Understanding the Pain-Body | A Special 3 Part Compilation from Eckhart Tolle

The more presence you are able to bring in, the better your mind will actually function when it's needed. Instead of having a function that is purely self serving, that purely strengthens the ego, which is for many people, that's 80% of their thinking or 90% of their thinking is self serving and problem making and not problem solving. It's problem making, not problem solving.

So that's the practice then is an.

Important part of the practice is be aware not only of what your thoughts are creating, also the emotional field that is there. Beware of the emotions that arise because that can. Emotion coupled with thought can have you in its grasp and you can't get out. You're completely. I mean, you all have experienced anger, what that is like when it's an emotion and it's usually accompanied by a story emotion that energizes the story and the story gives more energy to the emotion. And the vicious circle happens and you talk about it and think about it. This situation that makes you so angry and you get even more angry, it's horrible. And so you've all experienced how unpleasant that is. But you don't know when you're in the grip of it. You love it. Not you, but the ego which you mistake for who you are. The ego loves it. When you're in the grip of anger, you don't want to let go. You don't want to let go. You cannot awaken a person, even a person who is, let's say you live with somebody and if that person is being taken over by an emotion, like especially the pain body as I call it, perhaps most of you know what I mean by pain body. Pain body is an old emotion that still lives in you, a painful emotion that subsides in you. And sometimes it's dormant, sometimes it comes active in order to feed on more drama and more pain. So periodically the pain body which is accumulated, trapped, negative emotion often goes back to childhood and perhaps past lifetimes. If you want to go there, you don't have to believe in it. But the pain body in some humans can be very, very heavy, which is accumulation of painful emotion that lives in them. Not always active. Sometimes it's dormant, you hardly feel it, and then suddenly something triggers it and it wakes up. And if you have lived with somebody that perhaps the first time that you have observed it, let's say you fall in love and then suddenly, a week or a couple of months after you living together, the other your partner suddenly goes through some weird transformation. It's not the same person anymore. It's some little monster that suddenly is. Who is this? Who is this suddenly very aggressive or very deeply awfully angry and goes through complete transformation of their personality. And like a monstrous transformation.

Oh, my God.

And I signed a contract to be with this person forever. So all it means you first encountered their pain body. They were taken over by this emotional field. And the pain body attempts to feed on other people's reactions, negative reactions. It presses the buttons that it most will provoke a negative reaction in the other. It'll say just the right thing that is hurtful to get the negative reaction. And so, in other words, the pain body in you will awaken the other person. Attempt to awaken the other person's pain body, who presumably also has one, maybe not as strong, but probably has one.

And.

And it attempts to get the real. And this is how drama in relationships periodically happens. And the two that were in love yesterday, the next day, they are mortal enemies. At least for a few hours or a couple of days or three, they are suddenly mortal. They hate each other deeply. It's in the grip of their pain. And then sometimes it happens.

Then.

A little bit of time subsides. And then gradually they both wake up again, not into enlightened consciousness, but into normal unconsciousness, not deep unconsciousness, which is the pain body. And so they wake up and say.

Oh.

And then they make up. Maybe they make love because they make up. Feels good after a pain body.

Oh, all is well.

You can't even remember why. What you were fighting about. Can't even remember it.

Okay, all is well.

We are fine again. Okay. Then two, three weeks pass, and again happening again. Oh, my God. And again and again. I can't take any more of this. And sometimes the intervals between pain body episodes get shorter. And then this beginning of the end, and unfortunately, they don't recognize it for what it is. There's not enough presence to have at least some degree of disidentification from that entity which is the pain body.

I regard it.

I suggest that you look upon it almost as if it were a little entity that lives in you. A little monster or gremlin or something that lives in you. There's this weird in. I think it's in. In Lord of the Rings, there's this weird creature, Golon or something. I can't remember what it's called. And that creature is, to me, I see it as a personification of the human pain body because it lives in continuous deep pain. And it's beautifully portrayed. Also in the movie, it goes like, just. There's the pain body, you can see it. You can learn a lot by just watching that. And maybe that thing lives in you somewhere. Maybe it lives in you. And occasionally it wakes up and wants to feed on more of the same vibrational frequency that makes up its being. So it feeds on drama and unhappiness and whatever form it may take. So once you recognize it, that's the beginning of the end of the pain body. But the recognition of it requires you to be present with it when it arises. First you recognize it in the other person has her pain body or his pain body, that is. What do I do now? Oh, my God. Well, the important thing is that your pain body does not get triggered by it. Can you stay present? Not easy. And again, this is. You're being challenged and this is what is good.

You can actually. You're now required to be more present.

Than you would normally be when you're with somebody who is deeply unconscious in that moment, you need to be really present to turn up the dimmer switch the light. You need to be really present so that you don't get drawn into this and drawn down to the same level of unconsciousness.

So you're present and you observe.

You know exactly what's happening. You know this is the other person's pain, but it's not. Not who or what they actually are in their being. It is something that kind of possesses them right now, so you don't need to react to it as if it.

Were their real being.

And then you can stay conscious while it's happening. I suggest to couples who sometimes experience these periods of drama, pain body periods have an agreement. If you both realize the importance of awakening have an agreement. Not while you're in the grip of the pain body. There's no arguing with the pain body. No rational argument would ever get through. You can't do that. But when you're both relatively conscious, say, okay, again, last week, do you remember when we had our pain body attack?

Yes. Okay.

And don't start with yes, but you started it. No, don't go there. It's not necessary to go there. You said there was a pain. Doesn't matter who started it. That was the pain view. Okay, next time let's agree. If you see the beginnings of a pain body in me, please let me know. And the other person says, okay, I agree. You see it in me. Also, please let me know that this is the pain body so that I can stay conscious so that I don't get taken over by it completely. And you might even agree on A little sign that you. Whatever it is, and then so you have agreement and you have permission to point out mutually the other's pain body. And then just wait for the next episode to happen. And then comes the critical moment and then you observe it arising in the other. The first thing, it's just the first thing. They say it's the beginning of the. Or you know, it's a certain thing that always creates a pain body in them. Maybe it's to do with money or whatever it may be something. And then you say ah, there your pain body perhaps arising. You have to be really careful. And if that person has still some consciousness, he or she will say maybe it is. Let me check inside. However, it's possible that this person has already gone beyond that level and is no longer hearing what you're saying because the pain body is. Now you're no longer talking to him or her, you're talking to the pain body. And so if you'd miss it or it happens so quickly that you miss the beginning of it and then you say that your pain body. And then the pain body will speak back to you. How dare you save my pain. Look at your own pain body. You're just projecting. It's yours, it's always yours. And no rational argument will ever get through the pain body. It's completely pointless because the person is very unconscious and that moment is in the grip of this entity, as I call it, like a little gremlin. But it's a wonderful practice. I find that people with heavy pain bodies have a stronger motivation to awaken spiritually than people with relatively weak pain bodies because it's just. Just can't stand it anymore. And so I had a very heavy pain body. The first up to the first 29 years of my life I had a.

Very heavy pain body.

Was often very despondent and deeply unhappy. Sometimes angry, unhappy with myself. And this periodically the pain body comes up more strongly and then it subsides. If you live with somebody, it will use other people to feed on others reactions. If you don't live, if you live alone, the pain body can still feed, but it cannot feed because there's nobody around you. It will feed on your thought processes. So the negative energy of the pain body will go into your mind and then your mind will think, or rather the pain body will think through your mind and then every thought you have is deeply negative. There we go. Thank you. The demonstration.

Please sit down.

I'm addressing the pain body and you're hearing me. It's not the Pain body, you are able to hear me and you are able to now sit down and simply observe the energy that is within yourself. This is often the case that when I talk about that, the pain body reacts and it doesn't want the light shining on it. But you love the light because you are the light. You are not that energy. You are the light. So often it happens, and I've had it in the past when I worked with individuals, the pain body gets very restless when shining the light on it. So it's a universal human condition that you need to, it's not your individual problem, it's universal human condition. So allow it to be observe it so that it no longer has you in its grasp. And then you, your consciousness grows and the pain body begins to subside as you begin to observe it more and more. So this is a very important part of the awakening of human consciousness is to be aware of the pain body, not stop identifying it. You feel the energy of it, but you are the awareness. You are not it. You are the awareness behind it. And you are infinitely stronger as awareness than the pain body. So ultimately the pain body cannot survive in the light of your awareness. So what happens to doesn't get destroyed. It gets the energy that was trapped at a low vibrational frequency. The energy that was trapped in there becomes transmuted into consciousness or light. And that's the wonderful process of it. This is the alchemical, the real meaning of the alchemical process of the transformation of base metal into gold. The base metal is the pain body. It looks awful and unpleasant, but it is necessary. It is part of the challenge that humans find that they need to face in this incarnation. It's a necessary part of the awakening. It's one of the biggest challenges, but we wouldn't grow without it. So please work with it. Observe it as it still arises in you. The beginning of the end of it is the ability to see it, to sense it, to feel it, and then there it is. You are the presence, the light of presence in which it arises.

That is so.

You are much more vast than it. You are that. You are the light of the world, said Jesus. Which means. What does that mean when he tells people you are the light of the world? Which means you are the consciousness of the universe manifesting as a person. And the strange, almost one could say paradox, is that as I said before, the challenges, the obstacles to the awakening are actually the portal to the awakening. And this is very important. The pain body looks like a huge obstacle to the awakening in you. But again, like other obstacles, it is needed as a challenge to bring about an awakening.

You always carry the burden of yourself around the unhappy me with brief interludes of illusory happiness. Meeting someone in a bar or this exciting new person, and a few days later or weeks later, he didn't make me happy. So when you don't complain about not only other people, but also about your life, then you can't be a victim anymore. And there are quite a few people who have a huge investment in their victim identity, which can be either personal or collective. Now, you may indeed belong to a collective, racial or otherwise, that traditionally and historically has been disadvantaged. You may indeed be part or have come out of a so called marginalized group that has experienced discrimination in the past and may even still experience discrimination in the present. And so you may be part of that. And undeniably certain historical things happened. And it is very seductive to the ego and ego strengthening to seek your sense of identity in feeling that you belong to this group of people. And this is very seductive and seems to make sense. But you will be trapped. You're walking into a prison. You're walking into a mental prison. By deriving your sense of identity from being a victim in your mind, whether it's on a personal level, things might have happened to you as a person. In your childhood, somebody treated you very badly, a father, a mother, a caregiver, somebody else. So that you still carry the scars or wounds of your childhood with you. Undoubtedly, these things happen quite frequently to human beings. And yet, if the narrative that you form in your mind and that becomes the basis for your sense of self is one of victimhood, then you are imprisoned in a conceptual, deeply entrenched sense of identity that is also ultimately fictitious. Because whatever happened to you is not.

Who you are now.

It is not your true nature. Yes, the emotional scars may be there and you can still feel them, but who is it that feels the emotional scars and the emotional wounds at this moment? Who is it that feels these things? I feel them. Well, who is I? I is not what you feel. That's an emotion. It's not a thought. I is the light of consciousness in which these feelings are being experienced right now. So undoubtedly, you may still experience scars or wounds from past pain. You may experience it as the pain body inside you, but the pain body is not who you are. It is an accumulation of past emotional pain. To make it into who you are, and then forming a narrative on the basis of the pain body is a very seductive thing, can happen very easily, seems to make A lot of sense, because millions of other people are doing the same thing. And you can, even if it's collective rather than personal, you can even get a great sense of belonging. But you are condemned to living through and in the conceptual prison in your mind. Not only that, you're also condemned through, especially if it's a collective victim identity in making other groups of people no longer looking at the individual, but making the entire group of people into your enemy. Of course, as you know, the ego loves its enemies. It strengthens itself, strengthens itself enormously through creating the conceptual idea of your enemies.

You need to be vigilant to see how reactive you are with other people and situations do you go into. Some people just are looking for the next thing to have something to object to or complain about, a grievance, looking for a cause, a walking grievance, looking for the next thing. The Internet is full of these people too, with grievances. The Internet is a great place for the ego to play out its grievances, its upsets, its complaining, its judging and criticizing and self righteousness and victimization. Making myself into a victim of other people. The millions of people are engaged in these unconscious enterprises. So the Internet is a wonderful reflection of the unconscious human mind. And occasionally you get little conscious things happening on the Internet too. So it's not all of it is unconscious, just 95%. So watch out for the reactivity in you to see. The pain body has something to do with it too. I haven't mentioned it so far, but you all know what the pain body is. The old emotion in you that lives in you, has lived there for years, started in childhood, maybe even started before that. Old emotional pain accumulated inside you. Sometimes it's dormant, you don't even know it's there. Sometimes it gets triggered by a person, by a situation, by something somebody says, somebody you live with especially can trigger your pain body very easily. And some relationships actually are based on periodically triggering each other's pain bodies. So you say one thing, any overreaction to another, what somebody says or does or fails to do or fails to say. In relationships, any overreaction is usually pain body when you react far, an outsider would say, why do you have such a strong reaction to this? And then you get taken over by the emotion. The emotion flows into your mind and the emotion starts speaking through you. The emotion is an energy field that's trapped in there. So many people, most people carry some trapped pain as an emotional pain that you carry from the past, childhood especially. There's no child that does not experience pain one way or another. And most especially living in our civilization, our society that doesn't know about the essential things, Very few people. Well, there may be more. Now I know quite a few. I've met quite a few children in the past few years who have relatively conscious parents. And that's a wonderful thing. The parents who endeavor to live consciously may not succeed all the time, but endeavor to live consciously. In my generation, there was unknown. There were no conscious parents. All the parents, though there might have been some, I never met any. All parents were unconscious. So they inflicted on their children what their parents had inflicted on them. And it goes back many, many generations. So consciousness, it is vital to be there when the pain body awakens in you and you overreact. And you love the drama of it, or your partner loves the drama of it. And the pain body feeds on two things. It feeds on two things. One is the other person's emotional reaction to you. It wants more of goes into your mind, takes you over the emotion. You can watch a person, sometimes you can see the person being taken over by the emotion completely like a person possessed. And with very unconscious people who have extremely heavy pain bodies, they can even commit acts of violence in that state. Not all acts of violence are committed.

By the pain body, but that's another matter.

But some are, many are. But if it's not physically violent, it's emotionally violent. And you have. When you start living with a person, a moment comes soon after moving in together. When you experience the other person's pain body as an emotional overreaction and wanting you to react to what they are saying. They want an emotional reaction from you. And the drama begins to happen. The pain body loves, feeds on the drama. And then it says something just to hurt you a bit more so that you react even more, so the drama is played out. Could take a half an hour, one hour, three hours, one day, two days, two days. Varies. In relationships, favorite place for the pain body is partners. Personal relationships, families can be at work too. But the main thing is loves to have a contract with your partner. You feed mine and I feed yours. And then after a while, the pain body has taken in enough energy and enough new pain. And then you make up and make love and all is well. And then you have to wait just a few days, maybe two weeks, and happen again. So when I talk about reactivity, after a while, the pain body has taken in enough energy and enough new pain. And then you make up and make love and all is well. And then you have to Wait just a few days, maybe two weeks, and happen again. So when I talk about reactivity, reactivity comes from the emotion of the pain body in you. So you need to be vigilant, particularly there. And so what do you do? You recognize it for what it is. You recognize that this is an emotion in you so that you don't completely become it. There's an awareness that remains in the background. You may not be immediately free, but you recognize it as an emotion in you and you become the observer of it. Then it cannot use your mind. I said there are two ways in which the pain body renews itself. One is in relationships. But what does the pain body do? If you don't have a relationship, what's the pain body going to do? Then you live alone. Who is the pain body going to provoke to get a reaction? Well, easy. If you live alone, the pain body will use your mind to feed on. When it's feeding time, the emotion will rise into your mind. It might be in the middle of the night and the emotion goes into your mind and suddenly you start thinking very painful thoughts. It could be about yourself, it could be about your life, your so called life. It could be about somebody close to you. Those painful thoughts will overwhelm your mind. Very negative thoughts. And you don't realize that your mind has been invaded by the emotion of the pain body. And every thought that your mind thinks resonates now with the energy of the pain body and it feeds it. A vicious circle starts happening. The emotion uses your mind and creates certain thoughts in you which you completely believe in when you are unconscious. And the thoughts, because every thought is an energy, feeds the emotion. So you feel even worse. With every negative thought that you have, you feel even worse. And then you can detect.

That on.

Some weird level you actually enjoy that. And you don't want to get free of it. Who is enjoying it? It's the egoic entity strengthens itself through that enormously. It loves its unhappiness.

And in the moment.

If somebody came into the room and told you that, it doesn't have to be like that. You don't have to believe every thought that comes into your head because it's an illusion. You wouldn't want to hear what they have to say. You don't want at that moment, you don't want to be free. You are in the grip of it and it loves it. That's the addiction to unhappiness. So some people live in it for short, brief periods periodically. Others spend longer periods of time in the Grip of emotional unhappiness. Some people are in the grip of pain body 50% of the time, even more. And the longer, the more miserable your life is. The perception of your life the way you perceive your life.

So any reaction.

Reflects back to you how present you are. When you are present, you can observe the pain body arising in the moment it gets triggered. And you can sense the emotion. And then it doesn't need to overpower you. And it may still be there, but it may not need to control what you're saying anymore. If you live alone, then you can notice the emotion. But you don't have to go to there where the emotion wants to take you. You don't need to. You can give attention to your emotion directly. Be aware of it so that it doesn't rise up. And use your mind so you just be aware of it. Might be fear, it may be anger, it may be deep irritation with something. Those are the usual ones that are associated with pain body. Sometimes it's a deep sadness. So you can feel the emotion. Accept that it's there and be there as the presence for it. Be there as the observing presence. Be alert. Don't say it shouldn't be there because it is. It is part of the present moment. Don't deny anything that's arising in the present moment. You might as well accept it, it's.

Right here and now.

Fine. And be the awareness. Then it cannot rise up into your mind and renew itself through your thought processes. So you're free and it will subside more quickly. Then it may stick around for a while, but when it sees it's not being fed, then it'll go back into its dormant state, waiting for a better opportunity. Which could be any time when your level of presence has gone down. And that could happen through watching rubbish on television for three hours or a movie. That's very negative. Your presence goes down. Having too many drinks. Presence goes down. So where some people become quite happy when they drink.

Singing and so on.

There'S another phenomenon with drink. And that is it makes the person so unconscious that the pain body has an incredible opportunity to play itself out fully. So some people become happy when they drink until they collapse if they go on, of course. But others become actually violent when went through alcohol. That's an interesting phenomenon. They drink too much and they become violent. This means that the alcohol diminishes the little consciousness that they had when they were sober. The little consciousness that they had that prevented them from being totally taken over by the anger that's built up over the years that is taken away from them, even the little they had. And so the pain body can now take them over completely. And that's why people can become very violent through alcohol. And sometimes this is how marital abuse, spousal abuse happens. Often it's caused by, it's caused by the alcohol, but ultimately it's not caused by the alcohol, it's caused by the pain. Having the alcohol having deprived the person of the little consciousness they had and given the pain body an opportunity to take them over completely. When that episode in, let's say it's a marital relationship with physical abuse, which happens millions of people, it's a dreadful thing when next day usually the little consciousness at this person had comes back and then he, he often it's a man, but it could be a woman. The person says to the other, let's say the man says, I won't do this again, I'm sorry I did this. I know I beat you up and.

You had to go to hospital, but.

This is never going to happen again. I'm sure you this is the last time. And then you say, okay, I believe you. And of course the person means it because there's some consciousness there and that consciousness sees what he has done. But when it happens again, that consciousness disappears. So it will happen again and again. And all you can do in that case is remove yourself and eventually hoping that this person, through inflicting so much suffering on others and ultimately on him or herself, will wake up through the suffering. So to summarize, beware of reactivity, especially the strong reactivity of the pain body, but any kind of reactivity in daily life. Because when you are reactive to situations and people, then you are in the grip of unconsciousness and you are at the mercy of whatever happens to going on around you. It's amazing that the amount of freedom that you can experience when whatever is going on around you does not touch you at the deepest level of your being. And that's an amazing sense of freedom you have. You can be in so called unpleasant surroundings and still feel totally okay. And then you're faced with a very unconscious person who is shouting abuse at you. And there's nobody there inside you to receive it because you're not thinking and you're not reacting, you're not suppressing a reaction that's not good. But you're just so present that there is no reaction.