- In particular situations, you may lose awareness, and regress to total identification with some reactive pattern, and it could be the pain body, (bell chimes) a usually problematic area for many or most people is relationships, of whatever kind, or on whatever level. It's where people seek their happiness, and it's where many people
find their unhappiness. And so I'm talking about
both intimate relationships, somebody you live with, and I'm talking about other
kinds of relationship also, at work, other family members, relatives, friends, and even very brief relationships, because any interaction
with another human being is, I'm using now relationship
in a wider sense, any interaction with another
human being is a relationship. You are relating to that person. And so it is, for many people, most of their, or a large part of their, suffering, or unhappiness, unfortunately, is derived from relationships. They tend to go wrong so often, or present so many problems and obstacles, and it seems that human beings are just so terribly difficult, except one, (audience laughs) the one who is listening to these words. (audience laughs) (Eckhart laughs) You remember the statement, know thyself, famous words of wisdom. Knowing yourself, there are
two levels to knowing yourself. One is the level of mental, emotional, and reactive patterns that you display in your life, and the ability to be aware of them, that is one level of self-knowledge, of knowing yourself. That is the kind of thing that sometimes in good therapy sessions, if you have a good, aware therapist, can be helpful, to become aware
of that level in yourself, so that you know what your
predominant patterns are. "Doesn't everybody know
what their pattern is?" No. They are so identified
with their patterns, that there's no awareness left, and that usually means, when
a person is so unconscious, that unconscious, the
definition of unconscious, the way we use it here,
in a spiritual sense, not in a clinical sense. I'm not talking about unconscious, but in a spiritual sense, unconscious is to be totally identified with thoughts and emotions, so there's no room for any awareness left. So you are in the grip of the thought, in the grip of the emotion, and often they go, thoughts and emotions
are linked, go together. They have you in their grip so that they, basically you are them, you are the emotion. And those people who are so (indistinct), there's still millions around, you might have noticed. Often they have a tendency
of seeking always, there's always people are
always to be blamed out there. There's always people they
point their fingers at, why these people are so bad, and what they're doing to you, or how awful they are. There's never looking at oneself. Jesus already had that statement, why do you see the, what is the saying about the? (indistinct) What? Yeah, you see a little splinter
in the other person's eye, but you don't see the huge
splinter that is in your eye. Very profound statement. So why don't you find that first, he says. So, in other words, he says, know thyself. Be aware of your own patterns. And most people here have that awareness, but perhaps not all the time. For many of you, when you are challenged
in a particular way, in particular situations, you may lose awareness, and regress to total identification with some reactive pattern, and it could be the pain body. As you know, the pain body
is old accumulated emotion that still, I regard it as
an almost autonomous entity that lives in you. It's a way of looking at it, but there's a lot of truth to this. There's an emotional
field that lives in you almost as an entity, one could say. It sounds slightly spooky, but one could say that even
a thought is an entity. When you think a thought, it is an energy formation. It is a little being
that you give birth to, so it has a life, it depends for its life, it depends on you, on your life, but it is a little entity, and so in some forms of either
deep unconscious thought, or when mental illness, sometimes it can happen that the mind gets completely taken over by these little thought entities, and so you are then totally occupied. Your mind is totally, another word for occupied
is, I won't say it, it sounds too spooky. (audience laughs) (Eckhart laughs) So you are totally
occupied by these thoughts, and they pretend to be you. So that is total lack of awareness, so it's essential for your spiritual growth to be continuously alert and vigilant, so that you are able to be
there in the background, so to speak, as the
awareness in your daily life, so that you're not completely taken over by the arising thoughts,
and arising emotions. When you interact with people, when you become upset about this or that, always any kind of upset or disturbance in your energy field, can be very helpful. Do not believe that, "Oh, I shouldn't have this
disturbance in my energy field," or, "I shouldn't be upset
because I'm spiritual. I don't get upset about
these things anymore." But we honestly observe what arises, and then observe how does it arise? And as I already mentioned last night, very often, you will find, it is caused by certain
thoughts in your mind, certain interpretations, certain reactions. It can also happen that a
reaction comes so suddenly that it's just an emotion
waiting to come up, an emotion, and this is
what the pain body does, as you may know, the pain body is not necessarily
always active in you. There are periods when
the old emotional pain that you carry, you still carry
around with you, is dormant, and then it leaves you
in peace for a while, and then you are fine. You meet somebody, and this person is lovely, and it all goes fine, and you might spend some time
together and it's still fine, and then you go on vacation
together for the first time, and then there comes a moment when something else
comes in that's not fine, either in you, or through the other, and what happens in relationships, the pain body periodically needs to feed on a certain experience that corresponds to its energy field. The vibrational frequency
of its energy field is (Eckhart growls) a good external image of the pain body in, I think it's in "Lord of the Rings," is this little being, I can't
remember the name, goes, (Eckhart growls) (audience laughs) and even the little being
once was a normal being, according to the legend in this, it's kind of modern mythology, that being was once a
normal, lovely human, and there is still, although this being has
been completely taken over by what I call the pain body, occasionally there are still instances, when the original being that's
been completely taken over still shines through, and there's a little bit of
tiny glimmers of awareness come in occasionally, and then you almost feel sorry for it. But then again, the pain body, and if you feel sorry and you give in, then immediately the pain body
will take advantage of that. (Eckhart laughs) So that's a lovely mythological, modern mythological
illustration of the pain body. So to observe that in
yourself, in relationships, how it periodically comes up, either in your partner, or in yourself, wanting some kind of drama, amplifying something
little into something big, because it wants to feed
on your partner's reaction. It wants the emotional negativity. It needs the emotional
negativity from the other in order to suck it up (Eckhart inhales) and then you give back of it
to the other, the pain body, then mutually they energize each other, and that is unconscious, that is how couples, many couples, most couples, perhaps, unless there's already
considerable consciousness there in both of them, or at least one of them, they go through that periodically, don't realize that that is what it is. And at first there are
even people who feel they need that drama to feel that the
relationship is still real. (Eckhart laughs) There comes a point when it gets too much, so then the pain that arises so
often and so frequently, it gets too much, and, "I can't live with this person anymore," and then you separate, but if the awareness hasn't come either, so that you can be aware
of your own pain body, what you contribute to it, then you will repeat the same thing in the next relationship. So the pain body needs to
re-experience emotional pain through drama, and whoever it comes up first in, it's always recognizable
by being an overreaction to something, an event, something you said, something you did, or something you failed to say, or you failed to do, (Eckhart laughs) but the person who is
displaying the pain body does not know it's an overreaction, so only an outside observer, or the other, might see that it's an
overreaction to the pain, but it seems a totally natural reaction. So you need to know what situations, there may be certain
situations in your life that tend to trigger the pain
body in your relationship, or at work. There may be certain people that your pain body is susceptible to, resonates with. If you live alone, then the pain body has a little problem. "What am I going to feed on? I can't have drama with myself, or can I?" (audience laughs) Yes, you can. (audience laughs) (Eckhart laughs) You can have the drama in your mind. You can have a stream of
destructive and negative thoughts in your mind, either about yourself or others. They may not be here, but you have the thoughts about them. They may be in your
past, they may be dead, but the pain body, if there's nobody around that
the pain body can feed on through negative emotion, it will feed on negative thought streams, your thought streams, and this is where the
addiction to negative thinking comes from. (water cascading)
