痛苦的目的

开心树

摘要: 耶稣说过，每滴眼泪都为我们省下千年光阴。我决心释放所有妨碍我体验到我本来面目的障碍…      
作者：Judy Allen；译者：林慧如 ，若水 润稿
  An early Course stumbling block is the idea “I am not a body.” How can I not be a body when I so intensely experience pain and pleasure? When I cut myself I bleed. When I break a bone, it has to be set. My body will die. So why, then, do we have this body at all, if that is not what we are? To communicate, to ourselves and others. While we are in the dream, any pain experienced by the body or the psyche is simply communication about what needs to be healed.  「我不是一具肉体」是刚开始操练奇迹课程容易卡住的观念。我这么切身地经验到痛苦和愉悦，怎会不是一具肉体呢？我割伤了，就会流血；骨折了，就得接合；我的肉体是会死亡的。如果我们不是肉体的话，那到底为什么我们要有这具肉体呢？是为了传递讯息，传递讯息给自己与别人。在梦里，肉体或心理所经验到的任何痛苦只是在传递讯息，让我们知道哪里需要治愈。  Last September my column was entitled “The Purpose of Pain.” I quote: “Being overwhelmed by pain of any kind can be the beginning of healing, because it brings us to our limits of suffering. It can become a turning point……Growth need not be painful. It is the resistance to the growth that creates the pain. If we pay attention to the pain, we have a glimpse of our resistance— then we invite in the Holy Spirit to turn the pain into growth. We can choose pain, or we can choose peace.”  去年9月我专栏的题目是「痛苦的目的」，其中我提到一段话：「被痛苦淹没时，可能成为治愈的开始，因它把我们带到我们所能忍受的极限，它可以是个转折点……成长是无需痛苦的，抗拒成长才会产生痛苦。此时我们若注视这个痛苦，便能瞥见我们的抗拒，于是给了我们一个机会邀请圣灵介入，将痛苦转为成长。痛苦或平安，全在我们的选择。」  Sounds true to me, even now. But it was mostly a head trip at that point. The day after I wrote it, I lifted a 50-lb box (I know, I know, I should have bent my knees……) and immediately knew it was a mistake. What followed was six weeks of intractable back pain. I found the words in the above quote to be “true but not helpful.” I had been writing about emotional pain, primarily, and now I was faced with the stubbornness of physical pain, and the opportunity to invite in the Holy Spirit to turn the pain into growth, and to choose peace instead.  即便是现在，这段话对我而言，仍旧一点也没错。那一番话简直就是故事的序幕：在我写了那段话的隔天，我提起了一个50磅的箱子（我知道，我知道，我该弯膝盖的…），我很快就知道糟了。接着就是6个礼拜棘手难愈的背痛。我发现先前所说的那段话「很正确，但却使不上力」。往常我写的多半是有关情绪上的痛楚，而此刻我面对的是顽强的肉体上的疼痛，以及邀请圣灵介入将痛苦转为成长与重新选择平安的机会。  I tried to do that, over and over. It didn’t help one bit. I tried not resisting, but I didn’t really understand what that meant. My resistance, I felt, didn’t cause the pain. My injured back caused the pain. Finally I went to my friend and mentor John Miller, who understands healing, and told him of my misery. His first gift to me was to immediately see and know the absolute truth of my being, which was my perfection as a child of God and a part of God, and to keep on knowing it no matter what picture I presented to him. Then he explained to me how to deal with intractable physical pain. Stop resisting. He didn’t use metaphysical metaphors about what my back pain meant, or what spiritual growth I was resisting. He just said stop resisting the pain. He said go into the pain, experience it fully, allow it to just be. He said the way out of pain is straight through it. And everything in me resisted that idea.  一次又一次的，我尝试重新选择，但一点用也没有。我试着不抗拒，但我着实不懂那是什么意思。我觉得，导致我疼痛的根本就不是我的抗拒，而是我受伤的背。最后，我去找我那位深谙治愈之道的良师益友John Miller，并告诉他我的遭遇，他给我的第一份礼物是要我立即去看、去体认我真实不虚的实存，那是我身为上主之子与上主的一部份的完美本质，而且要我不断地体认它，不论我向他诉说的情况有多惨。接着，他告诉我因应棘手的肉体疼痛之道，即是不要抗拒。他没有用抽象的理论来分析我背痛的原因或隐喻我在抗拒哪一类心灵成长。他只是要我不再抗拒疼痛。他告诉我，进入那个痛，全然体验它，允许它呈现它的模样。他说道，出离痛苦的方法就是直接穿越它。但那个时候我体内每个细胞都在抗拒这个想法。  But there was nothing else to do. That night, when I woke up with the first of the back spasms, my reaction was typical: I stiffened my whole body, afraid to relax, knowing when I did the pain was worse. But this time I decided to try John’s suggestion. I invited and allowed the pain to do whatever it would do, let my whole body go limp, felt the pain accelerate, and the next thing I knew I was waking up again with a new bout. I did the same thing that time, with the same result. Each time I woke up in pain, I went into it and through it, and drifted right back to sleep. The next night I didn’t wake as often. And within a few days I noticed that I wasn’t aware of my back any more. I had learned an important lesson, this time in my body rather than in my head.  不过，似乎也没有其它可行之道。那天夜里，第一次因背痛发作而醒来时，我的本能反应又是：全身僵直，不敢放松，心里清楚这样背痛会更严重。这一次，我决定试试John的建议，我接纳这个疼痛，允许它呈现它的样貌，我让自己全身软趴趴的，感受疼痛的加剧。接着，我又因着另一次的背痛而醒来。当它发作时，我以同样的心态面对，结果也仍旧相同。每回我在疼痛中醒来，我就进入那个痛，穿越它，然后渐渐入睡。隔天晚上，我就没有醒来那么多次了。几天后，我发现我竟然都没注意到我的背了。这给我上了宝贵的一课，但这一次是透过身体，而非脑子。  I have applied this lesson in my life to various kinds of emotional pain— fear, grief, frustration and so on. When I resist I intensify. I can do a “spiritual bypass” around the emotion, quote the Course, and choose joy instead of pain. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes I have to turn into the skid, even though it feels like turning in the wrong direction, in order to regain my right direction. Sometimes in the past I have had to allow myself to be depressed until it was over, recognizing that the Holy Spirit was unraveling something inside me that needed to be released. I never knew exactly what that something was, but I knew afterward that it was an important healing of my mind, and that I had to be injected with a paralytic drug—depression—to keep myself still while the healing was accomplished.  我也把我这生命中的一课运用到各种情绪的痛苦上，诸如恐惧、悲伤和挫败等等。我若抗拒，它更强烈。我可在情绪旁边开一条「心灵的疏导管」，套句奇迹课程的话，转而选择喜悦而非痛苦。有时能奏效，有时不然。有时我得打滑一下，好似偏向了，却把我带回正轨。有时我得允许自己消沈一阵子，直到它自个儿结束为止，因为我知道圣灵正在清理我内需要释放的东西。我当时并不清楚那是什么，但事后自会明了，那是我心灵非常重要的一个治愈过程；我也明了了，我必须挨这一剂无力针（也就是消沈一阵子），让自己静下来，不再躁动，治愈才可能完成。  “The course does……aim……at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance.”  “The Holy Spirit……merely teaches you how to remove the blocks that stand between you and what you know.”  What are our blocks? Our guilt, our grievances and rage, our ungrieved losses, our fear, our resistance. Sometimes that Holy Spirit speaks through a friend, like John, to tell me what I need to do to remove the block and remember the truth of my wholeness. Sometimes the Holy Spirit stands in silent attendance while I go through the emotions without judging myself, allowing all that is not love to come up and be released.  「本课程旨在清除所有妨碍你体验到爱的障碍；爱是你与生俱来的禀赋。」（导言p.1）
「圣灵只能教你如何去除蒙蔽你真知的障碍。」（T-14, IV 9:5, p262）
那么，我们的障碍又是什么？就是我们的内疚，我们的悲伤以及愤怒，我们尚未抚平的创伤，我们的恐惧，我们的抗拒。有时圣灵会透过像John这样的朋友向我发言，告诉我如何移除障碍，要我记得我真实不虚的圆满本体。有时圣灵则只是默默地在我身边，陪着我不带批判地渡过各种情绪，允许所有不属于爱之物浮现，然后释放。  Jesus has said that each tear shed saves a thousand years. So I am determined to release my blocks to the awareness of Who I Am, even if it means at times going through emotional “pain.” A block stays blocked when it is suppressed, denied, resisted and protected. I suppress, deny, resist and protect out of fear and guilt. The Holy Spirit can help me with the fear and guilt, because “Remembrance of reality is in Him [the Holy Spirit], and therefore in [me].” Sometimes I shed tears of grief, and sometimes of joy. Sometimes they are both at the same time. And each one saves a thousand years.  耶稣说过，每滴眼泪都为我们省下千年光阴。我决心释放所有妨碍我体验到我本来面目的障碍，即使这意谓着有时得穿越情绪上的「痛苦」。障碍若被压抑、否认、抗拒或保护，它便仍旧卡在那里。我之所以会压抑、否认、抗拒或保护，都是出于恐惧与内疚，圣灵则会帮助我面对我这个恐惧与内疚，因为「对真理的记忆存在祂（圣灵）内，因此也存在我内」。我的眼泪有时因悲伤，有时因喜悦，有时悲喜交集。而每一回都为我省下了千年的光阴。  
  转自：奇迹课程中文部 教师集锦

2006/4/6