Jennifer pointed out that pain is in the brain. Our receptor sensory nerves detect the area that is wounded or needed attention and send a message to the brain, which interpret it as pain. Mark and Lili pointed out that pain is in our mind.
Very interestingly, under meditation, if we observe pain, there are 2 types of pain as discussed above. One is physical pain and the other is mental pain. Our brain detects the physical pain but it is our mind that holds on to this pain mentally.
As Mark pointed out, different people seem to have a different tolerant level to pain. What makes these differences is the level of control we have mentally. How we view pain can greatly alter our tolerant to pain.
I am not very good at meditation, however I have tried it a couple of times to look at pain. I tried to concentrate at my pain area, and strangely the pain disappears and all I can feel are pulses on my nerves in that area. There are times where the pulses are not very obvious, the pain is still there but strangely, I feel disconnect with this pain at the mind level. What this means is that I feel the physical pain but not at the mental pain.
There is always a saying that my body is sick but my mind is not. At the mind level, we can control or eliminate our mental pain. Often, people commit suicide because of mental pain. The pain of losing their love ones, the pain of losing their money, the pain of losing their reputation are all pain at the mind level.
Perhaps just like the story in What is Pain? we can’t possibly live with a bad leg and wake up in pain everyday, we should do a check from day to day and amputate that ‘bad leg’ that is preventing us from living fully.
Or perhaps we should do a check to see if these are ‘real’ pain in the first place. Sometimes the bad leg is already gone but as long as we hold on to it mentally, we will always feel the pain. As what Karen had realized in the story, this applies to all undesirable things in our life.
We should have the courage to face our pain, amputate it when needed and tackle it at the mind level. Let’s hope for less pain in this world.
4 comments:
Very good thoughts on pain. I believe there is no reason to be in pain. I believe that for many reasons some people want to be in pain.
Pain is often a choice, we can manage pain with our thoughts. We can amputate the pain if we so desire.
Thanks for the links and the mention.
Hi Mark,
You are welcome! I love your blog, it's thoughts provoking. Will be happy to share your blog with other readers :)
You have been tagged for The Personal Development List. (See my site for details), I would love to have you participate.
I was speaking with the doctors at the pain management clinic that I've been going to recently discussing the best options for us to take regarding the pain I've been in and they explained what you have here as well.
It took a little bit of explaining on their part and a little bit of thinking on my part to let it sink in what they were saying.
It's something that I'm in the process of working through with the help of meditation and deserves more attention by more people.
Thanks for addressing it here. When I get some time which is iffy these days, I'm going to check on what Karen has to say about it on her site.
Thanks for the topic and comment on my blog.
Peace, love and meditation.
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