So much of the time, we can find ourselves in pain in one way or another, suffering in the face of what Zorba the Greek called “the full catastrophe” of life — nothing less than the human condition itself — which often manifests in our lives in ways we may not feel we had “signed up for.” But even in such moments, some other dimension of the experience may be available to us, especially if we notice that our awareness of the pain that we are experiencing isn’t itself in pain.
Of course, this takes investigation and looking where we most don’t want to look. That is one virtue of the cultivation of mindfulness and the intentionality behind the practice — to help us to turn toward that which we are most impelled to turn away from.