Today\u2019s message cannot be understood by the mind, so if you are identified with mind when you read today\u2019s message, you will not be able to follow its clarity. It might be helpful to practice awareness-watching-awareness before reading today\u2019s message in order to break the attachment to mind and read from a place of Self-realization.<\/p>\n
The Self does not experience pain. It does not experience mental pain, emotional pain or physical pain. It is completely beyond pain. The only thing that experiences pain is the mind (attention on thought).<\/p>\n
When you believe that you experience pain, you are identified with the mind.\u00a0Awareness as attention has projected itself into thought and imagines itself to be thought. It is like watching virtual reality from what appears<\/em> to be within<\/em>\u00a0 virtual reality; therefore, appearing to experience<\/em> virtual reality, although virtual reality can never be actually experienced, and you can’t actually be in a virtual reality.<\/p>\n When Ramana Maharshi\u2019s body was being eaten up by sarcoma prior to his death, the body was filled with pain. Ramana asked his devotees to move his body carefully, because of the pain. When asked about his experience of pain, he explained that the jnani (enlightened one) experiences pain as if it is a dream.<\/p>\n Today\u2019s reading explains the same phenomenon this way:<\/p>\n You are the true Self, who is constant and changeless and sees the passing of all experience from a deep abidance within itself.<\/p>\n In other words, Ramana saw<\/em>\u00a0 the pain in the body and asked his devotees to move it carefully in the same way that you may be aware of the pain in a hurt kitten\u2019s body and ask a person who is moving the kitten to move it carefully. You do not experience the kitten\u2019s pain, but you have compassion for it. Ramama did not experience the body\u2019s pain, but he had compassion for it.<\/p>\n Ramana\u2019s compassion for the body wasn\u2019t any different than his compassion for the world. He saw the pain and understood that it was experienced as real, but he did not experience pain from his place of abidance.<\/p>\n