Physical pain can make you irritable.
Saturday, December 8
The arthritis in my knees has been getting worse and worse in recent weeks.Today on the walk to the shelter, crossing Baltimore Street, I stepped up on the curb and felt something snap in my right knee, to the left of and below the kneecap. For the next fifty yards or so, there was pain every time I put weight on it.
Then that pain went away awhile.
If I weren’t such a fundamentally happy person, it would hurt a lot more than it does.
Happiness is an analgesic.
Shower time came. There was no room to sit on the bench; several people were there, and this new guy was occupying half the bench. I took things in stride and did what I could. I had to stand on one foot to take off my shoes. When I stood on my right foot, there was sudden acute pain from the place I’d hurt — and blind rage. If anyone had come near me, I would have physically attacked.
Luckily, this only happened once.
The approach I mean to use to manage this chronic pain:
(1) Use the strategies and tactics known to me to stay as happy as I can.
(2) At my church, we offer the laying on of hands during worship every Sunday. I will seek this every week, so long as the pain continues.
(3) Use certain prayer techniques, with which I’ve already had some success as applied to toothaches and major depressive disorder.
I sometimes perceive an aura of pain radiating from either knee 3-6 inches in all directions. This is my personal energy, and I have every right to do with it whatever I please.
Every sentient being, every free-willed creature, has the ability, authority and privilege to change light into darkness and darkness into light. And I do this with the pain.
As I said in “A short route to agony,”
One must love the wounded or disagreeable member into wholeness.
I imagine the pain as being a physical material, that I can scoop up with my hands and form into a ball, like putty or modeling clay. I hold it in my hands and will it to change into comfort and joy, a healing salve. Then I use my fingers to spread the healing salve straight back onto the places the pain came from.
This is not the same as blocking the pain. I must accept the pain before I can transform it. But as soon as it appears, it is subject to manipulation.
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