Why be in pain?

A man used to complain bitterly about the lunch he brought to work every day. He would open his lunch box and look at its contents and complain. His friends one day finally asked him why he didn’t ask his wife to cook something he liked to eat, rather than suffering this way.

He replied: What wife? I am not married. I cook my own lunch.

We all live our lives much the same way. Through lack of awareness, we invite pain upon ourselves, complain about it and resort to painkillers. We fail to identify ourselves as the cause of the problem. Responsibility for the pain is always some else’s, never our own.

Pain is caused by absence of attention. It can be relieved by our attention. Pain is a negative energy; it does not exist by itself; it is the absence of a positive energy.

How to get over Pain?

Next time you have some pain, just try this small exercise: Lie in a dark room with eyes closed and focus upon the area of pain to the exclusion of everything else. As you experience the area of pain, drop the notion of ‘Pain’ from your mind. Focus all your attention on this spot; soon you will find it shrinking. Concentrate further and you will find that the pain disappears and in its place you experience pleasure; pain and pleasure are the same sensation with different tags. Your awareness of pain causes it to disappear and bring in positive energy of pleasure.

When you feel hurt and angry through other people’s actions, you need to watch these emotions without judgment of who is right or wrong. Suppressing these emotions can cause harm to you. Enter the feeling of hurt or anger; just watch it; don’t feel sorry for yourself; do not direct the anger against another person. This awareness itself will simply transform the negative emotion to a positive one.

You have no control over when, how and why things happen. All you can do is to choose whether to suffer from it or learn from it. If you use the opportunity of that pain experience to look inside you, you will discover that you are the cause, and that only you can be the solution.

Awareness is the way out of pain and suffering. Suffering is important in life for growth. But when you understand suffering, you will realize how unnecessary it is and you grow!

Be Blissful!