Pain Body (Not Pain In The Neck)

I have been working my way through the webcasts on Oprah.com for the book A New Earth. It is very interesting to see the text discussed, as opposed to just reading the book. Today I watched Chapter 6, with is about how to deal with the pain body. The pain body is the accumulation of negative emotion which we carry around with us that causes suffering. (Someone who is a pain in the neck is probably termed that because they are adding to your accumulated pain body!)

There were some interesting moment, as always, in the webcast.

Wanting something that isn’t there causes stress. This statement gave me pause, because it occurred to me how often I get upset about something or someone because they aren’t what I want or expect. If all I have is what is before right in this moment, then wanting anything else is stressful. And the reason that I feel that stress is not the situation itself, but rather the fact that I am not satisfied with now and want something else. All this stress is of my own creation. Not my fault, because that would imply right and wrong, but of my own manufacturing. So I just need to remember, stay aware, and choose to accept what is in front of me rather than wishing for something that isn’t there.

Identifying with what is right feeds the ego. Nothing adds conflict and stress to life like “I’m right and you’re wrong”. I do this in so many ways, as do we all. Sometimes it is outright statement of wrong, but sometimes it is the more gratuitous feeling that I know better (superior). This is the most insidious of all the self-delusion aspects for me.

The past cannot prevail against the now. This was one of the most powerful expressions! It does not matter how much pain and suffering I have experienced in the past, it does not have any power if you accept the now. Imagine that you have felt unloved and mistreated in the past. Now someone cuts you off in midsentence. If you do not bring the past (everyone in the past mistreated me and they don’t care about me) to this situation, then you have the opportunity to deal with this situation without all the baggage. Maybe the person cut you off because they were afraid to hear what you had to say, or they didn’t notice you speaking or any of a number of reasons. The cut off may have had absolutely nothing to do with you. If you can look at this now moment and accept that you were cut off, just that, with no other mind script, the past stays in the past. No suffering. So obvious and yet a difficult thing to practice. I feel like I am getting better at it. I wish I could always stay in the now, because when I do, I always feel much better.

I think that as a result of this episode, I am going to take some time and try to scope out my pain body. Figure out as many of the pains of the past that I can piece together. I want to do this for a couple of reasons. The first is that I want to introduce myself to those pains, look them in the face and make sure I can recognize them whenever I meet them again. The second reason is because I believe that once I really know them and can recognize them, I will be able to see that those pains developed scripts that start playing whenever I am faced with emotion, and I want to recognize the scripts and stop reciting them by rote.

I feel like I am already doing some of this already, but it cannot hurt to reevaluate those pains, especially as many of them were placed on me as a child, and I am no longer looking at the pain with a child’s eye.

I’ll keep you posted as to how this project on pain body goes! If you have knowledge, or think you do, of some scripting that you hear from me in emotional situations, please let me know! Usually other people see us more clearly than we see ourselves. I promise to try not to get into “your wrong about that” reactions. :)