Mindfulness Daily Check-In March 18, 2018

Hello, mindfulness community Have you heard of a concept called pain-body? I recently listened to Eckhart Tolles The Power of Now and learned what Tolle calls the pain-body. Its something that you can be aware of today, even at this moment.

What is a pain-body? A pain-body is a collection—a build up—of old emotional pain that an individual has not processed. For example, any trauma, difficult situations, loss, grief, guilt, anger, or misfortune that we have not let go of will accumulate over time and create our individual pain-bodies. Each person has this entity.

Our pain-bodies can be dormant or active. When they are dormant, we dont associate our identities with our emotional baggage or pain; we are living in the present moment and being mindful of our thoughts. Our pain-bodies are triggered by something in the present moment that relates to or reminds us of pain we experienced in our pasts. When activated, our pain-bodies try to control our minds.

If we allow our pain-bodies to control our minds, we begin to identify with our pain-bodies and begin living in the past since the past is where the pain lives. If we stay conscious and present, we can begin to notice when our pain-bodies are triggered and prevent them from taking control of our thoughts. If our pain-bodies take control of our thoughts, our inner dialogues will sound self-defeating and full of self-pity. We may become angry, argumentative, irritated, and identify as victims of our pasts. However, if we are present to our pain-bodies when they activate, we can notice them—our negative inner dialogues—and prevent them from continuing. Our pain-bodies thrive on drama and negativity. They need it to survive. If our pain-bodies activate, and we feed them negative thinking, we will not stay in the present moment. We will likely experience continued mental states of agitation, anxiety, depression, impatience, anger, and so forth.

How can we be mindful of our pain-bodies when they are activated? The simple answer is to be mindful. When a painful memory or emotion such as anger, bitterness, impatience, irritation, aggression, self-pity, victimhood, or some other unpleasant feeling arises, we become aware of the emotion, feeling, or memory and prevent it from taking up any more space in our minds. In other words, we dont feed the pain-body any more thoughts. We allow our bodies to feel the emotion without thinking of the situation that is causing it. Once we do this, we have chipped away at our pain-bodies, reducing its size and therefore its power.

Overtime, we can significantly reduce our pain-bodies because we are processing any old pain and preventing it from causing us to identify with any new painful situations. The key is to recognize that you are not your pain-body. Its a separate entity that doesnt need to control your mind or dominate your life situation. You can experience the peace and joy of being free from emotional pain caused by past and future thoughts.

Heres a 6-minute YouTube video of Tolle summarizing the pain-body for additional reference: https://tinyurl.com/ybmb2kps

What are your thoughts on the pain-body? How you can be mindful when you feel it becoming activated?

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