Getting-Rid-Of-Ness
By: Pretheesh Presannan
Tags: Mental Health, Anger, Anxiety, Emotions, Spiritual Secrets

Any discomfort or pain (mental or physical) that arises — be it in the form of anger or anxiety — thoughts gather immediately with the sole intention of — one and one thing only — how to get-rid-of it — the pain.

I need to look clearly at the intention of thoughts or the mind. If I can see that the intention is to get rid of it, then the only sane option I have is to not take part in the game — game of sustaining a temporary discomfort. Moreover, I do not have any control over it; there is no on-off switch to discomforts.

Even sitting with pain can backfire on me if the intention is to get rid of it.

And there is nothing wrong with having that intention, it is only that it is a futile game to play; moreover, that intention is purely habitual, an unexamined reaction burdened upon us from childhood.

After all, the way the thought intents to get rid of pain is by thinking on how to get-rid-of it; it wants assurance that it can find relief, but that very assurance seeking (which is more thoughts/thinking centered around pain) hijacks us into the habitual reactions: escape, procrastinate, addictions, etc.

It— mind or thoughts — can never do a thing with pain other than to prolong it or drive one toward any addictions or sedations. Addictions are actually nothing more than an escape from the possibility to come up with a creative response — an energy-saving response, a sane response — to the situation (feeling discomfort or pain).

Noticing the futility of thoughts clearly, I have the possibility to entertain flexible viewpoints or even question my own conditioned unhelpful reactions. I can ask:

What if no after-thoughts came up with the pain/discomfort?

Is it that, my desire to get rid of any temporary discomfort keeping it alive forever?

What if I forgot to habitually resist pain/discomfort?

What if I was not taught to react this way at all?

Am I at the mercy of my conditioning or am I choosing this on myself?

What if I wasn’t afraid of what others think; am I compulsively doing such worries just to fill the time with old unconscious habits?

What if the thoughts centered around the discomfort arise in an unfamiliar language; would I react the same way as before; say I got a Japanese version of my disturbing thoughts suddenly, instead of English or my local language?

What if I forgot to protect myself psychologically — would there be any change in what happens. Is it possible to drop the effort to defend?

If I slip into escapes or mind-numbing addictions does that mean I suddenly become safe from the very thing that drove me into it?

What if I could forget if only for a moment — the neuroticism of helping oneself too much?

When there is a space to see that I do not have to be a slave to my mind or conditioning, then I am at peace with the existing pain; I do not have to fight it or wait for it to go, and I can even involve in any creative work knowing there is nothing to be solved. The habitual tendencies die on its own when that energy gets played out.

It is not that one can choose to switch off a habitual pain maintenance tendency all of a sudden and that too so elegantly, but at least it is a beginning of a step in the right direction — to unstuck oneself from the arduous task of pain avoidance or self-defeating habit of getting-rid-of-ness.

Perhaps it takes some pain — if not a lot — to cultivate the patience to learn and to evolve through our neurotic suffering; to learn to outgrow pain creatively.

A truly creative response is not a modification of old or even the old reactions, but a new response that comes with going through pain or suffering (if it is there) and seeing how one sustains it unconsciously, uselessly via the old.

if only I could afford

to not help or protect

myself every single time

of the day

I — this physical organism —

would be at peace

throughout the day