True nature of pain and suffering

In this article I will make an attempt to describe some revelations and insights I had during a course of Vipassana. I don’t understand everything, some things I don’t understand at all, but I hope that my thoughts might help other people seeking to free themselves from old emotional pain and suffering.

If you’ve read “Power of Now” by Ekchart Tolle or even better, practiced the suggested techniques and observed the conditioned patterns of your mind then you know that most of our negative emotions arise from resistance to what is. Boredom, impatience, anger, intolerance, irritation, annoyance surface when we don’t accept what’s happening in the present moment. I am not going to talk about it in detail because Tolle explained it all much better than I ever could. If you are interested in learning more – read his book.

What I want to do is to touch on something else that happens – something that’s going on in the body. Our body possesses its own, though primitive and instinctive, consciousness. As a matter of fact, this is what we call “subconsciousness” or the “unconscious mind”. This is because all the processes in the body take place without us being consciously aware of them. The beating of a heart, blood flowing through blood vessels, breathing, the immune system – those are just few examples. Also, our body has an ability to automatically and instinctually react to danger. One of the reactions is a contraction of our muscles, nerves and, possibly, the cells themselves.

If you observe yourself in a moment of intense fear you will see how the muscles of your stomach contract in response. This is a more obvious reaction.

But there is another aspect of this reaction. It occurs not only when there is a real danger, but also when our “thinking” mind interprets something as negative, unwanted, unpleasant or dangerous. For example, it’s cold and rainy outside. As soon as we think: “What an awful weather!”, our body contracts and sometimes we might even begin shivering. If we think that the weather is wonderful – this reaction doesn’t happen.

If you have a painful place in your body right now – direct your attention to it. Close your eyes and just observe it very closely. You will notice that the underlying sensation in this place is just something like pressure, tension, maybe some stretch. Pain arises when the body resists those sensations and our muscles and nerves contract around this place. If you completely concentrate your attention on this place and will your body to relax – the pain will disappear and only the underlying sensation will remain. What this means is that suffering results not from the pain itself, but from the body’s resistance to it!

Now imagine that there is some conditioned thought living inside you, perhaps from your childhood, or passed on you by your parents, or maybe from previous lives. For example, “Nobody loves me”. Each time we react to a situation which, as it seems confirms our belief, the corresponding thought enters our mind (most of the time without awareness on our part) – our body reacts to this situation by contraction of some organs or body parts.

And so, time after time our heart (or some other muscles or body parts) contract from this pain, leaving a deeper and deeper wound. Now it’s written in cells of the body itself, deep in our subconsciousness. Then the process follows this path: Somebody said something, or did something, something happened around us – something that our mind automatically and conditionally interprets as “nobody loves me”. The body instantaneously react to it and from its depth emotion arises. It happens so fast that we are totally unaware of the process. By the time this emotion reaches our consciousness it’s too late. This emotion is raging in our inner world, spreading around negative energy, destroying our own health and sucking everybody around us into its vortex.

And so we go about our lives, reacting habitually and automatically to outside stimulus, being totally overpowered by forces out of our control. And because each of us has accumulated whole bunch of these automatic, conditioned responses – you can imagine the depth of suffering we all live in.

Then the question is: how do we get rid of these old pains and reactions? Only by uprooting them on the level of the body. We start by learning to accept what is (and sometimes part of “what is” is pain). This way we stop generating new pain and suffering.

Then, old pain begins to come to the surface and it becomes possible to transmute it into a positive energy. At this point, the most important thing we can do is to learn to become more and more AWARE of our emotions or our physical pain. Quite often the reason we don’t FEEL any emotions is because we have so much fear of them that we shut them down before they even reach our level of awareness. Fear serves as a sort of a gatekeeper. It’s a protective mechanism we learned as children when we couldn’t deal with intensive pain or negativity. So, if you realize that fear doesn’t really protect you, and you ALLOW yourself to start feeling whatever comes, the process will start unraveling.

The next step is to practice staying aware when any negative emotion arises. As soon as you become aware of existing negativity (in whatever form – anger, hurt, irritation, heaviness, discontent, etc) – stop whatever you are doing (if it’s practically possible), direct your full attention to your body and find the place where this pain is rooted. Concentration on the tensed spot leads to its relaxation, and as a result, releases and transmutes this “stuck” energy.

This also increases awareness of your body. On a theoretical level it can be explained like this: the more we become aware of our body, the more it relaxes and the accumulated old pain gets released from the habitually contracted parts of our body. Literally, old suppressed feelings come to the surface!

For those who never paid attention to their bodies and whose connection with it is weak or non-existent, extra help might be needed. There are a multitude of different techniques, methods, teachings and practices that can be used. It’s very important to choose a technique because it increases your awareness. For example, rebirthing, various forms of body work, massage, balancing techniques, etc., can definitely help to untie the old energy “knots.” But as far as I know they don’t really increase awareness and won’t help to penetrate into the depths of your subconscious mind.

From my own experiences, I believe that the best practice available in our times is Vipassana. But also yoga, tai-chi and martial arts - all of these can be beneficial as long as we use them to increase conscious awareness. I am sure there are other techniques that exist out there which I don’t know about, but I’m sure you can find something that will work for you. When there is a will, there is always a way.

The main thing – is that liberation from pain and suffering is possible, and the first step on this path is a recognition that it exists in your life. Only then will the process of healing and transformation start. And so will your journey on the path to your freedom and happiness.

May all beings be happy and have beautiful breasts which feel liberated and free!