Awareness in pain brings you bliss

PAIN — whether physical, mental or emotional — has only a negative existence, like darkness. Darkness exists only in the absence of light. As such, it has no positive existence of its own. In the same way, pain exists only in the absence of awareness.

Just as darkness disappears automatically when light is brought into a room, pain dissolves automatically when the energy of your awareness is focused on it. When you face any pain with awareness you become aware that you are not just the body. You become aware that no pain can touch the real ‘you’.

Any mental or emotional pain that you carry is just the tip of the iceberg. You need to work on the root cause of it and heal it. I tell people, ‘If you have pain, just drop everything and work on it. See that the root is healed.’

Once you realise that you are beyond pain, you rise above pain to become a dukkha ateeta (one who has gone beyond sorrow). You experience the rare freedom that arises with non-attachment to the body. You leave mundane life behind and enter into a spiritual plane. The pain will evaporate of its own accord when you see the nature and cause of pain with intense inner clarity because the clarity evaporates the reasons for the pain to exist in you. And this realisation brings with it a state of absolute bliss, the state of enlightenment.

Pain is actually the absence of attention, so the solution is ‘giving your presence’. There is a simple and beautiful self-healing meditation technique that channels your presence into the diseased limb or the suffering mind. Just try this.

Suppose you have pain in your leg or you are suffering because of some external incident. Lie down in a dark room. Make a conscious effort to forget about your whole body except the spot which is causing you pain. Focus only on that spot. If it is mental suffering, then forget your whole body and focus only on that incident that caused you suffering.

As you experience the pain, 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 while you are focused on that spot. You will soon see that your mind was just exaggerating the pain. Put all your awareness on the centre of the pain, and it will soon shrink to become just a tiny point of pain. Concentrate completely on this point and you will discover in a sudden moment that the pain disappears, and in its place there is bliss! Be Blissful!