Dissolving the Collective Pain Body ~ Katie Davis, Author, Awake Joy

Our conditioning determines our likes and dislikes. For the mind-made self, someone does something that the ego does not like and it judges it from a past perspective. That judgment is based on past experience and the conditioning from that experience. The ego resists what already is and reacts. That resistance and reaction cause suffering for you and others.

Self-observation begins when we start watching our thoughts and how they relate to our emotional environment. Content has to do with what someone said and what we dislike. Structure deals with how the ego and its thoughts interrelate with our emotion, regardless of the content or story about what is happening.

Through self-observation, we can notice that when the ego attaches to negative thoughts, the body reacts in contraction as though those thoughts were true. That contraction is what we call negative emotion. Our emotions do not change because of what is happening in the life situation. They change because of our problematic thinking.

When we watch thought, this structure becomes evident and we see more clearly how the ego mechanism is functioning within us. That is, we become conscious of what was previously functioning unconsciously. In self-observation, we can also watch our emotions and become aware of how the mind is more than willing to perpetuate the negativity as it moves deeper into unconsciousness.

If we resist the negative emotion, it perpetuates it in the same manner that when we try to control our thinking, it actually becomes stronger. Once you are caught in a deep emotion, the only option is to consciously suffer. If you are consciously watching, you are transmuting not only your present pain but also the pain of the past. The pain of the past formed your dislike and it reactivates in the present as reaction.

Sometimes, we may be confused when all of a sudden we find ourselves totally angry or deeply saddened. If the depth of the negativity is out of proportion with what is happening on the surface in the life situation, you are beginning to sense and feel the collective pain body.

What is collective pain? Well, if you could accumulate all of humanity's suffering into one "body" of negativity (unconsciousness), that is the collective pain body.

When this pain arises within you, if you resist it, you are accumulating more pain. Instead of resisting, invite it in and experience it fully. I am not asking you to get involved, analyze or interpret it. I am only asking you to consciously be with it. If it goes deeply enough, it is as though you become the negative emotion. The emotion consumes you.

I realize that it is uncomfortable, but there is no other way out. Through your willingness to watch and allow that collective pain, it is transmuted into pure consciousness.

Always ask, is there anything deeper? Discover what is at its depth. The pain does have an end. You will directly realize that suffering is a delusion. It does not help to just mentally say, "Well, this suffering is a delusion" and go on suffering from time to time. It requires that you directly realize the delusion.

In the core of the pain, you will realize the pure consciousness that you genuinely are. When all of the unconsciousness is transmuted, what remains is perfect peace.