Pain - Ego's Trickster

Most nights during sundown, or about 2 o’clock in the morning, or again at daybreak the howls, yips and screeches of coyotes claiming their territory stream across the desert. During the day, just when you least expect it, a lone coyote will quickly slink across the highway a little distance ahead of your car. And sure enough, as you reach the spot where he entered the almost vacant land, he’s gone. Invisible. He just seems to vanish! The trickster has crossed your path.  

Ego has tricks just like that. And one of his best is what you focus on so much of the time – pain. 


Physical pain catches your attention, just as it should. That ache in your left arm is a red flag, and maybe a crucially important one. Is the cause the couch you helped carry yesterday? Or is it the beginning of a massive heart attack? Big difference! One to be shrugged off with a little rest and the other driven immediately to the emergency room. Determining the difference is just like the coyote being that trickster, at it again. 

But, just maybe the recurring physical pain, though caused by actual breakdown in your body is recurring because you want it there. 

         Whoa! Slow down. Don’t everybody jump down my throat at once! I can hear the shouts of anger from you readers all the way through my computer. “Are you trying to tell me I want that searing pain in my back?” you scream!

         Well, yea, sort of. So let me explain. Pain and suffering are two different things, but that wily old trickster, the ego wants us to think they are the same. Pain is a red flag. But, are we doing what we should to handle it, fix it and get on with our lives? Or, are we hanging on to it for a particularly sinister reason – a favorite of the ego’s. And this is big – pain proves that we are innocent.

      Take a minute to look at that last sentence. Now, let’s see why A Course in Miracles teaches us about this ego tactic. 

     Those who suffer must be suffering at someone or something else’s hand. And that someone of something is the guilty party – not the one who is suffering. The more you suffer, the more you are proving to yourself and others that you are innocent and pure as the driven snow. Now, your innate sense of unworthiness has slipped invisible into your subconscious, just like that trickster the coyote, never to be undone by the Holy Spirit. 

     We are spirit, pure and filled with light, but ego wants to keep that hidden. Why? You ask. Well, that’s a big one to be discussed in another blog. But, for now, each time you feel that twinge or stab of pain, go check it out with a doctor. Remember, however, when you hold onto the idea of suffering, dragging around like a martyr and asking for sympathy from all and sundry, that is ego tricking you into keeping that pain. 

     While you still have a body, sure you will bump it and catch colds and maybe worse. But, enjoying your day, giving love to others and recognizing your amazing inner beauty never has to disappear at all. Suffering can drift away like mist.