Fear, Pain, and the Love Underneath
El miedo, el dolor y el amor que hay debajo
A student asks about the relationship between fear and pain as core feelings, and the teacher explores how pain is love tainted by fear, and how intimacy with sensation dissolves the mechanism of avoidance.
Fear, Pain, and the Love Underneath
A student asks about the relationship between fear and pain as core feelings, and the teacher explores how pain is love tainted by fear, and how intimacy with sensation dissolves the mechanism of avoidance.
As I've been listening to you talk about how everything comes down to fear and pain, I've been trying to see not only how I relate to these, but what I actually understand by fear and pain. Could you talk more about the relationship between those two?
When I started looking at it, it seemed like fear has more of a mind-label quality to it. When I really follow the branches of fear to the root, the one I follow through is that disappearance, for me, means isolation and loneliness. That already brings a lot of fear, so I can trace fear that way. But then when I looked at pain, I realized I have no labels for it. It's as if pain only exists in the body. I can identify the triggers for pain, but it feels slightly different. The experience of pain doesn't carry labels the way fear does. The triggers have labels, but the experience itself is just sensation, and my relationship to it has no mental understanding. It's more like a sensation-level understanding. I'm not sure if that makes sense.
You say "pain in the body," but you don't mean only physical pain.
No, not necessarily. That's what I was getting at. What I'm really curious about is how much emphasis you put on the idea that ultimately we're trying to avoid feeling these two core feelings, fear and pain. I'd love for you to talk more about that. What is fear? What is pain?
Fear as the fear of pain
I simplify it with those two words because it can get tricky if it becomes a big map of all these sensations and forms of fear and forms of pain. Then it becomes too involved, too much thinking. But usually you could think of fear as the fear of pain, and pain as the loss of what you love.
That really moved me. It's as if fear comes on top, like a response to separation, but pain is the actual experience of something that seems lost, something that seems disconnected. So ultimately, pain is the root.
Yes. But it's always through fear to pain, because fear is a kind of despair of trying to avoid a pain.
That has such beauty because of its clarity.
Pain as love tainted by fear
Pain, I would say, is the same thing as love, but tainted by fear.
Love tainted by fear is pain, or we experience it as pain.
When something you love is either going away, or gone, or could be gone, and you want to avoid that, that is what the word "attachment" points to. When you are invested in stopping that loss, the love gets perceived as pain. It's actually an interpretation of a sensation. Even physical pain works this way, because the sensation of physical pain, experienced directly, doesn't get labeled as pain. It's really hard to describe. If you experience it directly, there is nothing wrong with it. In fact, it has a quality of love. But because it's a love of something we are so deeply attached to, fear comes in and taints it. What I'm describing is extremely subtle.
You can think of it intellectually this way: physical pain is the love of the physical body. It's really just a sensation that the body produces to let you know something you love is asking for your attention. That's a more intellectual way of looking at it, but if you are fully, fully present with physical pain to a point where there is no fear, the sensation can feel very loving.
Is all pain ultimately physical?
Could we say that ultimately every pain has a form of physical pain, because it always involves body sensation? When we experience pain, the series of contractions in the body, the overwhelming sense that it's too much, it's overpowering, that always comes with fear, right? Is that fear on top of the sensation that creates the overwhelm?
"Overwhelmed," "too much": that is all fear response.
Right. But then the sensation itself is still a part of pain in the body. So is there any pain that is not physical?
You say "body," but we can talk about the emotional body, the thought body. I wouldn't say "physical body." That seems like too much knowing of something you cannot know. To say it's always a physical body, you don't know that. And also, why call it that? What's the use?
I think I get it. I'm not actually looking for a map. What I was grasping at is how I have a better map for fear and less of a map for pain. That was my whole point.
The texture of sensation
Pain is a sensation. By that I mean it's the same as fear: there is a texture to it. When you hear a sound, the sound of a cat or the sound of a bird, they have a different texture. The sound of an instrument, the sound of a voice, each has a texture, like a color. Pain is similar. Physical pain has a kind of texture. Emotional pain has a kind of texture. Fear has a kind of texture.
It's important to experience the texture directly, more and more, rather than staying in the naming of what it is. It's important to be able to name it: "I'm feeling loneliness." But then, not stay in the story of loneliness. Instead, directly experience the sensation, what it actually is. You naturally have a better understanding of fear because it's more superficial. It's what covers the sensations of pain. And by pain, I mean loneliness, shame, all of that falls under what I would call pain.
Getting intimate with pain
When you notice a fear, it's a fear of something. It's a fear of a sensation. The invitation is to notice that the sensation has a texture, and to get very intimate with it. By "intimate," I mean something like when you're in a concert hall listening to music and you close your eyes and just let it touch you directly, not thinking about it. The texture of the sound is so immediate, so close. That's the kind of relationship you can practice with pain.
The closer you get to it, the more you are acting in courage, and the fear begins to calm. Because once you're able to touch the sensation you've been wanting to get rid of, the mechanism of wanting to get rid of it starts to calm down. The sensation of wanting to get rid of it is fear. And ultimately, it's a fear of death. But what is a fear of death? It's what we imagine: what we love most, ending.
The pain of losing the self-image
Something really resonated when you said fear covers pain and that pain is directed toward the loss of something you love. A couple of sessions ago, it became super clear. There was a pain, not physical, but after I finished letting go and crying, it was the pain of knowing myself: the attachment to the idea of myself as an isolated being. Was it the pain of losing this self-image that I love? As if there's an attachment, a being in love with that image of the separate self and everything it implies?
Exactly. But it's narcissistic: you're in love with being that exclusively. The waking up is a heartbreak, because not only do you realize you're not only that (because you are still that), but you're not that. You are so much more than that. In a sense, it is a death of that, because you are so attached to the whole universe of you being that.
And it is a beautiful thing. We do truly love that. So it is a real heartbreak. But there's also the realization that you loved it in a way where you thought you were the one who created it. You thought you were the one responsible for it. It's hard to describe. The realization is that it never came from you. It was given.
I want to say I'm so grateful for this group. I'm traveling right now, and I'd come to the conclusion that I hate traveling. But now, almost three weeks in, I'm settling into it. It's like juggling another ball, and another, and realizing: I can do this.
One of my biggest limitations, the imprint from my past, is this feeling that I can't function, that the cognitive faculties shut down. "Help me, help me." Here I am traveling, having to deal with everything, all by myself in this supposedly hostile world. And I have to tell you, I've never been in this place in my life. It's free fall, again and again, and there's nothing to hold on to. Yet there's so little reactivity. There's so much love, so much gratitude. It's blowing my mind.
Seeing the construct in the darkest place
I'm traveling in a country that is imploding. I lived here during two wars. I visited during two intifadas. Those are nothing compared to what's going on right now. And it just is what it is. It can be overwhelming, but it's just another thing. So I figure out: what do I need to do to deal with this moment, right here, right now? That's all. I don't have to save the country. It's phenomenal.
What I keep getting, again and again, is the imperfection. It just keeps flowing, opening. Another opening, another beginning. It's a new moment every time. I don't need to figure it out. I don't need to be enlightened. I just feel so much love, so much openness. It's not that I'm great. It's just that I keep bringing myself to these places, with you and other people, and it happens by itself. Despite me. Who would have thought?
I come from such a dark, dark place. The world was so hostile for most of my life. Now I'm finding out that maybe it was a mind construct. What a cool discovery.
I barely want to say anything because I feel you're in such a great place that I don't want to touch it. You sound amazing.
What you're going through, I truly respect, because I have not been in the kinds of places you have and where you have lived. What you're describing, what you just said about a mind construct: it is that, but it's not a small thing. Because that's what the collective in that country is immersed in. That construct is what breeds the violence and the conflict.
That's exactly what I'm experiencing. Watching people take a pistol to their own heads and to other people, on a metaphoric level. The insanity of it is so profoundly painful. This is so much more painful than any war, because in a war it's very clear: you fight the war. This is like watching someone at the edge of a building wanting to jump and take the rest of the country with them. The people I'm talking to are horrified. It's magnified a thousand times. I don't take it lightly. But what I'm taking lightly is me, my mind construct. And the beauty of it is that I can watch around me and see the collective consequences of that level of insanity.
That is all you can do: look at yourself. And that is a lot. We have the example of so many people. You just mentioned Jesus. That is an example of somebody who all he did was look at himself, and two thousand years later, he's still impacting the world.
Exactly. Exactly.
I don't want to touch much of what you're bringing, because it's beautiful to hear you. It's just a big yes. What you're seeing, you're seeing in the darkest place. Not only are you in a place in the world that is dark, as you're saying now, but you also know that darkness in you because you've inhabited it for so long. When in that place of inner and external darkness you see the construct of darkness, you start the process of freeing yourself from it.
What has been clear to me for a very long time is that I can't save anyone. I can only save myself. And I can't even save myself. I can just show up, and then the magic happens. I show up at these meetings, and all of a sudden: all this love, all this gratitude, all this depth of okayness. It's phenomenal.
I see that I can't save people. And so I think this is an incredible opportunity for me to be able to say goodbye to this country that has meant so much to my grandfather, my parents, my family, myself, people near and dear to me. An important place in so many ways. And just to say: I'm in free fall, and so is this country. What's hard for me is to still love the people who are making it happen. That's an opportunity too. That's the big one for me right now.
Yeah. Wow. Thank you for sharing.