Can Meditation Take Away Pain? – Dialectic Two Step
Estimated reading time: 3 minute(s)
Question: I’ve been meditating for a few weeks. Sometimes it produces peculiar effects: something that would be painful may no longer be – for as long as I am in the meditative mind-state anyways. How can meditation take away pain?
Response: You should look into the Jhanas which are described in the Right Concentration arm of the Eightfold Path. Specifically the fourth.
Pain and pleasure are temporary states that pass through your awareness. As we open up in meditation things begin to flow through us more freely. Pain and pleasure become more like ebbing and flowing qualities of energy than discreet concrete states.
When we are open to all sensations, our BodyMinds become less reactive. A typical response to pain is to clench and hold it. The irony is that holding it tighter prolongs the discomfort and takes a heavier toll on the BodyMind. Lama Surya Das described it like this, the tighter you hold on, the worse the rope burn.
Dialectic Two-Step is an ongoing series of my thoughts on questions that come my way.
Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. - Octavio
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The thing we must understand is we've been provided 2 earthly windows of awareness or consciousness; that is consciousness in presence and the imposturous ego in fictional time. the ego is the cause of your pain. Until self-realization or getting to a good stage of meditation capability, all we know is ego consciousness - but we intuit something else In nature, in those special moments in life etc. When we meditate, whatever technique, we are helping bring our awareness into presence, which is the only place inside space-time we can connect with real Consciousness. that is the merging of our breath with 1-2 senses into a singular awareness, in which the mind is innately silent. This is good because in presence real consciousness flows (& all the love etc it brings), and if the mind is silent then the ego is subdued or not-present.
The pain is exacerbated or propagated by ego consciousness, and when you meditate you're stalling / putting on hold ego consciousness. This likely has a residual effect in your day-2-day life, and it probably says there's quite a bit of psychological component (I'm a veterinarian in case you wonder) to your pain which is natural with chronic pain. You also see this with hallucinogens as well (they drive presence, and movement of awareness beyond space-time-objective reality).
If you're interested to know more please see my author page and its link to website (ritualmeditation.com). thanks Andrew and good luck - hope the pain vanishes!