Eckhart Tolle discusses whether you can dissolve the pain body, the accumulated emotional suffering stored in your mind and body. He explains how awareness and acceptance in the present moment work to address it, rather than fighting or resisting the pain.
Hi. I feel as I become more aware, my pain body becomes more. It becomes overactive at times when it does hit me. And I'm wondering if there's a way. Do we ever dissolve entirely the pain body? Can we ever dissolve it?
Okay, yes, I've quite a few times people have asked that question. And it's an important, valid question. But a more important point is before I answer that question, to what extent you still identify with it or get taken over by it, because that is where the pain body continuously renews itself. To what extent does this old emotion that gets triggered from time to time, to what extent does it truly possess you and rises up into your mind and totally determines while it is active, what you think and what you do and how you react to people and situations. To what extent does it take you over totally? Or is there already a gap of awareness where you are able to know that the pain body has become activated and it is not totally using your mind and not totally controlling what you do or say? So how does that look in your life?
When I interact with people, I feel like I'm aware. I'm more aware of it and able to calm it, you know. But I think it's when I'm by myself that it's most penetrating. Especially after a night or a beautiful day and I go to sleep feeling very at peace and I wake up and it's just there.
Ah, yes. Associated with certain kind of mind activity.
Not really just waking up in the morning lately. Yes, it's just penetrating. I wake up and it's boom, right there. It's very penetrating. I don't know why I would go to sleep one way.
Where do you feel it? In your head. In your head. Like a clamp.
Strong force, pressure.
Yes. But not particular kind of thoughts. Maybe.
I guess on some level when I really evaluate it, probably just a cycle of, you know, lack of success in a certain area of my career or life. So it repeats. Am I going to start the same day and continue the day as I and not get anywhere with it?
Yes, you know. Yes. A powerful way to approach it and ultimately dissolve it is to accept, in whatever form the pain body arises, accept that that's how it is at this moment. Accept the reality of this moment. In this case, it's the inner reality of this moment. It would also apply to the outer reality of this moment and be with it as the aware space for it. So you step back. A way of putting it is you take a step backwards from it into yourself. And so here is the feeling. And so you go back within, so to speak. Not literally, of course. You step back and you become the awareness that's around it, that's always there. But you can lose consciousness of that when a strong phenomenon arises, either external or internal. A storm can absorb all your attention, but be the space for it always. And that is the most powerful way to dissolve what's there, rather than even wanting to get rid of it. Wanting to get rid of it very often strengthens it and produces a new level of problems. Because then by wanting not to have it and get rid of it, you not only have the problem of having that, you have the problem of not being able to achieve to get rid of it. And so you can get angry about that or upset about that, but you are most powerful when you're able to bring acceptance to whatever arises at this moment. And that requires a certain alertness. It is not a passive state. In one sense it is passive because it says this is what is. And that this gesture seems to be a passive gesture. It seems to be a gesture of allowing passivity. But that's not all. Because without the active principle at the same time, which is an uncompromising yes to what is, which is not that, it's the sort of presence, this is what is, and this is what I accept, because this is what is. That's the other polarity. The two come together in complete acceptance. It's a passive principle of allowing and the active principle of cutting through all the nonsense of the human mind with a sort of presence. And say, see, one could say it's the masculine and feminine, male and female combined. So you have often you see images of Kuan Yin or Mary, like this is the archetypal female spaciousness, space, beautiful. And then of course, we could also say this is the female and then this is the male, and the two have to come together. And that is true acceptance. So it's an uncompromising yes, which is the sort of presence, and it's the seemingly passive embracing what is practice. Use that as your spiritual practice. Then any phenomenon that arises, whether external or internal, in this case, it's internal phenomenon can become fuel for the fire of presence. Anything that arises. So rather than wishing it away, use it as fuel for presence.
Why is it I'm getting that? But literally at night, feeling that and being okay with whatever, I wake up. But then it's just yes, you have.
To let go of the why. Because then you start pursuing it. The mind, of course, does that.
I analyze it way too much.
Yes, because if you pursue the why that leads you to more whys, it leads you to that why. And then you would have to go back to to pass lifetimes. And even that's not enough because maybe it all started the bottom of the sea when before life came out of the sea where you got eaten a million times by other fishes.
Thank.
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