The Pain-Body and The Presence
Dear drummers, The picture of me at left was taken about 18 years ago, from a semester-long mask-making class I taught at Winona State University. I named the mask “Mr. Doom.” He was the voice constantly chattering in my mind telling me, “everything you think, everything you say and everything you do has always turned out shitty and it always will.” I worked with students to build masks of their own inner voices, and the class culminated with each student performing a masked dance/monologue as that inner voice. I didn’t realize until years later that what I was teaching my students, and what I was doing for myself, is what the superstar spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle calls “distancing yourself from the pain-body,” and what the shamans call “allowing yourself to be danced by spirits.” Both acts are intended to move the chattering voices from the inside to the outside so you can understand what they want from you. Tolle describes the pain-body as an energy field which almost everyone c