Fighting it is like trying to stop the sea from returning.

Pain moves like the seasons. Winter never asks to be skipped, yet in its starkness, something rests. Something restores. Spring only arrives because the earth allowed itself to be bare.

Just as a forest turns fallen leaves into fertile soil, pain too can transform if we give it the stillness to settle and the presence to break down what was into what can nourish.

Like a river carves stone over time, pain shapes the inner landscape. Not suddenly, but slowly leaving behind curves, softness, and depth.

 

The invitation is to stop asking “How do I get out of this?” 

and begin asking, “What is here with me right now?” and“What wants to be felt and seen?”

Because everything that is innate belongs. And everything that belongs carries wisdom.

From Resistance to Reverence: How Pain Became a Doorway to Deeper Truth

There was a time in my life when pain was something to ignore or conquer. I had learned, like many of us, to be strong, to be tough, to override it. The unspoken message I carried was: don’t feel too much, just move on. Pain, especially emotional pain was treated like an inconvenience, a sign of weakness for a Man.

But over the years, something softened. Maybe it was the exhaustion of resisting. Or maybe it was the body speaking a truth that the mind had ignored for too long. Tightness in my chest, heaviness in my belly, a rise in Blood Pressure, a faster heart beat, a constriction in my throat. I underwent medical tests. Nothing showed up. And in that space of uncertainty, I turned inward, not to analyze, but to sense and feel.

What shifted my relationship with pain most deeply was learning to see it not just as a symptom, but as a signal. A sacred messenger pointing toward unmet needs and unexpressed feelings. Underneath pain, there is often grief, loneliness, fear, or longing. And beneath those feelings lie core human needs: for safety, belonging, love, expression, support, rest, or meaning.

When I began to ask myself, “What is this pain trying to tell me?” rather than “How do I get rid of it?”, something changed. I began to understand pain as a wise communication from my inner world, asking me to slow down, to listen, to care.

This approach, rooted in Nonviolent Communication and somatic presence, invited me to relate to suffering not as a flaw to fix but as a doorway to self-awareness. Pain became a companion, holding within it the longing of what I most needed to restore connection with myself and the world.

With a deeper connection pain began to unfold: pain not as pathology, but as deeper presence. A doorway. A whisper from deeper within. It wasn’t just something wrong with me. It was something true about life.

If we can stay curious with our pain,  feeling the feeling and honoring the need, we often find that healing begins not with control, but with compassion.

Rumi, Buddha, Mulla and the Unfolding

There are voices that have helped shape how I now meet suffering: Rumi, Buddha and Mulla.

Rumi, with his deep heart and poetic clarity, once said:

“Do not turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That is where the light enters you.”

This line is not just metaphor, it is a mirror. There were times when I turned away from pain, thinking I needed to fix it, understand it, or outgrow it. But it was only when I turned toward it, looked into the bandaged place with honesty and compassion,  that I began to experience a kind of inner light. Not one of ease, but one of depth, presence, and truth.

And the Buddha, in his teachings, offered a clarity I have come to carry close:

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

It took years for that to make sense. I now understand that the first arrow is life,  a loss, an ache, a betrayal. The second arrow is what I add: the meaning-making, the interpretation, the story, the shame, the resistance, the resentment. And it is the second arrow that often hurts the most.

The Cup of Sugar

A neighbor once came to Mulla Nasiruddin’s house and asked, “Can I borrow a cup of sugar?”

Mulla said, “Of course. But only if you promise not to return it.”

The neighbor was surprised. “Why?”

Mulla replied, “Because every time someone returns sugar, they also bring a story. And every story weighs more than the sugar.”

Reflection:
Sometimes, it’s not the pain itself that burdens us, it’s the story we attach to it. And often, the cultural stories others bring can compound our own. In healing, we learn to hold stories lightly, and return to the raw, tender sensational truth beneath them.

Together, their teachings remind me that pain is not the enemy and healing does not come from avoidance. It comes from allowing. From tender presence. From surrender. From letting the river meet the ocean in the rhythm and flow of life.

They invite me to live fully. To feel fully. And to walk beside sorrow not as punishment, but as a companion on the path back home.

A Practice of Tender Presence

For me, what helps is not advice or affirmation, but immersion in nature, in poetry, in the felt sense of the body. A walk under a moonlit sky. A hand on the heart. A moment of breath when I do not need to do anything.

Sometimes, it’s being met by the presence of a compassionate friend,  someone who can listen without needing to fix, who can witness without trying to explain. That kind of presence is medicine. It reminds the body that it is safe to feel. That we do not have to hold it all alone.

I have learned that pain does not need to be solved. It needs to be felt and seen.

And it does not heal in isolation. It heals in relationship with the earth, with animals, with kind humans, and with the compassionate spirit of life itself.

An Invitation towards tenderness.

One of the most vital things I’ve learned on this path is the importance of tenderness. Pain does not respond to force, it softens in the presence of kindness and compassion. These are not luxuries of healing. They are the ground it grows from.

When we meet our pain with gentleness instead of judgment, with warmth instead of withdrawal, it begins to unravel.

Pain is not a private flaw. It is a shared movement, a thread that connects all humans. Everyone you meet is carrying something tender. Everyone is moving through something invisible. When we see pain as something that lives not just in us, but in everyone, we stop isolating. We become part of something ancient and communal.

If you are reading this and sitting quietly with some invisible sorrow, a grief no one can see. I want to say: You are not alone.

See pain not as punishment, but as a movement of life. A rhythm that flows through all living things. Trust that rhythm. Feel the sensation and the emotion, not just the thoughts about it. Let others in.

Pain was never meant to be carried alone.

Because pain is relational. It arises in connection, and it longs to be met in connection. When we hold it all by ourselves, it tends to turn inward becoming heavier, more silent, more isolating. But when we allow others into our pain through gentle conversation, shared silence, a hand on the back, or simply being witnessed and something shifts. Not because the pain disappears, but because its weight is shared. The nervous system settles in the presence of another. The heart feels less exiled.

Healing begins in the relational field with trusted friends, with nature, with animals, with spirit. We don’t always need words. Sometimes we just need someone’s calm presence to remind us we are not alone. Sometimes we just need to be believed.

Let others in. Let the trees hold you. Let someone sit beside you in stillness. Let your suffering be seen, not explained. In that space, something holy begins to mend.

As Mary Oliver writes:

To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

“In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver 

What if pain is not happening to you but for you?
What if this pain carries purpose not as a test, but as a teacher?

When we stop resisting the rhythm, pain becomes a path.
And we return to ourselves.

The Broken Chair

One day, Mulla sat uncomfortably on a broken chair. A passerby asked,
“Why don’t you fix it or get up?”

Mulla replied, “Because if I move, I’ll have to do something. But if I just sit here and complain, people come and talk to me.”

It’s funny  and familiar, isn’t it?
Sometimes we grow attached to our pain  not because we want to suffer, but because it’s the only way we’ve learned to feel seen.

Let’s not just sit in broken chairs, hoping others will notice. Let’s rise. Let’s move gently.
Let’s find the courage to be with our pain, not to fix it, but to feel it, share it, and let it move through us.

Because in that movement, healing begins.

Reflection Questions for You

As you step away from this piece, I invite you to sit with these questions.  Not to find answers, but to let them open something gentle within:

1. What is my current relationship with pain? Do I fight it, flee from it, or soften toward it?

2. Where in my body do I carry unspoken sorrow or unacknowledged tension?

3. What part of my suffering have I been carrying alone  and who or what could I invite in to hold it with me?

4. What wisdom might my pain be trying to offer me, if I were to listen without needing to fix it?

5. How does nature  in its rhythm, decay, and renewal  mirror something in my own healing journey?

6. What would it feel like to trust the rhythm of life, even in the midst of the unknown?

Let these questions move through you like rivers.
No pressure to respond.
Only an invitation to feel.

With much presence,

Diyanat