Wow, thanks for this incredibly detailed comment. It clarified something for me, especially this:
It was something like… when I struggle against pain, there’s an element of identifying (fusing together) with the subprocess that is fighting against the pain, rather than with the subprocess that’s producing the pain.
It feels to me like I’ve acquired some of the skill of not fighting against pain, but I don’t think I did it by doing anything to my sense of self. It’s more like I just repeatedly noticed that experiencing pain kept not killing me.
Yeah, there are a lot of things that you can do—or which can happen to you—which will help with not fighting against pain. Just undergoing a lot of painful stuff and noticing that it doesn’t actually kill you, is definitely one as well. (there are lots of anecdotes about people who’ve gone through a lot of terrible stuff and then being totally unfazed by more mundane things, being all like, “is that the best you’ve got, reality? I’ve been shot at in a combat zone, I’m not going to get freaked out by a dentist”. OTOH, some do get traumatized and even more freaked out by small stuff.)
Wow, thanks for this incredibly detailed comment. It clarified something for me, especially this:
It feels to me like I’ve acquired some of the skill of not fighting against pain, but I don’t think I did it by doing anything to my sense of self. It’s more like I just repeatedly noticed that experiencing pain kept not killing me.
Yeah, there are a lot of things that you can do—or which can happen to you—which will help with not fighting against pain. Just undergoing a lot of painful stuff and noticing that it doesn’t actually kill you, is definitely one as well. (there are lots of anecdotes about people who’ve gone through a lot of terrible stuff and then being totally unfazed by more mundane things, being all like, “is that the best you’ve got, reality? I’ve been shot at in a combat zone, I’m not going to get freaked out by a dentist”. OTOH, some do get traumatized and even more freaked out by small stuff.)