Reducing your own suffering can be simple by just noticing your breath and its quality for a few seconds to several minutes. But it can also be complex if you are not aware what triggers your suffering. Part of your suffering can be linked to your identification of almost anything. It's this identification and attachment that hinders your ability to think clearly and act in alignment to yourself. This suffering, Eckhart Tolle refers to it as the pain-body.
"The pain-body is the greatest obstacle to the arising of a new consciousness in humanity. It occupies your mind, controls and distorts your thinking, disrupts your relationships and feels like a dark cloud that occupies your entire energy field. I tends to make you unconscious, spiritually speaking, which means totally identified with mind and emotion. It makes you reactive, makes you say and do things that are designed to increase the unhappiness within yourself and the world."
In that sense, people then seek to look for ways to rid themselves of the pain-body to find inner peace. But most are unable to do that because that don't quite understand how it works.
"How long does it take to become free of the pain-body? The answer is, of course, that it depends both on the identity of an individual's pain-body as well as the degree or intensity of that individual's arising Presence. But it is not the pain-body, but identification with it that causes the suffering that you inflict on yourself and others. The identification with it forces you to relive the past again and again and keeps you in a state of unconsciousness. So a more important question to ask would be, "How long does it take to become free of identification with the pain-body?"
It takes no time at all once you're aware of its existence. The problem is that sometimes you're so immersed in the pain-body, you don't know it's activated. Awareness can come through just breathing - which is why meditation is so important. It trains you to be aware of your emotions and to observe instead of immerse yourself in it, especially if it's volatile.
"When you feel the pain-body, don't fall into the error of thinking there is something wrong with you or making yourself into a problem - the ego loves that. The knowing needs to be followed by accepting. Anything else will obscure it. [Accepting is being in the moment and being in the present.]"
(Excerpts from p 180 to 184, A New Earth b Eckhart Tolle, 2005)
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