Pain Body: Be one with it—don’t run from it!

The only way you can endure your pain is to let it be painful.
(Shunryu Suzuki)

I work with enough folks in the spiritual community to know that many of us carry pain bodies around. We know about it because we have the mindfulness and guts to just sit there and let the pain of the past, triggered by an occurrence in the present, bubble to the surface. We just sit there and open up to it, without trying to escape, without trying to blame it on others, without trying to medicate it away. It sucks to open up the pain of the past and the present, but we do it because we understand that this is the only way to break with the vicious cycle of the past.

Most of us experience the pain inflicted on us, at work, at home, or in random encounters with obnoxious strangers. We don’t realize that this pain body is within us instead. We keep changing jobs, maybe because we don’t like the people we work with very much. We keep changing partners because the last one, once again, hurt us, doesn’t get us, or simply is, well, boring. What we don’t realize is that the outer world just mirrors back to us the inner hurt, our inner restlessness, that has to come to the surface one way or the other. The French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal once said. ‘All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.’ If we did we would realize, the pain body wants to be expressed, with or without the others. We don’t because we have been programmed to believe that only by running around, by getting, by achieving, do we have a chance of being happy. Well, we don’t!

When you observe how some lose it at work, lose it with family and friends, is just the pain body being deflected on others. Have a close look at all the hurt that bubbles to the surface. Isn’t it true that somewhere deep inside we want to be loved? Only by facing the pain, by understanding our craving for love, by being one with the pain, do we have a chance to let go of it for good. Only by forging those that hurt us in the past can we move on. Only by finding the self-love do we have a chance to be finally at peace. Do you know the expression, ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’? Well, the equivalent for getting rid of the pain body is, ‘feel the pain, and be one with it, don’t run from it!’ Just sit there and see it deflate into nothingness.