Dropping the Pain-body
“Pain is in the nature of a nervous and physical recoil from a dangerous or harmful
contact; it is a part of what the Upanishad calls jugupsa, the shrinking of the limited
being from that which is not himself and not sympathetic or in harmony with himself,
it impulse of self-defense against others.” 117, Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine
Because of the attachment to our pain, the hardest thing to handle is the bliss
of our own emergence. Either we want to retreat from the “limitless space” of
Bliss into the pain-body, or we want to turn the Bliss into some self-indulgent
ego gratification. To leave the Bliss pure in its essence is almost impossible at the
beginning of the transmutational process. Kundalini is not usually painful, their
might be some neuralgic pain years prior to an awakening, and for short periods
during the peak, and the heart expansions can be painful as the heart explodes
in the chest, and their might be pain during a Die-off. But usually there is so
many opiates floating through the system that there is far less pain in the body
than normally. Pain is usually the result of obstruction, toxicity or dehydration.
Kundalini pain occurs when there is a blockage to the energy and bliss is the result
of the flow of kundalini. As kundalini moves through parts of the body that were
numb to us, we feel the extent of our contraction, but as Shakti does her work and
we start to open up, what was once painful turns to bliss, if you move “into” the
pain with the mind’s eye.
We can equate the pain-body with Wilhelm Reich’s body armor. Neurosis
and psychosis, and negative ego characteristics all stem from embeddedness in
our pain remembering mechanisms in the hippocampus and hypothalamus and
amygdala and consequently in the neuromuscular of the whole body as well. We
become addicted to our pain-body perhaps because we have found validity for our
existence through pain. It seems we continually want to go back and revisit our
pain so we can feel like we remember who we are, but this is just the perpetuation
of the memory of the false self. Stimulation of our adrenals and dopamine in
response to hurtful situations makes us feel alive. Defending our rights is defining
our boundaries as an individual and this makes us feel Real, a solid thing that the
ego finds reassurance in. Attainment of the Self however requires melting of this
limiting defensive structure...which might have been needed in the individuation
stage, but is a burden during the enlightenment stage. The caterpillar is completely
consumed in the construction of the butterfly.
As conditioning unwinds those with active kundalini are more “elemental” and
“archetypal.” The cerebrocortex is incapacitated through over-charge while the
limbic and autonomic brain are hyper-activated. As kundalini moves through the
brain intense emotions are felt. In the beginning stages there is often panic, anxiety,
depression, anger, paranoia, confusion shame, fear and self-pity. These negative
emotions tend to take over especially when the left-brain is in a clampdown from
overcharge. Then as the work of purging and restructuring proceeds there is more
enduring bliss, peace, equanimity, love and joy. If the cleansing work is not done
however, instead of attaining a true Witness we repress pain and shadow through