Something I re-learned again: The Pain Body
“Many stressful emotional patterns repeat themselves again and again. This is the invisible threat of Self-Sabotage. And it is invisible simply because it is an unconscious pattern that repeats itself… Who is not touched by the impact of recurring times of sadness, anxiety, anger, or self-defeating behaviors?
There is an unseen force that causes us to unconsciously seek pain over and over again. Of course no one would do this consciously. No one likes to suffer. And yet we unconsciously create repetitive and unnecessary conflicts.
These self-destructive habit patterns are known as the Pain Body. It is a powerful unconscious force with great momentum. It’s purpose is to continue the pattern – to bring us pain.
In his book “A New Earth” Eckhart Tolle describes the pain body as a ‘psychic parasite’ that possesses you and causes you suffering. Everyone, but the truly enlightened, is infected to some extent.
In most people the Pain Body is dormant for some time and then awakens to assert itself and replenish its energies. And it derives its energy from pain. Pain is its food.
Here is an example of how you can notice the pain body:
It can happen sometimes in the beginning of an argument with someone. You catch yourself saying some unkind words and you think, “Why am I saying this? I know where this will lead. It will lead to a conflict and I don’t want a conflict.” But then those words come out of your mouth anyway and the conflict takes its course.
At first, before the Pain Body took over, there was still enough of you awake to have this awareness, but not enough to stop the words. Then, after the conflict, the Pain Body has fed itself and goes back to sleep again.
Maybe you thought, “My God what possessed me to say the things I said?” Well now you know.
The Pain Body is the shadow aspect of our being, the emotional part of the ego. If we want to live in harmony with ourselves and the world, we need to dissolve it.
We create our own reality through our thinking and our emotional patterns.
Until we change them, the same problems are likely to happen again and again, including our tendency to self-sabotage to keep the patterns in place. This is how we can stay stuck for a long time…
The resolution of this challenge comes when our yearning to experience the true freedom of liberation from suffering has become stronger than the old habits of interference…
You do this by becoming increasingly aware of the way you create suffering for yourself through your reactions to people and situations. Sometimes you may be able to feel the subtle onset of internal pain.
Shedding light into these situations will dissolve the pain body. It can only exist in the darkness of unconscious motivation.”
THE NEXT 