Bad Day and Ear Aches: Advice?

[paul-met-debbie]

Push through or take it slow? Neither. Just listen to your body without having thoughts about what you perceive. Don’t personlize the sensation. Don’t label it even as pain. This is not a neutral term, it has a negative thought behind it (resistance). The resistance will ad to your dislike and the dislike will increase the resistance and distort the sensation.

What is pain exactly? How does it feel when you don’t call it pain? Who is having the pain if you don’t personlize it? Examine without “minding” it. If you strip it to the core, it is just some feedback from the body to itself, to make sure that some action is taken. Mostly it is un-ease to prevent movements that increases the feedback. There is really no one there that has (owns) the un-ease. It is just a bodily feedback. Act accordingly without even labeling the action or non-action as pushing through or taking it slow. Just get out of the way and let the body do or not-do what it seems to like most. Respect the natural wisdom of your body. You can support this by taking medication to reduce the feedback if it keeps the body from performing it’s natural tasks like eating, breathing or sleeping.

If the mind wants to put attention to the body, distract it by performing some easy pleasurable task that does not increase the feedback. Concentrate on your breath for instance. Do this over and over again every time you find your mind interfering. This trains your mind not to do this. It will learn. Have patience with it, it means well but is very limited. The mind is also easily distracted. Take advantage of this. Don’t think, talk or write about the un-ease. It is a common mistake that talking or writing about sensations or emotions is a good thing. Attention only increases the un-ease and feeds the mind. Starve the mind. Treat your mind like a little child with a soure knee after falling down. Be nice, distract its attention and put it back on track. The normal track of the mind is calm observation. An overly attentive mind becomes neurotic and problematic like a spoiled (misdirected) child. It turns from servant into a master. Don’t train it that way, because then you will be its slave before you know it (and without you knowing it).

If you stay in the moment, you will never have a bad day. In Reality, days don’t come in chunks of 24 hours. They come one moment at a time. The moments are not connected by themselves. Every moment is manageable because it only lasts one moment as long as you don’t let the mind make a story out of it by placing it into time and personalize it. The idea of having a bad day is an extrapolation and exageration of the mind and it is not correct. If you analyze, you will see that there are only moments of un-ease interrupted by many moments of not-noticing. If you connect all the un-ease, your mind calls it a bad day. If you don’t, there will just be the day and some moments of un-ease. This makes a big difference.

Be aware of the mind and isolate it from what is really only happening. Learn to look clearly without judging, labeling or conceptualizing. In the end, the mind will be free from bad habits and go back to its natural state. It is an art. The Art of Living. Sadly, we have not learned this. But you can start any moment, like Now.

Have a great moment!
Paul