Observe the pain!!

Observe the pain

We spent the afternoon soaking in the sun on a beach with some friends and their children and had a wonderful time. I came back home and went straight to my computer to read my daily inspirational blogs and sure enough there was a wonderful one from Deepam (www.myspace.com/Deepam) about Self Inquiry, Being Content, Observation and Healing Pain. Interesting and Introspective read.
I went down to the TV room and there was this movie about a 8 year old boy suffering from AIDS. The doctors tell the family he has at the most one year to live and that too a rather painful one.
I was just the observer here. I was just watching the movie on the television, but I started feeling the pain of the boy and the family. The tears couldn’t stop and I felt a lump in my throat and started having a headache due to the crying and my shoulders started to weigh me down. All this was just because of a role played by actors on TV. I knew that this was not for real, and I knew in about 90 minutes it would all be over, but still I couldn’t remain detached and be an observer.
It felt real pain and then started cursing myself for continuing to see the movie, but I still did not get up and leave.
Self Enquiry
Why ?
Are we all masochists, do we like pain, I knew what the end would be, but I still stayed to watch the pain and the agony that the family goes through. It was traumatic and painful, but I kept watching and kept crying. Sure enough, it was over. I got up, put my daughter to bed and went about my daily chores.
As I was retiring for bed , I thought to myself, how can it be possible to remain detached , how can we just be observers of our life. All the enlightened gurus, tell us to remain detached and just observe the pain. If, even as someone watching a movie, I could not stay detached and it had such an effect on me, how in real life can I choose to remain detached? If I had to go through with the actual pain of something like that, how could I choose to be an observer.
I don’t think we humans can remain passive observers of our life, we partake in life with all our being. How then can we not react to pain and pleasure? It is all about the ego they say, It is the ego that hurts, ego that feels the pleasure and so on. But that is my question, how do you detach yourself from the ego , if we are nothing but our ego’s.
How many of us are capable of being unaffected by a dying child? How can we immunize ourselves against pain? Pray Tell.

Luv/luck/happiness