Finders Pain Sutras
Sutras for nurturing Fundamental Wellbeing amidst health challenges
1. Recognition of Wellbeing and Health Interplay: Understand that health problems commonly impact the depth of Fundamental Wellbeing. A significant health issue may limit how far you can go in Fundamental Wellbeing. Even if you're a long-term Finder in a high location. You might get pulled down to Layer 1 of Location 1 or 2, or even out of Fundamental Wellbeing entirely. So: accept that health issues may cause a temporary shallower connection - even in long-term Finders.
2. Temporary Nature of Reduced Depth: Recognize that this reduction in Fundamental Wellbeing's depth is usually a transient phase. It may even aid healing, as the body often recovers more efficiently in less intense states of Wellbeing, where you're less dissociated from your body. Layer 1 may just be the best place for your body to heal,
3. Longer Journey for Chronic Conditions: For those with chronic conditions, be aware that the path to deeper Fundamental Wellbeing might be lengthier, involving a gradual detachment from symptom identification. This process can enhance coping mechanisms and lead to an improved quality of life.
4. Deeper States and Physical Sensations: Understand that deeper states of Fundamental Wellbeing offer more distance from physical sensations, which are then perceived more impersonally.
5. Practice Self-Compassion Exercises - Acknowledging Distress: Practice acknowledging your distress and pain without judgment. When negative thoughts surface, view them as mere perspectives and respond with understanding and compassion.
6. Universal Suffering Awareness: Realize that your distress is not unique. Knowing that others also experience similar feelings can foster a sense of connection and reduce feelings of isolation.
7. Practice Self-Compassion Letter Writing: Daily, write a letter to yourself offering kindness and compassion. Offer that also to the body parts in pain. Address personal pain challenges compassionately, as a friend would.
8. Practice Morning and Evening Gratitude: Begin and conclude each day with gratitude exercises. Focus on aspects of life you are thankful for, engaging in these reflections while in bed.
**9. Linking Emotions to Needs: **When experiencing intense emotions, like anger or sadness about your pain, attempt to connect them to deeper needs. Explore these feelings with non-judgment and in the context of Fundamental Wellbeing.
**10. Daily Practice Upon Waking: **Each morning, immerse yourself in as much Fundamental Wellbeing as you can. Also do that several times during the day. Acknowledge any pain or suffering, feel it, and then respond with self-care, love, and compassion. Direct positive feelings like caring, love, and compassion towards yourself and your body.
Spaciousness Sutras for understanding and transforming Pain
**1. Diversity in experiencing wellbeing: **Acknowledge that Fundamental Wellbeing can be experienced in various ways, each offering unique perspectives, especially in dealing with pain.
2. Layers of experience with pain: Recognize that while facing pain, you may find yourself in Layer 1. Close to this is Layer 2, characterized by a sense of spacious-emptiness, which can be perceived as spaciousness, emptiness, or both.
**3. Perception of spaciousness in pain: **When focusing on pain, try to discern the spaciousness it exists within. Despite pain seeming to dominate awareness, all layers of experience are present but may not be actively sensed.
4. Spatial context of pain: Understand that pain exists within a 3-dimensional space, interpenetrated by the spaciousness from Layer 2. This surrounding and permeating space, unaffected by pain, enables its experience.
**5. Incorporating spaciousness into perception: **Gradually sense and incorporate this spaciousness into your perception to alter the experience of pain. Start by perceiving the space around the pain, then extend your awareness to more of this space, potentially reducing the pain's impact.
6. Deepening into Layer 2: As you delve deeper into Layer 2, allow your perception to become predominantly that of spacious-emptiness, with pain occupying a smaller part of your awareness. This shift can significantly change your experience of pain.
7. Transition to Layer 3 and pain transformation: For those accessing Layer 3, blending the sense of all-pervasive fullness with pain can transform the experience, potentially introducing a sense of bliss. Remember that these experiences coexist, offering various approaches to managing pain within Fundamental Wellbeing.
- See more varieties of "spaciousness methods" here: Open Focus pain sutras
ABOVE FINDERS PAIN SUTRAS ARE BASED ON THESE TEXTS BY J.A.M.:
If you realize you are in Fundamental Wellbeing, but it’s shallow because of health issues. If you are experiencing a relatively significant health issue, this may be limiting how far you can go in Fundamental Wellbeing. It seems that in many cases, the system pulls Finders to shallower forms of Fundamental Wellbeing when there is something wrong with the body. This can happen even for long-term Finders who are very far out in locations. They can get pulled down to Layer 1 of Location 1 or 2, or in some cases, even out of Fundamental Wellbeing entirely. Usually, these effects are temporary. It appears that Layer 1 may just be the best place for the body to heal. This makes sense from the standpoint that the deeper layers increasingly disassociate from the body. It is fine to just accept that you may need to be in a shallower form of Fundamental Wellbeing while your body recovers. If your situation involves a chronic condition, then you may have a longer process of deepening and deconditioning ahead of you. Over time, it is possible to release conditioning and identification with the symptoms, progressively allowing you to deepen further into Fundamental Wellbeing. This, in turn, can often help people cope with chronic conditions. The deeper layers of Fundamental Wellbeing bring increased distance from bodily sensations, which are no longer experienced as personal. Rather, they are “just arising” and the deeper context within which they arise (i.e., Layer 2 or deeper) is untouched by them. Note that depending on your individual system and the severity of what you’re dealing with, this process may take time and a lot of sinking in, but it can really be worth it in terms of your quality of life."
Here are some self-compassion exercises: Give yourself permission to notice and acknowledge your own distress and suffering. As you do this, be on the lookout for negative or self-critical thoughts and judgments within you. When they happen don't avoid or try to suppress them. Rather use them for the purposes of this exercise by recognizing that they are only thoughts or perspectives. Treat them like little entities within you and try to understand the perspective they are expressing. Practice being understanding, kind, caring, and compassionate towards them. Practice recognizing that the types of distress and suffering you experience aren't only experienced by you. Often we tend to think in this way, which can be very isolating. Rather, try to increasingly realize that these things are experienced by humanity in general. Reframing things like this can allow them to become a powerful connector to others and humanity in general. Use what arises in you to help you to realize these same things are arising in many others as well, and to develop compassion not only for yourself as you experience them, but for others who experience them as well. Write one self-compassion letter to yourself per day until the next session. Pick something that you feel you can show or give yourself kindness, love, caring, acceptance, compassion, or something related for - and do it in the form of a letter to yourself. For example, you might think of something that tends to make you feel bad about yourself, a mistake you made, an argument with a loved one, and so on. If you have difficulty giving yourself a self-compassionate perspective, it can help to imagine an unconditionally loving and compassionate friend who can see all your strengths and weaknesses, and what that person might write in a compassion letter to you. Write a letter to yourself from the perspective of this friend. What would this friend say to you from the perspective of unlimited compassion? After writing the letter, put it down for a little while. Then come back to it and read it again, really letting the words sink in. Do the morning and evening gratitude exercise, from this point forward in the course - as outlined below on this page. Do the morning exercise right when you wake up, and the evening exercise just before falling asleep. It's best to do both in bed. If you find yourself caught up in a forceful emotion, such as anger, sadness, or frustration, see if you can connect the feeling with something deeper in your system, such as an underlying need that is perceived as unfulfilled. Non-judgmentally acknowledge and recognize it. Sink more deeply into Fundamental Wellbeing, if possible, while experiencing this and see what happens. Each day upon waking, do the following: a. Sink deeply into Fundamental Wellbeing b. In your own way, recognize any suffering or self-judgement that you experience, allow yourself to feel it (if possible), and send yourself caring, love, self-acceptance, compassion, or any related type of feeling or experience that you feel might be beneficial. Do this for as many things as you'd like, but for at least one thing. c. Bring yourself (or your "no-self", if necessary, LOL!) to mind and send yourself caring, love, self-acceptance, compassion, or any related type of feeling or experience that you feel might be beneficial.
---Something to consider is that there are many different experiences of Fundamental Wellbeing. For example, all of the layers are technically there in your perception at a given time, even if limited subjectively by location, or where your attention is habituated or has been dragged to. And these various experiences can be used in a situation like this if they can be reached. This can be a very useful way to begin sinking-in involving pain. Pain often takes people to Layer 1, so the closest nearby layer that might be perceived is Layer 2. That layer is primarily about a sense of spacious-emptiness. Usually, it is the spaciousness component that can be sensed in a situation of pain, though it might be emptiness or both things depending upon the person. I’ll use spaciousness in the example here for illustration purposes. While paying attention to the pain, and where it occupies in awareness (which probably includes your body-map perception of it) the question is can you sense the spaciousness that it inhabits. Often pain seems to take up the entire field of subjective awareness when it is focused on, however, remember that all layers are present, just not being sensed. So, the pain is underpinned, contained, and interpenetrated wherever it is at in your system/awareness with spaciousness from Layer 2. Another way of thinking of this is that it is occupying a space. Literally a spot that is comprised of space. If it weren’t there, the space it is occupying would still be there, and might or might not be filled with something else. In this case, the pain is occupying the space. The space is not a flat surface it is sitting on or something like that. It is a 3-dimensional space. So, the space that it is occupying is also interpenetrating the pain, and essentially enabling the experience of it. Nothing can touch the space, push it away, etc. If that happened, there would be nothing to contain or hold the pain sensation there. So, it is sharing a position with the space itself, being interpenetrated by it, and so on. It can take a bit of doing but getting to the point where you can initially start to sense this, then increasingly bring that into experience, can be a helpful way to dealing with this in FW. One can reach the point where the experience of pain is fully permeated with the spaciousness, for example, which significantly changes the experience of it. At that point, even with an intense experience of pain, it generally becomes possible to extend perception beyond the pain that was formerly taking up all your attention. In essence, you can see the wider space. Usually, initially, that is the space immediately around it (or even just to one side of it, etc.). Your perception is no longer limited to just the pain and the space it is occupying/that is interpenetrating it. Over time, your perception can get to more and more of the space, which has the effect of shrinking the pain. Often the area that is comprised by the pain can become very small within the overall field of perception, because you’ve deepened into Layer 2 as where your primary perception is. When this occurs, it may be 95% or 99% spacious-emptiness with various things covarying with it, and 1%-5% spacious-emptiness with pain covarying with it. As you continue to sink-in to and deepen in Layer 2, your identity will shift to where you actually are the spacious-emptiness, which will produce an even greater effect. This can be done with any level that you might have access to. For those who have access to Layer 3, becoming able to co-vary it (the field of all-pervasive fullness) with the pain can even bring a subtle to full-on bliss experience into subjective awareness that extends to what was formerly pain. Again, it is all right there in the same spot."