Andreas Gruber - The Power of Being

On a physical level, I had conquered my pain, only to discover more and much deeper pain throughout my body, as when I started doing mind training for other reasons. All the pain I had suppressed throughout my life started coming up. I felt even more helpless and overwhelmed than with my spinal injury. But since I had managed that, I decided to deal with this too. I had unknowingly accepted pain as an integral part throughout the best part of my life, and I was not going to continue doing that. I was prepared to do anything it took to conquer it. I can say that I overcame my mental pain and the pain memory related to that injury and many others. In a way, I was in too good a condition for surgery, but in too bad a condition to live an effortless life. I knew nobody who had overcome anything like that, so I had to do it my way. When I say that pain is my foremost teacher, I say that for many reasons, this being one.

This is in summary what I learned practically about pain:

1 Get a proper diagnosis done, but don't identify with the injury or disease.

2 Make sure the body gets enough time to heal and recover.

3 Start exercising your body as soon as you are advised or allowed.

4 Be kind to yourself, but persistent and unyielding.

5 Ultimately you have to decide whether to accept the limitations that the pain puts on you.

6 Go further and deeper than only exercising your muscles. Check in with suitable exercises like yoga, to stretch the tissues gently and confront yourself with the pain that involves the mental part of it.

7 Stay in touch with, and consult your doctors to get a second opinion and as much help as you can.

8 If desired, go deeper using mind training and introflection.

9 Never underestimate the power of your breath. Breathing towards the pain is another way of guiding your attention, and where the attention is, the energy will be too. There can be no true healing without our vital energy.

10 Our injuries go deeper than just the physical level, and time alone does not heal our wounds completely.

11 To live a free and effortless life you probably need to look at the emotional side of your pain too.

(Introflection is a created word used in this book, in short inward perception. It describes a state of mind that usually goes beyond intellectual understanding. It is closely related to the word reflection, but is not about thinking or contemplating. It is also close to the term introspection, but is not about viewing. It has to do sensing inward, but it goes beyond the perception of our five senses, although they may be part of it. It involves our sixth sense, the mind in a non-intellectual way, which may lead us to a direct knowing and intuition.)

I live an almost pain-free life today, where the accident and decades of pain are only distant memories. Instead of just taking painkillers and waiting for it to get worse, I chose to get active. It made me explore things that I would have never dreamt of. My pain became the fuel for transformation, but it could as well have made me resign. To be able to use that fuel, you need to take a firm resolution. And you can only take that resolution upon becoming aware. Decades of pain and limitation had blinded me and made me forget, that I do not have to accept this as my destiny. You have the choice, too. If your back hurts or your heart aches, go to the doctor, and then find out what it is that needs changing in your life.

Change the things you do daily, and your life changes.Breathe, eat, sit, and walk consciously, and your mind is bound to follow.

A friend of mine had been a manager for many years. He worked hard for it. Seemingly having everything, wife, kids, a brand new house, and cars, his heart started giving him trouble. His doctor recommended him to leave that type of job immediately. My friend refused to admit that he had a problem at all, nor would he take sick leave when he needed. Afraid of getting overlooked for the next promotion or even getting demoted, if someone knew about his condition. He started living a double life. It was a pain to watch him and his marriage go down the drain. Ultimately, if we have no compassion for ourselves, we are not likely to have any available for our spouse and kids. I don't talk about pure theory because, unfortunately, I have also been through two divorces. But I didn't end up dying at 45 as my friend did. It may not be a surprise to you that his new house was more important than his very own heart. Imagine that.

In Japan some robots look almost human. You have probably seen them on television. Every year there seems to be a more realistic and more advanced version. However, I would like to point out that we are the most realistic version of a robot. To a large extent we are the human robots. That may sound strange to you, but give it a thought.

We are human robots mainly operating on autopilot, as long as we give away our powerto our habits, reactions, conditioning, belief systems, and biased views.

Although we have an intellect, we are to a large extent governed by habits, triggers, and emotions. Reactions are like deeply ingrained patterns, which make us respond in an entirely predictable way on a particular stimulus called triggers. Our triggers are sometimes our sibling’s favorite toys when they are bored. Others often know our triggers better than we do.

Some even blame a higher conspiracy and that we are being controlled and manipulated by something or somebody. I believe we need to take a close look at ourselves first, because either way, only a person with a free mind can live a free life.

It's not hard to understand that habits, reactions, and emotions are just some of the mechanisms that make us live our lives like robots, and not necessarily for the better. We don't have to think or have a very high awareness for them to work either. On the contrary, the autopilot is our standard mode of operation. Our awareness only seems to peep out once in a while. To my understanding this has become a kind of protective habit of the mind, mainly to divert the attention from our very own pain and trouble inside. If that isn't enough, we go and distract ourselves with some entertainment, drugs, excessive eating, etc.

During the Roman Empire, two thousand years ago, it was not much different, as the following ironical statement indicates.

“ Panem et circenses.” "Bread and circuses (for the people)"

Juvenal – Roman satirist

A contemporary thinker explained this statement, as he wrote:

"The evil was not in bread and circuses, per se, but in the willingness of the people to sell their rightsas free men for full bellies and excitement of the gameswhich would serve to distract them from the other human hungerswhich bread and circus can never appease."

Marcus Tullus Cicero

Not only Romans sold their rights in exchange for some basic needs and a little bit of distraction. I do, you do, your employees do, politicians do - everybody does. We do it until we have had enough. We may undertake enormous labor to free ourselves, only to see that we are the robots that willingly trade the capacity of our minds for some further distraction.

Marshall Goldsmith, a behavioral scientist, has worked with personal development for more than thirty years. He usually asks his clients, when they last changed an interpersonal behavior. Only occasionally can we change personal habits like smoking, overeating or biting our fingernails, etc. He points out that he very, very rarely meets a person who has changed a behavior towards another person. What does this tell us about our freedom? Is it that we do not change because we don't want to, or because somebody has robbed us of this very ability? No, we have simply habituated our minds to be like that. But that doesn't mean the mind as such is like that. There is a saying that denominates humans as "habitual animals", and I tend to agree.