On this point I sometimes find it helpful practice to lean into the suffering until I suffer so much that it breaks. That is, I lean into the suffering but also discover through the suffering that nothing bad happens other than having a feeling that things should be different, and after enough time this causes an update, which I call the break, where you stop suffering from the pain of whatever it is you feel the urge to not have happening. Overtime this retrains you such that suffering pops up less because it’s relearned as a not-effective response to pain, againstness, etc.
Note that you have to be responsible with this and only do it when you have good episteme that you are not incorrectly ignoring a signal you should heed. You’re trying to get gnosis to match with episteme with this technique, not just give up feeling pain as suffering in general becomes sometimes pain is a useful signal that something is wrong that you should do something about to avoid getting hurt.
I used to do fire performances that would include some “light yourself on fire for the fun and amusement of others” bits. The longer the fire is on you the more it hurts. In the beginning, I would be constantly self monitoring for when it hurt “too much”, and then put myself out. I knew though, that although the fire caused pain, it did not at this level cause any serious damage .
Eventually I got to a point where instead of putting out the fire myself, I could hold it long enough that it would go out on its own (all the fuel would burn off). This actually made it hurt a bit less. It turns out that a lot of the perception of pain is from:
1) Worrying that this is causing damage. Pain is much more significant if you are worried that it is causing actual damage (“Oh shit, is my ankle sprained??”). Being fully cognizant that there is no actual damage is helpful. Pain is just your body bringing your attention to potential damage. It’s telling you something is wrong, but you already KNOW what’s wrong.
2) Constantly checking in for if you have to take action. “Should I turn it off now? How about now? Now?” This is putting your attention on the pain. If you accept that you will not take action, then you do not have to constantly be pinging your pain (and if it ever gets to a point where it pushes past the barriers, you can always take action anyways, relatively instinctively)
I both enjoyed reading this and feel like I got something out of it, so thanks! In general I would be happy to see more top-level posts of the form “here is an unusual kind of experience I had and here is an unusual but general thing I learned from it.”
On this point I sometimes find it helpful practice to lean into the suffering until I suffer so much that it breaks. That is, I lean into the suffering but also discover through the suffering that nothing bad happens other than having a feeling that things should be different, and after enough time this causes an update, which I call the break, where you stop suffering from the pain of whatever it is you feel the urge to not have happening. Overtime this retrains you such that suffering pops up less because it’s relearned as a not-effective response to pain, againstness, etc.
Note that you have to be responsible with this and only do it when you have good episteme that you are not incorrectly ignoring a signal you should heed. You’re trying to get gnosis to match with episteme with this technique, not just give up feeling pain as suffering in general becomes sometimes pain is a useful signal that something is wrong that you should do something about to avoid getting hurt.
I used to do fire performances that would include some “light yourself on fire for the fun and amusement of others” bits. The longer the fire is on you the more it hurts. In the beginning, I would be constantly self monitoring for when it hurt “too much”, and then put myself out. I knew though, that although the fire caused pain, it did not at this level cause any serious damage .
Eventually I got to a point where instead of putting out the fire myself, I could hold it long enough that it would go out on its own (all the fuel would burn off). This actually made it hurt a bit less. It turns out that a lot of the perception of pain is from:
1) Worrying that this is causing damage. Pain is much more significant if you are worried that it is causing actual damage (“Oh shit, is my ankle sprained??”). Being fully cognizant that there is no actual damage is helpful. Pain is just your body bringing your attention to potential damage. It’s telling you something is wrong, but you already KNOW what’s wrong.
2) Constantly checking in for if you have to take action. “Should I turn it off now? How about now? Now?” This is putting your attention on the pain. If you accept that you will not take action, then you do not have to constantly be pinging your pain (and if it ever gets to a point where it pushes past the barriers, you can always take action anyways, relatively instinctively)
These can be replaced with acceptance.
I both enjoyed reading this and feel like I got something out of it, so thanks! In general I would be happy to see more top-level posts of the form “here is an unusual kind of experience I had and here is an unusual but general thing I learned from it.”
Incredibly insightful observation. Thank you.