A Mild Bruise

You must look inside yourself and determine that from now on pain is not a problem.  It is just a thing in the universe...But if you do not learn to be comfortable with it, you will devote your life to avoiding it.  If you feel insecurity, it's just a feeling.  It's just a part of creation.  If you feel jealousy and your heart burns, just look at it objectively, like you would a mild bruise.  It's a thing in the universe that is passing through your system.  Laugh at it, have fun with it, but don't be afraid of it.  It cannot touch you unless you touch it.
-Michael Singer from the untethered soul page 103

Hmm! Them there are mighty powerful words aren't they?  Do you agree with them or do you instinctively pull back defensively when you hear them?

The Instinctive Reaction To Pain

Most of us will pull away from them and from anything that tells us pain is not something we have to react too, right?  Why? We are conditioned socially and biologically to instinctively react  to pain or anything that is deemed uncomfortable.  You unknowingly put a hand on the hot  burner and a reflex arc takes over so quickly you are not even aware of it.  You pull your hand away. 

Well our minds are the same.  If something disturbing touches  the mind, its tendency is to retract, pull back and close off  in order to protect itself.  Life circumstances, situations, the things our bodies or what other bodies do  sometimes disturb us. And sometimes the truth itself  is disturbing.

The Truth is seen as painful

The truth that we do not have to stay stuck in our suffering is disturbing to many of us.  The reason for that is what Eckhart Tolle calls the pain body and what Carl Jung would have called the collective unconscious.

Huh?

Within us is a body of repressed pain collected over the course of our life time (easy to accept right?) and collected over the course of many generations (maybe not so easy to accept lol). Pain, like all the experiences life provides for us,  is simply a current of energy that enters and exits if nothing blocks it.  If the mind is resistant  to the experience, however, we may block it through a host of defense mechanisms including suppression, repression, denial, and avoidance. We then unconsciously cling, struggle against, project outwardly through blame and rage, stuff down, and/or ignore it. None of these reactions permit the experience of pain to pass through.

A Hungry Little Beast

Many believe that blocked energy accumulates and  forms an invisible mass inside us like a separate little entity (Tolle). And this little entity is always hungry...always looking to be fed so it can continue to grow.

 

What does it feed on?

It feeds on our new emotional experiences and our thoughts especially the negative ones.  It feeds on the reactions from others and this idea that Life isn't going the way it should. 

When it is feeding, when it is triggered and reactive, it is all consuming...We get lost in it; we become it like we were possessed by it.  The mind appeases it by providing more and more negative thoughts for it to munch on. It goes out into the world around us searching for food in the form of grievances, resentments, what's wrong etc .

The pain body (that big accumulation of repressed pain)  comes to the surface to feed on what it is given by the mind. It is hard to fill. It needs more and more and more.

Addictive Quality to Human Pain

That is why there is almost an addictive quality to human pain.When we are lost in our pain, we don't want to be free of it.  It is who we are, right?  We wonder:  if we get rid of the pain who will we be?  We often subconsciously resist getting better. Try telling a person in the height of their possession  by repressed pain that there is a way to be free of it and see what happens.  You will probably meet with something akin to  Linda Blair's rotating head.

Of course this is all happening at the subconscious level and happening as quickly and as automatically as the nerve impulse from the burning hand is being carried to the spinal nerves and back. It is a reaction. All because we have come to see pain as a problem and something to with draw from.

So what do we do about it?

• The trick is to change the way we see pain.  To stop labelling it as something bad.  Pain is just something in the universe. It is neither good or bad...until thinking makes it so.  It is no big deal until we make it a big deal.
• We have to be aware of these hungry little beasts, past pain,  inside us so we stop feeding them.  Once we shine the light in their faces they shrivel up and become small.  We are less likely to react.They are creatures that like to do most of their nasty work in the dark.
• Don't avoid or repress or numb from pain. Be aware of your tendency to do that...just be aware .
• Allow pain to simply be what it is.  Don't fight or struggle against it.  Resistance only makes it stronger. Remember: it is just a feeling.
• Take it a step further and do what Buddhism teaches...gently soothe,  hold and embrace your pain like a mother would hold a crying baby.
• You can take it in even farther when you are ready...to laugh at it and have fun with it just as you would a comical, fun experience.
• Don't be afraid of it.  Don't withdraw from it because it is uncomfortable. 
• Learn to relax into it and see it more as a way out than something that keeps you trapped inside.
• Know that it won't hurt you unless you strike out at it.  embrace it and hold it gently in your being instead...so that it will eventually feel the compassion it needs to leave and move on.
• Let go
• Be present: The unhappy me that lives through past and future dissolves when we become present. (Tolle)

Pain is just a mild bruise that will heal on its own if we give it the opportunity to do so.

All is well in my world.

References

Michael Singer (2007) the untethered soul. Oakland: New Harbinger

Eckhart Tolle (Sept, 2017) The Pain Body.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Gzoooxb6M4