We like to speak of healing in terms of destination a place of wholeness, light, and peace. And yet healing is actually more a matter of surrender than of arrival. It calls us to let go of our grip on the familiar patterns of pain, to have faith in the mysterious, and to allow our spirit to become new.
But most resist this route. Not because they want to suffer, but because they’ve become accustomed to pain through the years. They’ve built homes of the spirit in the same locations that previously broke them and to leave those is a kind of death.
1. When Pain Becomes Identity
Pain is a good teacher, but it can also be a shawl, something we wear so long that we forget we were ever supposed to take it off.
The majority of people wind up learning to get through their pain by incorporating it into their sense of self. They begin to say things to themselves such as,
“I’ve always been guarded.”
“I’m just not someone who trusts easily.”
“Life has always been hard for me.”
These things can sound like truth, but more frequently than not, they’re echoes of previous hurts. Suffering, if permitted to breed, can whisper so persistently that we believe its voice is our own. The spirit shifts not because it wishes to stay wounded, but because the familiar feels safer than freedom.
2. The Illusion of Safety in Suffering
There’s an odd solace in what we know even if what we know hurts.
Pain becomes a rhythm, a fact. You know where the limits are, how to navigate through the blackness. Healing asks you to venture into the unknown.
For a soul that has lingered long in blackness, light is overwhelming. Peace sounds empty. Joy can even inspire terror “What if it doesn’t stop?”
So instead of leaving the pain, they stay in it. They prefer what they know rather than the divine mystery of transformation. But what they can’t yet see is that the not-knowing they fear is itself an invitation, an open door to a higher frequency of being.
3. The Ego’s Attachment to the Wound
Every wound has a narrative, and the ego loves narratives:
“I am the one who was betrayed.”
“I am the one who always dies.”
“I am the one who always suffers.”
These are identifications that bind us to the lower self. They make us go around and around in our pain instead of opening into our divine self.
In order to heal, the ego must let go of its grip on those stories. And that is just bummed because if you’ve been alive as long as “the broken one,” who are you without your wounds?
But here’s the truth: healing is not the death of who you are. It’s the resurrection of who you were always meant to be.
4. The Soul’s Contract with Pain
From the above, pain most often has sacred purpose. The soul chooses some experiences not as punishment, but as initiation.
Each wound holds a lesson to be learned — compassion, patience, surrender, or strength.
But after we have learned our lesson, we’re not meant to keep living there. Hanging on to pain after the lesson has been learned is like staying in school long after graduation. You don’t need the classroom anymore; the information is already inside.
Spirit whispers softly, “It’s time to move on.”
But the mind won’t let go of the pain because it is like proof of life.
Healing begins the moment we cease confusing pain with purpose.
5. The Sacred Act of Choosing to Heal
Healing is a sacred decision. It’s the soul announcing:
“I’m prepared to remember who I am aside from the wound.”
It is not about erasing the past, but about ending its grip on you. It is trusting that something more beautiful exists behind the door of pain.
To heal is to believe that peace will be secure, that love will be permanent, that joy can be maintained. It is an exercise of radical belief — to move out of the fire and not always return to make sure it’s still burning.
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Closing Thoughts
Some hearts don’t heal overnight because they’ve made their residence in the pain. They’ve built temples of heartache and called them survival. But heartache was never meant to be home just a gateway.
You are not what broke you.
You are what is still beautiful after the breaking.
When you finally step out of suffering, you do not lose yourself you welcome yourself. And in welcoming, you realize that healing wasn’t about being someone new… it was about remembering who your soul has been all along.
Thee Juju Aura 