How to Avoid Avoiding Pain

In my last post, I spoke about what happens when we are not conscious of our attachments. Attachments to good feelings, identities, material items, and people (and my attachment to Aquaphor). Eventually, our attachments begin to control us. We lose our freedom. We can become numb to life, including the good parts.

But the other side of the coin is just as bad: always being on guard to avoid negative situations. Pain. Discomfort. Disappointment.

The title of this post is jokingly How to Avoid Avoiding Pain because it is impossible to avoid pain. In fact, in our pursuit of avoiding pain we create more pain for ourselves. It’s hard to see this because it’s so ingrained. Who WANTS to experience heart ache, physical pain, or sadness? 

Life involves it ALL, the good and the bad. No matter what we do, we can’t control that. 

There’s war, poverty, pandemics. There’s love, abundance, and beauty.

In essence, these two topics (grasping pleasure and avoiding pain) have to do with our intolerance with change. Our dislike for impermanence. Our impulse to have control. When we feel out of control, something feels very wrong. There’s a natural impulse to figure it out and resolve it. Get rid of that feeling. Historically, this sense of things not being in control meant death for us and possibly our tribe. So of course we feel inclined to do something about it.

But when this tendency goes unchecked, we are no different from lab rats pushing the lever for food and avoiding the shock. That becomes our life, and it takes a LOT of energy. There’s no room for anything else when our only goals are to hold onto every positive feeling and avoid anything negative. We have to always be on guard in order to do this.

The unfortunate thing, though, is that we AREN’T like the rats. We have another option. We HAVE the capacity to see BEYOND the lever and the shock. We can train our minds to CHOOSE whether we pull the lever or not. To get OFF the hamster wheel and start living a life of more meaning, purpose, and contentment.

How to do this? I created an E-Book with all the answers (just kidding. Anybody who claims to have all the answers on a topic like this is lying and you shouldn’t trust them. But my guide does have a lot of things to think about including why we are the way we are, and some ideas of techniques to implement to move from a chaotic mind to a calmer, more grounded mind).