What makes you think that different people experience the same kind of pain the same way? One thing that produces a kind of pain is to go swimming in a river in spring. Depending on how your body reacts when you touch the water that experience can be both healthy or unhealthy and I don’t think that’s a simple matter of degrees of pain.
When Taber Shadburne teaches Radical Honesty he often makes the point that an essential part of Radical Honesty is to become a connoisseur of pain who can tell different kinds of emotional pain apart the way the proverbial wine connoisseur can tell apart the taste of different wines.
A wine connoisseur usually doesn’t simply judge a wine on a one-dimensional scale and the one-dimensional nature that’s implied by the “how much apologizing will hurt” isn’t a useful way to think about the emotions either.
Taber also used a Yoga metaphor where experienced Yoga practitioners need to be able to tell apart different kinds of pain. The pain of stretching a muscle is an essential part of Yoga and welcome while the pain from overturning an ankle is bad and has to be avoided.
I talked about this with one LW’ler who does Yoga and the person said that they are able to tell 7 different kinds of pain apart in their Yoga practice.
What makes you think that different people experience the same kind of pain the same way? One thing that produces a kind of pain is to go swimming in a river in spring. Depending on how your body reacts when you touch the water that experience can be both healthy or unhealthy and I don’t think that’s a simple matter of degrees of pain.
When Taber Shadburne teaches Radical Honesty he often makes the point that an essential part of Radical Honesty is to become a connoisseur of pain who can tell different kinds of emotional pain apart the way the proverbial wine connoisseur can tell apart the taste of different wines.
A wine connoisseur usually doesn’t simply judge a wine on a one-dimensional scale and the one-dimensional nature that’s implied by the “how much apologizing will hurt” isn’t a useful way to think about the emotions either.
Taber also used a Yoga metaphor where experienced Yoga practitioners need to be able to tell apart different kinds of pain. The pain of stretching a muscle is an essential part of Yoga and welcome while the pain from overturning an ankle is bad and has to be avoided.
I talked about this with one LW’ler who does Yoga and the person said that they are able to tell 7 different kinds of pain apart in their Yoga practice.