What is the pain-body?

 

Put simply, the pain-body is every emotional pain that you have experienced throughout your life, form childhood to today. Each of these painfully emotional experiences leaves a residue of emotionally scared memory with your body and mind that builds up over the many years of life lived. For most of us, it is not noticeable, until that is triggered by an event in the here and now, but it is the accumulation of all your negative energy in body and mind, so it will come out at some stage.

 

Mostly, the pain body is dormant, depending on the level of pain suffered and the ability or inability to release pain. So, someone who is usually quite positive and is emotionally mature enough to read books, sit in silence and is open to other world views, there will be little time and opportunity for the pain body to arise. While someone who is unhappy as a default (always complaining about something or someone) will suffer recurring periods of pain body attacks.

 

So, what is likely to trigger a pain body attack? Anything can trigger it, in particular if it resonates with a pain pattern from your past, such an abusive childhood in the past and suddenly being confronted with an angry person shouting at you and the person is likely to feel an overwhelming desire to fight or run from the situation; feeling threatened, intimidated and scared; similar to the past so they will think if they do not do something now, they face obliteration. But even a thought or an innocent remark made by someone close to you can activate it.

Most pain-bodies are obnoxious while relatively harmless, such as a child crying, while others are destructive and seem the embodiment of truly nasty demons. Some are physically violent; many more are emotionally violent. Some will attack people around you or close to you, while others may attack you, their host. Thoughts and feelings you have about your life then become deeply negative and self-destructive. Illnesses and accidents are often created in this way. Ultimately, some pain-bodies ill even drive their hosts to suicide.

For the onlooker, it seems strange and scary, when they think they knew a person, only to suddenly be confronted with this absolute stranger shouting, screaming, or passively disrupting their peace. As scary as it is to see in others, it is best observed in yourself if you are to truly understand the process and triggering of the pain-body. There are unmistakable moments of clarity when it’s possible to see the arising pain-body in yourself. Such as an irrational reaction to s frustrating situation, in the form of a car-jam, a delivery gone wrong, or a shoelace that snaps while running for the bus. Something out of our immediate control that has now disrupted our perceived state-of-mind and peace, will often be the triggering of a – usually mild – mood swings. The evidence of an underlying and usually active pain-body will be a constant state of agitation, annoyance, interest in gossip, a need to have some drama in your relationship, and so on. The key to better understanding it in yourself is to catch it as it emerges from its dormant state.

We must remember that the pain-body is just like any other entity and wants to survive. This is done by ensuring the host subconsciously recognise the existence and identify with it. It then rises and often takes over the host completely, resulting in a definite increase of drama in the host’s life. By provoking the drama through the host, the pain-body will feed on the drama and perpetuate the sense of dissatisfaction and desire for more drama. And it will feed on experiences that are related to the host, such as dramatic news, disasters befalling other people, complaining and so on. The pain-body will, once in charge of the host, create a situation that reflects its own energy frequency for it to feed on. Pain can only feed on pain. Pain cannot feed on joy. It finds it quite indigestible.

Once the pain-body has taken you over, you want more pain, until it feels sated that is and the host is left with an embarrassing sense of shame; “Why did I do / say / act like that?”

Being non-violent will make little difference, a host will easily become the victim or perpetrator, as long as it is involved in the cycle of pain and the cycle of pain has been perpetuated; inflicting pain on others, something, themselves, or suffer the pain directly. The host is not conscious of this directly, of course, and will vehemently claim that they do not want any pain, yet if they looked closely, they would find that their thinking and behaviour is designed to keep the pain going. When the host does become truly conscious of the pain-body the pattern slowly dissolves, for to want more pain is insanity, and nobody is consciously insane.

The pain-body, which can be described as the dark shadow cast by the ego, is most afraid of the light of your consciousness. When you consciously look at the pain-body and the thought-patterns it produces in your mind, it diminishes the pain-body’s influence on your thought-patterns and state of mind. The pain-body’s survival depends on your unconscious identification with it, as well as on your unconscious fear of facing the pain that lives in you. If you find the courage to bring the light of your consciousness into the pain, you can see the pain for what is, but if you don’t find the courage, you are forced to relive it again and again.

Many spiritual teachers describe the pain-body as ultimately an illusion, and this is true. But you need to know what to do to bring the light of consciousness to help diminish the influence, such as the following:

1                     Awareness & observation of the arising pain-body

2                     Non-judgement of the arising pain-body

3                     Self-compassion for the negativity that you feel

4                     Acceptance of the pain-body and the power it has on thought-patterns

5                     Daily meditation & still, deep-breathing exercise

6                     Self-expression f the pain and thoughts, so they can dissipate

7                     Gratitude for the great life that is and always will be…

 

So, in conclusion, the pain-body, as an entity made up of the cumulative emotional pain form our life so far that will arise when triggered by moments of perceived agitation, confusion, confrontation, rejection, insults, failure, annoyance etc… The consequences of which can result in us saying, doing or thinking the wrong thing, with potentially disastrous results, form offending people to harming people. Coming to terms with the effects of a pain-body and recognising the power the pain-body has will lead us all to the path of peace.

It is important to remember that the pain-body doesn’t want you to observe it directly and see it for what it is, so needs you to identify with it on order to maintain the power. As soon as you observe it, feel its energy field within you, and take your attention into it, the identification is broken, and you are closer to identifying with the authentic you and a greater dimension of consciousness has started to arise within you, better known as true presence. Then you become the witness and the pain-boy is less able to use you anymore by pretending to be you, and it can no longer replenish itself through you. You have found your own innermost strength within and although there will be a long battle ahead, you are on the road to embracing the power of consciousness.