“The healing magic is attention….”

A conversation this morning about fear and what to do with it, and then this quote in my afternoon reading:

“The pain is in the aversion. The healing magic is attention. Properly attended to, pain can answer our most crucial questions, even those we did not consciously frame. The only way out of our suffering is through it. Conflict, pain, tension, fear, paradox–these are breakthroughs trying to happen. Once we confront them, we realize that the reward is worth the scariness of the unanesthetized life. The release of pain and the resolution of conflict make the next crisis easier to confront.” -Marilyn Ferguson (quoted in Rico, Pain and Possibility)

Writing it down is, of course, one way to pay attention.