mathrasparshasthu kauntheya sheethoshnasukhadukhada:
aagamapayino:nithiasthamsthithikshaswa bharatha
Gita Chapter 2 verse 14
(Cold, heat, pleasure and pain happen by the contact of sense organs with their objects. They come and go. They are temporary. Knowing this, you endure them.)
At some point in life we all suffer. However rich we may be , however healthy we may be, we all suffer . This is a fact of life. Pain is sometimes physical, sometimes mental , sometimes both together. But how we deal with it is what makes or breaks us. If we live in our usual separate self or ego filled one, we suffer on many accounts. Physical pain is aggravated by the mental ones. Mental pain is sympathized by the body and so on. What we need to understand is that the it is a holistic system. One cannot exist without the other. Spiritual awakening can give us this unified feeling which will help alleviate our tensions and pains . In fact it is the only way to integrate our being.
To have this notion that all thoughts, emotions , sensations are in arising in awareness is not an easy thing at all. Years of conditioning has led us to treat our body-mind complex to be the sense of I. So we would need lot of spiritual sadana to overcome this feeling and rest in our awareness. Usually it takes years of spiritual conditioning to unlearn and un-condition . But you can start the process anytime. The pain or sorrow is an arising in our awareness. A completely aware person would still feel the pain and any misery in him. However there is a sense of detachment towards it. So what happens is , the mental aggravation would stop. He knows whatever is his true being is not affected by these transient things.The mind will not be able to tell you new stories about the pain. The physical pain is not something that can be relieved. It is a defense mechanism of the body to sustain itself. But when our inner being sees it arising in us , we sort of internally sort it out.
Nisargadatta Maharaj was dying of cancer. But he had satsangs till latter part of his life . Ramana Maharshi used to see people even when he was not well and he asked his devotees not to avoid anyone whatever be his condition. These are great sages of course who had transcended their body to become an ethereal presence. But it shows what spiritual life can do.
When a pain or suffering arises in us, there are two aspects that need to be understood. One is the immediacy of it. It is something we need to attend to. We need to attend to what is causing the issue by taking appropriate medicines or whatever is required. But there is another subtler aspect to it. When a pain or suffering comes, the mind pulls our attention to it all the time. When our attention is drawn towards it, the pain appears more. When our attention is drawn toward a misery that we think it becomes more. So any physical or mental suffering is aggravated by the attention to it. So what we can do is once we are sure , the immediacy has been attended to by taking medicines or anything , then try to divert our attention away from it. This can be done by say imagining ourselves to be in a beautiful dream whereby there is peace all around , birds singing , rivers flowing etc. Think of how quickly the pain is going to be over , and we are going to be free from it. Imagine yourself in a pain free state . Fill yourself with positivity . This requires some repeated effort. But if you start to believe in that, the pain or suffering would be reduced a lot.
The ego through years of conditioning has created layers and layers of suffering in us. Even small things are aggravated. But it is not easy to overcome them . The distance between our true self and ego need to increase to a point where the ego is no longer able to exercise its influence on us. One more point to note is that the ego just loves these sufferings. This is because it can create lot of thoughts pertaining to it. It can keep you really busy with thoughts. What happens during our spiritual conditioning is that even though the sensation of pain etc is there, the ego's influence on unnecessary thought patterns can be minimized.
Another very important point you would notice is that when you have some suffering , old problems and miseries which have long been forgotten might also resurface. This is again a trick to make you more engaged. If you are cautious of them , just devalue those thoughts now.
The idea is this. When you have physical pain rest your mind. When you have mental suffering rest your body. Except for the immediacy of the issue, try to disregard all others.
Once Ramana Maharshi was asked about pain and suffering. He said that pain is a result of our body consciousness. In deep sleep , where does the pain go?. If the pain was a real one, it should be there as well. Since in deep sleep there is no body consciousness we dont feel it. The pain is still there, but there is nobody to take responsibility of it. Also if somebody we like, walks in , even when we have pain we feel a little better. While if someone we don't like comes in we feel more pain. So we can see that the ego has a crucial role to play. Ramana Maharshi said " Manonasa is the only way to alleviate pain". But as i said earlier, it is not easy for ordinary mortals. Surrender completely to your true nature.
Another neglected part of pain is that we have a sense of running away from it . As a result of this escape thought, there comes a resistance towards it. This also increases the agony. We might think of course who wants pain to be there?. Yes it is true, But it should be not by escaping from it, but by increasing our tolerance towards it. Acceptance that the current situation entails pain is the way. The moment we ease into the current situation , pain is alleviated a bit. Tolerance can only be achieved by being aware of the pain as though it is not our body.
The upshot of all this is simple. We need to change our perspective about pain a bit. From the fact that " I am pain"., we should move towards the fact that " I am experiencing the sensations of pain" to finally "I am that which is witnessing the pain in the body". In neuroscience there is a term often used with pain and it is called the "Pain trap". When the brain senses pain sensations it constricts our cognition levels and avoid all thinking , rationality etc which makes us more attentive about pain and so on. This pain trap is a survival mechanism to make sure that we attend to the cause of the pain. However it is over exaggerated and this is the result of many traumatic conditions. Even when the pain is not big we get stuck in the trap. Soldiers who return from a war often experience this post traumatic stress. It is interesting that even in such a condition the sense of detachment helps us to alleviate the sufferings a lot.
(Cold, heat, pleasure and pain happen by the contact of sense organs with their objects. They come and go. They are temporary. Knowing this, you endure them.)
At some point in life we all suffer. However rich we may be , however healthy we may be, we all suffer . This is a fact of life. Pain is sometimes physical, sometimes mental , sometimes both together. But how we deal with it is what makes or breaks us. If we live in our usual separate self or ego filled one, we suffer on many accounts. Physical pain is aggravated by the mental ones. Mental pain is sympathized by the body and so on. What we need to understand is that the it is a holistic system. One cannot exist without the other. Spiritual awakening can give us this unified feeling which will help alleviate our tensions and pains . In fact it is the only way to integrate our being.
To have this notion that all thoughts, emotions , sensations are in arising in awareness is not an easy thing at all. Years of conditioning has led us to treat our body-mind complex to be the sense of I. So we would need lot of spiritual sadana to overcome this feeling and rest in our awareness. Usually it takes years of spiritual conditioning to unlearn and un-condition . But you can start the process anytime. The pain or sorrow is an arising in our awareness. A completely aware person would still feel the pain and any misery in him. However there is a sense of detachment towards it. So what happens is , the mental aggravation would stop. He knows whatever is his true being is not affected by these transient things.The mind will not be able to tell you new stories about the pain. The physical pain is not something that can be relieved. It is a defense mechanism of the body to sustain itself. But when our inner being sees it arising in us , we sort of internally sort it out.
Nisargadatta Maharaj was dying of cancer. But he had satsangs till latter part of his life . Ramana Maharshi used to see people even when he was not well and he asked his devotees not to avoid anyone whatever be his condition. These are great sages of course who had transcended their body to become an ethereal presence. But it shows what spiritual life can do.
When a pain or suffering arises in us, there are two aspects that need to be understood. One is the immediacy of it. It is something we need to attend to. We need to attend to what is causing the issue by taking appropriate medicines or whatever is required. But there is another subtler aspect to it. When a pain or suffering comes, the mind pulls our attention to it all the time. When our attention is drawn towards it, the pain appears more. When our attention is drawn toward a misery that we think it becomes more. So any physical or mental suffering is aggravated by the attention to it. So what we can do is once we are sure , the immediacy has been attended to by taking medicines or anything , then try to divert our attention away from it. This can be done by say imagining ourselves to be in a beautiful dream whereby there is peace all around , birds singing , rivers flowing etc. Think of how quickly the pain is going to be over , and we are going to be free from it. Imagine yourself in a pain free state . Fill yourself with positivity . This requires some repeated effort. But if you start to believe in that, the pain or suffering would be reduced a lot.
The ego through years of conditioning has created layers and layers of suffering in us. Even small things are aggravated. But it is not easy to overcome them . The distance between our true self and ego need to increase to a point where the ego is no longer able to exercise its influence on us. One more point to note is that the ego just loves these sufferings. This is because it can create lot of thoughts pertaining to it. It can keep you really busy with thoughts. What happens during our spiritual conditioning is that even though the sensation of pain etc is there, the ego's influence on unnecessary thought patterns can be minimized.
Another very important point you would notice is that when you have some suffering , old problems and miseries which have long been forgotten might also resurface. This is again a trick to make you more engaged. If you are cautious of them , just devalue those thoughts now.
The idea is this. When you have physical pain rest your mind. When you have mental suffering rest your body. Except for the immediacy of the issue, try to disregard all others.
Once Ramana Maharshi was asked about pain and suffering. He said that pain is a result of our body consciousness. In deep sleep , where does the pain go?. If the pain was a real one, it should be there as well. Since in deep sleep there is no body consciousness we dont feel it. The pain is still there, but there is nobody to take responsibility of it. Also if somebody we like, walks in , even when we have pain we feel a little better. While if someone we don't like comes in we feel more pain. So we can see that the ego has a crucial role to play. Ramana Maharshi said " Manonasa is the only way to alleviate pain". But as i said earlier, it is not easy for ordinary mortals. Surrender completely to your true nature.
Another neglected part of pain is that we have a sense of running away from it . As a result of this escape thought, there comes a resistance towards it. This also increases the agony. We might think of course who wants pain to be there?. Yes it is true, But it should be not by escaping from it, but by increasing our tolerance towards it. Acceptance that the current situation entails pain is the way. The moment we ease into the current situation , pain is alleviated a bit. Tolerance can only be achieved by being aware of the pain as though it is not our body.
The upshot of all this is simple. We need to change our perspective about pain a bit. From the fact that " I am pain"., we should move towards the fact that " I am experiencing the sensations of pain" to finally "I am that which is witnessing the pain in the body". In neuroscience there is a term often used with pain and it is called the "Pain trap". When the brain senses pain sensations it constricts our cognition levels and avoid all thinking , rationality etc which makes us more attentive about pain and so on. This pain trap is a survival mechanism to make sure that we attend to the cause of the pain. However it is over exaggerated and this is the result of many traumatic conditions. Even when the pain is not big we get stuck in the trap. Soldiers who return from a war often experience this post traumatic stress. It is interesting that even in such a condition the sense of detachment helps us to alleviate the sufferings a lot.
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