I see people in my life engaged in deep and intense struggle. Please offer some guidance for how to integrate and interact with them in their pain.
The drama of life brings many lessons with it, many of which are riddled wih the experience of pain and suffering. The greater the pain, the more challenging it is to transcend it until an extreme is reached where the only option is to transcend or die. This phenomena manifests not only in physical and literal death in certain instances, but more often as a death of ego, or a death of beliefs, attitudes or behaviors that have outlived their usefulness.
The source of the suffering is often a result of unconscious reactivity that then precipitates circumstances causing greater and deeper pain. As difficult as it is, what you must understand is that the pain is a call for change. The pain is a call to put a stop to the pattens that have brought you to the place of suffering.
We realize that this notion may seem somewhat paradoxical in that the requirement is to be witness to the experience which has overtaken you. Realize once again, that you are not your thoughts, nor are you your behaviors, nor are you your programmed responses. When the pain is so intense that it is no longer bearable, the mind will look for any avenue of release; and there is an opening at these moments for true and lasting transformation to take place.
An opening, but not a guarantee. These moments, although not assurance of transformation do provide the possibility for true choice, a true shift of being. There is of course an irony here, in that the moment of choice is generated out of an experience that it is no longer possible to continue on the path you’ve been traveling. So in essence, from a moment when there is no choice but to change, the possibility of true choice is born.