Pain and altered states of consciousness
It took me a little while to figure out what I wanted to write about when it came to touch. Touch has never been something which takes up much space in my memory. I can't remember many strong feelings of touch. Except pain. I remember tearing my chin open at around age five after falling on the kitchen floor. I remember slicing my knee on a jagged shower drain at around six. I remember slamming into a tree on a skiing trip in my early teens. I remember walking away with cuts and bruises after falling 14 feet through an old mansion's stable floor. I remember tearing the tendons in my knee, and feeling the most excruciating pain of my life a few years ago. Note the beatific expression of St. Sebastian (Il Sodoma) In her "Painful Times" chapter of The Deepest Sense , Constance Classen explores the relationships that premodern Europeans had with pain and suffering. I was particularly interested by her paragraphs on how pain elevates the consciousness by giving us ...