What causes hurt?

In response to a query on hurt, a self-help coach responded with a rhetorical question: “Who causes more hurt? The person who committed a hurtful action once or the person who relives the hurtful action in their head over and over?”. The obvious implication is that you cause more hurt to yourself than the original offender. It is the kind of advice that sounds insightful but doesn’t touch the reality of the situation at all and therefore only puts a short term band-aid that will come off in no time, only to go back to the coach again for more band-aid.

Instead if we inquire into the question with care, something else reveals itself. We can see that the one who caused the hurt and the one who relives the hurt are both images constructed by thought. Various images of ‘me’ come and go with each thought. Various images of ‘others’, sometimes even the same person, come and go with each thought. Incidentally, this is why in some cases, people feel that they love a person one moment and hate the same person another moment. Because the relationship of love and hate is not between persons but only between images put together by thought.

So going back to the original question, the person who caused the hurt and the person who relives the hurt are both merely images that are thought constructs. To compare the two as to who is more hurtful is then quite superficial. Instead, one can simply inquire in whose awareness are these ‘persons’, i.e. thought images, coming and going? This is another way of asking the question, ‘Who am I?”. This is our very essence of Being. It is ever free from hurt, insecurity, pride and all other ailments conjured up by the imaginary psyche called the ‘me’. Recognizing this essence of being is the only true freedom from all the so-called psychological issues. In other words, freedom from psychological issues comes only through freedom from the false identification called the psyche.

Incidentally, many seekers seem to compartmentalize daily living and spiritual liberation into two neatly separated buckets. The ones focused only on solving the issues of daily living, like hurt, pride, insecurity etc., while not having the seriousness to go deeply into the root of all these issues which is the ‘me’, fall easy prey to self-help advice and petty practices. And the ones focused only of spiritual liberation push the issues of day to day living into the closet and imagine that one day they can attain Brahman or Atman or the Self by any other fancy term, while all the issues of day to day living remain unaddressed and they only keep on adding more momentum to the ‘me’ they are ostensibly trying to dissolve.

If it is seen clearly that the two are not separate at all, then it removes any unconscious fragmentation of life into worldly and spiritual. There is no need then for any isolated meditation practice but only a clear recognition each moment of the unchanging ground of Consciousness upon which the movements of thoughts and images, experiences and actions, all perform their fleeting dance. The dance of the body/mind happens as ordained, while the ground of our Being remains ever free.