Do you value pain?

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Do I value pain? Most definitely, especially in the form of fresh French baguettes.

Apparently severe stress, or pain, can, according to mystics, provoke/trigger an instance of what they call "descending causality", in which something comes from somewhere inside/beyond the inside of you, and out through you, washing through you, leaving changes which you might otherwise never have managed.

I think that something like this happened to me 17 years ago, and it had a dramatic effect on me. I have always described it as a "moment of grace", and only a few days ago came across this information about mystics and "descending causality", which definitely fits.

I imagine that is why so many mystics/religious types have, over the years, practised self-mortification, flagellation, privation, etc, because they hope for such an effect.

I don't know if I would go so far as to try and provoke such an experience with self-inflicted pain/stress, but I can understand the desire. It was an amazing, and beautiful and utterly transformational experience. It all started with the worst headache I have ever had in my entire life.

I have had a child, and didn't use any painkillers, just breathing techniques, and my body's natural painkillers, which are produced in huge quantity as labour approaches. That was more like detaching myself from the pain, letting it go, opiated out, whereas the headache ... I "suffered" it, fought it, avoided it, struggled with it, ... for hours.

Generally I avoid pain. Low threshold to it.

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"pain" is the best thing France has to offer y'all! Hmm, Fresh Crunchy baguette..... -drool-

Hot cross (language) puns!

I would continue this joke, but I'm awestruck

ouinon wrote:

I have had lots of major troubles in my life and what they did for me is reveal the internal strength that was inherent in my personality and also the weaknesses. It did not either create or re-enforce them, merely demonstrated that they were there. Bad times do not improve me. They merely reveal who I am. As do times that were good.

Are you saying that you've always been the same? I've changed very much throughout the course of my life. I've also been in a place where I was cynical and found no meaning in anything. It's a very sad place to be. It's not until you can forgive or accept the cause of your suffering that you can grow beyond it.

I think physical pain can be a very interesting experience, not only because it might lead to the "descending causality" ( as described by mystics ), which I mentioned in my previous post, but because the way we experience physical pain depends on a host of factors, from how we were brought up, one's entire life experience, to what we eat, and in what context it occurs.

"Exploring", ( as in facing, struggling, interrogating, attempting to ignore, dialoguing with, etc ), physical pain is perhaps like challenging/examining/re-experiencing some of the most formative/important parts of one"s conditioning, one's life, almost like meeting one's "Shadow" outside dreams.

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