The Pleasure Body

Pain is attractive. Pain is delicious. Pain is important. Pain is sexy. Hmmm…

Eckart Tolle has written about the pain body. We create a self-image of pain to which we attach our experiences. We use it to organize our reality. By remembering pain we can make some sense of our history and our present challenges.

Having a pain body may well be useful. It is also clearly problematic. The habit of evaluating our world according to pain implicitly elevates pain to the primary position in consciousness. Other possibilities are devalued and potentially ignored.

Pain is about failure. It is our interpretation of message from nerves that tell us we are incurring tissue damage. Pain is subjective. It is a construct formed in the brain, not a direct function of sensation. Experiments have shown that the brains of long time meditators react 30-40% less to painful stimuli.

We can learn to experience sensation differently. To do so, we need to rebuild the Pleasure Body. Pleasure happens, but we are taught to deny and override it.

Pleasure becomes ephemeral as we distance ourselves from positive experience. Suppression, the choice to ignore particular sensation or thoughts, gives way to repression, the automatic non-conscious denial of those sensations and thoughts.

Pleasure is a sign of organic success. Our continued life implies ongoing pleasurable input. We breathe, and we enjoy it. Perhaps it is on a very subtle level, and rarely noticed. If we choose to notice it however, we then can nurture that experience. We can make decisions based on that positive and useful data. Nothing succeeds like success.

Most of life is maintenance. Growth and decay are balanced. Homeostasis is maintained. This natural state of vitality is pleasurable. When we choose to nurture the Pleasure Body, we step away from the frantic cycle of desperation and heroism and into maturity. Wisdom and ease become the norm and we become acquainted with the deep power of pleasure and joy.