Ask The Master: 24 Dec 2007

Q. Why do we invite (emotional) pain?

We invite pain and disease upon ourselves with our immoderate habits and stressful lifestyles, and then forget all about it and complain later when disease takes its toll. And sometimes we do enjoy the disease too, though no one ever admits to that! Just as an organ asking for your attention develops a disease, you yourself fall ill in order to get the attention of others.

This is no wonder, for in the hectic pace of today’s life, who has the time to pay attention to anyone else, unless they fall ill? Attention is such a basic need! Psychology proves that normally a man can stay alive without food for up to 90 days, but without the attention of others he will lose his sanity in just 14 days. Because attention is energy, it is a life-force.

Though we are unaware of it, the craving for attention is so great, that to gain it, we create our own low-energy pool, and gladly suffer from everything from cold to cancer.

Through our lack of awareness, we first invite pain upon ourselves, and then complain about it and resort to painkillers. And the truly shameful thing is, we don’t even mind getting afflicted by the same disease again and again, because we don’t identify ourselves as the root cause of the problem. We throw the responsibility for the pain on others, never on ourselves.

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This excerpt has been taken from the book: Uncommon Answers to Common Questions