Can Physical Pain Expand Consciousness?

[phoenix666]

Today I sat through my second fully completed Strong Determination Sitting Meditation. It was very painful, I'd go to say one of the most painful sessions I went through. It eventually became the best meditation I've ever experienced. The first half passed very slowly, there was a little bit of emotional suffering like confusion, boredom, frustration. Then I slowly felt the pain becoming physical. I felt it in my chest, my pulse increased. Then my whole leg began to hurt. now that was pure physical pain, probably something I was doing wrong with my half lotus position. I slowly tensed up, but then I decided to just go with it. I observed the increasing pain, which was mostly located on my hip joint. I felt all my muscles tensing up, spreading the pain. Then I just relaxed all my muscles, completely surrendered to the physical suffering, even embracing it, giving it my love.

then I think I got a very small glimpse of infinity. microscopic, but non the less beautiful. It felt like the point in my head, which I generally always interpreted to be 'me', suddenly broke out of my skull. It expanded, felt empty and at the same time full of energy. I felt very peaceful und released. 

as soon as I wanted to put it into words, I felt my muscles tense again, the radiating pain coming back and the 'thing' which felt like my expanded mind escaped. It only came back when I surrendered the tension and embraced the pain once more. This cycle repeated like 4-6 times.

Two questions emerged from this experience:

1. can physical pain increase your consciousness, thus leading towards enlightenment? When you think about it: pain captures your full awareness and it makes you focus on this very moment. it can make you very present. in many cultures and traditions we find examples of self induced pain (fakirs, scarring..)

2. could that have been a very, very, very, veeery small glimpse of infinity? or at least a small step towards higher consciousness?

much love

[Prabhaker]

@phoenix666

If you feel pain be attentive to it, don’t do anything. Attention is the great sword – it cuts everything. You simply pay attention to the pain.

For example, you are sitting silently in the last part of the meditation, unmoving, and you feel many problems in the body. You feel the leg is going dead, there is some itching in the hand, you feel ants are creeping on the body and you have looked many times – there are no ants. The creeping is inside, not outside. What should you do? You feel the leg is going dead – be watchful, just pay total attention to it. You feel itching – don’t scratch, that will not help. Just pay attention. Don’t even open your eyes. Just pay attention inwardly and just wait and watch, and within seconds the itching will disappear. Whatsoever happens – even if you feel pain, severe pain in the stomach or in the head… It is possible, because in meditation the whole body changes. It changes its chemistry. New things start happening; the body is in a chaos. Sometimes the stomach will be affected because in the stomach you have suppressed many emotions, and they are all stirred. Sometimes you will feel like vomiting, nausea. Sometimes you will feel a severe pain in the head because the meditation is changing the inner structure of your brain. You are really in a chaos passing through meditation. Soon things will settle. But, for the time being, everything will be unsettled.

So what are you to do? Simply see the pain in the head; watch it. Be a watcher. Just forget that you are a doer, and by and by everything subsides and subsides so beautifully and so gracefully that you cannot believe it unless you know it. And it is not only that the pain disappears from the head: if the energy which was creating pain is watched, the pain disappears and the same energy becomes pleasure. The energy is the same. Pain and pleasure are two dimensions of the same energy. If you can remain silently sitting and paying attention to distractions, all distractions disappear. And when all distractions disappear, you will suddenly become aware that the whole body has disappeared.

In fact, what was happening? Why were these things happening? And when you don’t meditate they don’t happen. You are there the whole day and the hand never itches, the head has no pain and the stomach is perfect and the legs are okay. Everything is okay. What was really happening? Why do these things suddenly start in meditation?

The body has remained the master for so long, and in meditation you are throwing the body out of its mastery. You are dethroning it. It clings; it tries in every way to remain the master. It will create many things to distract you so the meditation is lost; you are thrown off balance and the body is again on the throne. Up to now, the body has remained the master and you have been a slave. Through meditation, you are changing the whole thing; it is a great revolution. And, of course, no ruler wants to be thrown out of his power.

The body plays politics – that’s what is happening. When she creates imaginary pain, itching, ants creeping, the body is trying to distract you. And it is natural, because the body has remained in rule for so long, for many lives it has been the emperor and you have been the slave. Now you are changing everything upside down. You are reclaiming your throne, and it is natural the body will try whatsoever it can do to disturb you. If you get disturbed, you are lost. Ordinarily, people suppress these things. They will start chanting a mantra; they will not look at the body.

I am not teaching you any sort of suppression. I teach only awareness. Just watch, pay attention, and because it is false, immediately it will disappear. When all the pains and itches and ants have disappeared and the body has settled in its right place of being a slave, suddenly so much bliss arises you cannot contain it. Suddenly so much celebration arises in the being you cannot express; you are overflowing with a peace that passeth understanding, a bliss which is not of this world.

Osho, Yoga: The Mystery Beyond Mind, Talk #2

[phoenix666]

3 hours ago, Prabhaker said:

suddenly so much bliss arises you cannot contain it. Suddenly so much celebration arises in the being you cannot express; you are overflowing with a peace that passeth understanding, a bliss which is not of this world.

he pretty much put it into words. so I just observe. it makes a lot of sense because a lot of times I had to break my meditation sessions because I felt so overwhelmed by the pain or the boredom that arose. and last time I didn't try to resist it, I just watched it and surrendered to it. 

so, the key is to just watch. god, it always sounds so easy....but it can be so hard sometimes

[S33K3R]

Well said @Prabhaker I love how you know Osho so well. @phoenix666 I love how you said that. It took me back to times when I was doing exactly what Prabhaker said. That is too funny, I love that technique so much too. 

I believe the pain is the body releasing energy blocks, it gave me something to focus on too it can really train the mind to go into a trance while keeping you grounded in your body. 

I remember right after I experienced a similar event. I did a Kundalini meditation and I had an energy release that was pretty intense. It lasted about 20 minutes and I couldn't move my legs when I tried. It was very scary because I had actually done the meditation and left the house to ride with a friend to the gym and it started in the car. One thing I wanted to add is that in the past when these energies have released for me. I went through a small depression lasting from 2 weeks to 3 months. Its almost like energy was just realigning or something? This is a sign of great progress from my experience  I just love hearing about others experiences on their path! 

[Prabhaker]

1 hour ago, phoenix666 said:

so, the key is to just watch. god, it always sounds so easy....but it can be so hard sometimes

I was responding to your question ,"Can Physical Pain Expand Consciousness?" This is path of a mystic , for a modern man , for an intellectual , or a beginner , Osho's teaching is contradictory. Truth is always paradoxical, opposite paths can lead you to the same goal. Choose what suits you the best.

FINDING YOUR OWN POSTURE

Patanjali’s Yoga has been very misunderstood, misinterpreted. Patanjali is not a gymnast, but Yoga looks like it is a gymnastics of the body. Patanjali is not against the body. He is not a teacher to teach you contortions of the body. He teaches you the grace of the body, because he knows only in a graceful body a graceful mind exists; and only in a graceful mind does a graceful self becomes possible; and only in a graceful self, the divine.

Step by step, deeper and higher grace has to be attained. Grace of the body is what he calls asan, posture. He’s not a masochist. He is not teaching you to torture your body. He is not a bit against the body. How can he be? He knows the body is going to be the very foundation-stone. He knows if you miss the body, if you don’t train the body, then higher training will not be possible.

The body is just like a musical instrument. It has to be rightly tuned; only then will the higher music arise out of it. If the very instrument is somehow not in right shape and order, then how can you imagine, hope, that the great harmony will arise out of it? Only discordance will arise. Body is a veena, a musical instrument.

The posture should be steady and should be very, very blissful, comfortable. So never try to distort your body, and never try to achieve postures which are uncomfortable.

For the Westerners, sitting on the ground, sitting in padmasan, lotus posture, is difficult; their bodies have not been trained for it. There is no need to bother about it. Patanjali will not force that posture on you. In the East people are sitting from their very birth, small children sitting on the ground. In the West, in all cold countries, chairs are needed; the ground is too cold. But there is no need to be worried about it. If you look at Patanjali’s definition, what a posture is, you will understand: it should be steady and comfortable.

If you can be steady and comfortable in a chair, it is perfectly okay – no need to try a lotus posture and force your body unnecessarily. In fact, if a Western person tries to attain to lotus posture it takes six months to force the body; and it is a torture. There is no need. Patanjali is not in any way helping you, in any way persuading you, to torture the body. You can sit in a tortured posture, but then it will not be a posture according to Patanjali. 

A posture should be such that you can forget your body. What is comfort? When you forget your body, you are comfortable. When you are reminded continuously of the body, you are uncomfortable. So whether you sit in a chair or you sit on the ground, that’s not the point. Be comfortable, because if you are not comfortable in the body you cannot long for other blessings which belong to deeper layers: the first layer missed, all other layers closed. If you really want to be happy, blissful, then start from the very beginning to be blissful. Comfort of the body is a basic need for anybody who is trying to reach inner ecstasies.

Whenever a posture is comfortable it is bound to be steady. You fidget if the posture is uncomfortable. You go on changing sides if the posture is uncomfortable. If the posture is really comfortable, what is the need to fidget and feel restless and go on changing again and again?

And remember, the posture that is comfortable to you may not be comfortable to your neighbor; so please, never teach your posture to anybody. Every body is unique. Something that is comfortable to you may be uncomfortable to somebody else.

Everybody has to be unique because every body is carrying a unique soul. Your thumbprints are unique. You cannot find anybody else all over the world whose thumbprints are just like yours. And not only today: you cannot find anybody in the whole past history whose thumbprints will be like yours, and those who know, they say even in the future there will never be a person whose thumbprint will be like yours. A thumbprint is nothing, insignificant, but that too is unique. That shows that every body carries a unique being. If your thumbprint is so different from others’, your body, the whole body, has to be different.

So never listen to anybody’s advice. You have to find your own posture. There is no need to go to any teacher to learn it; your own feeling of comfort should be the teacher. And if you try – within a few days try all the postures that you know, all the ways that you can sit – one day you will fall upon, stumble upon, the right posture. And the moment you feel the right posture, everything will become silent and calm within you. And nobody else can teach you, because nobody can know how your body harmony, in what posture, will exactly be steady, comfortable.

Try to find your own posture.

Try to find your own Yoga, and never follow a rule, because rules are averages. All rules exist for averages. They are good to understand a certain thing, but never follow them. Otherwise you will feel uncomfortable. Four feet eight inches is the average height! Now you are five feet, four inches longer – cut it. Uncomfortable...walk in such a way so you look like the average: you will become an ugly phenomenon, an ashtha walker. You will be like a camel, crooked everywhere. One who tries to follow the average will miss.

How you feel should be the determining factor. That’s why Patanjali gives this definition, so that you can find out your own feeling.

There cannot be any better definition of posture: “Posture should be steady and comfortable.”

In fact I would like to say it the other way, and the Sanskrit definition can be translated in the other way: Posture is that which is steady and comfortable. We would like to make a rule out of it, [but] it is a simple definition, an indicator, a pointer. It is not a rule. And remember it always: that people like Patanjali never give rules; they are not so foolish. They simply give pointers, hints. You have to decode the hint into your own being. You have to feel it, work it out; then you will come to the rule, but that rule will be only for you, for nobody else.

If people can stick to it, the world will be a very beautiful world – nobody trying to force anybody to do something, nobody trying to discipline anybody else. Because, your discipline may have proved good for you, it may be poisonous for somebody else. Your medicine is not necessarily a medicine for all. Don’t go on giving it to others.

But foolish people always live by rules. 

Don’t be stupid. Take these definitions, sayings, sutras, in a very vague way. Let them become part of your understanding, but don’t try exactly to follow them. Let them go deep in you, they become your intelligence; and then you seek your path. All great teaching is indirect.

How to attain to this posture? How to attain this steadiness? First look at the comfort. If your body is exactly in deep comfort, in deep rest, feeling good, a certain well-being surrounds you: that should be the criterion with which to judge. That should become the touchstone. And this is possible while you are standing; this is possible while you are lying down; this is possible while you are sitting on the ground or sitting on a chair. It is possible anywhere, because it is an inner feeling of comfort. And whenever it is attained you will not like to continue moving again and again, because the more you move, the more you will miss it. It happens in a certain state. If you move, you move away; you disturb it.

That’s the natural desire in everybody, and yoga is the most natural thing: natural desire is to be comfortable, and whenever you are in discomfort you will like to change it. That is natural. Always listen to the natural, instinctive mechanism within you. It is almost always correct.

“Posture is mastered by relaxation of effort and meditation on the unlimited.” Beautiful words, great indicators and pointers. The first thing, if you want to attain to the posture, what Patanjali calls a posture: comfortable, steady, the body in such deep stillness that nothing moves, the body so comfortable that the desire to move it disappears, you start enjoying the feeling of comfort, it becomes steady.

With the change of your mood, the body changes; with the change of the body, your mood changes. Have you ever watched? You go to a theater, a movie: have you watched how many times you change your posture? Have you tried to correlate it? If there is something very sensational going on on the screen, you cannot sit leaning against the chair. You sit up; your spine becomes straight. If something boring is going on and you are not excited, you relax. Now your spine is no longer straight. If something very uncomfortable is going on, you go on changing your posture. If something is really beautiful there, even your eye-blinking stops; even that much movement will be a disturbance...no movement, you become completely steady, restful, as if the body has disappeared.

When the body is really in comfort, restful, the flame of the body is not wavering – it has become steady, there is no movement – suddenly, as if time has stopped, no winds blowing, everything still and calm and the body has no urge to move – settled, deeply balanced, tranquil, quiet, collected: in that state, dualities and the disturbances caused by dualities disappear.

Have you observed that whenever your mind is disturbed your body fidgets more, you cannot sit silently?...or, when ever your body is fidgeting your mind cannot be silent? They are together. Patanjali knows well that body and mind are not two things; you are not divided in two, body and mind. Body and mind are one thing. You are psychosomatic: you are bodymind. The body is just the beginning of your mind and the mind is nothing but the end of the body. Both are two aspects of one phenomenon; they are not two. So whatsoever happens in the body affects the mind and whatsoever happens in the mind affects the body. They run parallel. That’s why so much emphasis on the body, because if your body is not in deep rest your mind cannot be.

And it is easier to start with the body because that is the outermost layer.

Osho, The Essence of Yoga, Talk #7

[pluto]

Physical pain is the least of the pains that will trigger expansion of consciousness.

Emotional and Mental pain is far greater. We live in a society where the physical is cared about and valued most where most damage that actually does not heal for a very very long time is pains non-physical related.

Ill use physical abuse between a man and a woman as examples.

If a man hits a woman its a very serious crime and can be in jail for years while the damage can be healed fairly quickly within days or weeks but the psychological symptoms cannot be healed for a while. Where as say a woman is abusive to a man not physically but emotionally and mentally torturing him for years that way the man cannot do anything about it and women serves no time and he suffers far longer than if physical pain was used instead of days to weeks it could take decades to recover.

I know i didn't word it best but you get the picture, i was bullied a lot in school and same with relationships all the pain i held inside eventually blew up and manifested into my wisdom once i let go of all that i cannot control and accepted all that is for what it is.

 

 

[phoenix666]

@pluto looking back at my life.. I wouldn't be here at this point without all the emotional pain I've suffered. mental pain has helped me far more than happy little moments, ecstatic highs and physical pain. 

I'm sorry for your suffering. but see, it made you a stronger person. I can feel the same for me. you're right, the only way is to give up control and accept whatever is coming.