In Chapter 5 of "A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose," author Eckhart Tolle states, "The energy field of old but still very much alive emotion that lives in almost every human being is the pain-body." --page 142
Our pain-bodies are the energy of our past hurts: the bumps, bruises and scars of life that we never really dealt with fully in the moment. The result is that we carry that pain in an energy field within us.
We all experience pain in our lives and pain-bodies are both individualistic and collective. Whether that pain is from individual circumstances or part of a collective pain because of our identity with a particular group in history that has suffered, negative things do happen to people.
Some people and groups have heavy pain-bodies and it is precisely these people who have a better chance to awaken spiritually than people with lighter pain-bodies.
Most people probably do not want to recognize that there is something within them that seeks negativity, pain and drama. But the reality is that for many, negativity is an addiction. Pain-bodies feed on negative emotion.
No where are our pain-bodies more obvious than in our relationships. Often each partner will re-enact their drama frequently. The pain-body knows exactly which buttons to push in your partner, and it feeds on this drama in personal relationships.
So how do you recognize your pain-body? Becoming aware of your pain-body is the first step in diffusing it. However, it is not often easy to see the pain-body in ourselves, so it is often much easier to see the pain-body in another.
How do you strive to continually diffuse your pain-body? Author Tolle suggests that we must constantly strive to be present. Instead of being "caught up in the mental movie making" of our thoughts and emotions from the past or concerns for the future, he says that we can learn to not add to our pain-bodies by becoming as present as possible in all situations.
It doesn't matter if these negative thoughts and emotions are from years ago or just minutes ago: continually practicing being present diminishes our pain-bodies because in doing so, "our very Presence then becomes our identity."
Pain-bodies will fight hard to stay alive, so you may be thinking how could you let go of past hurts or collective suffering? Some may argue that we have to remember; that it is part of our collective identity as women or minorities, for example. Alternatively, individual pain-bodies may heavily identify with traumatic things that happened in our childhood. While there is nothing wrong with remembering, there is a difference if we define ourselves by our suffering. This is the pain-body feeding upon itself and in doing so, the energy of all that suffering becomes our identity. So the challenge is to move away from defining ourselves by our past and we do this by becoming present.
Consider this: "Nothing ever happened in the past that can prevent you from being present now: and if the past cannot prevent you from being present now, what power does it have?"--page 141
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