Is emotional pain an illusion?

[dancer]

Over the past few days, I have been doing an experiment where I allow myself to fully experience any negative feeling that manifests. My method is not ground breaking and is based on be present.

When I have felt negativity, I focused on it, didn't embellish or judge it or reject it, and poof the negativity was instantaneously gone. I have not searched or dug into my past for negativity, just applied focus as it surfaced. Admittedly, the negativity was minor, but even so it dissipated immediately and effortless.

Where did it go, was it ever there, was it only an illusion or did my negativity go into hiding? I asked myself these questions and my answer was: negativity is an illusion. Hmmm. If I take that futher is emotional pain also an illusion?

[Lanya]

Take it further and find out!

[SonoranBob]

Originally Posted by dancer

Negativity is an illusion. Hmmm. If I take that futher is emotional pain also an illusion?

If you have experienced so little pain that you can think pain is an illusion, good for you.

I think it's better to acknowledge the reality of suffering and say that suffering is based on an illusion. If you let go of the illusion, the pain fades away, although representing as it does habitual mental structures, it seldom goes "poof" unless, as in your case, it's some very minor negativity.

This is an important distinction because it gets at the core of the problem. The problem is not pain, but the source of pain: trying in one or more ways to make life or some aspect of life be something other than what it is. Resistance to what is brings pain. Acceptance of what is prevents pain. Learning to live well within what is, brings fulfillment.

--Bob

[Jarrod]

Emotional pain is real.

Do you have to feel the suffering? No.

[torilink]

for the ego it is real -

[Zwynd]

Originally Posted by torilink

for the ego it is real -

This I could agree with. One can use mind tricks to make yourself feel any emotion you want at any time, even if they contradict the current situation's socially expected emotion.

A very easy example of this is when you see a person you hate slip on ice and break their arm. Someone nearby might laugh over the slip but usually if one hears a crack then nearby people tend to rush up with concern. [Not always though, crowd mindset and all] If you hate the person then you may quietly be thrilled for their misfortune and might have to hide your smile.

On a more positive note, you could have just lost your job, your pet gets hit by a car and as you sit there wallowing in misfortune you could see a butterfly land on your foot and feel very happy from it.

Either the emotional trigger is strong from unconscious conditioning or you've trained yourself to respond to similar events in a desired way.

[Trudi]

I definitely think that emotional pain is as "real" as anything else we experience. The question is what do you with it? You can use it as an indicator in your emotional guidance system as advocated by Abraham.

Or you could love the pain and yourself and use it to open more fully as advocated by Arnold Patent.

I don't think the two methods are mutually exclusive.

Emotion is often referred to as energy in motion. It's perfect experience it and keep moving. It's when we get stuck in it that we may experience stuckness in our lives.

[Maguru]

Originally Posted by Jarrod

Emotional pain is real.

Do you have to feel the suffering? No.

I disagree. Emotional pain is suffering, e.g. despair, grief, sorrow. All part of life. I wonder why?

[SonoranBob]

Originally Posted by Maguru

I disagree. Emotional pain is suffering, e.g. despair, grief, sorrow. All part of life. I wonder why?

C'mon, some things hurt and some do not. There is no point in debating that.

We can debate whether things HAVE to hurt.

We can debate whether our emotions are as compelling as we think they are, or whether they accurately reflect the true nature of our situation.

We can debate whether some or all emotional pain is self-inflicted or not.

We can debate whether emotional pain can be waved away with this or that technique or practice.

But I don't think we can pretend that pain doesn't exist. Nor do I think that pain is even inherently a Bad Thing. It is what tells us when we are hurting ourselves or not taking care of ourselves. The only thing bad is loving pain / drama / suffering.

The fact that the ego can manufacture and revel in pain and drama and suffering doesn't usually make pain, drama and suffering unreal or illusory. It just means that the pain is being suffered for illusory or sick reasons.

I know it is more provocative to say that pain is an illusion, but it's not more accurate ;-)

--Bob

[Maguru]

Originally Posted by dancer

Over the past few days, I have been doing an experiment where I allow myself to fully experience any negative feeling that manifests. My method is not ground breaking and is based on be present.

When I have felt negativity, I focused on it, didn't embellish or judge it or reject it, and poof the negativity was instantaneously gone. I have not searched or dug into my past for negativity, just applied focus as it surfaced. Admittedly, the negativity was minor, but even so it dissipated immediately and effortless.

Where did it go, was it ever there, was it only an illusion or did my negativity go into hiding? I asked myself these questions and my answer was: negativity is an illusion. Hmmm. If I take that futher is emotional pain also an illusion?

I wonder, if negativity and emotional pain were illusions, would positivity and emotional pleasure also be illusions?
If both are illusions, there wouldn't be much left for the human to experience.

[Jarrod]

Originally Posted by Maguru

I wonder, if negativity and emotional pain were illusions, would positivity and emotional pleasure also be illusions?
If both are illusions, there wouldn't be much left for the human to experience.

Being aware of ourselves, our surroundings and with the things we can learn leaves plenty to experience.

[dancer]

Originally Posted by SonoranBob

If you have experienced so little pain that you can think pain is an illusion, good for you.

No, I have experienced much emotional pain. Regardless, it was a both a daunting and powerful thought to ask myself if it was just an illusion. There is no question, some of my pain has been an illusion, however, when it comes to other of my life experiences, it is difficult to get my head around it all being an illusion.

Resistance to what is brings pain. Acceptance of what is prevents pain. Learning to live well within what is, brings fulfillment.

Totally agree.

[dancer]

Originally Posted by torilink

for the ego it is real -

Yes, I got this recently. As I mentioned in my post to Bob, there is some suffering, which I question being manifested by the ego and wonder if consciousness also creates situations in life, which is part of our life lessons. No question, ego sabotages this learning by playing the victim, non-acceptance and every other trick in the book.

How do you see this Torilink?

[dancer]

Originally Posted by Maguru

I wonder, if negativity and emotional pain were illusions, would positivity and emotional pleasure also be illusions?
If both are illusions, there wouldn't be much left for the human to experience.

Is it not our attachment to our emotional experience that also leads us to suffering? I can see this, but still my ego strives to make it happen in its own way, however, my short glimpses in an awakened state have shown me that ego's delivers excellence when it comes to negative experiences, but is second rate in creating joyful experiences.

[Angela]

Originally Posted by dancer

Is it not our attachment to our emotional experience that also leads us to suffering? I can see this, but still my ego strives to make it happen in its own way, however, my short glimpses in an awakened state have shown me that ego's delivers excellence when it comes to negative experiences, but is second rate in creating joyful experiences.

Dancer, your ego doesn't want you to experience real Joy; it is absolutely committed to preventing you from feeling real Joy. I'm not talking about mere happiness here, you know that, I am talking about the infinite power, abundance and joy that is who you really are.

Your ego is committed to your believing you are separate and alone. It is excellent at helping you feel bad because that keeps it alive and thriving. Things like jealousy, envy, frustration, money worries, shoulds .... they are all perfect for convincing you that you are on your own.

So here you are having glimpses of the experience of being One with All - Real Joy. Absolute love, and limitless abundance. Your ego gets all panicky and tells you, "Nuh-uh! Ich don't theenk so!" -- your expanded self creates a nice scenario of emotional pain, and you plummet back into believing you are this limited being.

Isn't that perfect? The pain of your experience of being a limited being is "real" and it's also an illusion -- that is, it is one of the structures your consciousness builds into this game you're playing, and it's essential that you "believe" it so that you can have the fun of expanding back into the limitless that is Who You Are. As you expand more and more into recognizing you are All, you start to see your own brilliance at convincing yourself that the painful circumstances of your life are real -- how ultimately powerful you are at playing this wonderful, delightful game. And as you expand more and more into who you really are, you begin to see that you have the power to disappear the pain -- *Poof* -- how fun is that?! And the more you practice expanding into being limitless joy, the more fun you get to have observing your ego trying to lure you back into believing it is who you are, and you laugh at the astonishing brilliance of your own power.

[Maguru]

Originally Posted by Jarrod

Being aware of ourselves, our surroundings and with the things we can learn leaves plenty to experience.

What is experience without positive or negative emotions? Thought is only part of an experience.

[Maguru]

Originally Posted by dancer

Is it not our attachment to our emotional experience that also leads us to suffering? I can see this, but still my ego strives to make it happen in its own way, however, my short glimpses in an awakened state have shown me that ego's delivers excellence when it comes to negative experiences, but is second rate in creating joyful experiences.

Ah Dancer, you must have a sad ego
Personally I do not see my ego as separate. I see it as my subconscious causing all sorts of mischief until awareness steps in. Most certainly it has had me chasing my tail repeating old patterns of behaviour. However, as soon as I catch the little bugar, it quits.
I'm not sure about my subconscious attaching to emotional experience that leads to suffering as all my memories are of emotional experiences, positive and negative. I remember very little of parrot learning, for want of a better term.
I also would agree with Bob that suffering is not neccessarily a 'bad' thing. Yes, it hurts but, I see it in my life as a signal for change. Maybe we aren't looking after ourselves (as Bob suggests) and maybe we need to stop running, denying and avoiding our suffering to make room to grow.

[Angela]

I was just going through my notes on I Can Do It, and Marianne Williamson said, "Just because something is not real doesn't mean you don't feel it."

My experience is that there's a big difference between pain and suffering. Pain is a guidepost, a signal, a finger pointing at the moon. Pain is a wonderful boon to you in getting a clue about generating a life you love. Suffering, on the other hand, is the choice you make to dwell in the pain as way of avoiding actually getting the clue and generating a life you love.

Suffering = fear.

[dancer]

Thanks, Angela, for your inspiring post.

Originally Posted by Angela

Isn't that perfect? The pain of your experience of being a limited being is "real" and it's also an illusion -- that is, it is one of the structures your consciousness builds into this game you're playing, and it's essential that you "believe" it so that you can have the fun of expanding back into the limitless that is Who You Are.

Got a little lost here... if it is a game that has been setup by my expanded self, then why is it essential that I believe it in order to expand to Who I am? Then wouldn't believing it also part of the problem? How does the believing help you expand?

And as you expand more and more into who you really are, you begin to see that you have the power to disappear the pain -- *Poof* -- how fun is that?! And the more you practice expanding into being limitless joy, the more fun you get to have observing your ego trying to lure you back into believing it is who you are, and you laugh at the astonishing brilliance of your own power.

Didn't get how the expanding works.

[Angela]

Dancer, it's like you've designed a video game for yourself -- that is, your Expanded Self, Oneness, is designing this game of being human, in which "Dancer" has the featured role, and "Angela" is another character, and "Maguru" and "Jarrod", too. Dancer and Angela and Maguru and Jarrod appear to be separate and unconnected, but when you pull back your perspective, you see that they are separate in the same way that the characters in your dreams are separate -- "we" are all aspects of You. We all exist within your consciousness. Your Expanded Self creates "us", but that doesn't mean we are figments of "Dancer's" imagination. We are all aspects of the world that lives in your consciousness -- we are all, in fact, You.

So why would you design a video game with different avatars? The same reason you are creating a world with all of these different characters. For the fun of it. Part of the fun of playing a video game lies in following the rules, and believing in the parameters that the avatars must comply with. It's like playing beach volleyball. You don't have to believe that you "win" if you reach 21 points before the other team, but it makes the game more fun.

Now, this game of being a human being.... You (your expanded self) has chosen, for the fun of it, to make these "human" rules, and to play within those rules. So you set it up to look like you are a limited being. And as you go along, you unconceal from yourself your power, beauty, abundance, and joy, in little steps -- like Pac Man eating those things he eats and becomes stronger for it. You become more and more powerful, more able to see the fabulousness infinite Joy that is your essential self, a little at a time, so that you can savor each step. As you get glimpses of your own infinite Joy, you begin to see how much fun is this process you've made of thinking your problems are really problems.

I once used the analogy of a kid's art project, in which you scrape off the black paint to reveal a pattern of brightly crayoned brilliance shining underneath, in the shape of something you love. That's way more fun than just shaving all the black paint off all at once, isn't it? Some people do that, though; they have huge epiphanies in which the black paint is gone forever and there is nothing but bright color eternally. Some of these people live on mountain tops in Tibet. Eckhart Tolle might be one of those people, I don't know.

So expanding is: scraping off the black paint so that you can reveal to yourself, and delight in, your incredible beauty and infinite Joy. The more you do that, the more malleable the rules become, in my experience -- the more synchronicity, magic, power, and fun becomes available at your fingertips. The more your avatar "Dancer" becomes able to now make her own rules, like a Sorceress.

Does that sound like fun?

p.s... this is not The Truth. Don't believe me, just try on the perspective, if you want to. For fun.

[dancer]

Angela, yes it does sound like fun, but I'm smacking myself upside my head, here, because I don't get how I can get my pac man chomping.

[Angela]

Originally Posted by dancer

Angela, yes it does sound like fun, but I'm smacking myself upside my head, here, because I don't get how I can get my pac man chomping.

You are chomping. It's really easy for me to see, because I'm seeing you from a perspective outside the bones of your head. It's easy for me because I am watching you peel back the layers of the onion of what it takes for you to be in love with your own life. I can see how you are doing that with courage and grace, with openness and gratitude, with love and interest and playfulness.

One thing I've noticed lately is that sometimes when someone gets really, really into the game, they get so engrossed and enraptured that they don't realize they are having fun. It's like watching your teenager play one of those killer games, and you can see his face and body get all growly and tense, and he is utterly lost in the mayhem and murder. He's not thinking "this is fun!" -- he has just completely become fun.

Dancer, it's easy for me to see that you are fun. I invite you to take a breath, step back a little, acknowledge to yourself that you are making choices and you are generating enjoyment, and then dive right back in!

[dancer]

Originally Posted by Maguru

I'm not sure about my subconscious attaching to emotional experience that leads to suffering as all my memories are of emotional experiences, positive and negative.

Good for you that you don't get attached to emotional experiences, wish I could say the same. Would list them off, but that would be giving my ego the limelight.

[dancer]

Originally Posted by Angela

You are chomping. It's really easy for me to see, because I'm seeing you from a perspective outside the bones of your head. It's easy for me because I am watching you peel back the layers of the onion of what it takes for you to be in love with your own life. I can see how you are doing that with courage and grace, with openness and gratitude, with love and interest and playfulness.

One thing I've noticed lately is that sometimes when someone gets really, really into the game, they get so engrossed and enraptured that they don't realize they are having fun. It's like watching your teenager play one of those killer games, and you can see his face and body get all growly and tense, and he is utterly lost in the mayhem and murder. He's not thinking "this is fun!" -- he has just completely become fun.

Dancer, it's easy for me to see that you are fun. I invite you to take a breath, step back a little, acknowledge to yourself that you are making choices and you are generating enjoyment, and then dive right back in!

Ahh, so it's not about a specific technique, it's more the perspective of playing the game. Well, that sounds like fun. I'm going to give this some thought and who knows might do some serious fun chomping.

Thanks, Angela, for sharing and teaching.

I'm also continuing with my experiment. Yesterday, I had something in my "game" that wasn't so easy to *poof* but it's not game-over!

[Maguru]

Originally Posted by dancer

Good for you that you don't get attached to emotional experiences, wish I could say the same. Would list them off, but that would be giving my ego the limelight.

I don't quite understand what you mean by attached to the emotional experience. Do you replay it over and over in your mind? Do you not recover from some negative experiences?


It isn't that I drop the impact of those experiences. I look as to how and why I have created these experiences. I take full responsibility for my part in whatever it may be and usually come up with simple solutions e.g. "I'm not doing that again" or "I don't have to be that way anymore."

However, other devastating emotional experiences go much deeper. The impact can be life changing and has been several times in my life. I have had no control over these events and they changed me to my core. It is a loss of innocence that can never be recovered whilst a participant of the human race.

[coLLege kid07]

Originally Posted by Maguru

However, other devastating emotional experiences go much deeper. The impact can be life changing and has been several times in my life. I have had no control over these events and they changed me to my core. It is a loss of innocence that can never be recovered whilst a participant of the human race.

I like that last quote. Sometimes I think to myself...I wish I could go back to how things were and how great things used to be. Then I realise why would I want to do that...the reason why I had all these experiences is to show that my previous perception of reality was extremely flawed. The whole point of life is changing so why would I want to go back.

[dali]

if pain is the finger pointing to the moon and we look at the moon we have got the point. If however we focus on the finger then we are as the wise saying goes on to point out , Fools, but if we let pain speak and dont argue with it we will understand what it is telling us. It seems to be in the design. A child sometimes after all the care his mother can give, say, after burning his finger will sit and look at the redness and weep,long after the pain has gone. Thats suffering. Making a meal of it.He is not remotely interested in the fact that it was unwise to stick his finger in the fire.Its a hard one for the boy but he will have to learn to stop looking at his finger and drawing everyones attention to it if he wants the pain to go away. I suppose then we make it all as REAL as we want it to be.I heard this guy over a period of months at social gatherings tell perfect strangers some horrible personal things he had gone through in his life. Time after time real tragedy.One night I questioned him on this deep sharing he practiced. Somewhere along the line he had heard that it does you good to talk about these things and the more honest you are the better ,suggesting that by sharing our pains they will be healed. I suggested he sit alone with his pain sometimes and hold back on sharing it all willy nilly. He took me on and does that now and talks only to intimate friends about his issues . He laughs a lot more these days. Pain has a purpose. It has transforming qualities which work best when savoured than when bandied about. Best to let the moon shine on that finger than run around showing everyone how bad it all is! As to whats real and whats not real....one becomes the other anyway.

[Jarrod]

Originally Posted by Maguru

What is experience without positive or negative emotions? Thought is only part of an experience.

Emotions and thoughts posses a certain kind of knowledge. Once you have extracted the knowledge there is nothing more of substance there.

@Angela: In the game of being human 'Jarrod' requests that he wear a cloak and carry a katana.

[Angela]

Originally Posted by Jarrod

@Angela: In the game of being human 'Jarrod' requests that he wear a cloak and carry a katana.

Really? I used to go out with that avatar in "real" life. He was pretty sexy.

[Jarrod]

Originally Posted by Angela

Really? I used to go out with that avatar in "real" life. He was pretty sexy.

Substitute a japanese hakama for the cloak and you have me every saturday morning. And some weeknights...

I think people find cloaks sexier than hakamas though...