Your Friend, Pain

In the last installment in this series, http://gordon-feil-theology.blogspot.ca/2017/07/choosing-my-feelings-and-behavior.html, I discussed choosing emotions.  Often they seem to choose us, both the delightful ones and the ones that hurt.  The pain of life is my segue into the awareness of the addictions that I need to transform into preferences if I am to be freed from the emotional patterns that bring that pain. 

Because these painful experiences serve such a purpose, I welcome them.  For example, when I originally started writing this, I was experiencing a hurt occasioned by someone not living up to my addiction to having them care enough about me to fulfill what to me was an important promise. I decided to welcome this pain because it provided me with an occasion to realize that I have an addiction.  That realization was the first step to reprogramming it so that I am no longer addicted to them keeping their word. I can upgrade that addiction into a preference, and if they then fail me, it won’t trigger that same emotion. Instead, I will realize that I don’t need their integrity. There are other ways of being loved. The rest of this installment is at http://gordon-feil-theology.blogspot.ca/2017/08/welcoming-pain.html.