Ask a Facilitator: Why Do I Still Experience Pain?

Q: I know I am not this identity or the body, yet I was in a lot of pain last night. How can one who knows this have so much pain?

A: Here's a favorite old limerick, which I've edited slightly: (The original was about a Christian Scientist, and didn't scan quite right for this old English major.)

A nondual sage from Caneel
Once said, "Although pain isn't real,
When I sit on a pin, and it punctures my skin,
I dislike what I fancy I feel!"

Step hard on Eckhart Tolle's toe and I guarantee you he'll at least wince. So what? It's not a dilemma unless you say it is. I think it's more important to look at what we're thinking and feeling around pain than to try and dissociate from the body.

If I experience fear around having pain, that's the problematical body-identification, not the experience of pain itself. I'm believing that if the body hurts or isn't functioning optimally then "I" am not okay now, or it's going to get worse, or it will never go away, or I'll be disabled and that would be terrible. To fear pain, and look to "enlightenment" in order to transcend it, is not present-moment awareness at all; it's a story of the past projected onto the story of a future. I can "know" intellectually that "I'm not the body," and I can have had glimpses of the truth of this...but any fear around what could happen if I experience being in the body means I still believe I am a "me." Any thought that this shouldn't be happening just grounds me in "me-ness."

For her part, Byron Katie, who doesn't call herself enlightened, says, "You don't wake up forever. It's now. Now. Now." If you buy that, then attachment to a belief, or non-attachment, is only momentary—which makes sense to me, because there isn't a future. Even "now" is always over; we always begin again.

I haven't heard that the end of suffering means the end of physical pain. Ramana Maharshi apparently experienced physical pain; he just didn't experience it as a problem; he said words to the effect of, "let the body do what it does." The stressful thoughts about the physical sensations are worse than the sensations and they can, as you've likely experience, even seem to exacerbate pain.

Katie has said, "Pain is a friend. It's nothing I want to get rid of, if I can't. I'm a lover of what is. It's a sweet visitor; it can stay as long as it wants to. (And this doesn't mean I won't take the Tylenol.)"

I've witnessed Katie in recent years having all kinds of physical ailments...most recently, painful spasms in her feet which left her unable to walk for some time. Nothing, not even spinal injections, relieved the pain for many months, and I heard from her that she was just fine through it all: in pain, not suffering...because each pain, whether physical or emotional, always comes to pass and not to stay.

If it serves, you might like to do The Work on "I shouldn't feel pain." Why, in a friendly universe, is it actually a good thing to experience pain? I invite anyone who feels that pain is a problem to go deeply into this inquiry and post your experience here in the comments.


©2009 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.

On Not Minimizing Human Suffering

"Confusion is the only suffering." —Byron Katie

Is that true? I am not sure of this when I read things like "China Quake Toll rises to 10,000."

I'm sure that many people in Asia whose lives are now unquestionably changed are experiencing what I would call "suffering." Who am I to say that if they suffer, they are confused?

I can't know that those who died suffered, true enough.
I can't know that death is a tragedy.
I can't know that earthquake devastation isn't for the planet's highest good.

And I can't know the opposites either.

Perhaps Consciousness doesn't give a damn about good and bad, right and wrong. Perhaps we are not the body, so if bodies die, it's fine. This is beyond me; I sure feel like a body today. Mine is tired and is seeing a cobweb in its right eye from what may be a retinal tear. I'm told I should do something about that right away, and I have also read on opthamology websites that seeing floaters and flashing lights doesn't necessarily mean the retina is torn, that people with the kind of eye condition I have (posterior staphyloma) will inevitably experience this kind of thing as they age, and that surgery can make it worse or do nothing at all. That's confusing.

I'm not joyful about it, but I'm not exactly suffering over it either...except when I tell myself stories about what I ought to be doing and am not doing, and what might happen whether or not I do something. Same old story, different armature.

It all seems terribly unimportant when I consider what has just happened in China and Myanmar.

Both earthquakes and and a messed-up macula seem terribly unimportant in the face of the unknown vastness.

Tonight, however, that feels a little too spiritual.

Am I suffering? Not right now.

Am I confused? Often.

Tonight it doesn't feel like confusion though. It just feels like not knowing...not knowing anything at all.

Far be it from me to say that anyone who suffers over these events is confused. I'll leave that to others...and I don't wish to hold it against inquiry.

I see suffering, and I understand. I think I can be there for you as you suffer, and grieve with you, and even suffer alongside you, and still be available, of service, and loving you. You don't have to end your suffering for my sake, or, for that matter, for yours. Suffering comes, and suffering goes, like everything else in this ephemeral existence.

Tonight, I honor those who suffer. Suffering is "what is" too. Can we—I—allow it and not try to push it away with what "ought" to be understood after all this meditation?


©2008 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.

Treat Every Concept as a Character

Very often, when I'm facilitating someone on a belief such as, "I am afraid," I'll ask, "How do you treat fear when you believe this thought?" The client typically says, "Wow, I never thought of asking myself that," and they find that they have been treating concepts the way they treat the people in their lives when they attach to concepts: with loathing, perhaps, or with avoidance.

If you are doing inquiry with underlying beliefs from a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet—or, if you are writing about a universal belief, or about yourself—you may find yourself with more concepts to write about than characters. I invite you to treat each concept you question as a character in your story. Doing this can help you to deepen your realizations about your emotional life.

For instance, if you believe, "I shouldn't get angry," you may discover, as you answer question three, that you treat yourself harshly when you get angry, and that you treat others with distance; you wouldn't want them to see you as angry if you don't want to see yourself that way. So how do you treat anger itself when you believe that you shouldn't get angry?

Do you negate anger? Ignore it? Deny it in yourself? Dismiss it by saying it's really something else? Fear it? See it as the devil? Avoid or criticize angry people?

"There's not enough time." How do you treat time when you believe this thought? As a precious commodity (which means, in addition to valuing it, you could be fearful of losing it, or of not having enough of it)? As an enemy that withholds itself from you? Do you treat it with neediness? With avoidance?

"Nobody loves me." How do you treat love when you believe this thought? As something you lack, something that can be attracted or bought, something foreign? Do you resent love when you believe this thought, just as one might resent someone who doesn't love you?

"My body shouldn't hurt." How do you treat pain when you believe this thought?

"Dave smokes too much." How do you treat smoking when you hold this belief?

"We have nothing to fear but fear itself." Good one! How do you treat fear when you think this thought? If your answer is, "I treat it fearfully," what does that look like in your life and relationships?

Find some other concepts on worksheets you have worked through. See what else you can learn about yourself when you ask yourself, "How do I treat _____ ?"


©2008 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.