How to Recognize, Face & Heal Your Pain Body

Ego can strike at any time. Sometimes you can feel it coming on….a bad mood mounting after a series of events that haven’t gone your (ego’s) way. Other times it seems to appear as if out of nowhere…you feel yourself emotionally go from zero to sixty in an instant…

One minute you’re fine, the next minute you’re either flying off the handle or waiting for the next available opportunity to unleash the built up emotions…usually on an unsuspecting bystander, who has no idea what just hit them!

I experienced the latter last Saturday…

I woke up fine. Headed over to a local bookstore where I set-up as a vendor to sell some of my wares. Sometime between being set up and waiting for my first customer, a negative emotion started to spark. I started to feel irritated by the slightest things…

I shared something innocuous with a friend and his response irritated me. The subject of our conversation wasn’t about anything that I’m normally vested it, but since my ego was looking for a reason to be mad, it decided to invest in this particular thing in order to have a reason to become irritated.

Once ego’s momentum started to take root, it was easy for other things to become irritating…

There wasn’t much foot traffic, so sales weren’t happening (ego: why I am sitting here, wasting my time?).

The store owners didn’t advertise the event (ego: ugh, I could be doing about a thousand other things besides sitting here all day).

Then, I heard someone near me smacking while they were eating their lunch. With my irritation threshold at nil, it was absolutely magnified in my awareness. Chomp. Smack. Chomp. Smack. I thought I was going to come unglued.

It took everything in me to keep my rage physically hidden from the external world. I was on the verge of bolting, wanting to pack up and call it a day, at any moment.

I get it. I’m female so this seemingly unfounded irritability tends to point to the monthly thing that all women experience.

Most people (both men and women) tend to ride out this emotional rollercoaster without ever truly understanding what’s going on under the surface. Fortunately, there is a deeper explanation, one that when understood can actually lead to a transformation of this emotional energy to a higher state of consciousness.

The “seemingly unfounded irritation” is actually due to the arising of one’s pain body, something that both males and females have…

Our respective pain bodies are made up of the unconsciousness that exists in each of us. Our personal pain body consists of the emotional triggers that we’ve accumulated through direct experiences in this life, as well as the painful attributes that we unconsciously identify with and share as a collective (i.e., our particular gender, race, religion, etc.).

All of this is a part of the unconsciousness that we must uncover and transmute. In other words, it’s not a long-term justification for becoming irritated or angry. However, it does explain why these seemingly unfounded irritations occur, which is a starting point for directing the inner healing that needs to be done.

A breakdown of my pain body from the example above…

On a collective level, I was unconsciously identifying with the female pain body. The reason women do not want to be called “irrational” is because our emotions feel real (whether or not they’re understood) and there’s a history of women being persecuted under the assumption that they were irrational…the pain associated with these persecutions is an active part of the ongoing female pain body (whether or not you consider yourself a feminist).

In other words, the “seemingly unfounded irritability” actually arises from the unconscious association with the pain that women have collectively experienced. It’s a part of our unconscious psyche. This unconscious association with a collective past pain is the case for each type of pain body, not just the collective female pain body.

Again, this is to bring understanding to how the pain body works; it’s not to justify playing into the continued unconsciousness (i.e., justified anger). The emotional energy associated with each pain body must be transmuted, but that can’t happen if it’s not first understood and accepted.

On a personal level, a specific fear associated with my particular psyche (as opposed to a collective psyche) had been unconsciously triggered…

I’m currently making life choices that are in direct opposition to my past conditioning (like creating abundance without relying on a secure job). However, since I haven’t completely overcome my past conditioning, it still unconsciously holds weight in my awareness in the form of fear…

I was relying on this event as an opportunity to make money, so when the foot traffic didn’t appear to be there or the customers appeared to be bypassing my stuff, I got scared. I unconsciously started to doubt whether or not my new choices could work.

Once fear sparked, I started to blame outwardly. I blamed the store for not advertising the event better. I blamed the weather for being crappy, thinking that must be why people weren’t coming in. And worst of all, I blamed the person who epitomized my new mindset…my personal mentor. It must be his fault this isn’t working.

Fear’s nasty like that…it attacks whatever (and whomever) it perceives as threatening its security.

Fortunately, I hadn’t been fully overtaken by my pain body (though, I assure you, I was close). I could see there was a part of me who wanted to prove the negative mindset by not wanting things to get better (the ability to see this is awareness).

Even with this glimmer of awareness, I was still tempted to indulge in further negativity (to ego or the pain body this is gratifying…it’s how it feeds and strengthens itself). However, that glimmer of awareness was enough of a window to see another choice…one that focused on light instead of darkness.

When I finally mustered the strength to choose light, I started praying for help. I prayed to be disentangled from my ego’s perceptions (i.e., the pain body). I prayed to recognize (and bring forth) the awareness that lives behind the massive maze of misperceptions that I was caught in.

I just kept asking for help in this manner over and over until the energy started to redirect. After about five minutes of doing this, my identification with the negative energy started to give way and redirect into light. With divine help, I was able to come fully out of that funk.

Facing and healing the pain body is a necessary part of the inner journey. Doing so is what transmutes unconsciousness to consciousness…dark to light. So don’t be afraid to face it. Instead, welcome it.

In fact, if you can, embrace it was as much love, light and acceptance as you can muster. This is not the same as “justifying” it, which only serves to prolong the unconscious patterns. Instead, it sets the stage for healing.

Become childlike and curious towards it. This will serve to keep you from becoming identified with it. If you can maintain an innocent curiosity, you’re less likely to be taken over by it. Instead, you become an observer of its patterns.

As the curious observer of its patterns, you can begin to bring a conscious understanding to them. This builds awareness, which serves as your anchor between being fully taken over by ego/pain body and bringing light to it. This makes healing possible.

With time, the unconscious patterns will be known by the curious observer as soon as they emerge, leaving no space for them to thrive. Instead, they’ll die out just as quickly as they appeared, until a time comes when they no longer emerge in your awareness…the point at which you have fully transmuted (healed) all of the unconscious patterns that form the pain body.

Don’t stop your inner work until this happens.

To recognizing, facing + healing the pain body,

Shanna

P.S. For a deeper understanding of the pain body, check out Eckhart Tolle’s work: The Power of Now and A New Earth.