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please go to be here now network.com slash Joseph. I'd like to speak about pain. Usually by the second evening of the retreat people are quite interested in this topic.

Pain is a very important topic to understand. Because if what we're trying to do with our practice is to come increasingly into the present moment, to be more awake, more alive to

our experience in each moment.

One of the things that we can observe is that it's the way we relate to pain in our conditioned habit pattern of response that very often keeps us out of being in the moment.

Because pain or discomfort or unpleasantness is part of being alive,

of existence.

And because we don't like it,

when we begin to experience it in our lives, we've created innumerable ways, both

gross and subtle of avoiding feeling that pain.

And all those ways of avoidance

are exactly the ways which keep us out of being in the moment,

of being present.

Until we've so created, we've created such a

intricate and elaborate web of avoidance mechanisms that we find it actually very difficult to settle back into the simplicity of the moment's experience.

So I think it's helpful to look very carefully and precisely at exactly what pain is, the ways we've been conditioned to respond to it, and some possible alternatives, some ways that might be more skillful or more

empowering of us to be present. There are different kinds of pain that people experience and it's helpful to

distinguish them because the response is different dependent upon the kind of painful feeling that it is.

One kind of pain is the pain of a danger signal. If you put your hand into fire and it starts to feel hot and burning, you wouldn't

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