How to be an Effective Force for Good, part 1

Please don't feed the painbody.

ETA: I wrote this before the destruction of American democracy. I’m leaving this post as is, because this is the inner work of revolution, but by no means is this intended to blame or shame any individual. Rather it’s a call to action for those of us who are called to do this work.

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There is a lot of anger and pain in the world right now. There always has been, but it’s rarely impacted privileged Westerners in such a profound way as we’re experiencing now.

This post is not just about recent events. This concept has helped me for nearly 15 years, and I believe it can help you, too.

“Painbody” means unprocessed pain

All humans share a collective energy field, though our bodies are discrete. While this has long been accepted across all ancient spiritual traditions, quantum physics is beginning to catch up. In other words, it’s not as woo-woo as it might sound.

Within this collective consciousness, Eckhart Tolle coined the phrase “painbody” to mean an accumulation of unprocessed past pain, both individual and collective. He describes it as “the dark shadow cast by the ego” and a part of ourselves that keeps us unconscious. It keeps us focusing on our pain rather than looking at it directly, so that we can move through it and take effective action.

This is similar to a quote often attributed to Carl Jung: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will run your life and you will call it fate.”

How the concept of painbody helps me

During my years of living below survival level, the concept of painbody helped me find inner peace. By recognizing that I was feeling—in part—some of the pain felt by everyone who has ever not been able to pay rent or afford food, it helped me feel less alone and less like this was “my” problem.

As a perimenopausal woman (at the time), the concept of a collective women’s painbody helped me navigate the sheer rage I felt during different parts of my cycle. The painbody frequently pulled me to a place where I couldn’t even remember I had a toolkit, much less use the tools. But as soon as I remembered that every cis woman has and will experience this, and that I was feeling part of their pain, too, I felt more connected to the whole and less personally affronted. (Though I still had moments that I used to call, “Don’t breathe my effing AIR!”)

Dis-identifying with the painbody

If you can recognize that you’re identified with the painbody, that you’re actually enjoying self-righteous hostility—and I know that enjoyment well—that’s the first step in detaching from it.

“To suddenly see that you are or have been attached to your pain can be quite a shocking realization. The moment you realize this, you have broken the attachment.”

—Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

A couple of months ago, I was stewing over a personal situation—honestly, I can’t now recall what it was—and I just couldn’t let it go. For days, I stewed in my own self-righteousness. Finally, I went for a walk, and as I walked that quote above popped into my head.

I began laughing (a discharge of the pain) because instead of finding a solution, I had been preoccupied with protecting my hostile feelings. That hadn’t done anything to shift the situation, because I was reacting against it. Once I recognized that attachment, the energy dissipated.. Then, finally, I was in a place where I could take effective action.

Steps to detach from the painbody right now

Here are a few things you can do to create some distance from the painbody:

Limit your news intake

Ten years ago, I would have been appalled at this statement, but traditional journalism no longer dominates the media, and even outlets that were once bastions of objectivity now fan the flames of outrage.

What passes for news—opinion, more outrage, fearmongering, and Kim Kardashian’s latest butt-lift—only edges out awareness and numbs us completely. We become immune to horror (and therefore to compassion), because it’s on display 24/7. At the moment, too, many news organizations are becoming obsequious to the incoming U.S. administration out of fear.

An increasing number of actual reporters—people who are trained journalists and/or who value putting need-to-know information in context—have newsletters now. For now, that’s how I’m getting information.

It can also be helpful to look at media from a different country, like the U.K. While each media outlet in the U.K. has a strong political slant, seeing North American news alongside famines and catastrophes like Gaza can help us put our challenges in perspective. At least for this moment.

Limit or leave social media

Social media is a constant stream of people’s opinions, presented as fact. The algorithms are designed to fuel outrage and dissent—in other words, social media is designed to fuel the individual and collective painbodies.

On most social media, each person is shown posts that trigger their most painful emotions, whether that's outrage, envy, FOMO or something else. Those posts feed the painbody and prevent us from discharging the pain energy in a way that allows us to shift into responsive anger—a concept I’ll talk more about in Part 2.

Every time I avoid social media, my well-being skyrockets. I can’t write what I write while also spending time on social media. To write well, to allow wisdom to come through me—rather than the thoughts my ego believes are important—I have to be in a place of groundedness.

However, I still need to pay rent and bills, and I believe that social media is necessary for putting my writing and teaching out into the world, so I’ve made the jump to BlueSky. Please follow me there.

Get outside and into nature

Photo by Adarsh Kummur on Unsplash

When anger gets looping in our heads, when our amygdalae are on fire, we develop tunnel vision onto the problem. We’re never going to be able to solve problems from that place.

"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."

—Attributed to Albert Einstein

Get outside and get moving. If you have access to a park or forest, even better, because nature has been proven to stop rumination, as well as to boost mood and problem-solving abilities. However, just being outside helps us see that the world is bigger than whatever we’re ruminating about.

As Einstein wrote in a letter to his stepdaughter, “Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”

Meditate

It’s possible that meditation can’t cure all ills, but it can’t be beat for the multiple benefits and the cost (free!). I’ve experienced so many benefits that I can’t even list them all here.

Sharon Salzberg on Instagram

The image above is the quick version. If you’d like more guidance, here’s an article by Sharon Salzberg about how to meditate.

It’s simple, though it also may seem impossible that your mind will ever settle down. I promise, it gets easier with practice, and then it become comfort and refuge.

It will probably be boring at first. That will pass, and then it will be peaceful.

Some neurodivergent people can’t sit still; if that’s the case, try walking slowly (slowly!) and feeling the sensation of your heel hitting the ground, the tension in your thigh, and how your foot rolls to the toe as you walk. Keep your focus entirely on the sensation in your legs and feet. (Don’t try this when you’re crossing the street!)

You may also want to try some of these practices.

Allow the rage and pain to pass through

Breathe out the rage. Go for a walk. Go to the gym and sweat it out. Chances are strong—almost certain—that underneath the rage is deep, deep pain. Once you touch that pain—you may want to do this with a therapist—you’re on your way to taking more effective action. Let me say this again: if you have a history of trauma, please consider doing this work in the presence of a skilled therapist.

I saw this drawing on Instagram a few weeks ago, and while it’s not always this easy (if only!), it’s a great way to visualize the process.

Maintain fierce presence as much as possible

Much of what people are furious about right now is what we believe will happen in January. Without the ability to observe one’s thoughts, these beliefs become hardened into absolute certainty. But wait! None of this—except words— is happening right now, in this moment. There’s a fine line between being prepared and panicking.

Personal experience has taught me that the most effective way to a better future is to remain fiercely present in this moment. That doesn’t mean ruminating about potential Cabinet nominees. It does means to focus on the breeze on your face and arms, or the feel of your dog’s fur. Feel water flowing over your hands as you wash the dishes. Notice how each leaf on the ground has different colours. Focus on the objective “what is” of your environment, in this moment. In Part 2, I’ll explain how presence can help all of us take more effective action in the world. (I know, it sounds like a paradox—life is paradox!)

After all—not to be grim—there’s no guarantee that I, or any of us (of any age) will be around in another two months. As Lin-Manuel Miranda so poetically put it, “None of us is guaranteed even another day.” Do you really want to spend it raising your blood pressure and ruining your health? It’s possible to take action—it’s imperative to take action—from a place of inner calm.

When I talk about maintaining fierce presence, I’m talking about staying on the razor’s edge of this moment. It’s kind of like meditating and coming back to the breath. Fierce presence is, by definition, a constant practice. Your mind will move into the future and past, as will mine. Every time you bring your mind back to just-this-moment, you’re strengthening your neural pathways for peace.

If you want to hold onto pain, that’s your prerogative

Nobody is going to take away your outrage or your pain. Alleviating pain requires not only your consent, but also your active commitment.

For a long, long, long time, I was deeply attached to my pain. It gave me a sense of identity as a victim of life circumstances or of other people. It reinforced my ego, my sense of being a lonely, isolated self—rather than being an integral part of the universe, connected to everything else. As long as we identify with our thoughts and our egos, we’ll experience existential fear.

I’ve been an activist most of my life—my frustration with that was one of the reasons I moved to Canada in my 20s. Nothing I did seemed to “work.” I felt self-righteous and angry much of the time. None of my actions made a whit of difference in the political system; it only made my ego stronger by pretending it was useful. And there’s the rub: If I hadn’t been coming from a place of ego, I might have been better able to effect change.

Action taken from a place of ego is never useful.
Action taken from a place of presence can change the world.

In Part 2: The difference between reactive and responsive anger, how to take action from presence, and why hostility leads to futility.