Finding Your "Shool"

 

Those of us who deal with pain on a daily basis, I believe are greatly hampered by language when it comes to incorporating well-being into our lives. I have noticed over the years that there is actually no word that describes a non-pain state, without using the word pain: PAIN-less, no pain, pain free, pain relief, etc., etc.

When we are in the throes of pain, the immediate cessation of it becomes all-absorbing, with our attention focused--stuck, really--on the experience of the pain. There is no "go to" concept we can focus on that is "not pain", other than focusing on what doesn't hurt, which, again, includes pain in the desire of it. It's no wonder it is so easy to get caught up in the "pain cycle'--the more it hurts, the more it traps your attention, which then leads to more of it.

Last week, I got into a fascinating discussion with a local Native American "medicine man", Jake, who asked me, "How is your 'shool'?"

After observing the blank look on my face, he continued. "Have you ever heard of the idea of 'loosh'?" Yes, I had, actually. Loosh is the energy of suffering--the low frequency energy of pain and agony, and it is said that it's an energy that vampiristic beings feed off of to increase their own energy.

"Yes," Jake continued. "We just turn that concept around, and what you have is a word for your sense of well-being. We like to use it to describe a spectrum, where low shool is where it is difficult to spot anywhere on your body or your life where something feels good; and then high shool, is where you feel fantastically alive and high vibe."

I nodded, suddenly realizing he was answering this question I'd had for years.

"When there is pervasive pain, usually the first thing we do is try to get rid of it, when the healing thing to do is to acknowledge with gratitude where in your body there is no pain. We call it 'finding your shool," he gazed at me and I realized that although my shoulders were aching and my knees hurt, my lower back felt really good.

"Yes, concentrate on that. Give that your energy and attention, and it will expand," he added right after my thoughts.

As Jake left the room, I was elated to have a wonderful tool with this shool thing. In Manifestation 101, we learn that what we put our attention on expands. This is the problem with pain, so we turn to external chemical means--analgesics, NSAIDs, and such nostrums, to just get our attention off of it. This is why the shool concept is so valuable. We can now rest our attention on those areas of the body that feel good, or at the very least, don't hurt, and by turning our attention thus, those good feelings can expand.

Jake also advised that we can increase our shool where there is pain, by noticing that there is some part of that painful area that feels okay, or even feels good. He said that in order for pain to exist, there has to be its opposite present--and that's shool.

Our sense of proprioception is greatly affected by pain. Limping is a good example. We change how we feel movement in our body by avoiding the movements that trigger pain. In the Feldenkrais Method, the practitioner slowly and gently moves the body into those areas where there has been a proprioceptive avoidance of pain, demonstrating that either there is greater range of motion than was thought, or that the proprioceptive reaction is no longer necessary--basically allowing shool to expand in the area.

This goes much deeper into what it means to hurt, to suffer, and to eventually start defining ourselves by our state of pain--changing our social behaviors, altering our physical movements, and justifying the pain by accepting it as a part of who we are in the world. This is all a result of pain fixation, and not realizing that there is shool within the pain that is the gateway to healing.

Again, back to Manifestation 101, Joe Dispenza said it well: "You have to feel whole before your healing; you would have to feel abundance before your wealth; you would have to feel awe before the mystical moment; you would have to feel love before your new relationship; and you would have to feel empowered before your success." So, I would add you would need to feel shool before your healing.

Reverse Engineer Your Pain

After being on the spiritual discovery path for most of my 63 years, I've come to see that there are just about as many approaches to how to go about this journey as there are people. In other words, spiritual journeys are a deeply individual experience, and ultimately, only the journeyer can decide which way to go, or what approach to take.

Ironically, there are also some very tried and true techniques to use to speed you on your way that seem to apply to practically everyone--results vary. My own style of research and discovery into who and more vitally, what I am, includes trying out practically every mode and modality I run across. I've often thought, If I just stayed with one damn technique I'd probably be a lot further along by now. But then, this would be only if I didn't change as a result of applying these various tools. I change--need a new tool. And although that seems like a bit of an excuse, it seems to work for me as I am now.

That said, one observation I keep running across, and then processing on, is how the emotions are intertwined with the physical body. There are hundreds of modalities that address the emotional component of physical disease and discomforts, yet basically, they are all saying the same thing.

My favorite spiritual teacher and savant, Teal Swan, summed up this whole approach with one question: "How does your pain make you feel?" Sit with that for a moment. "How does your pain make you feel?" What emotions are triggered by your pain?

The reason this is such a significant approach is because the structure of pain and dis-ease in the body is underpinned, anchored and given form by the emotions or feelings from which they arose. By re-experiencing these emotions, we're able to effectively "reverse-engineer" and de-construct our pain.

It goes like this: Say, you experience knee pain. Now sit with that pain for a moment--not resisting it, not judging it, or fleeing from it. Instead, observe how that pain makes you feel. Pick out some emotions--there will be several.

For example, I felt my knee pain and it had a feeling of helplessness about it. I followed that back into my past, asking for the earliest time where I felt helplessness like that. I ran straight into a time when I was about 8 years old and had badly sprained my ankle. I couldn't walk on it, and was limping around. My friends wanted me to come out and play, but I had to say I couldn't. This tied into feelings of abandonment and rejection--not to mention frustration. I realized my knee pain had dozens, if not hundreds, of "anchors" or connecting points with past incidents.

I immediately began to feel my knee loosening up a bit, and inflammation and pain levels going down. I kept re-addressing the feelings my knee pain was putting me through, with it becoming increasingly clear that although physically the knee was swollen, stiff, sore and hard to walk on--all of that was being held in place by a previous emotional state. The "holding in place" of those emotions, over time, created physical changes and mutations resulting in knee pain.

Another one of my favorite teachers, Christopher Hills, always emphasized that emotion is "E, energy, in - MOTION". When the motion stops or is obstructed in some way, either by denial or lack of interest, or misunderstanding, it eventually creates physical disease and discomfort.

Thus, pain becomes a virtual key to emotional freedom. Emotions are locked up in the pain. By simply looking at them, the energy is reset into motion and pain dissipates.

This is such a simple mechanism it's easy to forget about it--not to mention pain has a way of distracting attention away from its cause. Use your pain as your deep existential treasure--your strident path to ease and joy in the body and freedom of choice in life.

Pain is not Suffering

I posted this as a meme on Facebook from Teal Swan: "The circumstances you are experiencing are not the cause of your suffering. The cause of your suffering is the thought that what is happening should not be happening, or is not supposed to be happening."

It's an expansion on the old Buddhist saying I heard in yoga class frequently: "Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional."

The Facebook post got several comments mainly about physical pain. One friend wrote, "Well, then, whoever wrote that was never severely burned in a car accident." Another wrote, "I really resent those who say you can control everything with your thoughts. You can control some things, but we live in a physical world." Still another commented, "They're talking about emotional pain, not physical pain, right?"

In all cases, the people completely missed the message of the meme. It was not saying that your thoughts caused the pain. It says that your thoughts about the pain and/or its causation is causing the suffering.

In my own case, in the past, for several years, I had debilitating lower lumbar disc inflammations that would put me in bed sometimes because I could not move without extreme pain in my back and down both legs. I suffered greatly because I kept judging how unfair it was, and why me, an active, professional musician who ate right, exercised, took good care of himself should be burdened with this disability. Sometimes I cried. Not so much because of the pain, but because of the circumstances of it--and the situation I was in because of it.

I finally just decided to stop suffering and do something about my condition. I began yoga classes, and within a year, my back was completely healed. Yes, it was very difficult to do the yoga, and there was a lot of pain along the way, but I was convinced that it would work, and I had the drive and determination to get out of pain. This is the remedy for suffering: change the circumstances. Do something different. Get out ahead of the situation. Allow the pain, allow all the inconvenience, all the gripey thoughts and emotions, and just soldier on.

Anyone who has a serious disability, for example, Stephen Hawking, absolutely could not be in suffering and do the things he's done. Sure, he's probably in a lot of pain, but his vision, will, and determination to live his life cancels out what could be certainly the best of reasons to suffer.

What Hawking has done, and anyone overcoming any sort of painful disability, is to focus on what is working; the things in life to be grateful for, because that's where the energy is. That's where the inspiration lies, and that's where LIFE is. Life is not in the suffering, because suffering is a mental construct of victim behavior. It defeats hope, it neutralizes motivation, and rips the color right out of life and living.

So above all, my friends, gratitude trumps suffering, and will certainly lead to ease, joy and a zest for life.

Confessions of a Universal Surrogate

In the Access Consciousness modality, there is a thing called a "Universal Surrogate", which is someone who takes on the pain and suffering of the world with the intent that by so doing, they are bringing relief to the afflicted.  I found out that I had an unconscious habit of automatically internalizing not only the miseries of other people, but also Planet Earth itself.  

After 60 years, it finally caught up with me.  I actually attribute this relatively sudden onset of physical pain symptoms to a kind of awakening upon the passing over of my twin flame in January 2012.  Shortly after her passing I began to get intermittent muscle and joint pain unrelated to my physical activities. I believe that my heart was somehow "broken open" during the dying ordeal triggering the expression of all this stored-up pain and suffering I'd accumulated since childhood.

By using the Access Consciousness question of "What percentage of this (pain) is yours?" I discovered that nearly 100% of it was NOT mine.  I then began to systematically ask about every ache and pain, "Whose is this?"  

At first, I got pictures and sometimes verbal information about individual people whose pain I had taken in.  After several hours of questioning, I began to get pictures of mountains, forests, oceans, underground water caves, crystals and rivers.  This was because I had taken on the pain of the Earth at these locations.  After a couple of days of pretty much asking this question constantly, I started getting pictures of past pets, other animals, insects, plants and even movies and TV shows. I got pictures of books and magazines. 

I realized the extreme nature of my automatic "surrogating" for all manner of pain and suffering I observed regardless of the source.

Oh, yes, and pains are reducing or going away, strength is returning, skin is clearing up, range of motion is improving.  

A friend of mine asked today in a Facebook post: "What if pain is really memories of   collective experiences that took root in your body? And, you hold onto the memory root through the illusion of control?"

This brings up the possibility that part of the human experience of consciousness includes some degree or another of this special type of empathy defined within the concept of the Universal Surrogate.  

Perhaps we could carry the idea farther. What if all non-optimum conditions of the human body have as their root cause the erroneous belief that by making the pains and sufferings of others your own (empathy) it ameliorates that pain and suffering in the other person (or even in the world).  

Isn't socialization all about the belief that you can control pain and suffering in your experience?   Isn't part of "caring" about another's pain a cherished value in most cultures? 

In fact, isn't it possible that such accepted distortions and permutations as aging or "incurable diseases" are actually a sort of empathetic resonance with others who in turn have resonated with others who are dying?  

My shaman/coach recently pointed out to me:  "You know, it looks to me like you're dying. You're following Shay (my partner) into death. You need to look at that, and make a decision about whether or not you really want to be here"  (see previous post). 

I had been so busy taking on Shay's pain and suffering, I had forgotten to connect it to what was going on in my own body.  Quite often as I continue the Questioning, I'll see that a certain pain twinge, ache or stiffness was Shay's.

The second part of the process is to send the energy back from whence it came.  At first, I was reluctant to do so, thinking it was sending the pain  back to the source. This is a misnomer--pain is merely energy.  Whether or not it arrives back at its source 
as pain would be up to recipient.

If we continue following this magic carpet down the rabbit hole, it becomes possible to see how the "Powers That Be" in the world could quite easily control their masses by making empathetic surrogacy a moral imperative, such as in most religions.  

Is it then possible or necessary to "care for others"?  Well, perhaps shockingly, the answer is NO.  In fact, all that happens is that one person's pain migrates out to everyone in their vicinity, who then take it in as their own and in turn broadcast that further out into the society and planet.  That's propagation, not caring...

So what is a poor surrogate to do?  The very best thing to do when confronted with pain and suffering of any kind is to maintain awareness.  By this I mean to become very mindful of your own emotional state, and observe the mind and nervous system.  Empathizing or, worse, sympathizing with another person opens the doors wide to surrogacy.  

I'm not saying to not have compassion. In fact, compassion is probably the most mindful thing to do when suffering and pain come into your awareness.  Compassion is a certain stillness and an abiding in empowerment for another.  Yes, that person is hurting now, but I know, one way or another they are experiencing what they are experiencing as a completely unique imprint with special meaning just for them. For me to judge the situation to mean they need some sort of emotional support or surrogacy on my part is the height of egoistic control fantasies.  Instead, we must truly appreciate and respect another's process.  

Perhaps taking on another's pain is actually complicating and maybe neutralizing their process. You've made it about YOU now, when it's actually about them.

This is not to say that if you are present, say, at a car wreck, do nothing.  Preventing suffering or pain is not same as taking it on as your own. 

Is it possible that ALL conditions that are NOT joyful, empowered and pure bliss are created due to empathetic surrogacy?   Try this thought experiment:  Imagine if everyone you see who is in pain suddenly stops their own surrogacy?  What if pain and suffering is the result of a sort of cultural dissonance created by the mis-absorption of other's pain on a mass scale?  Maybe that's what causes aging.  Maybe that's why we die.  We're just all trying to control each other's pain.  

Considering recent research in the field of epigenetics, where our environment, including thoughts, feelings and intentions, affect gene expression--it's not too far a jump to see how pain surrogacy could easily create disease and even death.   

A dear friend of mine, who was a trance channel, once said, "Aging and death is really just a cultural habit."  Perhaps how we achieve this sort of "population purging" is by rampant pain surrogacy, which is fully supported and further propagated via social and mass media. 

Science has already defined the human body as a self-repairing organism. As Lissa Rankin, M.D. has proven in her book, "Mind Over Medicine", remove the stress response from the human body, and there is nothing it cannot repair or heal.  When she says "remove stress" she's talking about completely removing it, as in a radical state of relaxation--a state few of us ever get to, creating a "repair deficit", which could be another word for aging.

The stress of pain surrogacy is most certainly included in this sort of radical relaxation, yet most of us are completely unaware that we are doing this surrogacy.  Ask the questions. Keep asking the questions until things start to change, and continue asking the questions.  Within the question lies the energy of freedom, the energy of liberation, the energy of the eternal. 

What if the whole deal about YOU is your uniqueness?  What if all of Nature and all of Universal creation is about uniqueness?  What if the reason you die is due to a denial of that uniqueness?  Isn't pain surrogacy the height of non-uniqueness?  It hurts us because we are giving away a part of ourselves, a part of our uniqueness.  The Universe just wants YOU to be YOU.