Pain, like every thing else we perceive, is qualiadelic. Our senses have evolved to notice it.
As in all qualiadelic relationships, on one side there is qualia projected (pain sent from your nerves and your brain), and on the other side qualia is received (sensed by your mind). Over time the qualia projected becomes more vivid, more perceptible, and the ability to perceive becomes keener.
With most animals and plants, the qualiadelic message is interpreted by instinct, but we humans have this specialized gift – the mind!!! – which can do the interpreting.
As I mentioned, over time both the ability to project and to receive the qualiadelic message evolves, becoming become keener and more vivid. As we know all too well, our nervous system can send quite vivid pain messages to the brain for the mind to interpret. But here’s the rub: when it comes to pain, our mind’s keen interpretation is generally overwhelmed by the limbic part of the brain leading to an emotionally fraught (and instinctive – fearful?) reaction! Here lies the difference between pain and suffering!
But let me explain…
Remember, the purpose of qualia is to hold matter together and to help it endure (think how the hexagon in a snowflake keeps the frozen water molecules together and unmelting longer than any other shape). Just so, the emotional stories we tell ourselves can prolong the life of pain by turning our interpretation of it into suffering.
But, if we consciously ritual with our pain, we can transform our interpretation of it. We can rewrite our pain stories.
Pain serves an important function for our survival, but like any other qualia it is not always beneficial. (i.e. animals have to learn the hard way when the qualia they react to is not good for them. I think of a deer at night getting hit by a car because has got “lost in the headlights” until it was too late). But we humans have an alternative. We can consciously abandon our usual landmarks and pathways – in this case, our emotionally charged pain responses.
Pain is scary just to think about. Our avoidance of pain is quite natural, and once it occurs we do everything we in our power to avoid it. Most often we take drugs to suppress it, but, like trauma (after all, it is a trauma), we really can’t really bury it anymore than we can run away from it.
So, the solution…
An animal in its landscape, after a fire has ravaged all the familiar landmarks and pathways, must wander into unfamiliar territory just to get its needs met. Just like that dispossessed critter, when it comes to the landscape of pain, we too, can sniff around and move toward new qualia, hoping it might reveal something good for us – like an emotional reframe – a new story. Here is where the conscious ritualing comes in.
(All ritualing is the same – we get out of the routine, we experiment or play with new qualia, and then we return to the routine.)
We can begin to nose around the edges of our pain. We can feel just a bit of it and play with the emotional qualia and the stories that come up. Is our pain going to leap out and attack us like some hungry cougar? Is it going to haunt us forever, like some tormenting, sadistic ghost? Is it going to rob us of all pleasure, force us to give up our goals, compel us change our lives forever?
Such questions beg for the playfulness and experimentation that is part and parcel of consciously ritualing. These stories are merely our poor mind’s interpretations of pain – relatively unconscious in as much as we wouldn’t choose such scenarios if we had a choice in the matter.
But we do have a choice in the matter. Our minds are not poor, they are rich with qualiadelic gifts!
When ritualing becomes conscious, and full of ideas and imagination, you become that animal venturing into the unknown beyond its ruined landscape: be brave or die!
The watchword is “courage.” You’re on the edge of your pain, looking in to its dark forest. Go a little nearer to it. It’s not a solid mass – you can slip in a little closer between the trees. Maybe you can sense different qualities of pain, its colors, smells, sounds, tastes, or textures, for you to interpret. You can see if they are not so bad as you think. They may even be good. Play there a moment.
Okay, now come away, back from the pain. You are a little bit changed because of the new qualia you ritualed with. New qualia changes you. Sleep on it. See if you don’t die. See if it doesn’t kill you, but makes you more courageous to venture a little more deeply into the forest tomorrow.
Your new stories, interpretations of the pain messages, are your future bread crumbs, so you don’t lose your way as you venture further into the experience of your pain-wilderness. Realize that most of the pain is not really painful at all; our interpretation causes most of our suffering.
In all your imagination, there is an element of science-like clarity of observation. You are like some botanist in the wild, discovering and naming new species, an archeologist discovering curious relics, an anthropologist delving into different cultures, a biologist making sense of, yes, your pain!
Is pain matter or qualia? Like any matter, all we really know of it is the qualia it projects. It’s your pain, or maybe it’s not your pain at all. Our interpretation of it is everything, so be qualiadelic!