Local anesthetic block nerve transmission to areas of the brain, which are believed to be pain centers, but these areas only process aspects of what is going on in the body. And furthermore they are wanting to find some pain center in the brain but like vision, there is no specific place in the brain that relates to either pain nor a visual image. There are only areas that process various aspects of sensations from the body. The construct is in the Mind, which modern science wants to attribute to the brain.
I have seen through my experiences and of others, that pain can be over-ridden. If there were a pain center in the brain where all the information comes together to form the pain, then these experiences could not have happened.
Firstly there is sitting meditation, 14 hours was the minimum a day in the Zen Buddhist retreats and 18 hours with only three breaks for meals in the Tibetan Buddhist retreats I have done. I did the Zen retreats first and of course even sitting for an hour cross legged can cause pain in the knees and hip. Or really what appears in the knee and hip,. My teacher told me how to diffuse the pain. He said you need to concentrate right at the center of the pain and not try to avoid it. This certainly made the pain more and more diffuse and finally disappear.
I wanted to try this technique elsewhere and I had the opportunity when I needed to get a tooth filling. The dentist, reluctantly agreed to do the filling without anesthetic. It worked and worked well. Indeed the dentist kept stopping and asking do you feel anything. I nodded because my mouth was full of instruments.
I found later that I had thoughts that sitting cross-legged for long hours every day for a month or six weeks in the Tibetan retreats might do harm to my legs. I talked to an orthopedic surgeon I knew and he assured me it wouldn’t. He said when they operate on the legs they use a tourniquet that cuts off the blood and do so for several hours in long surgery only releasing it from time to time and there is no ill effects. After his reassurance I never had any more pain in sitting meditation. I could sit the 6hours continuous, before a break and no pain. So the idea that maybe I may suffer harm was the cause of the pain.
Even more dramatically a man I knew took the pain from his son. His boy, then probably around 8 or 10 years old had to have some urgent surgery and stitches put into his leg after an accident and couldn’t have anesthetic. I don’t recall why it had to be done that way. Anyway, his father was with him and his father was able to take the pain and experience it himself while his son did not feel any pain or even discomfort during the procedure.
Another guy, who I met on the web and had helped, told me he had a lot of pain in his back. After talking with him for some time it turned out that he was in the construction business. I suddenly thought what if someone is presenting him with the idea “he’s in construction” and an image of him being welded or somehow being “worked on”. An image came to Mind and I drew it and showed it to him. He said that he did from time to time have the idea that “he’s in construction”, but he said that is what I do. I told him that the idea is probably used with another meaning. He understood what I was telling him and was able to reject the idea when it came to Mind. With that the pain was gone. For me, this was the best demonstration of pain as a mental construct.
