It’s Imperative to Know That No Pain No Gain is the Name of the Game on the Spiritual Plane

The good news is, the reward is as good as it gets.

Photo by Dawid Zawiła on Unsplash

You might assume that this will be a big bummer of an article because of the whole ‘no PAIN, no gain’ thing. “Pain? No thanks.” Click. Next article.

Not true! This will not be a bummer. It will reveal a truth we need to know if we are to make it to the promised land that spiritual growth takes us to.

The core of this springs from the teachings of Michael Singer. Here’s a quick summation.

Basics of the path

We have myriad experiences starting at the very beginning of life. Most of them pass right through us and have no impact.

But a minority are difficult and don’t pass through us because we don’t allow them to. We push them away and, by doing so, hold onto them.

Those experiences, stored as energy in what are known as Samskaras in Sanskrit, stay with us and rule our lives, and not in a good way.

Unless…

We let them go.

Letting go is name of the game

If we let them go, life gets better. We become less stuck in our heads. Why? Because that emotional baggage we carry is what causes our minds to go into overdrive in a futile quest to fix ourselves.

So, as I’ve written many times before and as Singer has said ad infinitum, letting go is the name of the game in the game of spiritual growth.

Because of its paramount importance, it behooves us to know as much as we can about the dynamics of letting go.

We have to know it’s painful

Critical to being successful in letting go is knowing that it is painful. If we’re not aware of that, whenever our stuff comes up and we feel the pain, we’ll just push it back down and make no progress.

Why is letting go painful? Because those difficult experiences we had went down with pain…and when we let go of them, they come back up with pain.

I just recently rediscovered this dynamic. Here’s the background, which I’ll keep short as I’ve written about it before.

The story of my tennis baggage

One prominent Samskara in my life relates to tennis. Huh? Yep, you read that right.

I grew up the youngest in a family of tennis players. Did the junior tennis thing where I traveled all over Southern California with my dutiful mom/chauffeur playing tournaments from San Diego all the way to Santa Barbara.

It may not seem like a big deal, but when you’re only ten, eleven, twelve-years-old and through the teen years, playing competitive tennis has major effects on the psyche. I’m sure the same is true for golf, gymnastics, figure skating and any other individual sports where it’s you against the world.

All the butterflies you feel before a match, looking at the tournament draws, thinking “There’s no way I can beat X! He’s the third seed! He’s great!”

Bottom line: One develops insecurities on steroids.

Unknowingly developing Samskaras

Kids don’t know it at the time, but if you’re in it early enough and long enough, you develop deep-seated feelings that turn into Samskaras. Like what? Like,

“If I win, I’m a worthy person. People will like me. My parents will love me. Everybody will pat me on the back. But if I lose, I’m a loser. I’m not worthy. And people won’t love me.”

My experience was that I did reasonably well. Not in the top ten in SoCal, but often pretty close.

I was a good competitor who rarely choked. And this is where things reach critical mass. Because what I did with that was develop an identity as “a guy who was really good who had solid mental toughness.”

Little did I know that that manifested inside as,

“If I play really well and don’t choke and am solid mentally, people will love me and think highly of me. But if I play like a loser and choke, that all goes away.”

Of course, none of this happened consciously. It happens down deeper in the recesses of our psyches.

As I grew into adulthood, that Samskara didn’t go anywhere. It remained embedded deep inside. That’s how Samskaras work.

My Samskara roars back last weekend

‘Cut to,’ as we used to say in Hollywood, last weekend when I played in my local club’s singles championship. I was an inner wreck before and during all three of my matches.

And I know it sounds trivial, but not when you consider my story. Because those feelings being poked aren’t those of a 61-year-old man, but a twelve-year-old boy. Those feelings/Samskaras get stuck in time.

A more salient example would be a forty-year-old man whose parents had a horrible divorce when he was twelve and those Samskaras show up in force every time he starts to get close to a woman. He freaks out, his stomach tied up in knots. Why? Because the feelings that twelve-year-old him had stuffed down himself are the same feelings coming up 28 years later.

Which leads us to a main point of this article: Those feelings hurt. A lot.

I noticed that all too well this weekend during my tournament. And it’s what prompted me to write this article.

The pain is pervasive anxiety

It hurt. How? The best way to describe it is as a form of anxiety. For me, I feel that in my gut primarily, but also in my chest.

How did I deal with it? I did my best to do what Mickey teaches: Relax with it. Which doesn’t mean to try and relax the awful anxious feeling and therefore make it disappear.

It means relax all around the feeling. Give it space. Don’t dive in and try and attack it or push it away. Give it space.

Space for what? We give it space so that it can break free and rise up.

Talking to the younger you

It’s also helpful to talk to those feelings. Something like,

“Hey. I see you. I’m not forcing you to do anything, but if you want to come up, go ahead. You’ve been stuck down there a long time and it’s totally safe for you to come up. If we lose, that’s okay. We’ll be safe. We’ll still be loved. So come up when you’re ready.”

You talk to those feelings as if they’re those of a twelve-year-old. Or fifteen-year-old. Or five-year-old. Because in so many cases, they are.

Maybe you have samskaras around food, eating and body image issues. And they originated in your teen years where you felt ‘less than’ and unworthy because you didn’t have a perfect body.

When those feelings come up now – twenty, thirty, forty years later – try having a chat with fifteen-year-old you. Be compassionate with her. Tell her she’s lovable no matter what she eats or how she looks. Relax and see if you can let those feelings come up and go.

Knowing intellectually how crazy it is

This leads to something else that is vital for us to be aware of. And that is that we often know intellectually that the feelings we’re having are way out of proportion to reality.

I, for one, know full well that the inner freak out I have during senior tennis tournaments is crazy. That no one is going to love me any less if I lose, choke or whatever.

Similarly, when that forty-year-old relationship-phobe has a near panic attack upon discovering that his girlfriend has left her toothbrush and toothpaste at his place, he also knows intellectually that his total inner freak out is way out of proportion to seeing dental products in his bathroom.

The primitive nature of Samskaras

But this is the point: It doesn’t matter! Because, again, Samskaras are usually formed in our early years and don’t mature.

This is important to know because we often get frustrated with these overwhelming feelings.

“What the hell is this about? Feeling like absolute crap because I have a tennis match in one hour? Seriously? It’s ridiculous!”

Feeling that way can lead to resistance which leads to pushing away the feelings and killing any chance of letting go.

So word to the wise. Be aware. Don’t question the validity of your freakouts. They make all the sense in the world from a psychic pain perspective.

Before wrapping up, I’ll recommend something that can facilitate the letting go process: Psychotherapy. It’s a great tool for understanding and clarifying what our Samskaras are, which can make it easier to let them go.

I did it on and off for many years and it helped tremendously.

A logical sum up

Let’s conclude by laying out the basic logical sequence here:

1. It is of paramount importance to our overall well-being that we let go of the emotional scars/Samskaras we’ve developed throughout our lives.

2. When those Samskaras are provoked (by playing in competitive tennis matches or increased intimacy in relationships, for example), the pain can be excruciating. So much so, that most people immediately shove them back down by, for instance, ending the romantic relationship.

3. To let go of these Samskaras, we need to do our best to relax with and around the psychic pain. Continually. Resolutely.

Which is difficult. And painful.

But more beneficial to us than any work we can do.

In other words, relax through the pain and you will gain, gain, gain.