Guest guest Posted September 24, 2008 Report Share Posted September 24, 2008 The Pain-Body Excerpts from " A New Earth " by Eckhart Tolle Any negative emotion that is not fully faced and seen for what it is in the moment it arises does not completely dissolve. It leaves behind a remnant of pain. 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 still very-much-alive emotion that lives in almost every human being is the pain-body. The pain-body is a semiautonomous energy-form that lives within most human beings, an entity made up of emotion. It has its own primitive intelligence, not unlike a cunning animal, and its intelligence is directed primarily at survival. Like all life-forms, it periodically needs to feed--to take in new energy--and the food it requires to replenish itself consists of energy that is compatible with its own, which is to say, energy that vibrates at a similar frequency. Any emotional painful experience can be used as food by the pain-body. That's why it thrives on negative thinking as well as drama in relation-ships. The pain-body is an addiction to unhappiness. It may be shocking when you realize for the first time that there is something within you that periodically seeks emotional negativity, seeks unhappiness. You need even more awareness to see it in yourself than to recognize it in another person. Once the unhappiness has taken you over, not only do you not want an end to it, but you want to make others just as miserable as you are in order to feed on their negative emotional reactions. 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. How the Pain-Body Feeds on Your Thoughts The pain-body awakens from its dormancy when it gets hungry, when it is time to replenish itself. Alternatively, it may get triggered by an event at any time. The pain-body that is ready to feed can use the most insignificant event as a trigger, something somebody says or does, or even a thought. If you live alone or there is nobody around at the time, the pain-body will feed on your thoughts. Suddenly, your thinking becomes deeply negative. You were most likely unaware that just prior to the influx of negative thinking a wave of emotion invaded your mind-- as a dark and heavy mood, as anxiety or fiery anger. All thought is energy and the pain-body is now feeding on the energy of your thoughts. But it cannot feed on any thought. You don't need to be particularly sensitive to notice that a positive thought has totally different feeling-tone than a negative one. It is the same energy, but it vibrates at a different frequency. A happy, positive thought is undigestible to the pain-body. It can only feed on negative thoughts because only those thoughts are compatible with its own energy field. 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, and 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. It is not so much that you cannot stop your train of negative thoughts, but that you don't want to. This is because the pain-body at that time is living through you, pretending to be you. And to the pain-body, pain is pleasure. It eagerly devours every negative thought. In fact, the usual voice in your head has now become the voice of the pain-body. It has taken over the internal dialogue. A vicious circle becomes established between the pain-body and your thinking. Every thought feeds the pain-body and in turn the pain-body generates more thoughts. At some point, after a few hours or even a few days, it has replenished itself and returns to its dormant stage, leaving behind a depleted organism and a body that is much more susceptible to illness. If that sounds to you like a psychic parasite, you are right. That's exactly what it is. 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--push 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. It is hard to resist another person's pain-body that is determined to draw you into a reaction. Instinctively it knows your weakest, most vulnerable points. If it doesn't succeed the first time, it will try again and again. It is raw emotion looking for more emotion. The other person's pain-body wants to awaken yours so that both pain-bodies can mutually energize each other. Many relationships go through violent and destructive pain-body episodes at regular intervals. It is almost unbearably painful for a young child to have to witness the emotional violence of their parent's pain-bodies, and yet that is the fate of millions of children all over the world, the nightmare of their daily existence. That is also one of the main ways in which the human pain-body is passed on from generation to generation. (There is a great deal more in the book about the pain-body, and I highly recommend the education, lol! ...I would like to move on to how to break free of it at this point.) Breaking Free The beginning of freedom from the pain-body lies first of all in the realization that you have a pain-body. Then, more important, in your ability to stay present enough, alert enough, to notice the pain-body in yourself as a heavy influx of negative emotion when it becomes active. When it is recognized, it can no longer pretend to be you and live and renew itself through you. It is your conscious Presence that breaks the identification with the pain-body. When you don't identify with it, the pain-body can no longer control your thinking and so cannot renew itself anymore by feeding on your thoughts. The pain-body in most cases does not dissolve immediately, but once you have severed the link between it and your thinking, the pain-body begins to lose energy. Your thinking ceases to be clouded by emotion; your present perceptions are no longer distorted by the past. The energy that was trapped in the pain-body then changes its vibrational frequency and is transmuted into Presence. In this way, the pain-body becomes fuel for consciousness. This is why many of the wisest, most enlightened men and women on our planet once had a heavy pain-body. (The book is a great read with much more on the subject!) Love, dhyana Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 24, 2008 Report Share Posted September 24, 2008 At my house, when our pain-bodies begins to arise, we say to each other, "uh-oh, Mr Frumpy is rearing his ugly head!" Don't try saying this to an already active pain-body though or Mr Frumpy will bite your head off!-alice--- On Thu, 9/25/08, novalees <dhyana wrote:novalees <dhyana The Pain-Body Excerpts from "A New Earth" by Eckhart Tolle Any negative emotion that is not fully faced and seen for what it is in the moment it arises does not completely dissolve. It leaves behind a remnant of pain. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 24, 2008 Report Share Posted September 24, 2008 That's great, Alice!! It really sheds some light on the power of the Safeties with Forgivenesses and Recapitulations, too! Takes some of that energy away. Love, dhyana , Alice Sackman <vista.records wrote: > > > At my house, when our pain-bodies begins to arise, we say to each other, " uh-oh, Mr Frumpy is rearing his ugly head! " Don't try saying this to an already active pain-body though or Mr Frumpy will bite your head off! > -alice > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 24, 2008 Report Share Posted September 24, 2008 This is a great thing. My daughter, who is almost 7 and I have an agreement when we see temper going out of control in one of us, we say to each other, " Uh oh, the Mad Monster is here! Go away, Mad Monster! " which works pretty well and usually has us laughing. So it's a good thing! Valarie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 24, 2008 Report Share Posted September 24, 2008 Wow, that's a great way to show a child the difference. It reminded me of the classes on this. Tolle does talk about how to show children to recognize it. Here's the links to the class on the pain-body that Oprah and Tolle did together on the book, The New Earth. If anyone is interested. Love, dhyana The Pain-body Ch 5 http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual & videoid=31572398 Breaking Free Ch 6 http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual & videoid=31990039 , " Valarie Vousden " <vjvousden wrote: > > This is a great thing. My daughter, who is almost 7 and I have an > agreement when we see temper going out of control in one of us, we say > to each other, " Uh oh, the Mad Monster is here! Go away, Mad Monster! " > which works pretty well and usually has us laughing. So it's a good > thing! > > Valarie > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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