The Pain Body
From A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. I am reading this book again with a web class being offered through oprah.com. Each week we read a new chapter, answer leading questions, and participate with other people from all over the world as we explore living more consciously. yum.
Chapter 5 – The Pain Body
Any negative emotion that is not fully faced and seen for what it is the moment it arises doesn’t completely dissolve and lives on in you later coming up as illness, addiction, drama.
In intimate relationships, pain-bodies are often clever enough to lie low until you start living together and preferable have signed a contract committing yourself to be with this person for the rest of your life.
You may wonder whether this is your partner’s real face that you had never seen before and whether you made a dreadful mistake in choosing this person. It is of course not the real face, just the pain-body that has taken possession. It would be hard to find a partner who does not carry a pain-body, but it would perhaps be wise to choose someone whose pain-body is not excessively dense.
Although the body is intelligent it cannot tell the difference between thoughts and reality. Every time you think of something negative or some problem your body will have a response to it.
You cannot expect someone to act beyond their level of consciousness. You must let go and forgive those who’ve hurt you. It’s never on purpose.
It’s all about experiencing negative emotions when they come up. Letting go of the repeated, painful stories we tell ourselves over and over again and make part of our identity.