Editorial October 30, 1995 Issue

The truth about pain

Mary Metzner Trammell

It's so important to tell the truth about pain. And once you understand even a speck of that truth, you never again really believe in pain—at least not in the same way. You never again feel so intimidated by it. In fact, you feel newly liberated. And you begin to understand Christ Jesus' words "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32).

Just what is the truth about pain? It's simply this. There exists a reality that completely eliminates pain—the totally lovable and potent reality called God. This ever-with-us God, the one and only Principle of the universe, is Spirit. Our salvation from pain lies in knowing for a fact that we live in the allness of Spirit. That we live forever in the holy comfort of God's love.

There can be no outside to Spirit's allness. Yet pain suggests that there is something outside of God—an outside where you and I are supposed to live, whether we like it or not. This "outside" is a mortal mind/matter world construct, a merciless trap we think we can't escape from. It's a place where matter-pleasures and matter-pains, matter-ups and matter-downs, matter-beginnings and matter-endings, toss us around like wood chips in the middle of the ocean. A place where matter is at the same time our creator and our destroyer, our defender and our downfall. A place where the footing is always slippery, the future always insecure. A place where matter is king.

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