Eckhart Tolle – What Is The Pain Body?
Eckhart Tolle, known for “The Power of Now” and “A New Earth,” introduces the concept of the “pain body” to elucidate human suffering and facilitate spiritual awakening.
Tolle’s teachings emphasize the importance of living in the present moment and transcending the egoic mind.
The pain-body concept is a crucial aspect of his transformative philosophy.
What Is The Pain Body?
The pain-body is accumulated negative energy that occupies the mind and body. Eckhart Tolle made this awareness during his spiritual journey. The emotional pain-body, the dark shadow cast by the ego, is scared of the light of your consciousness.
The pain body doesn’t want you to observe it directly. The identification is broken when you observe it, feel its energy field within you, and take your attention to it. A higher dimension of consciousness comes in.
It is called Presence. You are now the witness or the watcher of the pain-body.
The pain takes over when you are in a low-conscious state. Think about it. How often do you sabotage yourself when you are fully present in the moment? Hardly ever.
Pain is an accumulation of painful experiences beginning in childhood. These painful experiences, if they weren’t released, build up and are stored in the body.
After so much pain, the pain body begins to take a life of its own. It acts as an independent entity that uses you to do its bidding.
It is unconscious, unaware of what it is doing to you or others. I’m sure you’ve repeatedly seen couples argue over trivial things, and this is the emotional pain-body in action.
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Eckhart Tolle: Pain Body Symptoms
Do you have any of these pain symptoms?
- ‘Phantom’ body aches and pains for no reason
- Stiffness
- Hatred of yourself, others, and life in general
- Hypersensitivity
- Illness, physical or mental
- Easily offended
- Always unhappy
- Unexplained anxiety, anger, or depression
- Have feelings of loathing, rage, and jealousy
- Persistent complaining
- Immersed in drama in your life or around you
- Feeling like a victim or being the perpetrator of pain in others.
The Nature of the Pain Body
According to Eckhart Tolle, the pain body is a psychological entity that consists of accumulated emotional pain from past experiences. This pain is not just individual but also has a collective aspect, stemming from the shared suffering of humanity throughout history.
It thrives on negative thoughts, emotions, and experiences, creating a cycle of suffering that can be difficult to break.
Tolle describes the pain body as an energy field that resides within individuals, waiting for an opportunity to manifest itself. It is a dormant force that becomes active and takes over a person’s consciousness when triggered by certain situations or thoughts.
These triggers can be anything from personal conflicts and disappointments to global issues and societal challenges.
Identification and Dissolution
One of the key aspects of Tolle’s teaching is the importance of becoming aware of the pain body and its influence on our lives. Identification is the first step towards liberation.
By recognizing it within ourselves, we can observe its patterns and prevent it from taking control of our thoughts and actions.
Tolle suggests that the pain body can be dissolved through conscious awareness and presence. When we observe our thoughts and emotions without judgment, we create a space between ourselves and the pain body.
This space allows us to disidentify from the pain and prevent it from controlling our behavior.
Living in the Present
Central to Eckhart Tolle’s teachings is the concept of living in the present moment. He emphasizes that the pain body can only exist in the past or the future but not in the present.
By cultivating mindfulness and staying fully present, individuals can break free from its grip.
Practical Techniques
Eckhart Tolle offers practical techniques to help individuals deal with the pain body and live in the present. These include:
- Mindful Breathing: Focusing on the breath brings attention to the present moment and helps break the cycle of negative thoughts.
- Observing Emotions: Instead of reacting to emotions, Tolle advises observing them without attachment. This allows individuals to disengage from its influence.
- Acceptance: Accepting the present moment as it is, without resistance, helps in preventing the pain body from taking control.
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Benefits of Dealing with the Pain Body
Understanding and addressing the pain body leads to various benefits, including:
- Inner Peace: Liberation from the pain body brings a profound sense of inner peace and tranquility.
- Improved Relationships: By disengaging from it, individuals can respond to others with greater compassion and understanding, improving relationships.
- Increased Consciousness: Breaking free from the pain body elevates consciousness and allows individuals to experience a deeper connection with the essence of who they are.
Eckhart Tolle Pain Body
Eckhart Tolle Excerpt from Detoxify Now.com
Eckhart Tolle describes this energetic parasite as the “pain-body,” an active entity that takes possession of the human body and uses it to generate more pain. There are two ways in which the pain body feeds because that is all it can feed on, and it consists of the energy of the pain it needs.
It asks, “Please where can I get more Pain.”
It feeds on your thoughts when it’s ready to rise; it will control your thinking; it grows into the mind and mind, which is your thought activity because, with the Pain Body, every thought you think is destructive and painful. And it loves it!
It gobbles up the energy of every thought you think, every destructive and profoundly negative thinking, eats it up, and is having a Good Time! It’s feeding, and, at that moment, one way of putting it is, one could say, “the addictive quality of Human Pain.”
Addictive because the pain body loves its pain.
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The Pain Body Possesses You
When the Pain Body has taken you over (possesses you) and has succeeded in pretending that that’s ‘Who you are,’ all your thinking is completely aligned. And it’s feeding on it. The last thing you want is to be free of pain at that very moment.
At that moment, the pain is what you want because, at that moment, you become it.
How long the feeding time lasts for any particular person varies significantly from person to person; it could be a brief one, an hour, or two; some pain bodies have a feeding time of several weeks, even months.
That is extreme, and in very severe cases, some pain bodies have almost no dormant stage, continuously feeding and active.
But that’s rarer, but you sometimes meet people, and the pain-body is looking at you through their eyes, and they are waiting for an excuse to have more, and they want you to give them a painful reaction.
They want you to be angry with them; they want you to attack them. That’s people possessed by the Pain Body.
- Level One: It feeds on your thinking.
- Level Two:It feeds on the feedback of the emotional pain from other people.
So, it might not only use your thinking but also somebody else’s reactions. So, the Pain Body feeds on thought, and it eeds on others’ reactions.
The Pain-Body moves into that mind pattern, and its energy is amplified ten times, 20 times, 50 times, and 100 times.
In other words, the “unhappy me”; the Pain-Body arises, it flows into that mind structure, the emotion flows into that mind structure, and the Unhappy sense of me becomes dreadfully Unhappy and Loves its Unhappiness because that’s what it consists of.
A Foreigner in Your Energy Field
If a river cannot flow, the water and pressure accumulate. And when energy gets stuck and cannot flow freely, pain arises like a river. But it’s beautiful life energy in reality.
As we bring Presence consciousness (present awareness) into the Pain Body, it can no longer fool you into completely identifying with it. The water is still beautiful; there is pressure accumulating inside. That’s what the pain body is.
The Pain Body comes up, and at that moment, you will recognize it. That is the Beginning of Freedom from it.
Deep pain arises in whatever form regarding slight triggers, provocation, or even a thought; in some people, it is a very active, busy, aggressive pain.
It is a Passive form of Pain, “poor little me” victim pain does not matter which; pain bodies have different qualities in different people.
It may be turbulence, tightness, or constriction, which does not matter. As it arises, you will know there is a witnessing presence, and you watch where the pain body is and where you feel its energy field. In your body.
You can feel a dreadful heaviness in the solar plexus or stomach area. Some people perceive it as a big hole, a gaping hole inside—or intense anger.
But whatever it is, you watch it; this is why it is so helpful, you sitting here witnessing; you see Presence, which is part of this new state of consciousness.
Your presence gets so much strength by sitting in this Energy Field.
>>>Living the Liberated Life and Dealing with the Pain-Body – Eckhart Tolle Book – Amazon
Bring Presence
So the Watcher will be there watching the pain so the pain cannot use your mind anymore; it cannot feed on your thinking because you are viewing it directly; it cannot creep into your mind and become an “unhappy me.”
All that’s left of the pain is an energy field of turbulence or a heavy feeling inside you. But the pain has not become an “Unhappy me,” a sense of self, of who you are, and that’s the beginning of the end of the pain.
But our practice is allowing “what is” to be. And that also applies as long as the Pain-Body is there; you will enable the Pain that is there to be. That is a potent practice.
So, I am not saying we are not fighting the pain. We are not even trying to get rid of it. You bring consciousness, a compassionate state of allowing “what is.” It is a mighty state; it implies you are Present as the one who can allow it.
You are the one who can allow the pain to be. You know you are not creating this pain now because you practice accepting “what is.”
So it is not pain you are creating; it is old. You bring the “acceptance“ to the old pain, allowing it by not resisting it.
How to Identify and Stop Your Pain-Body | YouTube
Eckhart Tolle Dissolving the Pain Body
Poor digestion, too much junk food, hangover, and P.M.S. can create a pain-body experience. Any blockages will form negative emotions that will feed the pain body. You must keep your body’s energetic system in a proper flow state.
Remember these five steps for dissolving your pain body:
- Present Awareness. Become present in your thinking and observing by being in the now.
- Become aware of how you create suffering by reacting to situations and people.
- Reduce the constant repetitive thinking of the mind.
- Keep your energetic body system flowing through exercises like walking, yoga, meditation, stretching, running, bike riding, and QiGong.
- Be aware of the active pain body in others so you don’t get pulled into their drama.
An excellent tool for strengthening your conscious mind is meditation. Meditation helps you detach from the constant stream of thinking, allowing you to enjoy the peace and ease of the present moment.
INSIDE THE PAIN BODY Excerpt
Q: I don’t have a pain body myself. But my wife has a strong one. Sometimes, at the slightest problem, she will explode. And she will blame it on me. What should I do? Why have I attracted this person to my life?
A: In intimate relationships, there is almost always some “compatibility” in the parties’ pain bodies. If your wife has a strong pain body, be sure you probably also have something that needs to be discovered.
Otherwise, you would not have attracted her in the first place. Sometimes, men are better at controlling their emotions and seem calm and composed.
This does not mean there is not a pain-body there. It means you are better at covering it up so you can blame your wife.
Her outburst will no longer bother you once you have entirely dissolved your pain body. So instead of defining her as the problem, ask yourself, “Which quality should I have possessed so that her reactions would not bother me any longer.”
It may be you need to develop more empathy. Maybe you don’t see her but merely observe her from a distance. Beware, you don’t define yourself as calm and composed and her as hysterical and irrational.
It is satisfying to the ego to do that. But it will not help you grow in presence, which is your life purpose.
Source: INSIDE THE PAIN-BODY: Dissolving painful emotions in relationships: From the author of Understanding the teachings of ECKHART TOLLE
Conclusion
Eckhart Tolle’s teachings on the pain body offer a transformative perspective on human suffering and liberation.
Individuals can embark on a journey towards profound inner peace and spiritual awakening by cultivating awareness, living in the present moment, and disengaging from the pain body’s influence.
Tolle eloquently says, “The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.”
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