Pain, Valor and Surrender – Wisdom from the wisdom tooth

I had a wisdom tooth extraction today… Its called ‘intaction’. I don’t know how the name ‘wisdom’ came to this tooth, but this tooth which comes in a few humans, generally only causes problems… I have all 4 but two of them have come out horizontally instead of vertical… So, I needed to undergo the removal of these two… Today was intaction of the first one of them…

Till before the surgery I thought it to be a normal tooth extraction… But as I sat on the chair I was told it would take atleast half an hour ! The bone holding the tooth needed to be cut and only then would the tooth be extracted! Wow !! I thought to myself… As I switched off my mobile phone ( Answering the phone was a bit difficult considering my mouth would be wide open, tongue sticking out and some carpentry going inside !) I saw guruji’s beautifully smiling face ☺. I closed my eyes, and just remembered guruji… After taking 3 injections of anesthesia the surgery started… Inspite of the anesthesia, I don’t know how, but there was pain… Actually now, looking back, that pain was not much it was easily bearable, but the sound of the heavy carpentry was what increased the pain. Amidst all this while I was trying to observe my whole body and the mouth region… and then surrendering... i.e. remembering that this is just my body… a piece of flesh and blood… and that… the divine is always there to take care of me… I noticed that whenever I had pain, my body had stiffened at various places, and whenever I took my attention there and relaxed, the pain would subside… The same thing happened again and again. I would feel pain… I wouldn’t accept it instantly… Parts of my body would stiffen… Then I would surrender the body… And then the pain only localized to the area of the mouth… Actually if I closely scanned the area in my mouth where the pain was… I noticed, that even there… pain is nothing but a strong sensation… A sensation that is different from the normal state! Had this been there all my life, I would have lived with it without even noticing it! Actually all this is quite similar to doing yoga asanas… As soon as we assume a new posture… there is stiffness in different parts… and then we take our attention to the stiff regions and relax them… and it becomes so much more comfortable…… There comes the drilling machine again… and aaaooo…. Again… my body stiffens… I feel pain in the mouth… this time the doctor gave me two tips… don’t worry about the sound and shut your eyes… Such useful tips! I was magnifying my pain simply by the sounds and my own eyes! In this whole operation I tried a few more techniques… One of them was valor… I remembered the advanced course ( a course in the art of living incase you don’t know about it! )… and then I thought to my self… bring it on… lets see what can the pain do to me …. Come on ! bring it on !!! This also was a cool technique… But I prefer becoming aware and just surrendering…

No matter how much I pacify or remind myself through the intellect… When the pain comes instantly, its only the conditioning of the mind that matters… concepts don’t matter! I thought to my self… This is how death would be… The instant it comes… all the things in the intellect don’t matter… Its only the reflex action of the mind… Well.. I’m living now and I’ve got a lot to learn ☺ before I leave this body…

I guess, this wisdom tooth has imparted its share of wisdom while exiting ☺.