But what does it actually mean to be present? And how is it that “being present in pain” leads to an “expansion of boundaries,” and even to knowing the limitless? What Marina Abramović recreates in her art is the same thing Eckhart Tolle speaks about in his books—indeed, in exactly the same combination: presence in pain for the purpose of transcending the boundaries of ego-consciousness.
In fact, it was Eckhart Tolle who was the true reason I came to recognize the value of the messages in Marina Abramović’s work. That is why I now want to present his idea of transforming the “dense pain-body” through the “light of presence.”
“Your conscious Presence severs the identification with the pain-body. When you are no longer identified with it, the pain-body cannot control your thinking and so cannot renew itself anymore by feeding on your thoughts. In most cases the pain-body does not dissolve immediately, but once you have broken the link between it and your thinking, it begins to lose its energy. Your thinking is no longer clouded by emotion; your present perceptions are no longer distorted by the interference of the past. The energy that the pain-body has appropriated then changes its vibrational frequency and becomes Presence. In this way, the pain-body becomes fuel for the flame of consciousness. This is why some of the most enlightened men and women on the planet once had a dense pain-body.”
Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, Chapter 6 – Freedom from the Pain-Body
Tolle calls intense irrational suffering the “pain-body” and likens it to a separate inner being that leads an autonomous life in the depths of our psyche and “feeds” on our pain. What nourishes it are certain kinds of thoughts—thoughts that sustain resistance to pain. But since the source of this pain is far greater than our ego, the ego loses the battle with it, and the existing pain is compounded by additional pain—pain arising from resistance to pain itself. In this way, suffering reaches the threshold of the unbearable.
The only “weapon” for dealing with this specific kind of pain is presence within it—that is, non-resistance to the fact that it exists. Non-resistance to reality.
For me, as a psychotherapist, it is easy to recognize in such a description what psychology calls “psychic complexes.” These parts, split off from consciousness, live in the unconscious and exert a powerful influence on our lives, without our knowing what they are, how they operate, or why they do so. What we do know is that something makes us feel and think in a way that differs from the way we consciously choose with our mind. That is why the metaphor of the pain-body that Tolle uses is psychologically very accurate. Psychic complexes are also known for thwarting our good intentions and the efforts of our ego-will.
Psychic complexes represent energetic nuclei that contain interconnected emotions, thoughts, images, and memories from the past. Eckhart Tolle also connects the pain-body with the past. And in exactly the same way that it alternates between latent and active states, so too do our complexes—now sinking into the shadow of the unconscious, now surfacing again, giving rise to feelings of helplessness and a lack of understanding of what exactly is happening to us—where they come from and why they have appeared once more.
Psychotherapeutic work with psychic complexes is reduced to dialogue with them, with the aim of their being known and assimilated by consciousness. We reach this content through associations, dreams, active imagination, hypnosis, and other methods that lead to insight or emotional catharsis. The approach Tolle proposes for interacting with these energetic nuclei in our psyche—charged with pain that does not stem from our current life situation but from the deeper psychic past of the human being—is different. He calls it “presence.”
The practice of presence—that is, allowing the experience to be as it is, without resisting it in our thoughts—is the truly alchemical act in the processes of spiritual transformation.
And here is Tolle’s central idea: what we need to be liberated from is not pain. What we are liberated from is the ego.
“Whatever you identify with becomes ego. The pain-body is one of the most powerful things the ego can identify with, just as the pain-body in turn needs the ego in order to renew itself through it. This alliance, however, eventually breaks down whenever the pain-body becomes so dense that the ego-structures of the mind, instead of being strengthened by it, are weakened by the relentless, powerful assault of its energetic charge. In the same way, an electrical device can be powered by electricity, but it can also be destroyed when the voltage is too high.”
— Eckhart Tolle
I had never considered that the ego might want to identify with pain. The logic behind this is simple: pain in our lives becomes a problem only when we take it personally. And we take it personally only when the ego is involved, with attitudes such as “I want this” and “I don’t want that.” The moment the “I don’t want” appears, resistance arises, and the neutrality characteristic of Spirit disappears.
The rejected part does not vanish—it merely sinks into the shadow of the unconscious. Each subsequent rejection of suffering gives the pain-body ever greater density. This is how we reach the point that Eckhart Tolle himself once reached:
“People with dense pain-bodies often reach a point where they feel that their life has become unbearable, that they cannot endure any more pain, any more drama. One woman expressed this state in simple, definitive words: ‘I am fed up with being unhappy.’ Some people may feel, as I once did, that they cannot live with themselves anymore. In such a case, inner peace becomes the primary priority. Intense emotional pain forces them to disengage from identification with the mind and the mental-emotional structures that created and perpetuated their unhappy sense of self. They then learn that neither their unhappy story nor the emotions they feel are who they are. They realize that they are the knowing, not the known. Instead of pushing them into unconsciousness, their pain-body awakens them—it becomes the decisive factor that catapults them into the state of Presence.”
When reflecting on the close relationship between pain and awareness, between suffering and spiritual awakening, I am reminded of Osho’s words:
“The purpose of pain is not to make you miserable—remember that. This is where people always miss the point… Pain has a purpose: to make you more awake. People become awake only when the arrow penetrates deeply into the heart and wounds it—otherwise, they pay no attention.”
If the purpose of pain is to awaken us, then its proper use is to turn it into a source of awareness. This means becoming a neutral observer of our experience as it unfolds in the dimension of the here and now, the present moment. This does not mean that we do not take practical steps to resolve the problems of daily life. It simply means that there is distance between us and deep, irrational suffering. There is freedom—the same freedom experienced by the woman who came to Eckhart Tolle for help:
“Once a woman in her early thirties came to see me. As she greeted me, I could feel the pain behind her polite, superficial smile. She then began to tell me her story, and within seconds the smile turned into a grimace of pain. She broke down, sobbing uncontrollably. She said she felt lonely and unfulfilled, filled with anger and sadness. As a child, she had been abused by her physically violent father.
I quickly realized that her pain did not stem from the circumstances of her present life, but from her extremely dense pain-body. It had become the prism through which she viewed her life situation. She was unable to see the connection between her emotional pain and her thoughts, because she was completely identified with both. She could not see that she was feeding her pain-body with her thoughts. In other words, she was living with the burden of a deeply unhappy self.
At some level, however, she seemed to realize that she herself was generating her pain, that she herself was a burden to herself. She was ready to awaken, and that is why she had come to see me.
I directed her attention to what she was feeling inside her body and asked her to sense her emotions directly, rather than through the prism of her unhappy story and unhappy thoughts. She told me that she expected me to show her how to get out of her unhappiness, not how to go into it. Although reluctantly, she nevertheless did what I asked.
Tears streamed down her face, her whole body was trembling. ‘This is how you feel right now,’ I said. ‘And there is nothing you can do to change that in this moment. Now, instead of wanting this moment to be different—which would only add more pain to your already pain-filled being—can you fully accept that this is how you feel right now?’
She fell silent. Suddenly she appeared restless, as if she were about to get up, and said, ‘No, I don’t want to accept this.’ ‘Who is speaking now?’ I asked her. ‘You, or the unhappiness in you? Can you see that your unhappiness about being unhappy is simply another layer of unhappiness?’ She fell silent again.
I said to her: ‘I am not asking you to do anything. All I ask is that you find out whether you are capable of letting the feelings you are experiencing simply be there. In other words—and this may sound strange—since you do not mind being unhappy, what happens to the unhappiness? Don’t you want to find out?’
After a minute or two of silence, I noticed a sudden shift in her energy field. She said: ‘That’s strange. I’m still unhappy, but now there is space around my unhappiness. It seems to matter less.’
For the first time, I heard someone express it this way: ‘There is space around my unhappiness.’ That space, of course, arises when there is inner acceptance of what is being experienced in the present moment.
I said very little after that, letting her remain with her experience. Later she realized that the moment she stopped identifying with her feelings, the old painful emotions living inside her—when confronted with attention directed at them without resistance—could no longer control her thinking as they had before, within the mentally constructed story called ‘the unhappy me.’ Another dimension had entered her life, beyond her personal past—the dimension of Presence.
And since one cannot be unhappy without an unhappy story, her unhappiness came to an end. This was the beginning of the end of the pain-body. Emotions in themselves are not unhappiness. Only when combined with an unhappy story do they become unhappiness.”
I would like to add something from my own experience. It happened during one of my group workshops on the theme “Alchemy of Human Communication.” Because many participants had dense pain-bodies, the seminar effectively turned into an Alchemy of the Pain-Body. As is typical for this kind of work, we used role-play within the field of knowledge. Participants worked in pairs, with one person entering the role of the emotional pain-body, while the goal was to practice presence within it.
In one of the pairs, however, the emotional intensity increased instead of decreasing. I approached them to understand what was happening and saw that the woman interacting with her “pain-body” was not relating to it with presence and neutrality, but with understanding and empathy. The interaction resembled that of a loving parent toward a wounded child. The irony was that the more the “parent” tried to support and love the “child,” the more the suffering intensified.
When I pointed out that the goal was to practice presence in order to observe its effect on the pain-body, the energy of the participant in that role changed noticeably. He straightened up and began to breathe much more calmly.
At that moment, I had no doubt that I had just witnessed the difference between two kinds of intelligence in dealing with our problems: emotional intelligence and spiritual intelligence. The first is based on a mature relationship between mind and emotions, resembling the “inner parent” who seeks to understand, support, and unconditionally love the “inner child.” The second interrupts even this relationship, in order to dissolve the mind’s identification with emotions. From the outside, this may appear unloving—but that is only on the surface.
“The thinking mind cannot understand Presence and therefore often misinterprets it. It will tell you that you are not caring, that you lack compassion, that you remain distant and uncommitted. But the truth is that you are committed—on a level deeper than thinking and emotion. It is on this level that true meeting, true union takes place, which is something far greater than involvement. In the stillness of Presence, you can feel the formless essence in yourself and in others as one.
Knowing that you are one with others is true love, true care, true compassion.”
— Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth
Thus, if presence in the present moment means awareness, then presence in pain means awareness at the boundary where we usually stop. This is why awake presence in the zone of discomfort brings expansion—it creates space, shifting the mind from “I can’t endure this” to “I can endure this.”
We can endure the unbearable only if we see ourselves as human beings having a spiritual experience, rather than spiritual beings having a human experience. In this way, the energy that the pain-body has appropriated changes its vibrational frequency and becomes consciousness.
“Because of the unprecedented surge of consciousness now taking place on our planet, many people need to reach the depths of their intense suffering in order to break identification with the pain-body. Each time they realize that they are slipping back into a state of dysfunction, they become capable of stepping out of identification with thinking and emotion and entering the state of Presence. They do not resist, they become still and aware—one with what is within them and without. The next step in human evolution is not inevitable, but for the first time in the planet’s history, it can be a conscious choice. Who makes this choice? You.
And who are you? The consciousness that has become conscious of itself.”
— Eckhart Tolle
If your inner development has brought you to the point where such messages make sense and bring clarity to what you are going through, you may be asking the same question that was once asked of Eckhart Tolle: How long does it take to free oneself from identification with the pain-body? Here is his answer:
“The answer is: no time at all. When the pain-body activates, know that what you are feeling is the pain-body in you. Knowing this is all you need in order to become free of identification with it. Once identification ceases, transformation begins. Knowing prevents the old emotions from rising again in your head and taking over not only your inner dialogue but also your actions and relationships. When you know, the pain-body can no longer use you to renew itself.
Old emotions may still remain in you for some time and occasionally come to the surface. They may even tempt you to identify with them again and thus obscure knowing, but such ‘dark’ periods do not last long. Not projecting old emotions onto present situations means looking at them ‘face to face.’ It may be unpleasant, but it is not pain you cannot survive. Your Presence is now more capable of holding them. Your emotions are not who you are.”
That is it. It is simple.
If you are going through periods of intense unhappiness in your life—usually without a real cause, or when the cause is disproportionately small compared to your reaction—know that this is likely what Eckhart Tolle is referring to: a dense pain-body. Apply what he has shared above as an alchemical recipe for transforming it into awake presence and awareness in the present moment.
Explore in practice how this space around emotional pain is created when the mind is no longer filled with thoughts that argue with reality. Direct all your attention to the body and to the bodily sensations of pain, and simply switch off the mind for a moment, until the surge of intense pain passes.
“When you feel the pain-body, do not fall into the error of thinking that something is wrong with you. The ego loves it when you make yourself into a problem. Knowing must be followed by acceptance. Anything else would obscure it again. Acceptance means allowing yourself to feel what you feel at this moment. It is part of the isness of the Now. You cannot fight what is. Well, you can—but it will cause a great deal of suffering. By accepting, by allowing, you become what you are: spacious, vast. You become whole. You are no longer a fragment, as the ego perceives itself. Your true nature emerges, which is one with the nature of God.”
— Eckhart Tolle
For me, what Eckhart Tolle describes here is an example of spiritual alchemy of the highest order. We succeed in turning pain into fuel for awareness only when we reach the point of understanding—deep in our bones—the truth that:
“That which wants to give light must endure burning.”
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
- Note: The quotations are translated from Bulgarian and are not presented as verbatim citations.
