The Knowledge of Pain

Three recent incidents gave me an insight of something what nature/god gave us but what we turned into a complication that multiplies itself due to our ability of thinking and learning. 

In the first incident I met a very great person. Great in his achievements and spiritual status. He is one of those few people who has been in touch with me for  quite many years no matter where he was in his material status. We always discussed life, spirituality, religion and a lot more things. He is middle-aged and has seen a lot of success in life and not many failures after that.  He was crippled by accidents and ill-health right from his younger years but his management covered this fact well so that people wont it.  As time passed by his ailments increased and the pain resulted in frequent hospitalizations and complications that never seemed to decrease. In our recent conversations we discussed more about his health that his career leading him to question me something painful but straightforward "How long was he going to live?" . The question baffled me not because of its essence but mainly due to the stage of fearlessness he always had reached due to the uncertainty of his ever-worsening health. He never feared death nor loved life much but he has always expressed his urge to finish his work and leave a mark behind unlike a happiness that a normal person would seek in material sense. I asked him the reason for suddenly asking me such a question. Despite being of a positive person always I wanted to know what made him think of the remains of his life suddenly! He said that he had been through a rigorous routine of consulting doctors within the country and outside India to know the source of his medical complications. After some positive talk and discussions the depressing thought was dampened and in the next meetings he didn't discuss life or death. 

In the second incident there was this person who everyone knew was on his deathbed, but he had been there many times... so he had hopes. He wanted healings apart from the medical support system he was already under. Since he had been under this condition many times before he was sure of getting cured again and get back to his work, earn more money and leave more property for his family. He was known for his practicality and shrewdness in life. Apparently he would never make a decision or analysis that was only based on emotions or faith but I always used to think that he asked for healings to feel positivity more than the healing energies. Whenever I heal, I have never healed to cure. I have rather healed to enhance the souls wish to lead the path it has chosen. This time I received a message from him that he had enough of treatment and wished to leave his mortal self. He died 2 hours after the healing commenced without any pain or suffering. I visited the hospital to pay condolonces as I had to leave for some other work later and I saw this third incident where a baby who was badly injured on head was been taken inside for treatment. It was crying and screaming due to the pain but emerged smiling with a bandaged head trying to respond to playful relatives. 

I couldn't stop thinking of what I had seen this short span. My memories of various accidents I had seen and experienced started flashing in front of me. I started wondering if I would be a confused person on deathbed or as I am. I wondered if people whom I respect or follow for their acceptance of life would be the same when they were closer to death. Would they be strong enough to endure or anticipation of whatever experience death brings? It is scientific and natural that a body goes into a state of painlessness if there is really a state of pain that goes beyond our endurance limits. It’s a lift saving mechanism triggered by our brain so that adverse body reactions due to pain don’t result in a death which might not be  the only way in that moment. Be is accident or disease when we are in pain many people faint or go into a coma. Sometimes his painless state is also induced by doctors using painkillers on treatments as simple as a tooth-removal procedure to a complicated surgery. So for sure all this had to do with some kind of pain. But is it really the physical pain that shatters our decisions or beliefs, or is it something else? 

I feel that knowing the reason of our pain is more frightening or painful than the pain itself. A child will fall down a staircase and still be smiling after an hour. An animal who is a victim of an accident might limp and heal its wounds with time and natural instincts. But if the same thing happens to an over-thinking adult person, there is a lot of fear, worry and anxiety which leads to more pain and collapse of our system. Its our knowledge of the wound, health or disease that makes us think a lot. We start to anticipate conditions that that might not be there at all, but we start imagining things and start following a certain pattern of diagnosis psychologically leading to an entire different set of problems. Our limited knowledge about our condition exceeds the ignorance about that problem in the state of panic. this leads us to taking advises from more doctors and well-wishers. The time we should spend in resting and getting healed is rather burnt in the flames of anxiety and fear. This waste of energy and time cripples us more, complicating the problem. Not to mention that the negative thought actually leads us to the problem we never were in. 

All this doesn't mean that we shouldn't go through a good clinical diagnosis, treatment and our own analysis to decide the procedure for cure. But certainly we shouldn't confuse ourselves with too many advices nor on the knowledge that is not complete. What is required is such is case is mainly to decide about the path you want to take. Its better to decide on two paths instead of multiple ones because ideally any number of choices always boils down to two choices at its final stage. 

Overcoming the fear of that unknown experience of death is something we all have to endure, but this wont be achieved unless we are consciousness about who we are and have been and what we want from life. The path to Moksha or Nirvana has these small steps at the end of each life we live, where we should be fearless and accepting to realize that death is not about anticipation its only about a happening which we have to go through without our choice. The pain of going through life or death will surely be minimized if we think less about  the pain the both endure, and find out ways to ignore that pain to move on.  

Relational Distortion

Lately I have been reading a lot of music recording, arranging and mastering stuff apart, from the regular photography and editing. There is an exceptional relativity that I found in between not just in the technicalities of these two arts, but also in real life. 

Everyone who is aware of digital photographs generally is aware that when we zoom the pictures we reach a level where we start seeing pixels (squares) in the image. This distortion happens due to excess dissection of the image beyond its normal resolution capacity. High-end softwares and hardwares even enable us to zoom this single pixel further which then again appears as a resolution of small dots which appear more like grain/noise than a square pixel. Even at pixel size level one cannot judge a picture forget about imagining anything at such a nano level.

In sound engineering or recording there is a similar technique to get into the details of a waveform by amplifying the certain part of the wave and getting into it. When we amplify that detail we reach to a level of finer tuning that we are looking for. At the same time the sound starts getting distorted just like the pixels in a photograph. If the waveform was to be represented in pixelated form like a digital image we would end up finding the same result as we would find in an image of finally reaching to details where we see nothing but grains.

Taking the above examples we can imagine that the images whether good or bad photographically can be judged better as a whole picture when seen from far. We can also see the color tones well which are good enough for the limited capability of the eyes. I think similar logic applies to a relation or a person we try to judge. No matter how much you love or hate a person, the more you will try to study that person the more unclear and distorted the whole judgement will become. Its like looking at a beautiful woman and admiring her from far, and then suddenly getting close to her skin to see if its as flawless as it appears from far… it won’t be or it might be more than it should be. 

Realistic approach in maintaining relations and judgements about people is very important. This realistic approach lies in the understanding of the distance we choose to keep from that person and the importance we give to that relation. If we try to dissect and investigate everything in detail nothing will seem perfect. Like I always say… there would be no importance for peace if there was no evil around. The same way expecting a relation or a person to be flawless is stupidity. Yes you can analyze or study a case from a distance if there is any problem occurring, but for the right analysis and results you will have to maintain a distance and see that you don’t get too close. So close that you will blur your own vision!