Pain

مساء الخير — good evening. This is Ahmed again and this is POV Zero. It’s episode ten, and tonight I would like to talk about pain. Going through pain and how that resonates with the singularity, what it looks like from the point of view of the zero.

We might be tempted to think about the singularity, the so-called enlightened state, as something light all the time, something joyful. I alluded to that when I was talking about joy — it’s perfectly fine to seek joy, it’s the only right thing to do in life, to seek it and stay with it.

But from the point of view of the singularity, there’s no hierarchy between things. If all is one and all the same, then there’s no judgment about feelings that feel negative at the human level — grief, physical, psychological, emotional pain and suffering. Joy is in no way more divine than pain and sadness. Everything is divine. The divine is in everything — in the painful as much as the joyful.

Over the past few weeks, when I was in the very light state, I was able to see things from a perspective where I could detach, disidentify. Nothing could hurt me. But then there comes a phase, because we’re all humans, where pain sets in again. Friction occurs. And friction always comes from identification. If you completely detach, disidentify, become the essence, let go of everything tying you to this human body and identity — there will be no friction, because the singularity is frictionless.

But that’s a state we can’t necessarily expect to feel constantly. We feel glimpses of it — when we are joyful, fully immersed in love, when we let go of concepts, thoughts, attachments. But in general, as humans, we are here to experience friction. The important thing is to know there is no way around the friction. No shortcut where you say, “I get to lightness and stay there, circumventing the friction.” The only way is through the friction and through the pain and sadness.

I’ve experienced that again — through messages I received, encounters I had, interactions where I feel pain, injustice, where I as Ahmed want some sort of justice, to be treated fairly. That comes from identification. But at the same time it’s perfectly fine, because from the zero, everything is fine.

The challenge for Ahmed is to accept the friction and sadness and pain as something divine. That’s the only thing we can really do. Accept that we have to go through it, that there’s something waiting at the end. That resonates with the singularity in terms of pure acceptance of everything that is — acceptance of the isness.

Being fully immersed in the present moment, experiencing pain, you don’t resist the pain itself. There’s no point in resisting it, because if you’re resisting, you’re resisting something already outside the present moment. You’re resisting the fact that you’ve been in pain for the last few hours, and you’re fighting the fact that you’ll be experiencing it in the next few hours or days. It already takes you out of the present.

More importantly, it comes from a place of not accepting, of fighting. When there’s something to do about the situation causing pain, by all means do it, fully and with full dedication. But when you cannot, when there’s just pain you have to endure because there’s nothing to do about it — then the only way is to sit with it and embrace it. Embrace the sadness, the pain, see it as something divine meant for you. Not something happening against you, but something happening for you. By going through it and having faith that something good is going to come out of it.

Good in the sense that everything is going to be good and fine. Don’t get stuck with immediate negative consequences. Think long-term: where will this lead? From the point of view of the zero, it all leads back to love. It came from love. Once you see that circle — we came from love, we’ll go back to love, and we are here to experience things and go through them — you take every experience with full dedication, full love, unconditional love, no judgment. You accept and have faith that it all makes sense and is meant for you, meant to get you to that place of love and surrender.

I’ve been struggling with this at the physical level, at the bodily level. But when I really accept the frustration — the thing with frustration and sadness is that as humans, we have a tendency to try to find solutions. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, and we don’t learn to sit with the discomfort, understand it, embrace it, observe what it does. We usually try to find solutions and answers. We rarely accept it as such.

But accepting the isness of the moment means accepting the discomfort as something meant to be, happening for a reason that is perfect in itself. So when frustration arises, you don’t try to find a solution. You say, “This is happening to Ahmed right now. Ahmed is having a really tough time. He’s being tested in a tough way once again. And it’s a privilege to be allowed to go through these triggers, these frictions, knowing that it will all lead to that place of love again.”

It cannot lead you anywhere else. Perhaps temporarily to a place that doesn’t feel right, but everything is meant for you on this planet. You’re just here experiencing it. When frustration and pain arise, I surrender to it and observe it. If it feels like I want to throw my fist into the wall, I accept that feeling as such. I don’t have to throw my fist, but I look at what the frustration does with my body. Does it make my temperature rise? Does it make me nervous? Angry? Sad?

Often, anger and action are meant to take us away from sadness and shame. If we don’t act, we sit with the shame and sadness, and ideally, we can go through it and cry. Let that pain flow through you. At the end of that process, there is dissolution and lightness waiting. If you’ve cried hard, you know crying is liberating. You let go of the sadness, allow it to flow through your body, accept all it does as something divine and meant for you. That will lead you somewhere.

It feels like diving into the feeling, fully embracing it, reveling in it, staying with it as something that is a gift. As painful as it may feel. That’s what surrender looks like, what faith looks like.

The most important thing is first accepting it, going into it. And then not judging it. Not judging yourself for feeling bad, for feeling friction, not saying, “I would like to be happy right now but I can’t, and that’s so frustrating.” That doesn’t lead anywhere — it posits the feeling as something not meant for you. But it is meant for you, from the point of view of the singularity.

Accept it, don’t resist it, don’t judge it. And at the most actionable level: don’t act upon it right now. Tell yourself, “I’m not going to do anything about this feeling.” It might be painful in your head, but at least you’re not doing anything that will take you away from the immediate experience. You stay with it, more likely to go through it in full acceptance, and get what is meant for you at the end.

This has worked well for me, because at the conscious level I still have deep clarity about where this is all leading and where it comes from, as I look at it from the point of view of the zero. But at the same time, Ahmed experiences frustrations and frictions. And I accept it.

That has been liberating — knowing there’s no hierarchy between feelings. There’s no hierarchy between joy and sadness. They’re both equally divine from the point of view of the zero. There’s no point in thinking, “I would like to be happy but I’m feeling sad.” That creates resistance, and resistance comes from judgment, and judgment comes from a perception of hierarchy. You can let that hierarchy go, because from the zero there is no hierarchy.

As you accept and go through the feeling, keep your faith that it’s going to be good for you. I stopped judging myself when I felt sad, stopped thinking, “The zero is frictionless, so if I’m experiencing friction, I’m being estranged from the essence.” That’s just my mind interpreting. There’s really no difference between these two experiences — the friction and the frictionless joy. It will all lead back to joy, but there’s no detour. You have to go through the friction. The only way is through embracing it as something divine, meant for you, something that already makes perfect sense. Because we came from love and we’re going back to love.

Let me know if that resonates. Stay kind, be gentle. That’s the best thing you can do on this planet. Peace out.