Why choose to suffer?
When I identify with the labels and stories that I superimpose on my pain, I choose suffering. Then I need to talk about it constantly, to myself and to others, even if there is no actual pain at this moment.
Why not carry pain as pure energy, not labeling it with thoughts, not turning into a melodrama or a story about a poor suffering "me"? When there is no compulsion to tell a story about my pain, there is no suffering, but only an intense presence of energy and sensation.
Suffering and pain are completely separate. Pain is simply part of our energy-field. Suffering is a story we make up about it, creating a past and future.
I cannot be not liberated from pain. But I can be liberated from my story about it, from identifying pain as who I am.
Then I can embrace pain as part of the seamless whole, the energy-field of body, earth, and stars. My pain is not bound to my form: it merges with the pain of all creatures. No man is an island, and no particle is separate from the field.
Do feelings have boundaries? Do bodies have edges? Pain and pleasure are waves of one ocean, made of one water. I allow both pain and pleasure to dissolve into waves of bliss. In the energy of ananda, the labels "pain" and "pleasure" disappear. There is just aliveness in the body.
The dissolution of pain into bliss can only happen when I am fully present. In Presence, there is the melting away of past and future, and the dissolving of any beliefs, any stories, about a "me."
This is not a philosophy for intellectuals, but a survival technique for those who choose to live instead of suffer.
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