The Pain Beneath the Fear
El dolor debajo del miedo
A question about the relationship between fear and pain, and how investigating each one reveals that pain is the deeper layer: the felt sense of losing what we love.
The Pain Beneath the Fear
A question about the relationship between fear and pain, and how investigating each one reveals that pain is the deeper layer: the felt sense of losing what we love.
As I was listening, I was trying to see not only how I relate to fear and pain, but what I actually understand by those words. I realized I'd like you to talk more about the relationship between them. Let me share a bit of my experience first.
As I started looking at it, it seemed like fear has more of a mental label to it. I'm not sure if you'd call it the fear of ultimate disappearance or death, but when I really follow the branches of fear back to the root, what I arrive at is this: to me, disappearance is isolation and loneliness. That sense of already disappearing brings a lot of fear, and I can trace fear along those lines. But then I looked at pain and realized I have no labels for it. It's as if pain only exists in the body, in a way. I can identify the triggers for pain, sure. Something happened that triggered pain in the body. But it's slightly different. I don't know if what I'm saying makes sense.
You say pain in the body, but you don't mean only physical pain.
No, the experience of pain doesn't necessarily have labels. I know that triggers have labels, but the experience of pain itself is just sensation. The relationship to it is without any mental understanding, as if it's a different kind of understanding, a sensation-level understanding. Maybe what I was really curious about is this: you put a lot of emphasis on the idea that in the end we're trying to avoid feeling these two core feelings, fear and pain. I'd love you to talk more about that. What is fear? What is pain?
Fear as the avoidance of pain
I simplify it with those two words because it can get tricky if it becomes a big map of all these sensations, all these 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 is the loss of what you love.
That just really moved me. I think I was trying to grasp exactly that. It's as if fear comes on top, but it's the explanation, the response to a separation. Pain is the actual experience of something that seems lost, something that seems disconnected. So ultimately, pain is the root.
Yes, you're in pain. But it's always through fear to pain, because fear is a kind of despair, a desperate attempt to avoid pain.
Pain as love tainted by fear
That has such beauty because it has such clarity.
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, gone, or could be gone, and you want to avoid that (that is the word "attachment"), when you are invested in stopping that loss, then love gets perceived as pain. It's actually an interpretation of a sensation. Even physical pain works this way. You can think of it intellectually: physical pain is the love of the physical body.
So in relationship to physical pain, the attachment is the belief that we are this physical body, that the physical body is our reality?
But it's really just a sensation the body produces to let you know that something you love is asking for your attention. That's a more intellectual way of looking at it. But if you are fully, 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, even though there's a category of psychological suffering, ultimately every pain has a form of body sensation? When we experience pain, those contractions in the body, the overwhelming sense of "it's too much, it's overpowering," that always comes with fear, right?
"Overwhelmed," "too much": those are all fear responses.
Right. But then that sensation is still a part of pain in the body. So is there any pain that is not physical?
Because you say "body," but we can talk about the emotional body, the thought body. So I wouldn't say physical body. That seems like knowing something you cannot know.
I think I get it. And actually, I'm not looking for the answers or the map. What I was grasping is that I have a better map for fear and less of a map for pain. That was my whole point.
Getting intimate with sensation
Pain is a sensation. By that I mean it's the same as fear in that there's a texture to it. When you hear 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. It's important to be able to name it: "I'm feeling loneliness." But then not stay in the story of loneliness, and instead directly experience the sensation of 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 what I would call pain. When you notice a fear, it's a fear of something. It's a fear of a sensation. So the invitation is to get very intimate with its texture.
By "intimate," I mean: like when you're in a concert hall listening to music and you close your eyes and just let it touch you directly, without 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 starts 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. And the sensation of wanting to get rid of it is fear.
The heartbreak of waking up
Something really resonated about fear covering pain and pain being directed at the loss of something you love. A few sessions ago, at one point it was super clear: it was not a physical pain, but after I finished letting go, after the crying, there was the pain of knowing myself, the attachment to the idea of myself as an isolated being. That belief generated fear. And just now, hearing you speak, I was thinking: was it the pain of losing this self-image that I love? As if the attachment is that you're in love with that image, with that separate being and everything it implies?
Exactly. But it's narcissistic: you're in love with being that exclusively. Waking up is a heartbreak, because not only do you realize you're not only that (you are still that), but you're not that. You are so much more than that. In a sense, it is a death. Because you are so attached to the whole universe of being that. And it is a beautiful thing. We do truly love it. So it is a real heartbreak.
But there's also a realization: I loved it in a way where I thought I was the one who created it. I thought I was the one responsible for it. It's hard to describe. The realization is that it never came from me. It was given.