Ask The Master: 25 Dec 2007

Q. What is the cure for our emotional pains?

If pain is perceived as the absence of your attention, then the remedy must be your presence. There is a simple and beautiful self-healing meditation technique that channels your ‘presence’ into the diseased limb. You can try it out the next time you experience pain. It is definitely a better option than painkillers, whose side-effects sometimes prove worse than the original complaint!

Let us now come to the meditation.

Let us say that you have limb pain.

Lie down in a dark room. Make a conscious effort to forget about your whole body, focusing only on the limb/spot which is causing you pain. As you experience your painful limb, deliberately drop the word ‘pain’ from your mind. Your mental chatter will continue to tell you that you feel pain. Switch it off. Feel deeply; experience with an open mind. Look into what is happening inside your mind. You will soon see that your mind was just exaggerating the pain. Put all your awareness on the center of the pain, and it will soon shrink to become just a tiny pinpoint of pain. Concentrate completely on this point, and you will discover in a sudden moment that the pain has disappeared, and in its place is pleasure, bliss.

The root of pain and pleasure are the same; it is the same sensation with two names. If you have ever received a good massage from a friend or a professional, you will realize that the same massage would seem like sheer physical violence if you received it at the hands of a stranger!

If you try to understand the truth of your experience, it will be that ‘pain’ does not exist at all. Pain has only a negative existence. Like darkness, it is only an absence - the absence of awareness. As darkness disappears of its own accord when light is brought into a room, pain dissolves automatically when the energy of your awareness is focused upon it.

Any kind of pain can be transcended by this meditation. I invite you to experience it
for yourself, to channel your pain into meditation and use it as a tool to enter your being. You will find that pain itself can become a door to ananda - bliss.

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