Today I had a real insight to the condition of the mind towards pain, turns out that pain is just a feeling, but what is it that defines whether that feeling is "pain" or "pig tails" (Pig tails doesn't make much sense does it?) ?

I was having lunch and as I normally do I just gulp the food down, if I'm concentrating on something else sometimes I forget to chew, and that was the case today.

A thin broken chicken bone got stuck 3/4 way down my throat, you could imagine the annoying pain that would create.

The thing is I didn't know what to do, whether to keep swallowing like a drain pipe or try throwing up, the bone was stuck and the uncomfortable, blood spitting, dilemma caused alot of anxiety and distress.

I decided to go to the nearest hospital. I came into the doctor's room where he pulled my tongue out and stuck a mirror down my throat to check where the bone is.

"There's no bone" he said, "It's gone down".

That really got me confused, It really felt as though something was blocking the passageway in my throat, or was that just an illusion?

Here's what happened in reality:
There were feelings coming out of the throat, signals sent to the brain indicating that there is something in the throat that needs to be taken care of, the parts of the brian responsible for analysis went frantic, the brain tried to analyse the signals into something "understandable" or "me related" and translated the signals in terms "there's a peice of bone in my throat". The brain believes it's own false analysis and starts panicking causing symptoms of anxiety and tension in the body.

But after a while the bone had passed the throat, why was it then that I was so convinced that the bone was still there?

Because the story was taken to be true without checking, once that happens the belief is assumed to be right until something else proves it wrong, I just wanted an excuse for the pain, a "reason"

Once the doctor pointed out that there is no bone, and that it was swallowed down a while ago, it just showed how much I was just holding onto that image, reinforcing the pain, as though I wanted it to happen, as if the image was true.

But the image was never true, it's just something that turns normal and natural bodily signals sent to the brain into "me" and "my pain", the image contributes to the story of "me".

I'm not saying that the image wasn't there in reality, it was, and at the time it felt really true, but it was just a feeling, when reality strikes again, everything comes back to place, and you see what it really was, just an Image.

That's what pain is actually, the suffering that comes from pain is all made up, it's a story attached to a feeling, next time you get a serious injury or some illness, instead of automatically being immersed in the story of "your suffering" look at what's happening.

And just a word of advice....

Check your chicken bones.

Cheers.