The evolutionary mechanisms for pain are ancient and distributed among most living species on this planet.
Whether fish feel pain is debated, but it's clear that most animals experience pain meaning that it showed up very early in our evolutionary history.
As humans, our experience of pain is highly emotional. The word itself brings up a host of emotions. Ask yourself right now:
What comes up when I say the word "pain"?
Like the word "sex" it awakens a deep sense of something visceral.
The most common reactions humans have towards pain, particularly young ones, is to run away from it. Aversion to it.
Yet when we take this approach it limits us. We section off a part of reality and say "No I don't want to go there".
If we want to live a more full life we must look at pain differently. Most recently, I have learned to welcome it and I invite you to do the same.
This does not mean to make pain where no pain exists, i.e. the "no pain, no gain" model. It just means to uncover that pain which we buried sometime during childhood and accept it completely.
If you want a personal understanding of how pain has informed my life listen to the short audio clip above.
