Pain - an excerpt from WELL

[Excerpt from WELL]

Often, a question comes up about physical pain. And of course the risk in a conversation about no objective reality is that the pain and the experience of the individual is dismissed as ‘just your thinking’ or even ‘there is no body therefore there is no pain’. And the teacher gets to look clever and the individual retreats shamefully back into their silent world of suffering, apparently not spiritual enough to live free from arthritis, migraines or sciatica.

So how do we walk this tightrope of the absolute realness (and imprisonment) of the individual experience and the understanding (and liberation) that there is no reality? How do we do that without negating and denial? Without loading more suffering and self-blame into a mind that is already drowning in it?

A good place to start is in the body. In the raw sensations that sing out before words get to them, The body is as close to reality as it is possible to get. It is the intelligence of life in form and its every movement, message, indication and sensation is integral to the living system. In its raw state, this information is critical, but neutral, feed back on the demands and requirements of the system. It is real time reporting to which the whole system can seamlessly respond. That’s the design. It’s the deer shaking out the stress of the wolf attack. It’s the roots of the plant moving away from a patch of toxic earth. It’s our own liver and inner ear silently compensating for that bottle of red and our lungs and heart bringing equilibrium after the run for the bus.

An incredible, unfathomable system of life in form. And what happens is that the information of this system, instead of being taken as what it is - information about the system - is labelled, bundled into concepts and transported into the illusory reality of the ever-active mind. The sensations, instead of being sensations, now become evidence of whatever narrative of self is in place: failure or bleak futures or unfairness or whatever it is. The entire raison d’être of pain is to draw attention to itself. Like a warning light on a car. It is drawing attention to that part of the system. And is that all it is doing? I say ‘all’ without in any way meaning to dismiss the potential intensity and indeed torture of that experience.

I mean ‘all’ in the sense of - is it only information about the real time status of that specific area? Or has the pain been packaged up by the mind and transported into the far reaching lands: the future, the past, the reactions of others, the implications on jobs, the possible meaning behind the pain, the failure of the body. If so, then the system is entirely disrupted. Because the signal of pain is designed to bring the attention into the body, into this moment, into reality. It is not designed to throw the mind into the exhaustive effort of trying instantly to solve imaginary problems, to pin down and predict the unpin downable and unpredictable.

So instead of the pain fulfilling its function, it is misunderstood. And every time it fires, the mind is transported into a reality than has nothing to do with the actuality of what is happening. And because the pain is now evidence of the mind’s worst fears, the mind is on high alert. Every twinge sends it off into the full force of its resistance, stress and anxiety. In misunderstanding, the pain is ignored, other than as evidence of the narrative which is ruminated on, feasted on by the active mind. In understanding, this is reversed. The pain, the signal, the essentially neutral indication of the system is all there is. It is honoured as a King would honour soldiers bringing information from impenetrable lands. And the narrative? That hotch potch of fears, shames and needs that has scooped up the pain and is using it as evidence of its veracity? That can be there, no problem. It has no meaning though, no truth, no information. And when that is seen, the compulsion to spend time in it ebbs away.

Pain can bring the attention back to reality, to the intelligence of a miracle system.

Or it does the opposite.