WHAT IS THE PAIN BODY?
The pain body is part of our energetic structure that is made up of an accumulation of old unprocessed emotional wounds. It can be understood as a negative energy field or entity that occupies your body and mind, and which can negatively affect your health and your physical, emotional, mental, and energetic well-being.
The pain body can be made from unprocessed wounds from our childhood, our ancestral lineage, our culture, stressful living, poor choices or other timeframes. The pain body blocks your natural intelligence and your connection to higher awareness by keeping you bound to the past and to victim identity. The pain body gives an intensification of voice of ego.
In energetic terms, the pain body acts like an entity that clouds your mind and emotions, keeping you stuck in incomplete or unhealthy mental-emotional loops. The pain body seeks to perpetuate the cycle of pain for yourself and others.
The pain body can be dormant or active. In most healthy individuals, it is dormant most of the time, and we may be largely unaware that it exists until something triggers it, like a divorce, illness or a stressful life event. In a deeply unhappy person, the pain body may be active up to 100% of the time.
Some pain bodies are relatively harmless yet unpleasant to live with. It can come up in the form of emotional triggers or places where we feel ‘stuck’, and where our capacity for connection, pleasure and authentic wisdom feels blocked or inaccessible. In other cases, the pain body can make life on Earth very challenging for us, and even make us feel hopeless, violent, suicidal or depressed.
For the purpose of spiritual awakening, we can use our awareness of the pain body to create a space for more freedom, love, creativity and authentic self-expression.
TRIGGERS & THE PAIN BODY:
Most of us are unaware that our pain body exists until something internal or external triggers it. Common situations that trigger the pain body include:
rejection
betrayal
unjust treatment
challenged beliefs
feelings of helplessness or loss of control
being excluded or ignored
disapproval or criticism
feeling unwanted or unneeded
feeling smothered or too needed
insecurity
loss of independence
Triggers can vary from person to person, but are often related to painful or unprocessed experiences from our past. In a broader context, it is also often related to a particular lesson or theme that our soul is seeking to heal, upgrade or evolve (e.g. belonging, leadership, power).
You can recognize the pain body through any signs of unhappiness within yourself, including irritation, impatience, anger, rage, somber moods, a desire to hurt others or to create drama in your relationship. It is generally easier to spot the pain body in others than to see it in oneself! But it is only by seeing it in yourself that it begins to change.
When the pain body is triggered (or active), how you view other people, situations or memories becomes distorted. It’s like looking through a dark distorted prism that does not allow you to see yourself or your life accurately, and it actually very defensive, dark and depressing. This false perception of reality will give rise to certain behaviours, choices and beliefs that are not in alignment with your true self.
The pain body seeks to create more pain for you and others. It wants to cause you to create more pain, stress, reactions and anxiety for yourself and others. The pain body feeds on negative thoughts of blame, victimization and/or self-recrimination. The pain body resists or resents joy and happiness.
Because these triggers can feel very strong, they can a strong urge to create fights, especially with family, lovers or those closest to you. It is closely linked with the sympathetic nervous system, and to the fight-or-flight response in the body-mind.
The pain body creates a mental-emotional pattern of hurt and victimization such as:
“Someone did this to me! I will get revenge!” (anger)
“I will never love again.”
“My life is wrong. I made the wrong choices and I am bad.” (guilt)
“I have always been this way. I cannot have relationships or friends or money. There is something wrong with me.”
Self-sabotage
“What other people did to me is responsible for how I am now.”
WHAT IS MY RESPONSIBILITY TOWARD THE PAIN I FEEL?
The only way to heal your pain is through your presence to it. This is not always an easy or comfortable process!
Very often, the pain body is difficult to deal with because it brings up the most immature, hurt, hostile and infantile part of ourselves.
You may notice that you will often encounter intense inner resistance to being present with your pain. When we are facing pain, it is also common to want to ‘jump out of it’ or numb it through distractions - such as our devices, social media, alcohol, eating, mental loops, etc .
The process of transforming your pain into consciousness can only be done by you. However, your connection with a spiritual teacher or guide (someone with deeper consciousness) and the process of self-inquiry can accelerate this process, to help you identify roadblocks and to grow in your own true identity.
Your daily practice is a powerful tool to help you be more present with the pain body, and to help soften some of its patterns through your inner witness. Silent retreats are also an opportunity to go deeper in transmuting pain into pure presence, as is any type of bodywork (e.g. fasciatherapy, acupuncture, massage, ect). Surrounding yourself with others who are also seeking to deepen their connection with essence is also very important, as they will be able to help you see your own patterns more clearly.
Truth be told, processing old pain requires a lot of energy and self-awareness, since most of humanity is not yet living in this state. If you are doing this work, please try to take conscious periods for deep rest and rejuvenation. This is key in helping yourself to heal and restore your energy.
Written by Briya
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