Let’s talk about pain. I mean actual physical pain, the kind of chronic pain one experiences from nerve damage, organ damage or chronic disease, the kind of pain that leaves you curled up in a ball screaming to God to make it stop. Its a fact that if you haven’t yet suffered this kind of pain in your life you most likely will. You see, this is just another part of the experience of life.

The Tao Te Ching says:

Under heaven, all can see beauty as beauty, only because there is ugliness. All can know good as good only because there is evil. Being and nonbeing produce each other. The difficult is born in the easy. Long is defined by short, the high by the low. Before and after go along with each other.

Although it may seem nearly impossible to realize it at the time of suffering, this suffering is in your life for a reason. Nothing “good” can be experienced without something “bad” to compare it to. In fact without duality nothing in our consciousness exists at all. Imagine if everyday was the same, no ups no downs, you wake in the morning and sleep at night. Your have only the same experiences everyday, nothing new, nothing different. That kind of existence would be enough to make you imagine a new one, one that allows you to have all kinds of different experiences.

Embrace the times that seem to be negative in your life so you have something to compare to the times that seem positive. If you can understand this those positive times will be that much sweeter or at the least bring a new perspective to the reality of things. Don’t let your ego control you. The more we are able to see things in a positive, or clear understanding of what they really are, the less suffering we will experience. After all life on earth is for the experiences, both Yin and Yang.