I have had a toothache for about a week. Actually it's a reoccurring pain that the dentist can't find a good explanation for. Still, it hurts. In fact, I sometimes feel consumed by the pain.
I decided to try to detach from the pain a little. I stopped resisting it and just observed. It was a very difficult thing to do. The pain kept threatening to take over; to obliterate everything else in my awareness. Yet it was possible to sit with the pain and let it be. When I did, it relinquished its control over me.
This is a useful skill and one that is difficult to cultivate: this ability to detach from pain. It brings an awareness that I am not it and it is not me. I am also aware that it can be a dangerous thing to do. We run the risk when we practice detaching that we will become untethered, like the astronaut in David Bowie's Ground Control to Major Tom who drifts off into space.
I suppose that the trick is to detach without trying to escape; to acknowledge the pain and sit with it patiently, carefully giving it the respect it is due.
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