Conscious And Unconscious Pain
I've got a question.
Is a sensation felt as pain because of your reaction to it?
I'm pointing out here the speed of conscious and unconscious thought.
It's a little like watching the film "Back To The Future" for those who remember it.
A stimulus occurs (either internally or externally), initially beyond your conscious awareness.
An Unconscious Pathway
An unconscious pathway is fired based on all your past learning, unconscious thoughts, beliefs, future predictions and all the elements present in the current environment.
It creates the output from the brain and is expressed in the body, of which you become consciously aware.
The unconscious filter through which you interpret the sensation incorporates all the previous historical information and potentially incorrect beliefs that create the illusionary danger on which to base that conscious decision.
It has arrived at its conclusion before your conscious awareness exists.
Something Inherently Dangerous
So the conscious moment of recognising this sensation, defaulting to it as something inherently dangerous, apparently from no specific cause or based on misbelief, and thereby experiencing and defining that sensation as pain is essentially a misinterpretation or danger and a reaction to an illusion.
But because the conscious mind doesn't realise the speed of the unconscious signal that came before it and the kaleidoscopic amalgam of fragmented components which creates the filter it has to view the experience through, you unknowingly make an error of judgement.
Interpreting that sensation as pain that indicates current and real danger is an error.
Obscure The Present Moment
It is the filter designed from the past, based on incorrect beliefs, and firing faster than is possible for full consciousness to appear, obscuring the truth of the present moment.
I believe it is possible to create an awareness in those who experience persistent pain that it comes from these processes and not the origins currently they think.
The job is to listen to and explore the beliefs that make up the filter and challenge the stories and the people telling them that contribute to its perpetuation.
That could include you.
Replace The Filter
And finally, it is to take steps to replace the filter to allow an experience of consciousness, devoid of the trigger-happy unconscious patterns creating persistent pain.
Easier said than done.
But if you can start changing your default reactions to pain and create a small enough space to allow full conscious awareness to appear, you create a gap where a pain-free existence becomes possible.
You may have to sit in that gap without a reaction repeatedly.
You may also find yourself returning to reactions you now recognise based on historical and unconscious reactivity patterns and forgive yourself for that.
And also, when ready, you must commit to learning new responses to feather into the edges of the gap as you emerge from the other side of it as you take your steps toward a pain-free life.
What’s next?
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