Byron Katie + Eckhart Tolle + Karen Horney = Better Health (2)

Eckhart Tolle talks about "the pain body" as a false self in his book The Power of Now. This whole idea of emotional reactivity as something different than emotional spontaneity is very important. It is often unrecognized, but once you see it genuinely, it is almost impossible to miss. It is such an obvious thing once you know it.

One of Tolle's most basic and important points is that most of us have learned to identify ourselves as our pain. We defend our pain, we treasure our pain, and we share our pain with people we feel close to, but we attack people we don't feel close to: we want them to know pain. In a twisted way, when we believe that we are our pain, trying to make others feel pain is a way of trying to share ourselves or share who we are. While this is a normal enough reaction in some ways, it is a very strange custom. Once you think about it, it begins to look like an odd choice to choose to continue this personal and cultural custom. So, again, it is a normal reaction but an odd choice--once it becomes a choice, that is. And it becomes a choice once you get the feel for it. Once you get the feel for it, other people are constantly pointing out to you (often in aggressive ways) that you are not acting like a very genuine person. At that point, it becomes a choice to hear them, to be aware of how we protect our pain rather than strengthen our love, or on the flipside, to choose to remain unaware. We choose to remain unaware when we feel low-down, petty, mean, surly, resentful. In other words, we choose to be our pain when we grudge. And we grudge everything from our parents to our leaders to our neighbors to God to bad food to dirty diapers.

Think about it--you've spent precious time and energy (I have too) grudging traffic, a pile of dogshit, laundry, papers (which you might be expected to fill out), etc. Then, with all that grudging and identifying ourselves as our pain, we feel like life is not so good. Ha, ha, ha! Anyone with the slightest amount of sanity agrees living like that is piss-poor. Then, because we identify ourselves as our pain, we look around and try to find someone to blame for this situation. Kind of funny, kind of tragic.

So Karen Horney breaks it down for the rest of us dummies. She says, "Look. There are three basic ways in which you can notice yourself or others acting neurotically. If someone is moving against others, moving away from others, or moving towards others rather than moving with others, that someone is acting neurotically." Byron Katie is nicer is some ways. She says that you don't even have to show other folks all your grudging and pain if you don't want to--you can work on it yourself with just a little education and the willingness to be honest with yourself and be happy. Isn't that great?! Tolle says, "If you're identifying with pain, you don't have to keep identifying with pain." Oh, yeah, how is that Eckhart? Horney shows the signs we can see with ourselves and others, and Byron Katie gives one way of addressing all that by ourselves or with others. How does it work? We're all really simple at heart. Our hearts are the simplicity of mind, and mind can be--but it is not always--the unfoldment of the love and intimacy we feel in our hearts. It only takes a little education to have a mind and ego that supports the love rather than a mind and ego that falsely identifies as pain.