Discovering and Releasing the Source of Inner Pain

Do you ever feel like there’s a non-stop conversation happening inside your head? An incessant chatter that comments on everything, judges, worries, and generally creates noise? Michael A Singer, author of The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself reveals that you are living with just such an “inner roommate”, and it is something many people experience. We spend our days listening to this voice, which often gets things wrong. Imagine living with a person who constantly narrated your life, reacted emotionally to everything, and gave unreliable advice – that’s essentially what happens within us. This state of affairs, the constant, anxious inner talk and the need to worry about ourselves, is a form of suffering. It is such a core influence that we often don’t even realize how prevalent it is.

[Also See: The Power of Belief According to Seth]

What is This Inner Pain? It’s More Than Just Bad Days.

When we experience difficulties, our first instinct is often to look for solutions in the world outside. We think if we can just change the situation, the person, or the circumstances, we’ll feel better. But the real problem isn’t outside us; it’s something deep within that can have an issue with almost anything. There is a layer of pain seated deep in the core of our heart. This is an inner, psychological pain, distinct from physical pain which only occurs when something is physiologically wrong. This inner pain is always there, underneath, often hidden by layers of our thoughts and emotions. It’s so uncomfortable and challenging that our entire personality and life are often spent avoiding it.

This core pain is linked to fears like rejection, insecurity, anxiety, and self-consciousness – the universal language of the psyche when it’s not well. These feelings arise because our psyche is quite fragile inside. We’ve given it an impossible task: to make everyone like us, ensure nothing bad happens, get everything we want, and avoid everything we don’t. This constant worry and attempt to control the uncontrollable have broken the psyche, resulting in underlying fear and incessant neurotic thought.

Where does this deep-seated pain come from? It stems from energy patterns from past experiences that we were unable or unwilling to process fully at the time. These blocked impressions, or Samskaras in the yogic tradition, didn’t just disappear; they were pushed into deep storage within the heart. Everything that didn’t make it through you, from the time you were a baby until now, is still inside. These stored Samskaras encrust the valve of the spiritual heart, restricting the natural flow of energy. This is why, when we are open, we feel a wellspring of beautiful, unlimited energy, but when we close, the energy stops flowing. The ability to close up inside and block this energy is the only difference between people who have boundless energy and those who don’t.

[Also See: Heal Your Inner Child]

The Trap of Avoidance: Building Walls and Clinging to Illusions

Our natural tendency when something disturbing touches our psyche is to withdraw, pull back, and protect ourselves. We “close,” putting a shield around our inner energy. This closing is simply an attempt to avoid the pain we feel. If we buy into this protective reaction and build a psychological structure around it, the pain stays inside and becomes a building block of our life, shaping our future reactions and preferences.

Instead of facing the pain, we try to compensate for it by attempting to control the outside world or clinging to external things. We use relationships, success, finances, appearance, and behavior to avoid feeling that core pain. For example, if loneliness is a deep pain, you might seek a relationship to avoid feeling it, but you haven’t removed the root; you’ve just used someone to shield you, and now you have to worry about keeping that relationship. This approach compounds the issue, creating layers of sensitivities linked to the hidden pain.

This avoidance leads us to build a “house” of our thoughts and emotions – the walls of our psyche. This conceptual structure, made of our past experiences, beliefs, views, and dreams, seals us off from the natural light of awareness and reality outside. We cling to this structure, this false self-concept, as a form of false solidity to feel safe and in control. We live within the boundaries of our comfort zone, which is finite, and resist anything that threatens it. This struggle to defend and maintain this inner house is a constant, exhausting task with no peace or winning.

The True Path: Facing the Pain

True spiritual growth and personal transformation require coming to peace with pain. Instead of trying to fix problems outside or building defenses, the path involves turning inward. You must be willing to look deep within and see that the weakest part of you is running your life. The moment you realize you don’t want this stuff inside, regardless of who or what stimulates it, you are ready for real growth. Life is actually trying to help you by presenting situations that hit your “stuff,” giving you opportunities to let go.

The key is to understand that the fear of pain is what makes you try to protect yourself. As long as you are afraid of it, you will devote your life to avoiding it. But inner pain and disturbance are just temporary shifts in your energy flow, just things in the universe, like any other feeling. You can handle a feeling. The moment you are no longer afraid of the pain within yourself, you become free.

The Power of Letting Go: The Release Process

The core of spiritual work is learning to release the pain instead of avoiding or resisting it. When you feel pain or disturbance, the natural tendency is to pull away and close. To free yourself, you must do the opposite. View the inner experience simply as energy passing through your heart and before your awareness. Then, consciously relax and release. Relax your shoulders, relax your heart, and fall back behind the disturbance. Give room for the pain to pass through you. Don’t fight it, don’t try to change it, don’t judge it, and don’t try to stop it. Just be aware that you are seeing it.

It is crucial to let go right then when the pain gets hit, because it will be harder later. Don’t rationalize, blame, or try to figure it out. Simply let go immediately. Relaxing through your personal resistance changes your relationship with everything, teaching your soul how to let disturbing energies pass through. This purification process, sometimes called the “fire of yoga,” may feel like burning, but you learn to embrace it because it is freeing you. Every single time you relax and release, a piece of the pain leaves forever. If you resist and close, you keep the pain inside.

Becoming the Witness: The Key to Release

Who is it that notices the pain, the thoughts, the emotions, and the internal changes? It is you. You are not your thoughts or emotions; you are simply aware of them. You are the one who hears the voice in your head. This awareness, the indwelling being, the Soul, the Self, is the witness. Taking the seat of witness consciousness is the solution to your every problem. From this place of centered awareness, you can objectively watch your problems instead of being lost in them. You are separate and aware of these things, and this separation allows you to free yourself. The witness simply notices the internal activity without getting involved, fighting, or clinging. The power of the disturbed mind comes from you giving it your attention; when you withdraw your attention, the thinking mind falls away.

The Price and the Reward

Yes, letting the pain surface and pass through can be uncomfortable and even painful. It’s the pain you’ve been avoiding, the price of breaking down the walls you built. You must be willing to accept this pain to pass through to the other side. But on the other side of this pain is ecstasy, freedom, and your true greatness.

By consistently relaxing and releasing, allowing energy to pass through, your heart purifies and becomes permanently open. The blocked energy is released and purified, strengthening you instead of weakening you. You begin to be sustained by an inner energy flow. The world will no longer be able to bother you, because the worst it can do is hit the pain you no longer fear or hold onto. You become less sensitive.

You will experience life without being run by the fears of the psyche. Your capabilities will expand exponentially. Relationships become about connecting with others, and work becomes fun. You live life fully, appreciating each moment, free from the fear of living. You discover an ocean of love behind the fear and pain, a force that sustains you. Peace and love will run your life.

The choice to embark on this journey of self-realization and release the source of inner pain is entirely up to you. By daring to go beyond where you currently are, facing the inner disturbances, and consistently letting go, you can experience a profound transformation. You can steal freedom for your soul and discover the boundless potential of an untethered soul.