You invite pain on yourself
Actually, pain is a requisition letter written by the body to the mind saying, 'Please pay me some attention!' Understand: your attention is your energy. Wherever you direct your attention, there your energy is also directed, and in that direction you witness growth.
You invite pain upon yourself. Not many people will believe it if they are told that all they invite pain upon themselves, like honored guests into their household.
A small story:
Once a man entered a restaurant and began ordering various food items. Platefuls of steaming food of various types made their way to his table. He ate with relish.
After a hearty meal, the man finally signaled the waiter to stop bringing in the food. The waiter duly returned with a little white slip.
'What is this?' asked the man, looking at the bill innocently. 'Why have you brought me this? I haven't ordered anything like this!'
Same way, we invite pain and disease upon ourselves with our immoderate habits and stressful lifestyles, and then forget all about it and complain later when disease takes its toll. ```
And sometimes we do enjoy the disease too, though no one ever admits to that! Just as an organ asking for your attention develops a disease, you yourself fall ill in order to get the attention of others.
This is no wonder, for in the hectic pace of today's life, who has the time to pay attention to anyone else, unless they fall ill? Attention is a basic need. Psychology proves that normally a man can stay alive without food for up to 90 days, but without the attention of others he will lose his sanity in just 14 days. Attention is energy, it is a life-force.
Though we are unaware of it, the craving for attention is so great, that to gain it, we create our own low-energy pool and gladly suffer the disease.
In a relationship, you often notice that both parties are begging for each other's attention, begging bowls outstretched. Do you think two beggars can have a positive and fulfilling relationship? To truly attain freedom from disease, stop begging for attention. This is a subtle, psychological begging, which happens without our complete awareness, and which is ultimately far more damaging than physical begging. Life teaches us a lot of things. Understanding them is our responsibility. But we live in a constant sate of somnambulism, unaware of what we are inviting upon ourselves.
Let me illustrate with a small story:
An engineer working in a large firm would bring the same dish for lunch everyday. Every day he would complain about how much he hated that particular dish, and his sympathetic friends would share their lunch with him.
One day, one of his friends finally asked him, 'Why don't you ask your wife to cook something you like, for a change? How can she not be aware that you hate this dish?' 'What wife?' the man asked in surprise. 'I'm a bachelor. I cook my own lunch!
This may sound funny, but it is true. We live our lives in much the same way. Through our lack of awareness, we first invite pain upon ourselves, and then complain about it and resort to painkillers.
We don't even mind getting afflicted by the same disease again and again, because we don't identify ourselves as the root cause of the problem. We throw the responsibility for the pain on others, never on ourselves.