The Meaning Of Pain

Physical or moral, the pain can be so violent that it makes you want to die. When opium or morphine are powerless to calm it, the last resort is flight: to leave one’s body so as not to suffer. Only insiders do it at will. For the common man, the exit of body can be obtained only by taking the death.

But suicide has a serious disadvantage. It is irreversible. It’s a one-way trip for the afterlife. We do not return from the world of the dead. There are some mythological or literary exceptions. They are only there to confirm the rule.

When we are dead, whatever our efforts can be, it is definitive, we remain dead. Some people think that the dead can come back. Let them speak to us if we know how to listen to them. Everyone can believe what he wants. The law is tough, but it’s the law. Let the dead bury the dead, there is enough for the living. The other world, if it exists, has an impassable border. We better accept it right now.

Here in their strangely inhuman vocabulary is what doctors think about pain. It corresponds to a biological function which is an alarm mechanism whose role is to detect internal stimulations (of visceral origin) or external (cutaneous) stimuli whose intensity threatens the physical integrity of the individual. This neurophysiological system of protection is useful to the body because it immediately informs the patient of a malfunction.

Inhuman as hospital, allopathic medicines, compulsory vaccination and psychiatric treatments. Inhuman yet very real.

Pain is a paradox. When it is so violent that nothing can stop it, it endangers the survival of the body, while its purpose is, on the contrary, to protect it. Physical pain aims to prolong our existence by alerting us of a dysfunction. So can we fix it. But when remedies can not cure the cause of pain, when drugs and alcohol can not erase it, what was supposed to save us becomes what loses us. Not possible ! There must be another explanation. The pain must have another use.

Take your pain

One can take the pain of others without keeping it in oneself. Neither feeling it for a moment. We suck it with our skin, with something in our skin. It is sucked enough to take it out of the patient’s body, not enough for the pain to come in contact with our skin. One can manage very finely the fluctuations of the energy, of this particular energy that one called the Ki or Chi, vril, mana, influx, power, radiation, magnetism, subtle energy, energy of awakening, and even the Force in Star Wars. All these pretty labels, and many more, adorn the same bottle.

Pain is a nerve impulse that is detected by the central or peripheral nervous system, and that the brain and spinal cord turn into a more or less acute sensation. The pain has no material existence. Or rather, as well as light, a wave-particle duality, as Louis de Broglie has shown with wave mechanics. (source) Traveling along the electric cables that are our nerves, pain is a wave. It is also a particle stream. By emitting an equivalent inverse wave, it is theoretically possible to cancel it.

Some humans have moved from theory to practice. Their mind can do that. Yogis, fakirs, healers and penitents have succeeded and are still successful. As well as followers of voodoo or other similar animistic spirituality that repeat this feat during collective trances or hypnosis. Sioux warriors do it by the Sun Dance. For them, the Sundance is not what Westerners imagine: a masochistic ritual intended to prove that the insider is a man. A Sioux practices it because he is in search of vision.

From the point of view of the Sioux, a vision must be earned. The Sun Dance would therefore be a purifying ordeal of the kind: “Now that I have shit, I deserve an answer to my question, and / or that my wish is granted.” All over the world, pilgrimages are made for that. Mecca, Amarnath, Lourdes, Compostela, Medjugorje, Saut d’Eau in Haiti, Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico, and hundreds more – each time physical or moral tests are the prelude to the quest for vision, healing or any other wish.

Exceed one’s pain

The Dance of the Sun has another function, which is added to those I mentioned. Get out of one’s body without risking death. This is how I practiced sweat lodges, when the stinging pain of the steam on the bare shoulders causes the exit of bodies of all the warriors present in the hut. One after the other, we find ourselves in our subtle bodies hovering over the hut. Moments of great hilarity. It’s so unreal, so magical, we better laugh. Oh yes, laughing is possible in astral body!

Moderation of the arcane XIIII Temperance. Distancing. Banalization of the miracle. From this arcane, the path will become that of all possibilities. It climbs steeply, it is difficult, even acrobatic, and often dangerous. But also what happiness to be around the abysses and to be familiar with the peaks! Taking care, however, not to give in to drunkenness. Perspective. Cultivate humility. Do not attribute this grace to our merits. They do not count. They have their use, of course. But as of our actions, expect no result. In the philosophy of nagual, there is no god, no Source, conscious or not. There is only Energy and Intention. Energy is blind, Intention is deaf. The prayer is vain. Only we protect our intention.

The pain is also made to be exceeded. Beyond pain comes a broader understanding of our place in the universe. What put things back in place and the clocks on time. Humility, O my rule, O my shield! I am nothing. Out of Love, my existence is insignificant. Out of love, everything is diluted, everything disappears. And this direct path to unconditional love is at the heart of the pain. No masochism in there. One does not seek pain as others seek pleasure. We do not like it like the masochist would do. As soon as it occurs, we try to go beyond it to sublimate it, make it disappear, make it change into something else, a global, warm feeling, the offertory.

Thus one enters the heart of the pain. Without anesthesia, we face him, we face him like a wild beast. We give him the love he lacks. Love one’s pain as one loves the way. To accept it not for what it is, but for where it leads. In doing so, it is shifted to make it harmless. His claws are still in my flesh, his fangs still tear me, but I’m elsewhere already. I still feel the pain, yes, but as I chose to do not care, I do not care.

Sufis followers of the blame path use it for this purpose. Beyond the pain, there is the hyper-enjoyment of total happiness. Let’s call it the Christ-on-the-Cross syndrome. With life, he gives his sufferings to take those of humanity. The imitation of Jesus led Christian mystics to inflict the hair shirt, the whip, hooks in the flesh and whatnot. The self-tortured mystic becomes the Lamb of God who removes the sin of the world. “Agnus Dei who tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem.” Give us peace.

Is there peace in the heart of suffering? It is a war of every moment. It makes the body a battlefield. Mined ground, disemboweled by the bombs, strewn with rubbish and burnt flesh, body of suffering as an offering, intense body, body that opens and let go of the spirit, the atman, the aura. The subtle body and self-awareness join the soul, our aura. All three fly to the light of the inter-life, the glory of the world, which the nagual warriors call the beak of the Eagle.