7. Pain Is A Great Teacher

Pain can be physical, mental or emotional.

Physical pain is a basic necessity for the body. Just imagine, if we could feel no pain in our body we might accidentally hurt ourselves or start styling our faces, hands, and legs the way we style our hair today! Actually, pain is a letter of request, written by the body to the mind, saying, 'Please pay attention to me!' because attention is energy. When attention is given to a particular area, that attention becomes energy for that area. When the body communicates pain, it is actually asking for attention or energy, which will help it heal.

Mental or emotional pain is the psychological feeling that arises when you are faced with something you don't like. Research shows that emotional pain can deeply disturb the physical body. For example, the psychological feelings that arise with sexual repression can result in lower back disorders, or the pain of shouldering too much responsibility can cause pain in the shoulders.

Whether the pain is physical or emotional, an important thing you need to understand is that pain is always born from resistance to the present moment.

Time vs Understanding

If a painful incident happens in one's life like the loss of a child, the husband or wife leaving the spouse, the breakup of a close friendship, one suffers and then slowly accepts it over time. One may cry and brood many days and nights, but then one comes to accept what happened. Time heals. It is a common saying. Understand that time is needed for healing only because you were not ready to face the pain and suffering in a conscious and aware manner at the time the incident happened.

If you can just look at the pain, if you can witness the emotion with awareness and see the play of the mind while experiencing pain, then the understanding dawns and instant healing happens. Time is needed because you are not ready to have the understanding. So you suffer a great deal. Over time, after some weeks, months, or

Pain is always born from resistance to the present moment.

even years, the incident fades and becomes a

distant memory.

However, the pain is not completely gone from your system. If you come across a person who even distantly reminds you of your lost child or husband, for example, if the person has a similar style of talking, walking, or laughing, the wound reopens. It hurts because you carry the memory of the past. Because of this, you feel life is too heavy a burden to bear. You choose to hold onto your entire past, when you were a child, when you were a teenager, when you first went to work, holding onto all the stages of life with all the experiences, pains and mistakes. That burden and load of your emotions associated with the past, is what causes you pain every time you experience the memory. If you decide to drop the past and look at every situation with a fresh perspective, you will not have so much pain. You will heal instantly. You will not need so much time.

Pain and pleasure – two sides of the same coin

A small story:

Once a disciple went to his master and

said, 'Master, I am not able to meditate. My legs ache. I feel distracted.' The master just said, 'It will pass.'

After two weeks, the disciple went back to the master, this time saying, 'I am able to meditate beautifully. I feel so aware and blissful.'

The master again replied, 'It will pass.'

The root of pain and pleasure is the same. It is the same sensation with two names. It is like two people receiving a body massage from the same person. One concludes that it was a beautiful rejuvenating process while the other decides that it hurt! The same massage will appear like pain or pleasure depending on the person receiving it.

Life has both of these opposites, pleasure and pain. Both pleasure and pain are from the mind. The mind always moves from one extreme to the other. It rarely falls into the middle path. From pleasure you move to pain, from pain you move to pleasure. As we saw earlier, pleasure and pain are completely dependent on the person feeling the pleasure or pain. Something may seem like pleasure to you, while the same experience may be pain to someone else.

In the Bhagavad Gita* , the great scripture that teaches the various paths to Selfrealization, the enlightened master Krishna

Bhagavad Gita - Ancient Hindu scripture by enlightened master Krishna, considered the essence of the scriptures.

says beautifully, 'He who regards alike pleasure and pain, and looks on a lump of earth, a stone, and a piece of gold with an equal eye, who is wise and holds praise and blame to be the same, who is unchanged in honor and dishonor, and who treats friend and foe alike, is said to have gone beyond the modes of nature. Pleasure and pain are the same to him and he is ready for enlightenment.'

Free yourself from Pleasure and Pain

Buddha, an enlightened master, says, 'Free yourself from both pleasure and pain.' Craving for pleasure and nursing pain are both different aspects of the same experience. Both are chains. Pain may look like an ugly chain and pleasure a beautiful chain. Just as the day follows night and night follows day, pain and pleasure will always follow each other.

When you understand that pleasure and pain are both creations of the mind, you will realize that they are both temporary, they come and go like soap bubbles. Nobody is needed to take away your pleasure, because your mind by its very nature will move like a pendulum to the other extreme called pain!

The only way is to go beyond both pleasure and pain. This doesn't mean suppressing Both pleasure and pain are from the mind.

is an awareness that transforms pain to bliss which is the energy that exists no matter what the external situation may be. Bliss is your very nature and cannot be lost. Just because of your resistance to what is happening, you feel pain and your natural bliss is forgotten.

Awareness in Pain

pleasure or forgetting about pain. It

Like darkness, pain, whether it is physical, mental, or emotional, has only a negative existence . 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.

Any mental or emotional pain that you carry is just the tip of the iceberg. You need to go into the root where it starts. You need to work on the root cause for it and heal it. Otherwise, there is a distinct danger that you will inflict that pain on someone else or hurt yourself more with it. I always tell people, 'If you have pain, just drop everything and work on it. See that its root is healed. Only then you can be in a safe zone. Otherwise neither you nor the people living around you are in a safe zone.'

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'. Once you realize that you are beyond pain, you rise above pain to become a dukkha ateeta* . You experience the rare freedom that arises with non-attachment to the body. You will carry this freedom all your life. You leave the mundane life behind and enter into a spiritual plane. The whole material world disappears and another world arises, one of incomparable beauty, innocence, joy and compassion.

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. This realization brings with it a state of absolute bliss, which is the state of enlightenment.

Pain from birth to death

Life itself starts with pain, which is the pain of birth. When you are born, you undergo tremendous pain and you enter into a coma before you even exit the birth canal. According to the mystics, before entering into the world you are pure Consciousness and that Consciousness knows its reasons for taking this birth. Because you enter into a coma, you forget the memories of your past lives and the reason for taking birth again. In the same way life ends with intense pain, which is the pain of leaving the body.

Life is almost like a bridge between pain and pain. Just like the Golden Gate Bridge in the USA that connects two places, life seems to be a bridge connecting pain to pain!

Unclutching from Pain

When you can maintain your center, when you can be centered on your being while facing deep physical pain or mental suffering, you will see that you just go beyond the pain. When you go deep, when you become more aware, more conscious, you suddenly realize that you are affected and disturbed more by the 'internal reality' within you, than by the real incident that caused the pain. You realize that the incident that happened in the outer world is not directly connected to the experience that is going on in the inner world. Sometimes, if you just avoid the words that you constantly repeat like, 'pain, pain,' 'suffering, suffering,' you will escape from

Dukkha ateeta - Beyond sorrow and pain.

the pain that you might otherwise go through.

For example, with an incident that usually creates suffering or pain in your inner world, be a little intelligent and careful from the beginning not to allow thoughts such as, 'This is painful. I am suffering,' to occur. If you are aware or conscious enough to stop these types of words before they surface to the conscious layer, you can escape from the suffering. If you become a little aware, you will know how to play with your inner reality, how to be more balanced. Then, the outer world things will not be able to affect you.

Pain – a phenomenon of the mind

Painless delivery

There is an interesting incident from my wandering days that I want to share with you. During the days of my spiritual journey, I was once with some tribal people in Madhya Pradesh in Bharat. I was living in a small temple in the center of the village. One day I noticed a pregnant lady entering a small hut. After about half an hour, she came out with a small baby in her hands! No pain, no doctor, no nurse, no medicine, no cries. In half an hour she came out walking with a baby in her arms.

I was shocked! I could not ask anything because I did not know their language. After one month, I saw another pregnant lady do the same thing. In half an hour she came out with a baby. I asked the local priest who came to the temple, 'How does this happen? Don't they have any pain?' He asked, 'Pain? Why pain?'

I was amazed. The very idea that women should have pain at the time of delivery did not exist in their society! Not only that, nobody suffered from gynecological issues like menopause problems either.

I started enquiring about their lifestyle. I understood that in their tradition, they respect women a lot. The moment a girl becomes physically mature, she is acknowledged with respect that she is now qualified to become a mother. People fall at her feet and she touches and heals them! Just because of this different conditioning, the women don't suffer the usual pains that women in other cultures do.

'Phantom' Pain

There have been recorded instances of 'phantom pain' which is pain in a part of

The perception of physical pain can be changed by the mind.

the body that does not exist. Once in the

Second World War, a soldier's leg had to be amputated because it was badly damaged. The strange thing was that when he became conscious again he was still complaining about the pain in the leg. He was covered with a blanket so he had no idea that the leg had been removed. The blanket was removed and he was shown that his leg was not there anymore. He was shocked!

Further research then showed that each part of the body is related to a certain part of the brain. When a certain part of the body feels pain, the corresponding brain center shows activity. In this case, the related brain center was still vibrating in the same way it was vibrating when the leg was a part of the body. There are many such instances of people who feel pain in the empty space where their limbs were amputated. This is called 'phantom pain'.

Placebo effect

The mind has tremendous influence over the body. Even the perception of physical pain can be changed by the mind. In science they call it the 'placebo effect' when a simple sugar pill gives the same effect as a painkiller just because the person is made to believe that the sugar pill is a painkiller!

The other day, I was reading about research done at the University of Michigan in the USA that appeared in the Journal of Neuroscience. The research was done on a group of young men who agreed to let researchers inject their jaw muscles with a concentrated saline solution causing pain. The brain's response to the pain was studied using PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scans that showed the activity of the body's natural painkillers called endorphins.

In one scan, the men were told they were being given a painkiller but actually what was given was just a placebo, a substance that had no painkilling properties. Then they were asked to rate the intensity of the pain they felt on a scale of 0 to 100. Also, the PET scan would indicate the

brain activity related to pain. The researchers were able to study both the response of the brain and what the men actually felt.

The amazing observation was that when the men were given a placebo, meaning not a painkiller but just a neutral substance, the pain they felt was actually less. It was as if they had been given the painkiller itself! The PET scans indicated that the endorphin (natural painkiller) system in the brain was activated. It showed increased activity with the placebo, just because the person believed that it was a painkiller! Further studies have shown that the placebo effect was observed in more than seventy percent of the people, where the pain decreased by up to twenty two percent. Science is still studying this amazing phenomenon, which so clearly shows the mind-body connection.

We invite Pain

A small story:

One man was seen walking in great pain. Another man asked him, 'What happened? Do you have stomach ache or leg pain or something?' The man replied, 'No. The shoes I am wearing are too small.' The other man was surprised and asked, 'Then why are you wearing them?'

The first man replied, 'Yes, I am suffering now, but in the evening when I remove the shoes, it is such a relief and The residual accumulated pain creates a negative energy field around you, which we call the 'pain body'.

great joy. You don't know how enjoyable it is to feel the relief when I remove them!'

This may look silly. But if we look into our lives, we are also doing exactly the same thing!

We invite pain upon ourselves. We may not like to believe this, but every single pain that we experience in life is invited by us. It is just like inviting guests to your house, calling them again and again, but when they finally arrive we say we were not expecting them! We invite pain and disease upon ourselves with our immoderate habits and stressful lifestyles, and then forget all about it and complain later when disease happens.

Pain body

Every time we experience pain, it leaves behind some residual feeling that remains stuck in the body. This accumulated pain creates a negative energy field around us, which we call the 'pain body'. The pain

Every pain is because of your internal investments of your ego.

body not only stores, but also starts reproducing many diff-

erent kinds of pains.

Again and again, we share what we create. That's what I always tell people that if wealth is created out of a pain body, we transfer the pain body along with the wealth to the next generation. Wealth should be created just out of a relaxed and blissful mood. Then the wealth can be enjoyed by the person you pass it on to.

The pain body constantly attracts the same kind of people and situations that make you feel hurt. By the very law of nature, you attract similar situations in your life. What you think, you create in your life as reality. So the more pain you harbor, the more pain you attract.

Pain is due to ego

You undergo suffering in many situations, maybe when you fall ill, when your neighbor gets a new car, when your loved one leaves you, when your boss fires you, or when you lose some wealth. Suppose you decided to welcome these situations just as they are without anger or resentment. Would you still suffer as much? No! But you don't manage situations that way. When your boss yells at you, you feel pain. The pain could have been either because he scolded you in front of everyone, because you feel bad for having fallen short of your boss's expectations at work, or because you feel you didn't deserve the scolding.

Sit by yourself and think honestly about what the reason is. If the pain is due to him scolding you in front of everybody, then the pain is actually a hurt to your ego. Ask yourself, 'So what if everybody was watching? Why have I invested so much in what others think of me? Why can't I have my own gauge to measure myself?' Ask yourself these questions. You will realize your investment in other's opinions of you is not worth it. Your pain will disappear!

If you experience pain because you did not perform to the best of your ability, become intensely aware of that. That awareness is enough to overcome the pain. Then you will use only the learning from the incident, you will drop the 'feeling bad' part.

If you are pained because you feel you did your work and didn't deserve to be scolded, then again just the intense awareness will dissolve the pain. The awareness will bring in the understanding and acceptance of your boss. You will have the patience to approach him later and clarify the situation.

If you look deeply, every pain is because of your internal investments of your ego. Your boss or your neighbor or your loved one or your wealth is not the reason. No one outside can be a reason for your pain, because your pain itself is only your response to an external event based on your own investments. Depending on where you have invested your ego, you will suffer. If you work towards dissolving all those investments, you are intelligent.

Understand, working to destroy your ego is nothing but working on your pain body and expanding its boundary. By expanding, I mean feeling less or no personal pain for incidents that happen.

A small story:

A man went to a doctor for treatment of severe back pain. A number of tests were conducted on him. Finally the doctor diagnosed his problem and told him, 'The pain can be cured by an operation. It will be a major operation, so you will need to be in hospital for a month and then take six months bed rest.' The man replied, 'Doctor, that'll be too expensive for me.'

The doctor replied, 'In that case, I can touch up the X-ray for ten dollars!'

If we look at our life, we also keep the pain alive, doing just touch-ups by feeding our ego. The pain doesn't come from life. It comes from our expectation, from our ego.

The question is not how to change ugliness into beauty, pain into pleasure, or misery into happiness. The question is how to change the unconscious into the conscious, how to infuse awareness into ourselves and embrace reality as it is.

Pain - the catalyst to start the quest for Truth

Just look back at your life. When was the last time you were happy about something? When was the last time you wondered about the meaning of life? Did you look inwards to see who you are or what life is all about? Did you feel the need to deeply know about the ultimate Truth? No! When things go smoothly you just blindly follow the same routine with barely any awareness or consciousness. There is nothing to jolt you into awareness from your routine and you continue without any awareness.

But when pain happens, it makes you look at life objectively. It forces you to look deeper into life, to learn why you react the way you react and seek to uncover the real mystery of life. Pain is a blessing in disguise. It is the key that can open the door to the world of reality. The choice is yours to open the door or not.

Pain can simply shake you out of both the dream state and the 'waking dream' state you are in. Please understand that even if you are awake, you are not completely in touch with reality. You live in a world of your desires and fears, which is called a 'waking dream.' You see things only with the lens of greed and fear. Pain can be a great teacher that simply jolts you out of the dream and puts you in touch with reality as it is.

With pain, your usual thought patterns are shattered and you begin to see things as they actually are. You begin to recognize a subtle distance between you and the pain. You see that it is not something that is a part of your nature.

Stepping stones of Pain and suffering

Never curse the pain or the person who is inflicting the pain on you. Instead, take the opportunity to use it as a blessing, to go in, watch objectively, and cut the root of the pain. Pain can be a great teacher if you allow it to be. If in one instance you properly research the cause and effect of pain within you, it can turn out to be the biggest turning point in your life.

One important thing we need to understand is that while pain might be inevitable, the suffering that comes from the pain is not. For example, if you get hurt, there is definitely pain, but how much you choose to suffer from that pain is really your choice. Suffering is not a state of life. It is a state of mind. It is not an event in your life. It is your response to an event. In a particular situation, whether you suffer or not depends entirely on your reaction to that situation.

A small story:

Once a man was seriously injured with multiple fractures and injuries. His friend came to visit him at the hospital. He saw the state of his injured friend and didn't know what to say. So he asked his friend, 'How are you feeling my friend? I guess it must be painful with all those injuries. Do you suffer a lot?'

The man replied, 'Not much, only when I laugh.'

It is a question of attitude! Pain is inevitable, but suffering is your choice.

Is suffering necessary?

One of the most deeply hidden reasons for suffering is that you may be enjoying it. For example, falling ill can become a source of pleasure if it gets you the attention and care you have been craving. Look deeply at why it sometimes gives you pleasure to inflict pain on yourself or on others. Is there a better channel through which you can receive the same pleasure without the suffering?

In the same way as a seed has to rupture before a plant can grow and blossom, intense suffering can rupture your ego and leave you open and vulnerable to transformation. In the great epic Mahabharata* , there is a beautiful quote by Kunti* , the mother of the Pandavas* , the heroes of the story. She prays to Krishna, the enlightened master, 'Oh Krishna! Let pain and suffering come from all sides in my life. They will constantly remind me about You, my Lord.' Kunti* is asking the Lord to bless her with pain and suffering so that she may constantly remember Him for relief! In modern days, we need not go to this extent, but we can understand the potential of suffering in the context of our own inner clarity. Suffering has tremendous potential to integrate and transform us.

Start to witness your experiences without judgment. See with clarity where you are suffering at the gross and subtle levels. If you are just aware, the suffering itself can open your eyes to the unreality of suffering. It can teach you how unnecessary it is to suffer at all. This is what I call 'necessary suffering'! Once you learn your lesson through necessary suffering, you will handle suffering in a much more mature and beautiful way.

If you are just aware, the suffering itself can open your eyes to the unreality of suffering.

The master Bodhidharma* says, 'Every suffering is a Buddha-seed.' Suffering can propel you to become a Buddha. It can bring you the wisdom of knowing all about life and reality. He says, don't be against suffering. Feel grateful to suffering and pain because they create the situation for you to search for the truth. Otherwise, you will just live life like a rock or plant. You will not realize the ultimate, which can only be achieved by the human consciousness. If the body and mind are the field, suffering is the seed, wisdom is the sprout, and the ultimate state you attain is the grain! When you sow the seed of suffering in the field that is your body-mind, wisdom sprouts from it, and you attain the ultimate state!

Mahabharata - The Hindu itihasa or epic whose central characters are the five Pandava princes, their hundred Kaurava cousins and enlightened master Krishna.

Kunti - In the epic Mahabharata, the mother of the five Pandava brothers who stood for righteousness.

Pandavas - The five princes in the Hindu epic Mahabharata. Their father was Pandu.

Bodhidharma - A disciple of Buddha and mainly responsible for spreading Buddhism as Zen Buddhism.

Enlightenment is not escaping Pain, it is understanding Pain

Normally, whatever steps we take when we are faced with pain are attempts to escape the pain and suffering. People ask me how I am able to be blissful all the time and whether enlightenment gets rid of all pain. Be very clear, enlightenment is not an escape from pain but an understanding of pain. It gives a deep insight and courage to look objectively at oneself. 'Why am I feeling miserable? What is it that is causing me suffering and anguish? What exactly is causing me to feel hurt?' All you need is the courage to ask these questions and face the answers. You will be free from the usual suffering.

A small story:

A man came to a Zen master with a question, 'Master, how can we avoid heat and cold?'

The master replied, 'Be hot, be cold.'

Heat and cold are metaphorical representations of pleasure and pain. How to avoid pleasure and pain? Just go through both in a witnessing state, that's all.

Pain – a path to no-mind

A small story:

Once a disciple was walking with a Zen master when a flock of geese flew overhead. The master asked, 'What are they?' The disciple replied, 'They are wild geese, master.' The master asked, 'Where are they?' The disciple replied, 'They have flown away.'

The master suddenly caught the disciple's nose and twisted it. The disciple cried out in pain. The master said, 'You say they have flown away, but they have been here from the start.' The story says the disciple became enlightened in that moment.

This story may sound very strange, but this is the way of most Zen masters. Pain has a tremendous value in awakening you to reality. That is why it has been used by many masters to awaken the sleeping disciple. Normally what do we do when someone is in pain? We console. Unknowingly we enable the person to continue to sleep. But the master is not interested in consoling. His only interest is in awakening you. In the moment of great pain, the mind stops, there is only pain. In that moment, the Truth is delivered! In the story you can see that in the moment of pain, the disciple's inner space was ready to receive the Truth from the master, and the master delivered it!

The Pain of transformation

Pain can become a very creative energy. It can become a remembrance of God. It can become prayer. It can become meditation. It can become awareness. It can cause tremendous transformation in you.

An important secret of life that you need to understand is that if you become aware of something, you can get rid of it very easily. If you are not aware of it, there is no question of getting rid of it. It remains with you. The pain is a pain because it exists in your unconscious, not in your awareness. Your fear of facing the pain allows it to exist and grow more and more, like a tumor. A master will simply remove this tumor through his master surgery'! When it leaves you, you transform into a new person. Once a devotee asked me, 'Swamiji, I understand that the surgery is needed for my inner space to be cleansed. But can the master use some pain-killer while doing the 'master surgery'?'

What is the attitude needed to deal with the painful 'surgeries' of the master? Sometimes, just the awareness itself will dissolve the pain. Many times, I will just point at the pain, nothing else. It will simply disappear and it will evaporate.

Now, what is the correct attitude to deal with these painful 'surgeries'? It is having complete trust that whatever 'pain' the master causes is only for your good and nothing else. The 'surgery' itself is because of his boundless love

The master is intense life. He will just remove the 'tumor' and throw it away.

and compassion for you. If this is clearly understood, then even if it hurts, you will go through it with deep gratitude for what the master is doing to you. I can say that the painkiller from the master's side is the love and compassion the master showers with just a look.

One more thing is that the pain is also because you start thinking it is a pain and labeling it so. The master can teach in just two or three seconds what will ordinarily take a lifetime or a few hundred years or a few births. The master is intense life. He will simply remove the 'tumor' and throw it away. So, even if it is intense, it is better to go with the master than with life because it is a very quick process. Also, if you understand what the master is doing to you, you can enjoy it as the ultimate happening in your life.

Also the pain you will experience continuing life with the 'tumors' will be much worse than the pain you experience when the master removes them. Removing a 'tumor' will take hardly a few minutes. The master just removes it, and it is done.

Once you understand this process, you will no longer label the transformation as pain. Instead, you will welcome it. You will not only welcome it, you will feel thankful that what was lurking deep down in your unconscious has been brought up and removed.

The urge to know the true you

Your true nature is divine. Your ultimate potential is to realize that you are divine. Anything less will leave you feeling dissatisfied and discontented. You can have all the money in the world, all the name and fame, all the best relationships, all the power, and still you will remain empty and feel the pain of being unfulfilled. Unless your divine nature flowers, unless your divinity is revealed to you, you can never feel fulfilled.

The master kindles the fire inside you to know yourself. He creates the pain of unfulfillment in you. He creates such deep longing in you, because only through such divine discontent will you move, will you take the quantum jump into the unknown divinity that already exists within you. Only then you will wake up from the meaningless dream you have been living lifetime after lifetime. Only then you will integrate all your energies and jump in to explore the adventure of life.

1. Focus on Pain

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. You can try it out the next time you experience pain or suffering. It is definitely a better option than painkillers, whose side-effects sometimes are worse than the original complaint.

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, focusing only on the spot which is causing you pain. 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 it deeply. Experience it with an open mind. Look into what is happening inside your mind. You will soon see that your mind was just exaggerating the pain. Put all your awareness on the center 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!

2. Stop, Freeze!

Here is another meditation technique you can try when you feel pain or suffering.

Close your eyes. You don't have to sit straight. Just sit in a completely relaxed way. If you want to stretch your leg, you can stretch. If you want to sit on the ground, you can. If you want to lean on the wall, you can do that. Just make yourself completely comfortable so that you will face the actual pain or suffering. If you are uncomfortable you might start facing the pain that comes because of your uncomfortable posture. Only if your body is comfortable will you be able to face the real pain or suffering.

Close your eyes, visualize that from head to toe your body has frozen completely. Just stop all movement. Just freeze. Be like a stone. There should be no movement in the eyes, no movement in the hands, no movement in the legs, no movement even for breathing. Just stop, freeze.

Only the idea that you are frozen should be there inside you. No other idea should be there. Entertain only this one idea that you are completely frozen.

Do not imagine or visualize any relaxation from it. Relaxation or witnessing consciousness should happen by itself. Until then just be completely frozen. You will see that you establish yourself in the ultimate state of bliss.

3. Witness Pain

You can use this as a technique for dissolving physical pain in any part of your body.

When you are faced with physical pain, just witness the feeling of pain in that part of your body in a relaxed way. You will see that first, there might be a surge of pain, but soon the pain reduces to a spot and disappears. What happens is that the moment you get hurt physically, energy supplied by your own body intelligence rushes to that part to heal it. The energy rush is what you label 'pain'. If you witness the energy rushing and healing in a relaxed way, the pain disappears and healing happens. If we just understand this, we will not resist and suffer the pain. We will cooperate with the natural healing energy of the body.

I can say this from my own personal experience. Once somebody closed the door of the car on my finger. People around me got agitated and ran around to get first aid. I simply told them not to bother.

Your own inner ambulance system is what you call pain!

As my finger swelled, I just watched clearly what

was happening inside my body. I could feel the energy rushing from my navel center to my finger. I could clearly see the body intelligence responding to the emergency on its own. It healed on its own.

Your own inner ambulance system is what you call pain!

The witnessing focus that you give the pain will make you realize that you are more than a mere body. You will touch your energy base and realize that you are more than the body-mind.

Watch the pain intensely but without attaching the word 'pain' and the meaning 'suffering' to it. For a brief moment the pain may seem to intensify but soon it will dissolve.

Actually, the body is intelligent enough to allow energy to flow to the part of the body that is asking for energy. But you resist that energy flow by labeling it as 'pain'. Just allow the energy to flow by infusing full awareness into that part of the body. Just look at the energy flow with curiosity. Be a complete outsider. Do not participate in the process. Just let the energy flow to that area and work on it. You will see it heal.

4. Filled with nectar

Close your eyes. Sit straight. Inhale and exhale deeply. Visualize that your body is filled with nectar (or honey), with a sweet feeling as if your whole body is smiling.

If you have irritation or itching in any part of the body, concentrate and feel that portion also being filled with nectar. Feel that your whole stomach is filled with nectar. Visualize that your whole body from head to toe is filled with nectar, with a pleasant feeling.

Now slowly divert your attention to the place where you have pain. Just be continuously aware of that spot. Now just drop the word 'pain'. Just see what that special sensation is, what is the experience you feel in that spot. Do not mentally suffer, do not connect to your suffering, do not be emotionally disturbed. Just see what is happening in that spot. Look just as a child looks, with curiosity. Just penetrate and be in that space without using the word 'pain' or 'suffering' until the feeling or the sensation disappears.

5. Look into the blue sky

Look into the blue sky beyond the clouds. Normally, we only look into the clouds and pass judgment on them as 'beautiful clouds', 'dark clouds' and what not. Now, do not get caught in clouds. Clouds are like thoughts, like dreams. Look beyond the clouds into the blue sky, the vast emptiness.

If you look at the clouds, your mind will start thinking something. If you look at the sky beyond the clouds, your mind will stop working! If you start looking at the stars, again you will start thinking. Seeing the clouds means getting stuck with your thoughts. Seeing the stars means getting stuck with spiritual visions and experiences. Don't do either.

Just look into the empty, vast and open blue sky. Just lie down. Do not support your head with a pillow. Otherwise you will fall asleep. Just lie down and stare at the sky, the vast empty space.

Just gaze at the sky. You may experience fear. If you just gaze without looking at the clouds or counting the stars you will experience fear because the idea of your boundary is getting lost. Don't bother about the fear. If you are doing it properly you will have fear. If you are gazing and managing to think, you will not experience the fear because you are still caught in the boundary of the body. It is like back-seat driving. You are gazing and your mind is thinking.

Just gaze, do not think. After some time, suddenly you will realize you have forgotten your body for a few minutes. The link, the shaft of thoughts that you normally create has suddenly disappeared. This can't happen if you are expecting it to happen. Don't expect, 'When will I lose my thoughts? When will I lose the shaft?' Just gaze without bothering about anything.

When you see that in the last few seconds there were no thoughts, just close your eyes and bring the whole outer space into the inner space. Visualize the same thing inside you. Suddenly you will see you are having the same thing inside. There are no thoughts, no stars. There is just vast space.

If you are having knee pain, try this technique. Just gaze at the sky. Suddenly when you remember that for the last few seconds you did not have thoughts, take that whole space inside your knee where you have pain. The pain will simply disappear in a few seconds.

Whenever you have physical pain, whenever you have mental suffering, try this technique. That very moment you will be healed. That very moment you will simply see the inner healing happening inside you. Apart from the healing, if you are a seeker looking for spiritual growth, it will also bring you tremendous energy and quantum experiences. You will have a quantum jump in your growth.

LIVING ENLIGHTENMENT

Fear and desire are the fundamental energies that drive our lives. We act either out of a desire to achieve something or reach somewhere, or out of a fear of not wanting to experience something. Attraction and repulsion are not merely forces of molecules, but also essential to human behavior.