Eckhart Tolle discusses how resistance to physical pain creates suffering, and how shifting into relaxed awareness of the sensation itself can ease it. The key is observing pain without the mental story you add to it.
Hello, I would like to ask about physical pain. Your expression of ease of being, it really speaks to me. And relaxed awareness that I feel something that always pushes me out of that is the physical pain I find inside just too much most of the time.
What are you, what do you experience? What kind of physical pain are you experiencing?
Stomach pain, bubbles and a lot of time. A lot of the time, just my whole body.
Your whole body aches?
Yes. And while I'm here, there is an immense inner body feeling. It's like. Like Eckhart says, having the socket just put in.
Is that painful?
It's so intense that it's sometimes too much, but I can still rest in it. But then the physical pain is so strong at the same time.
Are you in pain right now?
In this moment, when I'm speaking? A little bit. When I'm sitting down, it's much more. I've tried to shake it out, it seems to help a little bit. But I wonder, are there things I can do or just being with it? I see there is a lot of resistance too. And then watching the resistance makes the resistance just stronger. I stiffen up.
And you stiffen up when the pain happens, you mean?
No, the pain is there before, but trying to watch the pain makes it worse.
And watching the pain makes it worse.
Yes.
Is that what you said?
Yeah. And the tensing up of the whole body gets worse and.
Because you don't want to feel it, right?
Yeah.
Remains want it gone. Right.
I want it to be over. I'm aware of that, but I just can't avoid the thought of wanting to be. To be away. It's. It's just a circle. And the whole body goes into a stress reaction and.
Yeah, yeah.
How to be with that? I mean, I know there is resistance. I see it, but I can't stop it either.
It's okay. So if you can't stop the resistance, can you accept resistance?
Sometimes in a split second.
Okay, now can you stop resistance again? Accept it. I mean, if the resistance is there, then you got to accept resistance. If you can't, surrender to the pain, surrender to the sensations. If we drop the label pain. See, immediately when we feel a sensation in our body and it's painful, our minds goes, pain, No, I don't want it. And then we contract more and then the pain is even greater. If we let go of the label pain and just accept and feel the sensation, because all it is, it's sensation. The moment we label it, it's almost like we make it a solid form. If that makes sense. Does that make sense? It's like when you are looking at some flowers and you go, that's a rose. Well, it isn't a rose. It's a concept. Rose, it's a name. We call it rose, but it's not a rose.
Foreign.
It's like we. We stop the flow, the natural flow and the connection of this beauty right here. So the pain that's happening inside of you, and my guess is you know how our emotions are so connected to our body and our thoughts are so connected to our body, there's probably something in your conditioned self and habit forming of thoughts, maybe some negativity as well. And that accumulates. The energy stays stuck in the body and eventually does lead to pain. And maybe eventually it leads to some sort of illness. So accepting what accepting means you accept the present moment. You accept the form of the present moment as if would last for eternity. That's accepting the sensation of pain, the pain that you have or anything that you have. True acceptance means that you are willing to feel this emotion, this pain in your body forever. It.
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