Being Human: How to end suffering for good?

Most decisions in life are driven by our wish to lessen suffering in our life. To make it more comfortable, more enjoyable, more peaceful and fulfilling. Somehow this blissful life always seems to be in the future and not here. This is because we are so good at creating suffering for ourselves without noticing.

Every human being who is born into this world will have a pain body, as Eckhart Tolle calls it. A lot of it is formed from the experiences that we label as negative over the course of our life.

As we have just entered this world, we also get plugged into the collective pain body that the human race has, plus the pain body of our nation, gender etc. We are also heavily influenced by the pain bodies of our parents. More they try to hide these, the stronger the energy is that affects the us.

What is a pain body? 

A pain body is the metaphysical energy that tries to make you feel as if you are in pain when something triggers an automatic emotional response and is supported by automatic thought patterns that enhance the negative emotion.

It is really all locked in negative emotions and emotional patterns. This energy exists on the astral plane and is part of our energetic field.

 

All the individual pain bodies are connected and form a collective pain body. Children form their pain bodies from the connection of the collective pain body or from their parents’ pain bodies.

If parents are very unconscious and suppress their pain bodies then these are even worse than the ones that are acting out. Children absorb the negative energy from the suppressed pain bodies even more than otherwise.

What is really causing suffering?

As our Mind is feeding the negative emotion, the energy gets blocked and it also causes the body to produce such chemicals that you can feel physical pain. In extreme cases people even get chronically ill because of that.

All chemicals that people consume to feel better are also produced in the perfect combination inside our body. Once you learn how to use your body and Mind correctly, there is no more suffering. 

When the life energy is trapped, it feels like suffering, that is the main compound of the pain body. Once it is released, it becomes a fuel for presence. You can always choose – fear or love.

Feeding the pain body

When something triggers an emotional reaction in your pain body this emotion is not really reflecting the situation (the trigger) correctly. Very often it is totally out of proportion or not directly related to the situation… or a person at all. Yes, people are the best triggers.

Next your automatic thought patterns kick in and start increasing the pain (emotion) in you – feeding the pain body. The moment you notice it, it stops. Your pain body cannot feed if you do not identify with it. The moment you observe it as consciousness, it will start weakening the emotion and the pain body.

Another way your pain body likes to feed is by using other people agreeing with your emotional response to the horrible misfortune, as your pain body would label it. It is great for your pain body when somebody can support the negative narrative of the event that triggered you in the first place. 

Eckhart Tolle explains in The New Earth how to dissolve the pain body. There is no unhappiness with only emotion, the emotion needs a story to support it for the unhappiness to appear. Your negative thoughts will feed it more. Your pain body enjoys the unhappiness and it might even give you some sort of satisfying feeling when you soak in your sadness.

In order to dissolve it you will have to feel into your body, focus on the sensation that you are feeling – sadness, pain, anxiety etc and allow it to be. Accept that in this moment you are feeling this emotion. Do not get sucked into your “supporting story” and watch your thoughts. Just be there in that feeling and experience it. 

The moment you accept it, it starts fading away – there is a space of consciousness around the feeling and even though you are still feeling it, the suffering is not there any more. This is the beginning of dissolving the pain body.

Unconsciously increasing your unconsciousness

There is a list of activities that move you out of thought but not into consciousness, but quite the opposite. These move you into a state of deep unconsciousness and have very strong addictive qualities.

Here is a list of few of them:

For example, let’s take watching TV. Even though there is lessened Mind activity, you are either just deeply unconscious or even worse – pulled into the thoughts shown at the TV program or spoken by other people. You become “programmable” without any control of what is inserted into your unconscious Mind. 

There is a reason the commercials industry has so much money pumped into it. And this is also how it works.

It is falling below the thought rather than rising above it as with rising consciousness. Even if you do not find anything interesting to watch from TV, you can continue to flick through the channels for hours and the only button you are unable to push on the remote seems to be the “off” button. 

If you notice when your addiction wants to kick in, remember to take 3 conscious breaths for this is increasing your consciousness and then the addiction has lost its power to rule you into more addictive activities.

Eckhart Tolle has written in his book The New Earth that when paying attention to your breath for a year has more benefits than taking many spiritual courses. Every time you are breathing consciously you are stopping thought. 

Practising this will increase the time of consciousness and from one point onwards you do not have to do anything to be more conscious. The time that you spend without compulsive thinking increases until it stops.

Being present creates a space around all thoughts, emotional highs and lows. This space creates continuous peace in your life. You will be fulfilled from inside and you will be able to stop all the self-created suffering that comes from overvaluation of form and unawareness of inner space. You will not become addicted to the world.

How to use your pain body for your advancement?

It is obvious that the pain body is the source of all our suffering. And our Mind feeds it constantly with negative thoughts so it keeps growing stronger and stronger as we grow older. That is also why older people seem to be harder to get along with because nearly everything can trigger some unwanted conflict or reaction from them.

And it doesn’t help that our Ego works like the most loyal guardian and sees the pain body as its ally. Sometimes that can backfire though. For some people it happens that the pain body grows so strong that it is impossible for the person to live with it. This triggers the awakening process that results with the Ego Death – the most unwanted outcome for the Ego, of course.

Ego is building on the past experiences and cannot survive without the future. The moment you have no more time or no more future, Ego dies. This is why when you get a “2 more months to live” diagnosis from your doctor and your future collapses, so does your Ego. 

Exactly there lies the great opportunity to use your pain body for your own advancement. And this is also where it is actually more beneficial to have a bigger and stronger pain body, because it then also “works” better. More you have suffered, the deeper the awakening that it triggers. This is why most enlightened spiritual masters have had the most challenging lives.

If you want to work your pain body to your benefit then the way to do it is to first notice and acknowledge it. You have to acknowledge that you are experiencing the emotion and the pain that it is causing as a conscious observer. 

It is a curse in terms of suffering to have a strong pain body but at the same time a great opportunity for enlightenment. One of the fastest ways to become enlightened is to catch yourself and start observing your emotions and thoughts every time you find yourself triggered into emotional pain.

Soon your pain body will be totally dissolved and if anything triggers you, you will start to welcome it as an opportunity to move deeper into being – closer to your Soul. It doesn’t mean that you will have no obstacles, but the way you handle these is totally different. 

 

How to end suffering for good?

Slow down – the first step on the way to eliminate Ego is to eliminate time from our life. This does not mean clock time that we use for our daily tasks. It is the inner time that we have to eliminate – that we understand that we are forever in the endless now. There is no rush to anywhere, there is stillness in being here and now.

Life will be a problem or obstacle when you consider the present moment as a problem or an obstacle. This is your Ego/Mind trying to get you to some unreachable future moment where happiness lies. 

This is a never ending struggle if you’re living like this because you only ever experience the endless present moment. Your past is right now when you think of that. Your future is right now when you think of that. But both of these do not exist.

Stay present – the moment you stop fighting with what is, is the moment when you are starting to live and step out of the Ego/Mind. This is when you really start to experience life that really is. And it is amazing!

When you treat the present moment as an enemy or obstacle and react to it accordingly, you are only feeding your Ego and your reactions and unfulfillment only grow stronger.

Harmonise your Body/Mind/Soul – the way to live to the fullest is to learn how to operate your body and your Mind. Including your body chemistry and your brain. In order to do that you have to stop identifying yourself as your body or your Mind.

“Your body is the food you have gathered over time and your Mind is made up of thoughts and memories you have accumulated.“

– Sadhguru

Neither your Mind or your body is you. But you feel like it is you, you (or rather your Mind) might argue. You are actually the consciousness(Soul) that has a body and the Mind.

Think for a second – if someone loses their limb or has their appendix removed or hair cut, are they less themselves? No. Or if you forget some facts about your life are you less you? No. Or just the very basic example that most people go through – are you more you when you gain weight? There is more body, after all… or are you less you when you are losing weight? Again – nothing to do with the “amount” of body you have.

New state of being – blissfulness – non-resistance, non-judgement and non-attachment are the three pillars of internal peace, joy, love, freedom and blissfulness.

“This too shall pass” applies to every situation and before judging or labelling any situation as good or bad, if you first apply that statement then you will be at peace. Your Ego might tell you that this means you will never be able to enjoy another success, but this is not true – you will still enjoy your successes but you will not be attached to these and therefore will not suffer once the moment of victory has passed.

Use all the above to end suffering – If you look at the world from another place than formless, the world becomes a scary place.

In order to end your personal suffering for good – all you have to do is become conscious and for that, all you have to do is be. Be here and now – feel into the present moment. This is how the thoughts will subside, your reactivity to different life situations will tune down and you will become enlightened. In short – enlightenment is the end of all suffering.

Your Mind will tell you a hundred ways how this cannot be true. And how you are far too busy at the moment with one thing or another and cannot be here and now. And you will try to do a thousand things to be happy and fulfilled and free yourself from suffering… just as your Mind suggests.

Usually it takes an unbearable amount of suffering to break your Ego. But once you have hit the rock bottom after you have tried everything, you will surrender and see it for yourself. Or if you are really wise, then you do not listen to your Mind and try it right now. 

Conclusion

It is up to us to stop suffering and start living. It can be surprising that the same suffering that we are trying to get rid of, can be a doorway to bliss and joy. I guess it is time to start looking at the misfortunes in our life in a different light and start noticing how we ourselves create most of it. 

This is not about ignoring the things we do not like in life, but quite the opposite – to be totally present and not react, but act from consciousness. This way  you do not stop suffering only for yourself but also help others to do the same.