Are there spiritual lessons in a toothache? Yes. I arrived home tired after a long visit with my dying mother. I did what I could, but my brother, her designated caregiver, assured me it was time for me to let go and let God.
As I entered my office I became aware of a throbbing tooth pain. Ouch! Hadn’t I experienced enough body illusion? I chose to ignore the pain and medicated the tooth with Sai Baba’s vibhuthi, for I believe in the healing properties of this sacred ash.
The Puttaparthi Master’s words reminded me, “You proceed from death to life and from illness to health by the experience of the buffetings of the world.
The world is a very essential part of the curriculum of man, through the agony of search is born the infant, wisdom. The pains are worthwhile; they indicate the birth of a new life.” Being immersed in the sensory world of family, I slipped back into old attachments, old fears…. I had forgotten my own divinity.
Swami said, “Pain and pleasure are like the two parts of a seed or the two sides of a coin. People should learn to treat pleasure and pain alike.
In fact, pain enhances the joy derived from the pleasure that follows. Pleasure and pain, loss and gain, fame and infamy are inextricably linked in the world. Man’s divinity consists in overcoming these opposites. Unfortunately, man falls prey to limitless desires and ends his life in misery and despair.”
The toothache persisted. So, I decided to go deeply into contemplation and review the many lessons learned as a result of pain.
For example, a broken heart taught how to love less exclusively. Loss of money, loss of reputation taught self-reliance. I fell asleep and woke feeling better.
Beloved Sai noted, “When a few tiny stones get mixed in rice and get between the teeth, you say in disgust that the plate of rice is a plate of stones. It is human nature to exaggerate in order to create an impression. We treat joy as incidental and insignificant and dwell more on grief and pain.”
Was I exaggerating the negative while ignoring the positive?
Maybe, for I had a fruitful visit with my mother, held her hands and heard her tell me how much she loves me. Also, having a younger brother who has undertaken all the details of caring for our mother is a great boon.
“There is pain only so long as attachment for outer forms remains,” the Preceptor taught. “Ultimate relief from pain can come only from loss of ego, the neutralization of that which reacts to something as pain and something else as pleasure, whose memory, whose conditioning help to recognize the dualities of joy and grief…. The world is pain. Expect nothing from the world but that; I willed the totality of your conditioned existence to be pain, to draw you to Me.”
And here I am, drawn once more into the infinite Ocean of Love that is Lord Sathya Sai Baba because of a mundane toothache—which incidentally has gone away.