Chapter 41: PAIN-BODY

This is the conversation my ego (E) and pain-body (PB) had this morning with my higher self (HS).  E & PB:  "Why do we have to wash the fry pan you cooked bacon in yesterday?  It's gross, the inch of fat has been sitting over 24 hours, it stinks and it has solidified into big chunks.  We don't even like bacon.  There is a TINY bit of meat on it and the rest is fat.  Fat isn't good for you and we don't think pork is even that good for you.  Why do you even buy it?  We think some one else should wash this pan."  HS:  "I think you are making a bigger deal out of this situation than it is.  Other family members love bacon, and sometimes I do things because people I love would like it.  We don't have it very often, and I did have one piece of bacon with breakfast yesterday.  I could ask someone else to wash the pan, but I would like to get it done now so the smell of bacon doesn't last too much longer.  This is not an important issue in my life."

"The greater part of most people's thinking is involuntary, automatic, and repetitive.  It is no more than a kind of mental static and fulfills no real purpose.  Strictly speaking, you don't think:  Thinking happens to you.  The statement 'I think' implies volition.  It implies that you have a say in the matter, that there is choice involved on your part.  For most people, this is not yet the case.  'I think' is just as false a statement as 'I digest' or 'I circulate my blood.' Digestion happens, circulation happens, thinking happens."  Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, page 129

My heart and soul now understands and believes the information in the above paragraph.  I have to work at it every day, but I am now able to "catch", or observe my ego and pain-body when they have overtaken my thinking.  Sometimes my ego seems to be in control of the conversation, sometimes my pain-body is the culprit, and sometimes they join forces and become really obnoxious.  

When my ego or pain-body are in control they tell me things that are not true, are blown out of proportion, do not agree with my higher self, and many times remind me of what a child might say.  If I do not become Present and let my higher self stop the chatter, the conversation is often repeated over and over.  What they say can cause emotions that are based on a made up story and I begin to feel sad, angry, or depressed.  Making progress in helping my higher self be in charge of my mind and thinking is helping me feel better more of the time.  It is so hard for me and I have to practice every day.  I am not implying that I don't need antidepressant medication.  Changing my thinking helps the medication be more effective.

I think these are important points to know about the pain-body.  Taken from the book, A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle.

1.  p. 135  EMOTIONS AND THE EGO

"The voice in the head tells a story that the body believes in and reacts to.  Those reactions are the emotions.  The emotions, in turn, feed energy back to the thoughts that created the emotion in the first place.   This is the vicious circle between unexamined thoughts and emotions, giving rise to emotional thinking and emotional story-making."

 2.  p. 136  EMOTIONS AND THE EGO

"Almost every human body is under a great deal of strain and stress, not because it is threatened by some external factor but from within the mind.  The body has an ego attached to it, and it cannot but respond to all the dysfunctional thought patterns that make up the ego.  Thus, a stream of negative emotion accompanies the stream of incessant and compulsive thinking."

 3.  p. 140  CARRYING THE PAST

"Because of the human tendency to perpetuate old emotion, almost everyone carries in his or her energy field an accumulation of old emotional pain, which I call "the pain-body." 

 4.  p. 141  CARRYING THE PAST

"We can learn not to keep situations or events alive in our minds, but to return our attention continuously to the pristine, timeless present moment rather than be caught up in mental movie-making.  Our very Presence then becomes our identity, rather than our thoughts and emotions.

Nothing ever happened in the past that can prevent you from being present now; and if the past cannot prevent you from being present now, what power does it have?"

 5.  p. 142  INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE

"The remnants of pain left behind by every strong negative emotion that is not fully faced, accepted, and then let go of join together to form an energy field that lives in the very cells of your body.  It consists not just of childhood pain, but also painful emotions that were added to it later in adolescence and during your adult life, much of it created by the voice of the ego.  It is the emotional pain that is your unavoidable companion when a false sense of self is the basis of your life.

This energy field of old but sill very-much-alive emotion that lives in almost every human being is the pain-body."

 6.  p.142-143  INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE

"The pain-body, however, is not just individual in nature.  It also partakes of the pain suffered by countless humans throughout the history of humanity, which is a history of continuous tribal warfare, of enslavement, pillage, rape, torture, and other forms of violence.  This pain still lives in the collective psyche of humanity and is being added to on a daily basis, as you can verify when you watch the news tonight or look at the drama in people's lives."

7.  p. 144-145  HOW THE PAIN-BODY RENEWS ITSELF

"Any emotionally painful experience can be used as food by the pain-body.  That's why it thrives on negative thinking as well as drama in relationships.  The pain-body is an addiction to unhappiness.

In most people, the pain-body has a dormant and an active stage.  When it is dormant, you easily forget that you carry a heavy dark cloud or a dormant volcano inside you, depending on the energy field of your particular pain-body.  How long it remains dormant varies from person to person:  A few weeks is the most common, but it can be a few days or months.  In rare cases the pain-body can lie in hibernation for years before it gets triggered by some event."

 8.  p. 147  HOW THE PAIN-BODY FEEDS ON YOUR THOUGHTS

"Emotion from the pain-body quickly gains control of your thinking, and once your mind has been taken over by the pain-body, your thinking becomes negative.  The voice in your head will be telling sad, anxious, or angry stories about yourself or your life, about other people, about past, future, or imaginary events.  The voice will be blaming, accusing, complaining, imagining.  And you are totally identified with whatever the voice says, believe all its distorted thoughts.  At that point, the addiction to unhappiness has set in."

 9.  p. 148  HOW THE PAIN-BODY FEEDS ON DRAMA

"If there are other people around, preferably your partner or a close family member, the pain-body will attempt to provoke them---bush their buttons, as the expression goes---so it can feed on the ensuing drama.  Pain-bodies love intimate relationships and families because that is where they get most of their food."

10.  p. 149  HOW THE PAIN-BODY FEEDS ON DRAMA

"A deeply unconscious person whose pain-body habitually replenishes itself through physical violence often directs it toward his spouse or children. . . he is truly sorry and may say he will never do this again, and he means it.  The person who is talking and making promises, however, is not the entity that commits the violence, and so you can be sure that it will happen again and again unless he becomes present, recognizes the pain-body within himself, and thus disidentifies from it.  In some cases, counseling can help him do that."

11.  p. 151  DENSE PAIN-BODIES

"Some people carry dense pain-bodies that are never completely dormant.  They may be smiling and making polite conversation, but you do not need to be psychic to sense that seething ball of unhappy emotion in them just underneath the surface, waiting for the next event to react to, the next person to blame or confront, the next thing to be unhappy about.  Their pain-bodies can never get enough, are always hungry.  They magnify the ego's need for enemies."

12.  p. 153  ENTERTAINMENT, THE MEDIA, AND THE PAIN-BODY

"Why do violent films attract such large audiences?  There is an entire industry, a large part of which fuels the human addiction to unhappiness.  People obviously watch those films because they want to feel bad.  What is it in humans that loves to feel bad and calls it good?  The pain-body of course.  A large part of the entertainment industry caters to it.  So, in addition to reactivity, negative thinking, and personal drama, the pain-body also renews itself vicariously through the cinema and television screen.  Pain-bodies write and produce these films, and pain-bodies pay to watch them."

13.  p. 153-154  ENTERTAINMENT, THE MEDIA, AND THE PAIN-BODY

"If films show violence in its wider context, if they show its origin and its consequences, show what it does to the victim as well as the perpetrator, show the collective unconsciousness that lies behind it and is passed on from generation to generation (the anger and hatred that lives in humans as the pain-body), them those films can fulfill a vital function in the the awakening of humanity.

Such films do exist and they do not fuel the pain-body.  Some of the best antiwar films are films that show the reality of war rather than a glamorized version of it.  The pain-body can only feed on films in which violence is portrayed as normal or even desirable human behavior, or that glorify violence with the sole purpose of generating negative emotion in the viewer and so become a 'fix' for the pain-addicted pain-body."

14.  p. 155  THE COLLECTIVE FEMALE PAIN-BODY

"Nobody knows the exact figure because records were not kept, but is seems certain that during a three-hundred-year period between three and five million women were tortured and killed by the "Holy Inquisition," an institution founded by the Roman Catholic Church to suppress heresy. This surely ranks together with the Holocaust as one of the darkest chapters in human history.  It was enough for a woman to show love for animals, walk alone in the fields or woods, or gather medicinal plants to be branded a witch, then tortured and burned at the stake.  The sacred feminine was declared demonic, and an entire dimension largely disappeared from human experience."

15.  p. 156  THE COLLECTIVE FEMALE PAIN-BODY

"What is it that suddenly made men feel threatened by the female?  The evolving ego in them.  It knew it could gain full control of our planet only through the male form, and to do so, it had to render the female powerless.

In time, the ego also took over most women, although it could never become as deeply entrenched in them as in men."

16.  p. 157  NATIONAL AND RACIAL PAIN-BODIES

"Certain countries in which many acts of collective violence were suffered or perpetrated have a heavier collective pain-body than others.  This is why older nations tend to have stronger pain-bodies.  It is also why younger countries, such as Canada or Australia, and those that have remained more sheltered from the surrounding madness, such as Switzerland, tend to have lighter collective pain-bodies.  Of course, in those countries, people still have their personal pain-body to deal with."

17.  p. 158-159  NATIONAL AND RACIAL PAIN-BODIES

"Spiritual practices that involve the physical body, such as t'ai chi, qigong, and yoga, are also increasingly being embraced in the Western world.  These practices do not create a separation between body and spirit and are helpful in weakening the pain-body.  They will play an important role in the global awakening."

18.  p. 159-160  NATIONAL AND RACIAL PAIN-BODIES

"It doesn't really matter what proportion of your pain-body belongs to your nation or race and what proportion is personal.  In either case, you can only go beyond it by taking responsibility for your inner state now.  Even if blame seems more than justified, as long as you blame others, you keep feeding the pain-body with your thoughts and remain trapped in your ego.  There is only one perpetrator of evil on the planet:  human unconsciousness.  That realization is true forgiveness.  With forgiveness, your victim identity dissolves, and your true power emerges---the power of Presence.  Instead of blaming the darkness, you bring in the light."

Chapter 40: EGO

I believe the writing of Eckhart Tolle on the subject of egos in his book, A New Earth, is profound.  Applying these teachings to my life have helped me heal depression symptoms this past year.  My thinking has changed.  What do you think?  Do you think changing your thinking can help depression?  Do you think these concepts are truth?

 1.  p. 59  Chapter 3  The Core of Ego

"Most people are so completely identified with the voice in the head---the incessant stream of involuntary and compulsive thinking and the emotions that accompany it---that we may describe them as being possessed by their mind.  As long as you are completely unaware of this, you take the thinker to be who you are.  This is the egoic mind."

2.  p. 61-62  COMPLAINING AND RESENTMENT

Complaining is one of the ego's favorite ways to strengthen itself, and resentment is the emotion that goes along with it.  Mental labeling of people adds even more energy to the ego. 

"Name-calling is the crudest form of such labeling and of the ego's need to be right and triumph over others:  jerk, bastard, bitch ---all definitive pronouncements that you can't argue with.  On the next level down on the scale of unconsciousness, you have shouting and screaming, and not much below that, physical violence."

3.  p. 63  COMPLAINING AND RESENTMENT

"Complaining is not to be confused with informing someone of a mistake or deficiency so that it can be put right."  This type of complaining desires change, the ego kind enjoys making someone wrong.

4.  p. 68  IN DEFENSE OF AN ILLUSION 

"Every ego confuses opinions and viewpoints with facts.  Furthermore, it cannot tell the difference between an event and its reaction to that event.  Every ego is a master of selective perception and distorted interpretation.  Only through awareness--not through thinking---can you differentiate between fact and opinion."  The ego is strengthened by a sense of boundary, separateness, and superiority.

5.  p. 76  WAR IS A MINDSET  

"Recognize the ego for what it is:  a collective dysfunction, the insanity of the human mind.  When you recognize it for what is is, you no longer misperceive it as somebody's identity." 

6.  p. 77-78  BEYOND EGO:  YOUR TRUE IDENTITY 

"When the ego is at war, know that it is no more than an illusion that is fighting to survive.  That illusion thinks it is you.  It is not easy at first to be there as the witnessing Presence, especially when the ego is in survival mode or some emotional pattern from the past has become activated, but once you have had a taste of it, you will grow in Presence power, and the ego will lose its grip on you.  And so a power comes into your life that is far greater than the ego, greater than the mind.  All that is required to become free of the ego is to be aware of it, since awareness an ego are in compatible."

 7.  p. 79  BEYOND EGO:  YOUR TRUE IDENTITY

"What remains is the light of consciousness in which perceptions, experiences, thoughts, and feelings come and go.  That is Being, that is the deeper, true I.  When I know myself as that, whatever happens in my life is no longer of absolute but only of relative importance.  I honor it, but it loses its absolute seriousness, its heaviness.  The only thing that ultimately matters is this:  Can I sense my essential Beingness, the I Am, in the background of my life at all times?"  . . ."Or am I losing myself in what happens, losing myself in the mind, in the world?" 

 8.  p. 79   ALL STRUCTURES ARE UNSTABLE

"Whatever form it takes, the unconscious drive behind ego is to strengthen the image of who I think I am, the phantom self that came into existence when thought---a great blessing as well as a great curse---began to take over and obscured the simple yet profound joy of connectedness with Being, the Source, God."

  9.  p. 79-80  ALL STRUCTURES ARE UNSTABLE

"Whatever behavior the ego manifests, the hidden motivating force is always the same:  the need to stand out, be special, be in control; the need for power, for attention, for more.  And, of course, the need to feel a sense of separation, that is to say, the need for opposition, enemies."

10.  p. 85  Chapter 4 Role-playing:  The Many Faces of the Ego

"An ego that wants something from another---and what ego doesn't---will usually play some kind of role to get its 'needs' met, be they material gain, a sense of power, superiority, or specialness, or some kind of gratification, be it physical or psychological.  Usually people are completely unaware of the roles they play.  They are those roles."

11.  p. 86  Role-playing:  The Many Faces of the Ego

"All you need to know and observe in yourself is this:  Whenever you feel superior or inferior to anyone, that's the ego in you."

12.  p. 87  VILLAIN, VICTIM, LOVER

"The playing of negative roles becomes particularly pronounced whenever the ego is magnified by an active pain-body, that is to say, emotional pain from the past that wants to renew itself through experiencing more pain."

13.  p. 88  VILLAIN, VICTIM, LOVER

"What is commonly called 'falling in love' is in most cases an intensification of egoic wanting and needing.  You become addicted to another person, or rather to your image of that person.  It has nothing to do with true love, which contains no wanting whatsoever."

14.  p. 89  LETTING GO OF SELF-DEFINITIONS 

"Only rare beings at the time, such as the Buddha or Jesus, saw the ultimate irrelevance of caste or social class, recognized it as identification with form and saw that such identification with the conditioned and the temporal obscured the light of the unconditioned and eternal that shines in each human being."

15.  p. 90-91  PRE-ESTABLISHED ROLES 

"What really matters is not what function you fulfill in this world, but whether you identify with your function to such an extent that it takes you over and becomes a role that you play.  When you play roles, you are unconscious.  When you catch yourself playing a role, that recognition creates a space between you and the role.  It is the beginning of freedom from the role."

16.  p. 95-96  HAPPINESS AS A ROLE VS. TRUE HAPPINESS 

"If there is unhappiness in you, first you need to acknowledge that it is there.  But don't say, 'I'm unhappy.'  Unhappiness has nothing to do with who you are.  Say: 'There is unhappiness in me.'  Then investigate it.  A situation you find yourself in may have something to do with it.  Action may be required to change the situation or remove yourself from it.  If there is nothing you can do, face what is and say, 'Well, right now, this is how it is.  I can either accept it, or make myself miserable'."

17.  p. 96  HAPPINESS AS A ROLE VS. TRUE HAPPINESS

"Unhappiness covers up your natural state of well-being and inner peace, the source of true happiness."

18.  p. 98  PARENTHOOD:  ROLE OR FUNCTION?
 
"If their desire to control or influence the actions of their adult child is thwarted---as it usually is---they will start to criticize or show their disapproval, or try to make the child feel guilty, all in an unconscious attempt to preserve their role, their identity.  On the surface it looks as if they were concerned about their child, and they themselves believe it, but they are only really concerned about preserving their role-identity."

19.  p. 100  PARENTHOOD:  ROLE OR FUNCTION?

"My parents should approve of what I do.  They should understand me and accept me for who I am."  "Really?  Why should they?  The fact is they don't because they can't.  Their evolving consciousness hasn't made the quantum leap to the level of awareness yet.  They are not yet able to disidentify from their role."  . . ."What difference does their approval or disapproval truly make to who you are?  All such unexamined assumptions cause a great deal of negative emotion , much unnecessary unhappiness."

20.  p.101  CONSCIOUS SUFFERING 

"If you have young children, give them help, guidance, and protection to the best of your ability, but even more important, give them space---space to be.  They come into this world through you, but they are not 'yours.'  The belief 'I know what's best for you' may be true when they are very young, but the older they get, the less true it becomes.  The more expectations you have of how their life should unfold, the more you are in your mind instead of being present for them.  Eventually, they will make mistakes, and they will experience some form of suffering, as all humans do.  In fact, they may be mistakes only from your perspective.  What to you is a mistake may be exactly what your children need to do or experience."

21.  p. 102  CONSCIOUS SUFFERING 

"As long as you resist suffering, it is a slow process because the resistance creates more ego to burn up.  When you accept suffering, however, there is an acceleration of that process which is brought about by the fact that you suffer consciously." 

22.  p. 103  CONSCIOUS PARENTING

"Many children harbor hidden anger and resentment toward their parents and often the cause is inauthenticity in the relationship.  The child has a deep longing for the parent to be there as a human being, not as a role, no matter how conscientiously that role is being played.  You may be doing all the right things and the best you can for your child, but even doing the best you can is not enough.  In fact, doing is never enough if you neglect Being."

23.  p.106  GIVING UP ROLE-PLAYING

"To do whatever is required of you in any situation without it becoming a role that you identify with is an essential lesson in the art of living that each one of us is here to learn."

24.  p. 112  THE PATHOLOGICAL EGO

"Negativity is not intelligent.  It is always of the ego.  The ego may be clever, but it is not intelligent.  Cleverness pursues its own little aims.  Intelligence sees the larger whole in which all things are connected."  . . ."Cleverness divides; intelligence includes."

25.  p.  114-115  THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

"Being at peace and being who you are, that is, being yourself, are one.  The ego says:  Maybe at some point in the future, I can be at peace---if this, that, or the other happens, or I obtain this or become that.  Or it says:  I can never be at peace because of something that happened in the past."  . . ."The ego doesn't know that your only opportunity for being at peace is now.  Or maybe it does know, and it is afraid that you may find this out.  Peace, after all, is the end of the ego." 

26.  p.  115  THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

"There are three words that convey the secret of the art of living, the secret of all success and happiness:  One With Life.  Being one with life is being one with Now.  You then realize that you don't live your life, but life lives you.  Life is the dancer, and you are the dance."

27.  p. 120  PATHOLOGICAL FORMS OF EGO

"The collective ego of tribes, nations, and religious organizations also frequently contains a strong element of paranoia:  us against the evil others.  It is the cause of much human suffering."  (Spanish Inquisition, burning of heretics and witches, First & Second World Wars, Communism, "Cold War", McCarthyism, violent conflict in the Middle East)

28.  p. 120  PATHOLOGICAL FORMS OF EGO

"The more unconscious individuals, groups or nations are, the more likely it is that egoic pathology will assume the form of physical violence.  Violence is a primitive but still very widespread way in which the ego attempts to assert itself, to prove itself right and another wrong.  With very unconscious people, arguments can easily lead to physical violence."

29.  p.  121  WORK---WITH AND WITHOUT EGO

"Most people have moments when they are free of ego.  Those who are exceptionally good at what they do may be completely or largely free of ego while performing their work.  They may not know it, but their work has become a spiritual practice."

30.  p.  122  WORK---WITH AND WITHOUT EGO

"They are one with what they do, one with the Now, one with the people or the task they serve.  The influence such people have upon others goes far beyond the function they perform.  They bring about a lessening of the ego in everyone who comes into contact with them.  Even people with heavy egos sometimes begin to relax, let down their guard, and stop playing their roles when they interact with them.  It comes as no surprise that those people who work without ego are extraordinarily successful at what they do.  Anybody who is one with what he or she does is building the new earth."