The Pain Body and Eckhart Tolle

 With any experience of emotional pain, a residue or energetic imprint can continue to live on merging with past pain and becoming lodged in the mind and physical body.

The Pain Body:  Whilst reading ‘The Power of Now’ by Eckhart Tolle, I was interested to read of the concept of the ‘Pain Body’. The author and spiritual teacher goes one step further, in identifying accumulated pain as a Negative energy field, which he calls the Pain Body. “Because of the human tendency to perpetuate old emotion, almost everyone carries in his or her energy field an accumulation of old emotional pain, which I call ‘the pain-body.’” ~ Eckhart Tolle He goes on to further describe this as a form of ‘entity’ which is in effect a part of you and which he observes, can be either active or dormant.

Individuals who are in a deeply unhappy state: Their Pain Body is constantly active whilst in others it is dormant only becoming active in certain situations e.g. following an innocent remark made in the present moment that triggers a memory of past hurts.

Most of us can relate to this…perthaps someone snaps at us, or jokingly calls us ‘silly’ or ‘stupid’ and suddenly we find ourselves feeling overwhelmed, angry and hurt. We instantly react by verbally attacking those around us or becoming withdrawn and wanting to hide, feeling stupid or not good enough.
The Pain Body has ‘become’ you… you identify with ‘it’ as you experience the depths of negative emotions and feelings that you have experienced in the past…you instantly react rather than seeing the remark for what it was, innocent. The Pain Body has taken over and you are no longer in a peaceful place.

We are not usually aware of this happening, we are only aware of our unhappiness and upset as a consequence of the Pain Body being activated. As we become more aware of ourselves we can see this pattern of behaviour and make attempts to alter or temper our negative reactions…often ending up berating ourselves when we fail to stop ourselves ‘overreacting’ again and again.

This caused me to consider, wouldn’t it be useful to ask if indeed we do have a Pain body? what emotions are involved, if we can release them and ultimately release the Pain Body itself?

Through clearing emotions and reducing or hopefully de-activating the Pain Body, we can begin to realise that we are less controlled by ‘stimuli’. We hopefully step back and observe, rather than experiencing a reactive relationship with our emotions and feelings…we become more aware, providing the opportunity to thoughtfully choose our response…allowing us to make for more nourishing choices

Perhaps we can at last be free from this energy that results in episodes of deep unhappiness, negatively affecting our relationship with others and also with ourself…moving on to experience a more peaceful and joyful life.

This was true for myself, for as long as I can remember if I felt verbally under attack, I would clam up, unable to utter a word even though I would desperately want to. Now through clearing my own pain body which on testing was active 86% of the time, I reduced it to being active just 2% of the time and now I can freely say what I need to say in a manner that is both empowering and rewarding in my relationships with others.