The ego is a drama queen that demands only half of life’s experiences. It wants to bury the painful ones and keep the happy ones. It’s a mad, unconscious strategy that closes us off to all feeling. In trying to eradicate any pain, we tense up against every emotion, including pleasure. Pain versus pleasure is a distinction made only by the ego mind; you might as well ask for day without night, or up without down. It’s a meaningless pursuit.
What IS meaningful is to close your eyes and give your body some attention. Breathe deeply into it, noting all feelings and sensations. If you can welcome all these feelings and sensations without judgement, they will begin to ‘speak’ to you, especially the painful ones. These come from the wounded child in you and need to be acknowledged and accepted. It’s the very act of trying to push away what you label as painful or shameful or undesirable that feeds the pain-body and keeps your inner child petrified and hidden away.
You’re also ruining your health. Each time you feel afraid, whether the fear is apparent or bubbling away in the recesses of your consciousness, your body responds by flooding your system with harmful hormones and chemicals. There is every reason therefore to drop the drama because the only person you are hurting is yourself.
As you continue to look inside, relax any fear by just meditating on your thoughts and feelings from a slight distance with simple curiosity instead of judgment:
“I have learned to simply look at the way I operate – in my head, in my body, in my actions with simple curiosity and a complete suspension of judgment” (W.L., client)
The pain-body, being of the ego, loves to feel special. It revels in the drama of playing the victim and filling itself with resentment. Resentment literally means re-feeling the same old grievances held in the body. Insight shows us what happens when we keep nursing old hurts:
“The Aha moment showed me how often I play the victim in my relationship, seething with unspoken resentments instead of speaking up” (S. B., client).
When we are all tangled up in the pain-body, we literally can’t think straight. All we know is our fight/flight response has been switched on and we feel under threat. The reasoning part of our brain closes down as our body reacts like an animal under attack. When our neo-cortex is offline, we feel as lost and vulnerable as a child.
This pattern of unconscious and automatic response can only be broken when we allow painful feelings to come up and be seen for the nothingness they are:
“All I had to do was allow painful feelings to arise and then strip away these artificial layers to be who I always was. It was liberating in the true sense of the word, the freedom just to be” (P.S., client)
Artificial layers are held in place by unfelt feelings, frozen pain, petrified resentments. Contacting old hurt places brings deep understanding and releasing them is an emotional cleansing:
“I felt a rush of energy and understanding of this old hurt. A very deep moment occurred and I filled up with emotion and tears”. (C.L., client)
What we don’t understand about ourselves is that when we fail to acknowledge our own inner pain, we see it out there in the world. We need someone or something to blame for the fact that we feel lousy. So instead of recognizing that we are responsible for how we feel, we project our emotional dramas on to everyone and everything that presses our buttons. Our list of complaints and criticisms is endless until we stop and realize that we are doing this to ourselves!
Dramas can stop being projected onto the world when we are friendly to ourselves and accept our feelings:
“I am more with myself and my feelings, but in a place of acceptance.” (D.L., client).
Practices to Free YOUR Pain-Body
Emotional pain is triggered when you are either not getting what you want or you are getting what you don’t want.
Feelings of anger or hurt can be clues that you are suppressing what you need to say.
The next time you feel angry, ask for what you want or say clearly what you don’t want. The anger will quickly dissolve.
Soon you will realise that there is no need for anger or any other negative emotion to become part of the pain-body.
Simply express what you want or don’t want.