1. You have more power than you acknowledge
2. Your mind is very powerful. Even now, despite all the excruciating pain, your mind is still very powerful.
3. The pain is your biggest present problem.
4. To solve a problem you have to know and understand the problem.
5. To know and understand the problem you have to look at the problem.
6. Your job is not to analyze prematurely. You know practically nothing about the pain except that it is there.
7. Your job is not to run away from the problem by distracting your mind away from it.
8. Your job is also not to stubbornly (and apparently valiantly) keep on trying to live your previous life and it’s engagements (conferences, publishers, meetings etc.) by pushing the pain aside.
The pain is at the center of your experience right now so you must give it your central attention.
9. This does not mean that you sit and mope the whole day with attention on the pain. Do what you can, as naturally as you can, in co-operation, in partnership with the pain — not despite it. Ask the pain, “What do you want?”
10. Each day, give at least 10 minutes to yourself to sit and connect to your current experience physically and mentally, in the present moment. Observe it minutely. Experience your full body and receive what it is telling you. That is where the answers lie — in the present moment, at the heart of the pain.
You have more power than you acknowledge. No one can know your pain better than you can. No doctor, no other person who cares for you. Ask the pain for answers — that is where the answer lies. But first and foremost, sit with the pain. With gentle kindness — towards your self and the pain. Without judgement — for your self or the pain. With fascination even — towards the pain and your self.
You are not your pain. The pain is a visitor. Honor it. But you are still the master of your self and you have more power than you acknowledge.