The Ego's Greatest Lie + The Pain-Body
If you’re curious how the ego affects emotional well-being, this article is for you. Below we expose the ego’s greatest lie and dive deep into the concept of the pain-body and how it affects our lives.
Here’s what you’ll learn from this article:
The ego’s greatest lie.
How the pain-body affects emotions.
How to most beneficially process emotions.
Let’s get to it!
EMOTIONAL IDENTITIES
Most simply put, an emotion is the body’s response to a thought.
In addition to the ego’s thought-based identities (which we discussed in this post), it also has emotion-based identities.
“Ego-generated emotions are derived from the mind’s identification with external factors which are, of course, all unstable and liable to change at any moment.” — Eckhart Tolle
Just as not all thoughts are ego-based, neither are all emotions. It’s only when we identify with our thoughts and emotions that we can be sure they’re of the ego.
Having said this, humanity, as a whole, has been conditioned to identify with thoughts and emotions.
Rather than being taught to observe our thoughts and emotions from a space of conscious awareness, we’re taught that we are our thoughts and emotions.
That, right there 👆, is the ego’s greatest lie. That we are our thoughts and emotions.
You may be thinking to yourself, “What’s the harm in identifying with positive emotions?”
As Tolle notes, “Positive emotions generated by the ego already contain within themselves their opposite into which they can quickly turn.”
Pause. ✨ Read that again. 👆
A great example of this is anticipation.
Have you ever been looking forward to something—let’s say a vacation—for months and months only to be overcome with sadness once the event has passed?
Nestled within our attachment to that feeling of anticipatory excitement is a looming sense of letdown when the vacation is over.
When our emotions—even positive ones—become part of our identity, there can’t be good without the bad, no high without the low.
And so we become stuck in a habitual loop of anticipation and letdown.
THE PAIN-BODY
The pain-body is something Eckhart Tolle refers to often. The concept can be a bit complex to grasp, but I’ve done my best to outline some of the core features below.
The physical body has its own survival-focused primitive intelligence—a semi-autonomous life force that allows the body to carry on living without the mind consciously willing it to do so.
For instance, your body has the ability to react and move out of harm’s way by using reflexes or the fight or flight response without your mind having to think about it.
There’s another semi-autonomous energy form that exists within each of us that’s made up of our previously experienced (but not fully processed) emotions. It, too, has a primitive type of intelligence focused primarily on keeping itself alive.
Friends, meet the pain-body. FYI, he’s a bit of a jerk.
“What is it in humans that loves to feel bad and calls it good? The pain-body, of course.” — Eckhart Tolle
Tolle notes that, like all living things, the pain-body periodically needs to feed. Only instead of food, the pain-body nourishes itself with any energy that’s compatible with its own (i.e., of the same vibrational frequency).
Thus, any emotionally painful experience fuels and strengthens the pain-body.
The pain-body thrives on negative thinking and dramatic situations.
It especially loves intimate relationships and families because there is so much yummy (read: dramatic) food to be devoured.
“It may be shocking when you realize for the first time that there is something within you that periodically seeks emotional negativity, seeks unhappiness.” — Eckhart Tolle
Tolle notes that, in most people, the pain-body has both dormant and active stages.
Like a hibernating bear, when the pain-body is dormant, it doesn’t need to feed.
However, the pain-body awakens from hibernation whenever it’s hungry. It can also be awoken by emotional triggers.
And once the pain-body is awake and feeding, it doesn’t want to stop.
Of course, if you’re unaware that the pain-body has taken over, you’ll assume that its cravings for negativity are a dysfunctional aspect of YOU.
The voice in your head may take on any number of negative personas—naming, blaming, accusing, sad, anxious, angry, catastrophizing.
As the pain-body feeds, it lives through you and pretends to be you.
Unlike the hibernating bear though, the more the pain-body feeds, the less it wants to sleep.
And so a vicious cycle ensues between the pain-body and your thinking.
Negative thoughts feed the pain-body and in response, the pain-body generates more negative thoughts.
✨ Unpacking the pain-body’s baggage can feel overwhelming—feel free to pause and process as needed. ✨
When you’re ready, let’s continue...
Tolle describes the pain-body as a “psychic parasite”.
After feeding for hours or days or weeks, the pain-body eventually goes dormant again, leaving behind a depleted, exhausted mind and a physical body that’s become more susceptible to illness.
Proof of the pain-body’s jerkiness. 👆
There are varying densities of pain-bodies—some people carry a much lighter pain-body while others carry a very dense one that requires constant feeding.
Very few carry no pain-body at all.
Quick disclaimer: Everything shared so far is meant to empower, enlighten, and expand us.
There’s a temptation to allow this type of information to feed into the pain-body. If you’re feeling resistance or negativity, that’s the pain-body acting up because it knows it’s being seen. Congrats! Awareness of the pain-body is the key to disarming it once it’s been activated.
THE DENSE PAIN-BODY IN ACTION
When I worked as a psychologist, I often wondered if some of the individuals I worked with who had been diagnosed with a “personality disorder” were actually suffering the consequences of a dense pain-body.
Here’s an example...
I once worked with an adolescent girl whose behaviors fluctuated vastly from those originating from a genuine desire to connect with others to those that were clear, outlandish attempts to destroy those very same connections.
This individual’s deepest intentions appeared to be in the right place, but she couldn’t resist stirring up self-destructive drama.
And once the drama was stirred up, this girl would “sit in her sh*t” (as we elegantly refer to it in the world of psychology).
It was as if some part of her thrived on the suffering she’d created and wanted to remain entrenched in it.
It wasn’t until many years later that I learned this pain-seeking energy exists within all of us to some degree and it has a name—the pain-body!
After months of ongoing assessments, this individual was diagnosed with a personality disorder—a DSM-V identity that essentially marked her as “unfixable”.
Looking back, it’s quite possible this young girl’s collection of contradictory behaviors would have been more beneficially explained by a dense and insatiable pain-body rather than a label of pathology (yet another ego-fueling identity).
Sadly, the diagnosis only served to further unravel this girl’s already fragile sense of self.
Instead of empowering her, the label seemed to solidify what her ego had been suggesting to her for so many years: “You’re messed up. Unworthy. Broken.”
In the world of psychology, all too often a diagnosis ends up being a means to an end rather than an insightful tool through which to empower the individual and aid in healing.
Which illuminates an important question…
Now that we know the pain-body exists and that emotions, too, can become egoic identities, what do we do with this information?
PULL IT BACK TO PRESENCE
“Strictly speaking, you don’t think. Thinking happens to you.” — Eckhart Tolle
Much the same, emotions happen to us—they’re a byproduct of the thoughts that form in the mind.
Just as we are not our thoughts, we are also not our emotions.
When we disidentify with emotions, we create conscious space in which to effectively process them.
Be careful not to confuse disidentifying with ignoring.
Emotions need to be acknowledged in order to be released.
As Tolle suggests, disidentifying involves releasing the story that surrounds an emotion.
It’s the mind’s story that supports the existence of the emotion and so by releasing the story, we ultimately release the emotion.
For example…
Identified with unhappiness: “I’m unhappy. I’m unhappy because my life is falling apart. My husband left me. I’m unsatisfied in my career. My car broke down, and I can’t afford to have it repaired.”
The unhappy emotion is kept alive by the unhappy story.
Disidentified with unhappiness: “There is unhappiness in me.”
The emotion is experienced as it presents itself in the body without allowing the mind to tell its unhappy story.
“Emotion in itself is not unhappiness. Only emotion plus an unhappy story is unhappiness.” —Eckhart Tolle
The above can all be boiled down to…
Presence.
When we’re fully present for our emotions, experiencing them as they take shape in the body, there’s no room for the ego’s story.
There’s no arguing against what is or isn’t, because Presence implies radical acceptance of the now in its current form.
Through the ongoing acceptance of what is right now, we build conscious space around our emotions, rendering them far less important than we once believed them to be.
STATING THE OBVIOUS
The above is way easier said than done.
As always, I offer this information to you as mind candy to inspire rather than as doctrine to defeat.
Presence, dissolution of the ego, etc. are not destinations to arrive at but rather fluid, moving milestones to guide us in our desire to live a meaningful life.
By simply becoming aware of these concepts, we push ourselves to examine reality from different vantage points. And we create space in the mind from which to observe and untangle this experience we call life.
INTENTION
I am not my thoughts, I am not my emotions. But I am.
DO THIS TODAY
Notice the pain-body at work. What are its triggers? What feelings are its favorite to cling to? Identify one way you can bring awareness to the pain-body going forward.
WRITING PROMPT
Write to your intuition about the above. Resist the temptation to judge or edit—just let the words flow heart-to-paper.
3 RESOURCES
How to Identify and Stop Your Pain-Body
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