Sometimes I find that the body is unwilling to co-operate with me. When I try to be present with the body, when I focus my awareness, even sometimes when I try to pray, my body seems to fight back. My mind is still enough but it is as if my entire body is knotted or strung up tightly and unable to relax. I'm not just talking about small knots that can be prayed over but rather a physical reaction that is more than just tension or fatigue, and seems to affect the whole of my nervous system. I wondered if there was some energetic/occult connection influencing my body's lack of response but, while this may be the case on some occasions, I feel I am able to distinguish between these times and the occasions when it is just a physical response, pure and simple. It's as if my whole body is tight and unwilling to allow energy to flow. If I try to force this by will or any other mental function it starts up an adverse reaction and I have to back down.

During prayer on occasions when my body isn't responding I have to be very careful. The Spirit can only touch me lightly and sometimes the knot, a huge tangled thing, prohibits any flow whatsoever and I am unable to connect with the Spirit. Very frustrating!

I wonder if anyone else notices this and if, perhaps, there is some explanation related to the flow of kundalini. I feel this might be the case. Perhaps it is just my body telling me to slow down, and that any work has to be carried out on it's terms, at it's pace.

Lately too, I have been experiencing sexual reponses as emotional pain and wounding. I remember w.c. talking about this elsewhere and wondered if he had anything to add. Desire is experienced as a deep hurt, a sypmtom of that part of me which exists without God and desperately needs to be redeemed.

Any comments on either of these topics would be most welcome,

Best,
S.

My recollection from one of Thomas Keating's video
lectures was how deeply moved and touched he was by those "dear people" who often had repressed sexual
selves from the culture and church where they had grown up. The shadow came out and tormented them and good people in their fifties were going through these agonies. Hopefully God and community can carry
someone though these dangerous reefs without being smashed by them. Very important to be strict and gentle with one's self at the same time. IMHO.

caritas,

mm <*))))><

Stephen:

I'd say keep trusting your intuition, and if more support is needed, consider calling Ann Cornell and setting up a Focusing session by phone to see if this approach helps you. I don't want to assume too many parallels to my own experience, but what your describing does sound familiar - where existential and developmental contents are carried into conscious awareness via kundalini, and temporarily overwhelming our capacity to remain present without collapsing into the painful affects.

Stephen:

What you're struggling with, just to comment further, is one of the most neglected aspects of spiritual formation within the churches. If Christianity were to embrace existential psychology, particular the cutting edge where we find such discoveries as Focusing, Hakomi, Peter Levine's work and Sedona Releasing, then it would gradually reconfigure these according to its own theological anthropology (i.e, the notion of Christ's indwelling via the human heart), and the course of an individual's growth in devotion wouldn't be so forlorn in terms of the private suffereing that seems to impede spiritual authenticity. In fact, such suffering is right at the heart of spiritual authenticity, but is obscured with shame when we are left so alone and not able to find connections to the main body of our spiritual membership. St. Paul sounded so lonely when he lamented over his thorn, and I've met monastics who speak of how lonely their own communities are, mainly due to a pervasive psychological immaturity.

Sex is perhaps the experience most like birth and death, it seems. Who knows, of course, since ultimately you have to die to find out. But sex is like a death if you really surrender to passion. When I let this happen, the energy gushes into my heart, and there is such a goodness and nurturing felt that at least for moments sex is clearly not the problem, since the heart seems to source most of what we long for and objectify right inside itself. What is the problem, or the struggle, is what unhealed parts of self emerge via passion, which I'm left with in such a raw way when kundalini is more active.

As I watch some close friends parent their young children, it is clear that life is about releasing whatever experience we are having, both painful and pleasurable, into the larger presence which is always there, which activates and reinforces the true Self as the personality emerges, giving the growing person the concrete sense of being more than whatever the momentary experience happens to be. This presence is instinctively, for the soul, God, the source of grace, but children of relatively sane families have the advantage of being able to release their pain and pleasure through the humanizing filters of their parents' hearts, where pain and pleasure release into the radiant source of all longings through a tangible, nurturing connection (never completely, of course, since parents always challenge the child toward further self awareness by not being perfect). This containment and soothing, which children internalize since it matches the nature of the true Self, generates neural connections capable of sustaining increasing degrees of unbiased awareness, not in the cold way of many Buddhists observing their emotions in meditation, but with curiosity and ease in knowing "I am not just this part of me that is sweet, or hurt." I haven't actually heard a child say those exact words, but it is an approximation of the ease some feel in knowing/intuiting this greater, intimate capacity.

I received precious little of this heart resonance as a child. Focusing and Sedona releasing have been the closest I've come to being able to let polarized, painful energy dissolve back into the hidden, grace-filled presence of the bodily temple. It hasn't happened enough to reconnect me so that I can function as sanely as I wish, but enough that I know it is possible and how it is so crucial to human development for spiritual formation.

Thanks for the replies!

Your observations are very interesting w.c.

Some ramblings:

What I find difficult is best seen as an acute awareness of the division between heart and body and, paradoxically, a sense of the heart needing physical intimacy to nurture and protect it.

On one hand the body seems to me to have needs of its own, aches to be comforted and soothed. At the same time, there is a connection to the heart so that physical desire is seen as a manifestaion of a greater longing. It appears that the heart needs some sort of physical experience so that it can fully integrate and thus experience love and grace at the deepest level.

So then, the isolated suffering of the body must be purgatorial and the antithesis, body/heart integration is felt as rapture, a burst of physical/spiritual delight experienced around the heart.

The flesh rebels from God, separates from the heart and as such demands its own satisfactions which are by nature shameful.

I think it is this physical intimacy, the heart nurtured through the body that I miss when the body resists prayer and contemplation. Then there are the times when I see an attractive lady in the street. I occasionally experience K as rapture and bliss and I believe this is truly feeding my heart. Does it adequately compensate for my lack of a loving partner? Whatever, it seems to be my path for the moment.

"On one hand the body seems to me to have needs of its own, aches to be comforted and soothed. At the same time, there is a connection to the heart so that physical desire is seen as a manifestaion of a greater longing. It appears that the heart needs some sort of physical experience so that it can fully integrate and thus experience love and grace at the deepest level."

Very much my own experience. And, research suggests that the entire body resonates with the status of our hearts, such that one's EKG appears throughout the body. My friends are parenting their children in ways that support the observation that what parents mainly are doing, when they are attuned to the Self in the child and its unique manifestations in the emerging personality, is drawing forth qualities of the child's soul into the child's conscious awareness. The parent, to whatever extent she is connected consciously to her own heart, is mirroring this presence to, and within, the child, which activates the child's knowing of presence, with memories reaching back into gestation, when earthly and heavenly belonging weren't strongly dissociated. All of the body's denser energies organized in the lower chakras are drawn into the heart chakra and find their peace in this domain where Christ dwells in His various forms.

Yes re: how the body suffers when separated from heart awareness. When I'm in the throes of intense sexual hunger, and can be with the yearning until it reaches my heart, there is a restored sense of sexuality's spiritual nature, or resonance with, even as, the spiritual. The trouble for me comes in dealing with the intense loneliness I accumulated during my early developement, where there were no mirrorers of embodied spiritual presence (my grandmother occasionally) to generate habits of release of lower energies into the heart. And so the worst part isn't the horniness, but the emotional hungers for intimacy that belong to the mother-infant-child relationship.

Stephen and others:

It is an elementary distinction, but one that reappears in fresh ways as I practice Focusing and Sedona releasing (both of which clear the space of awareness for prayer):

Pain and the suffering of pain.

The latter is the stories and various mental reactions we have to any wound, however old. Older wounds tend to be more entangled with stories, but they all gather their momentum from the internal dialogue, which has a certain automaticity to it. Pain, prior to having its meaning drawn into the internal dialogue with our attention, is quite different, and offers a different experience of suffering itself.

It is rather amazing to hold both of these in awareness. Even in our best attempts to be "mindful," we tend to resist our mental reactions to pain rather than just being aware of them, particularly how they gain somantic expression. We want to stop struggling, but the automatic nature of the internal dialogue can't be overcome by the will, and so we set ourselves up for the suffering of pain even as we intend to "let go." This is different than just being with the sensations, and eventually noticing that the sensations arising from mental reactions, and the rawer, more existential pain, are distinct. The body holds each in a slightly different way, and the two kinds of pain both need compassionate attention.

But what is most startling is that the existential pain, which is usually treated as the most fearsome and difficult to manage, has its own life-giving radiance, a intimacy where one would never expect to find it. And the layer of suffering mostly generated by resistance to the existential pain often holds our attempts to compensate, improve, correct, and heal, even though these efforts usually end up just stimulating the internal dialogue.

Wanting to improve, find meaning, change, surrender . . . . and many more efforts that are as common to the spiritual life as psychotherapy, all seem to be sources of the suffering of pain, obscuring the rawer, more basic sensate presence in any wound, and where we can be led to a surprising richness in a place the resistance/effort suggests is untrustworthy, not good enough, forbidden, etc.

This is a fairly good fishing hole for describing the difficult-to-express (at least for me) feelings:

http://ronrolheiser.com/

A couple of examples:

http://ronrolheiser.com/arc110704.html

http://ronrolheiser.com/arc100503.html

caritas,

mm <*)))))><

I understand the distinction w.c.

I think a lot has to be cleared away before one can simply be present with pain. For example minfulness requires an initial acceptance. Pain experienced as external oppression sets up a serious of emotional responses like feelings of injustice, remorse etc. Yet when one overcomes these initial reactions one is left with the ability to be present. There is the sense of the mystery of one's pain, a kind of bittersweet sensation which stikes right at the heart of life, experience, awareness.

You talk of the desire for change, improvement etc as sources of the suffering of pain. I agree with you. I think its important to be aware of that. In most cases this awareness relieves the suffering to certain degree. But then how does one deal with the unendurable. I can only rely on faith and grace. I find that, even in less extreme circumstances, God compensates when we give our pain to Him. Such has been the case recently when I've taken certain pains to Him. He reacts immediately. Then there was a time when my oppression was so great I thought I couldn't bare it any longer. Suddenly, for an instant, I was given a flash of white, peaceful light, a sense of the beauty present at the other side of awareness, the source of the mystery. It didn't end my suffering but it gave me the strength to endure.

What I find difficult is the resurfacing of old wounds. I wonder if it is healthy to drege them up. Perhaps it's best to give God access to the subconscious and allow Him to deal with them at that level. It's difficult for me to be present with the suffering of pain, easier to be present with pain. Perhaps there are barriers to be cleared away before I am able for that.

Stephen:

Yes, even the most unbiased, compassionate awareness we are capable of as humans requires the larger Presence/grace for the basic pain of original sin/separation. I share that experience with you, and will ask Jesus to be with me as I do Focusing, especially when the going gets rough. I don't mix prayer with Focusing, but I'll stop and pray as needed, then return to Focusing.

I agree whole-heartedly about the futility and danger (especially around kundalini) of dredging up old pain. After several years of cathatic-oriented psychotherapy, which was helpful for the first 6-8 months, I learned that this process can become addictive and deadening in its constant overidentification of the mind with memories and garden variety emotions. One's sense of soul can be lost in such a narrow process. This is why I've found Focusing such a God-send, as well as Sedona release work, since those processes are about dis-identifying with the pain so it can have a relationship to/within presence and Presence; otherwise, the hidden presence in the pain gets obscured via dramatic reactions and attachments to the emotions. And as you allude, God works beyond our faculties of awareness on all aspects of the soul, and so Focusing, for me, is just a beautiful way of cooperating. As I've said before, prayer has made itself quite distinct from Focusing or any other form of meditation, and what a relief that is, since letting go, and presence, are all contingent on Presence i.e, the created in relationship to the Uncreated.

Yes, for me it is still much more difficult to be with the suffering of pain; it will probably always be this way, although it seems to be getting easier, or less difficult. Nevertheless, some old wounds have deeper patterns of reactivity than others, and so we mind the temple as its custodians as genuinely as we can.

Thanks for your insights, Stephen. It helps to have these exchanges.

This is great sharing! Very informative and insightful. Thank you both.

I think a lot has to be cleared away before one can simply be present with pain. For example minfulness requires an initial acceptance. Pain experienced as external oppression sets up a serious of emotional responses like feelings of injustice, remorse etc. Yet when one overcomes these initial reactions one is left with the ability to be present. There is the sense of the mystery of one's pain, a kind of bittersweet sensation which stikes right at the heart of life, experience, awareness.

I agree with Phil. There�s a lot of good stuff going on in here. I won�t crash the party but I�d just like to say that I felt the raw and painful tinge of some old wounds this morning. They can instantly make you weak at the knees and make you feel like the whole universe is set against you. Powerlessness is not a fun feeling, as you probably know.

I thought Stephen described the process well of finding a way to see past, no matter how weakly, our involuntary reactions which have become habit, a habit developed usually by repeated reactions to some pretty nasty stuff. It�s so easy to escape into our customary habits and internal dialogues and other coping methods. Well, these coping methods may have helped us cope but they also keep us bound to our prior problems and limited by them. Being able to just remain aware in the uncomfortable pain is surely a start, and is probably the only way that other healing forces can be allowed to do their healing work. But that pain can feel so deep and permanent that there seems no hope of ever being rid of it. Perhaps that�s the most upsetting part. We can handle the immediate pain, more or less. That part is relatively easy. We�re somewhat used to it. But the ontological stirrings of hopelessness and powerlessness that are agitated and activated are, I think, the nastiest parts of it all. We don�t always know when that pain will erupt and so we feel like an epileptic. Our "driver�s license" of life is revoked to some extent.

So what I�m trying to do, for better or for worse, is to take a few hints from WC�s "Internal Dialogue" thread where we try to detach from, turn off, or not identify with our internal dialogue and to just let our problems "rest" in the silence, in the unconscious, and/or in the presence of a loving God. Whatever one�s ontology is, I think I can vouch for the efficacy of reaching down into and trusting deeper sources of guidance and information and letting go of trying to micro-manage every problem or uncomfortable emotion as it erupts. Whatever happens, I certainly can�t do any worse than I have done before which has been utterly worthless.

I read an article some while back about meditation when I first became interested in this type of spiritual practise. It suggested that meditation was inadvisable for people suffering from schizophrenia because it stripped away the mind's defenses. About the same time I read somewhere that, in times of pain and suffering, one should always seek to find the presence of God. I think this highlights one of the many differences between Eastern meditation and Christian contemplation; the idea of emptying the mind contrasted with that of stilling it in the presence of God.
Having suffered my fair share of mental trauma because of a violent K eruption and subsequent occult connections I know the futility of presence with this type of suffering. The mind needs diversion, layers of defense against the attacks, or else it gets swamped by the terrible sense of otherness. But then I found that prayer and awareness of God's Presence built a wall of peace around me alleviating the suffering somewhat and that God provided His own system of defense, not always but more often than not. I had to overcome the initial feelings of powerlessness and such that we have been talking about, stop trying to fight the pain, stop trying to wish it away, run from it, what have you. My only hope lay in resting with God.
I was led into Romans 5:3-5, where suffering eventually leads to hope. At times I wondered at the connection when, naturally speaking, suffering tends to lead to the hopelessness Brad talked about. Then it became clear that "the love of God has been poured out in our hearts." His loving presence is constantly with us inspiring hope and deflecting the problems the suffering of pain would naturally present.
There are however times when the body is unwilling, for whatever reason, to connect with that Presence, which is why faith is so important, more important than any "spiritual feeling" because it tends to find God when no other faculty, be it will, imagination, physical sensation, is able to connect. It is the last bastion, but also the leader of the frontline.
I was pretty fortunate to have been brought up in a loving environment by caring, protective parents. I think this "nurturing connection. . . which children internalise since it matches the nature of the true Self" (w.c.) has been crucial in the way I have been able to be present to Presence and thus survive pain which at times has been pretty unbearable. I really should be thankful.

So good to have these exchanges. No pat answers or solutions from the purely human standpoint.

Stephen:

You are probably familiar with principles of Catholic Spiritual formation, and what you describe sounds like one of the Dark Nights, of either the senses or Spirit, where our mental faculties cannot pray in any discursive or imaginative way; it is a time when God is moving in ways the mind cannot even glimpse, and we certainly can feel utterly alone, or even abandoned if we interpret this according to human relationships. For myself, this quite a raw spot, since the memories of early abandonment come haunting. But God wants us to be so aware of His presence in creation that His Spirit must infuse us beyond the fragile machinations of the mind.

With what you've been through, I'd say keep trusting your intuition/heart as to whether something feels safe or not. You sound like you have a fairly mature radar for that sort of thing.

"My only hope lay in resting with God."

In the end this is all we have, as hospice patients make it so clear; yet, allowing others to love us is part of that rest as well, at least for me, since I tend to withdraw too readily.

Brad said:

"Being able to just remain aware in the uncomfortable pain is surely a start, and is probably the only way that other healing forces can be allowed to do their healing work. But that pain can feel so deep and permanent that there seems no hope of ever being rid of it. Perhaps that�s the most upsetting part. We can handle the immediate pain, more or less. That part is relatively easy. We�re somewhat used to it. But the ontological stirrings of hopelessness and powerlessness that are agitated and activated are, I think, the nastiest parts of it all. We don�t always know when that pain will erupt and so we feel like an epileptic. Our "driver�s license" of life is revoked to some extent."

Being aware in the midst of the pain, and taking time to attend to the pain, where the internal dialogue shifts from mental chatter to bodily sensation responding to gentle attention, really does invite the deeper intelligence of the soul to give us a visceral sense of interiority. This sense has been a most welcome relief in that I don't have to chase after good feelings, or as quickly resist painful ones, but feel like I've re-inhabited my body with less dependence on the talking head orientation. There is a lot of aliveness in those raw places, and not just because they hurt like hell, but because they want to live and make new connections. It is a small miracle to experience something really painful melt and unfold into a life giving energy/awareness. The conscious mind never seems to suspect this is possible, which is probably why every time I can allow it to happen, there is such freshness in it.

I really like what Stephen said here: There are however times when the body is unwilling, for whatever reason, to connect with that Presence, which is why faith is so important, more important than any "spiritual feeling" because it tends to find God when no other faculty, be it will, imagination, physical sensation, is able to connect. It is the last bastion, but also the leader of the frontline.

We certainly need something to sort of act like a flywheel, to act both as a gyroscope to keep us on course and to store energy for those times we aren't generating much of our own. It's only human and perhaps common to have that flywheel be fear. But fear wears out the parts rather fast. You need lots of grease to make that system work and too often the lubrication is 40 proof. I'm still looking for my flywheel.

No pat answers or solutions from the purely human standpoint.

Oh geez, WC, give me a chance already. I've just started.

I agree with Stephen about faith during the Dark Nights. St. John of the Cross (?) speaks of dark faith. It seems to mean faith when there is no conscious hope, but I'll look around for a clear definition. But I want to question the idea that the body is unwilling to connect with Presence, even though Stephen's experience may very well reveal a different aspect of this than my own.

Very often we confuse the bodily intelligence with aspects of the conscious mind, and when we direct attention within the body, until the body begins showing us its own point of view, it can seem like an extension of the conscious mind itself, or mostly a set of sensate responses (often uncomfortable, or numb) to however the conscious mind is struggling in the moment. But this is not yet the body speaking via its own hidden presence, or the body as the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Now . . . I'm not equating presence with Presence here, or kundalini with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit works beyond our faculties, and is uncreated, and k is a creaturely faculty. But in either case, the body has a certain felicity in regard to both p and P, since it is dying all the time and not resisting this process, which the conscious mind is struggling against in so many ways in almost every moment.

In the Focusing process, the difference between K and Holy Spirit is made even more plain; however, what also becomes possible is an experience of the body from its own point of view, which is unlike any experience of the body we normally assume as its normal operations. I won't say it is supernatural, which suggests archtypal kundalini as part of its intelligence; however, the body's capacity, when we are simply giving sensation bare, curious attention, to bring opposites together and dissolve them into peace suggests at least one way it functions as the Temple of the Holy Spirit, or presence resonating with Presence.

But as for faith being an opening without dependence upon sensation, imagination, will, yes, I can relate with this, although there is a certain quality of consent or trust which seems to imply the will, if subtly.

Stephen, you have made your description, which Brad cites above, within a certain context, so I may not be appreciating all that you have in mind. Care to clarify?

Since the body is dying continually, and without fear, it shouldn't be surprising to find that an experience of its awareness, of its actual point of view, imparts quite a different perspective on pain and suffering. And so the bodily revelation I'm referring to is "Jesus is in our pain, at the very heart of it as the source of all longing." And so only the fearless body can carry this deepest sense of mortality in the presence of the Divine source. We can ask Jesus, who knows us through and through already, to be with us in the pain we feel, as he is already there in His resurrected, wounded body.

This is the dying body's gift, where oppositional, archetypal tensions (mentally experienced as internal dialogue, and kinesthetically as passion) dissolve into each other leaving us in His immanent Presence. And so in Focusing we are holding opposites (wanting and not wanting, desire and fear, anger and shame, wanting to control/let go, contract/open etc.) in the space of unbiased attention, where the grace of God hidden in the senses (the body's death = wisdom) via the way the kundalini knows the Holy Spirit as its source.

Perhaps what I'm talking about is a temporary withholding of the graces which can accompany contemplation. There is no sense of the diffusing of the Holy Spirit, no concomitant peace or joy. I would normally experience the Spirit's presence as physical/spiritual delight and there would be a feeling of Him drawing the various parts of my being - body, mind etc - together; a sense of wholeness and unity of being.

In this dark night, I'm aware of my body as material form, hard, stony, tight, and separate from my spiritual being. There is just no sense of any bodily response to the Spirit's energies. No fruit. Instead there is real unsettling.

However, perhaps I need to make the distinction between the body's connectedness to Presence and my sense of bodily connection. The latter seems to be a more accurate rendering of the situation. That unsettling, then, may be a different kind of response to the Holy Spirit, but I don't think so. I really feel it as resistance, as if my body is closing down the spiritual channels.

Stephen:

That really does sound distinct from what I'm describing, except perhaps regarding a Dark Night passage. Do you have a spiritual director, or guide? What you are going through may be beyond any of the responsiveness of the mental or sense faculties, but I certainly couldn't advise you re: how to assess your situation. Hopefully Phil can help, or make referrals, if you are open to that.

My hope is that this unsettling you describe is just what us humans would encounter at a certain point of consent, where the Holy Spirit works so subtly that nothing familiar to us can give orientation or a sense of cohesion. And I'm familiar with some descriptions of spiritual transformation where the kundalini is simply not in charge of the process, or perhaps beyond itself. But other than that, you have officially fallen off my radar screen, although what you say makes sense according to some of St. John of the Cross' descriptions, my familiarity being limited.

But your last paragraph sounds like you are not sure if this is the HS simply operating beyond the faculties, or if you are mentally withdrawing from the sensate aspect of the encounter. Boy, aren't our minds feeble?! Hence, the dark faith you have alluded to.

Hum . . . I have had more than a few moments when I couldn't do Focusing, or any other inward movement of attention, and my prayer was just a faithful waiting with no consolations. These aren't experiences I like recalling, but in looking back, they seem to have left more room for contemplative prayer.

Actually, w.c., your last paragraph, the "faithful waiting with no consolations", strikes a chord with me. And I have to say that this has been a sporadic phenomenon over the past couple of years, it passes quickly, then resurfaces, and is best seen as a serious of minor blips amid some gracious encounters and a general growth in my awareness of the presence of God.

I just don't like the rhythms of my body dictating my experience of the Holy Spirit, but I guess I am just human and am subject to all the vagaries of our condition. And I'm sure the Holy Spirit really is still operating and in control during these occasions.

By the way, I don't have a spiritual director as such and occasionally feel isolated in certain aspect of my spiritual life - the k, the occult attachments, contemplative prayer etc. - although I have learned a lot through shalomplace and have a rich church life.

Thanks for your concern and help during these exchanges. Much appreciated.

You're welcome. And it has been mutually beneficial.

In attempting the quick and easy form of focusing that you had pointed out, WC, this is what came into awareness:

I'm at an overload point. I just can't deal with any more ****. Why does awareness contract? To protect one's self? It seems I'm always having to react to other people's ****. Well, I�m tired of that. I don't want to be a pawn anymore.

My dream state the last few nights has mirrored this sentiment. It's been a torrent of dreams, waking up feeling anything but refreshed. I'm at the point now where I just want to hold a stop-sign up to life and say "Whoa! Hold on for at least a few seconds." Stuff seems to accumulate faster than it can dissipate and that can cause one to certainly numb one's self, tense up, and to contract one's awareness as if clenching one's butt cheeks.

I must find a way to be a bit like a duck and cause life's constant stream of crap to flow right off my back. It is certainly feeling some type of control that is missing.

LOL. "****" = farmyard debris.

www.debrishappens.com

Brad:

When the mind is attempting to manage powerful polarized energies through the internal dialogue, there will always be a sense of overwhelm. The body's awareness, however, is keen to, and accepting of, both poles, and so there isn't the struggle to cling to comfort and resist pain. The body is continually dying and not afraid of that process. When we access its awareness, then this greater space and ease will be concrete. Any attempt to resolve in the mind the pain you're describing is likely to just create more of the same.