Transcending Pain: The Body Is Only a Vehicle

Pain is an inevitable part of life.

That’s an uncomfortable truth, but it’s an important one to accept. Because accepting that pain is a necessary part of life gives you the ability to start developing a healthy relationship with it.

What does it mean to have a healthy relationship with pain?

Of course, we’ve evolved to experience pain for a good reason. It warns us of potential harm and danger, so that we can avoid it in the future. The classic example of “getting burned by fire” teaches us to avoid a hot flame in the future.

In this way, pain is a wise teacher. It tells us when we are approaching our physical boundaries and limits, and motivates us to avoid potential harm and danger in the future.

When we experience pain, our natural instinct is to run away.

And that’s a healthy instinct in the right situation when it’s appropriate. However, there are also times when we must test the limits of our pain, and push forward in spite of pain.

In certain situations, we must push forward in spite of pain. Our ability to endure pain becomes a test for self-growth and self-improvement – a challenge to go beyond our limits and achieve something great.

Let me show you the key to transcending pain.

Transcending Pain: The Body Is Only a Vehicle

Our relationship with pain depends on our perspective more than anything else.

Do you always see pain as something to avoid or run away from? Or are you able to embrace it in the right situation and overcome it?

I recently read Ernst Junger’s essay “On Pain” written in 1934 (here is a free copy from Archive.org – I printed it out and took notes while reading, it’s only 30 pages of text).

Ernst Junger is most known for being a decorated soldier for Germany during World War I, illustrated in his famous memoir Storm of Steel, published in 1920. He also served Germany in WWII in occupied Paris. And post-war, he wrote science fiction and was one of the first people to take LSD with Albert Hoffman in the late 1950s. An interesting historical figure, at the very least.

Most of Junger’s writings on pain stem from his experiences as a war veteran (which can make them particularly harsh and brutal), but I found many of his insights are still relevant to anyone, especially in today’s world.

Ernst Junger On Pain

Here’s an excerpt I wanted to share with you guys…

“There are apparently attitudes that enable man to become detached from the realms of life where pain reigns as absolute master. This detachment emerges wherever man is able to treat the space through which he experiences pain, i.e. the body, as an object. Of course, this presupposes a command center, which regards the body as a distant outpost that can be deployed and sacrificed in battle. Henceforth, all measure are designed to master pain, not to avoid it.

The heroic and cultic world presents an entirely different relation to pain than does the world of sensitivity. While the latter, as we saw, it is a matter of marginalizing pain and sheltering life from it, in the former the point is to integrate pain and organize life in such a way that one is always armed against it. Here, too, pain plays a significant, no doubt opposite, role. This is because life strives incessantly to stay in contact with pain. Indeed, discipline means nothing other than this, whether it is of the priestly-ascetic kind directed toward abnegation or of the warlike-heroic kind directed toward hardening oneself like steel. In both cases, it is a matter of maintaining complete control over life, so that at any hour of the day it can serve a higher calling. The central question concerning the rank of present values can be answered by determining to what extent the body can be treated as an object.

The secret of modern sensitivity is that it corresponds to a world in which the body is itself the highest value. This observation explains why modern sensitivity relates to pain as a power to be avoided at all costs, because here pain confronts the body not as an outpost but as the main force and the essential core of life.”

The essential distinction made in this passage is: “the body as a goal” vs. “the body as a vehicle.”

When we only see life through the lens of “seeking pleasure” and “avoiding pain,” we become slaves to our bodies. We chase temporary sensations, rather than striving for larger and more rewarding goals that require us to look beyond our immediate perceptions.

In our current world of hedonism and instant gratification, we are more likely to become slaves to our bodies than ever before.

Our world is more comfortable than ever before. And we are becoming more sensitive to smaller and smaller pains. We lose internet or AC for a day, and our whole world comes to an end. We are addicted to comfort.

If pain makes us stronger, then too much comfort makes us weaker.

By weaker, I mean we’ve become less disciplined. Junger draws a direct connection between “managing pain” and being “disciplined.”

Discipline is doing something even when you don’t want to do it or it doesn’t feel good – discipline is doing something even when it is uncomfortable and painful.

To do that, you have to treat your body as a vehicle. Only then you can you rise above “pleasure” and “pain” and achieve something meaningful and bigger than yourself.

We endure pain, because we know we are building toward something better in the future.

This applies to all different types of pain:

• Physical Pain: Pain from intense exercise and curbing unhealthy desires.
• Emotional Pain: Pain from social rejection and loss.
• Mental Pain: Pain from failure and making mistakes.

These are all types of pain we must learn to embrace if we want to grow and improve ourselves. They all have a wisdom behind them.

Embrace Pain and Challenge Yourself In Life

Here are healthy suggestions for challenging yourself and embracing pain.

• Intense Exercise – Exercise is one of the most common areas in life where you need to work through pain to progress. The classic motto “no pain, no gain” is true for improving our physical health, whether it’s running that extra mile, doing that extra rep, or challenging our physical strength in a new way (like climbing a mountain or going on a difficult hike). Your muscles will feel fatigued and achy the next morning, but it’ll be worth it!
• Short-Term Fasting – Fasting is another great way to challenge your body and push it to new limits. Try fasting for a short-period of time, such as “16:8 intermittent fasting” where you don’t eat for 16 hours each day and leave an 8 hour window for eating – or go a whole 24 hours fasting on an “off day” during the weekend. In both cases, you can permit yourself to drink water or tea. Overall, seeing how your mind and body respond while fasting can be a great exercise in self-awareness, even if it’s not always a pleasant experience.
• Cold Showers – Cold showers are a fantastic way to embrace and overcome pain. They train you to endure discomfort and teach you that you can overcome difficult experiences with the right mindset and determination. Even just one whole minute under cold water can be a battle for most people, can you do it? Check out this beginner’s guide to cold showers to get started. A great way to test your physical limitations!
• Fail At Something – Failure is one of the most powerful types of “mental pain.” No one likes failing and it rarely feels good, whether it’s not getting a job, failing a test, or losing a competition. However, failure is a necessary part of learning and growth; and for that reason it must be embraced and welcomed. Try failing on purpose in fun and safe ways. It will teach you that the pain of failure is often not as bad as we think it is. And if you can desensitize yourself to failure, you’ll be in a much better position for success.
• Let Go of One Desire – Pain is sometimes nothing more than “eliminating desire,” especially if we have come to depend on certain pleasures to be happy, such as junk food, alcohol, sex, drugs, TV, or video games. One of the best ways to challenge yourself and build discipline is to practice letting go of unhealthy cravings and desires. Start by choosing just ONE pleasure that you will abstain from for a whole week or a month. See if you can live without it. Often once you reach a certain point, you realize that the pleasure wasn’t as essential to your happiness as you thought.
• Build A New Daily Habit – Discipline and pain are closely related. To build discipline, we have to fulfill daily habits even when we don’t feel like doing them. This could be any new habit: writing, exercising, reading, playing an instrument, pursuing a hobby, etc. But if you want to get good at that activity and improve, you’ll need to make it a habit to practice everyday, even when you don’t want to. Doing despite disliking is a core feature of discipline and success in any area of life – and it requires a mastery of temporary pain and discomfort.

These are just suggestions for ways you can embrace pain in your life and start developing a healthy relationship with it.

I certainly don’t believe it’s the goal of life to “actively be seeking pain,” but sometimes purposely engaging in difficult and uncomfortable experiences is necessary if we want to grow and reach the next level in our lives.

Once you challenge yourself, feel free to go back to your comfort zone to rest and recharge. Then get ready to challenge yourself again and keep pushing forward!

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