Before I continue, let me introduce you to two of my most familiar acquaintances, here on either side of me. They actually don’t need much introduction, and it’s likely you have already met, so this may be more of a formality. But since their credentials go back many thousands of years, respect is an important observance.

They are a couple of ancient spirits, or more accurately daemons, from which we get our modern, word demon. These two are members of the Algea, the daemons of Pain and suffering. Their mother is Eris, the goddess of discord. Because she wasn’t invited, she threw a golden apple into the middle of the wedding of Peleus and Thetis inscribed, “To the fairest,” landing  at the feet of Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite all of who claimed it, which then led to the ten year Trojan war. Well, these are two of her children; the one standing here on my left is Inflammation, the one on my right, Pain. I knew you would both recognize, and likely shrink from them, knowing that even a mere handshake would likely be regretted. Even being in the same room is enough to evoke deep fear, the avoidance of the slightest eye contact, lest they seize the opportunity to seize you. I hope you at least brought an offering…

It’s best to be polite to elders, especially elders who are quite sensitive about not being invited in, who are used to people who want to flee, and welcome those who want to fight, which from a human perspective is usually not a good idea.

I wasn’t going to write about pain, again, and have resisted doing so for many months for fear of being self indulgent. However, these two have both made their demands much more clearly of late. I had wanted to write about the fog that hangs along the coast, it being quite heavy these mornings, softening the greens of late summer leaves and providing the crows the stuff on which to slide noiselessly through the neighborhood. So I originally wrote:

For years I have enjoyed a close and affectionate relationship with the fog. Not that it’s a warm and fuzzy friend, it isn’t. But it is remarkably aesthetic, and has a powerful ability to soften everything it surrounds. Then came the intrusion. A forceful and strident, blaring, painful voice has intruded, and has not just required my attention, but has changed my perception and the way I am in the world.

Fog and pain both obscure the ability to see very well with their blankets of varying densities, and both increase and decrease, appear and disappear according to some unspecified calculus. But here the analogy stops and the comparison begins.

Pain is noisy, fog is quiet. Fog is cool, pain is hot. Fog makes polite, perhaps determined suggestions and requests. Pain simply demands what it wants: forcing one’s attention. Pain is an egotist, and can be rude. Fog is a whispering aesthetician. Both can be subtle, hiding nuances of understanding, but only fog is gentle. I don’t tire easily of fog.

And all of it is true. But it’s a description of a fight (another of the Algea family). When I realized that, writing stopped on its own; the Muse had evaporated, at least temporarily.

Daily meditations continued, with corresponding, temporarily soothing, predictable results. One morning, I had a serious conversation with my body, and was more than a little surprised when both Pain and Inflammation took different forms, and showed up for a cup of tea, and to give me some instruction. Because they have a remarkable ability to both command and detract one’s attention at the same time, listening was a challenge. I have had several conversations with them since then, admittedly, somewhat less than mutually interactive, and only reflectively instructive, by which I knew they were real.

My familiar adversaries had changed to unfamiliar allies.

I simply didn’t know how to behave, how to relate to them in roles that were completely new to me. All I could do was to pay attention, respectful attention, which was sufficient. My instruction began:

One lesson addressed the difference between knowing about something and knowing it deeply, somatically, and psychically, which requires listening in unfamiliar ways and not dismissing images and ideas that spontaneously arise in my consciousness.

Another lesson I learned, more deeply, is one does not get to choose one’s psychic or spiritual allies; my conscious ego was not in control, and there was no explanation that I could supply, to offer as a rational denial.

And yet another included a review of the refining functions of the Algea and of Pain and Inflammation in particular, and with that came a flood of understanding: they had been allies all along. Severe. Unrelenting. Their radiating power sometimes dulled by drugs and merciful sleep, allowing an occasional day and a half of misunderstood relief. But their power continued, heating, burning off dross, layers of assumptions, false thinking, and ego driven intentions, and continues, burning even the metal being refined, until only the vapor, the alchemical essence of pure attention remains, allowing for a sort of seeing that is past vision.

These teachers are old school. Requiring crawling through the darkness of heat to get to this place illuminated by burning the bushes of the past, a place of the dark sun.

It is said that what we want, more than that, what we need, perhaps more than anything, is confirmation, acknowledgement of one’s self. Which doesn’t imply agreement, but a sort of recognition that indicates we have been heard, and listened to. It means getting as little as a nod, an acknowledgement if it comes from the right source. When that nod comes from the divine the nod becomes the numinous.

I fell into this cave, nearly drowned in this river of pain, and now realize I will walk out on a foundation of solidified fire, a path of physical pain and numinous teaching. There is no other way. But pain will not carry me out. I will walk out, and walk on cobblestones condensed from the fog of pain, that have rained down, coming in storms, like squalls blowing in off the ocean, the way illuminated by light provided by my incandescent allies.

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