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Any time I have managed to ignore pain, I have ended up worse off because it turns out, pain is sending an important signal. Ignoring it ends up in more damage.
If you mean emotional pain, yeah maybe. "My long-term partner broke up with me after ten years, but due to mindfulness techniques I'm not upset". Too much "I am never upset or distressed" is as bad as too little, though. Perfectly calm, unfeeling people who are unaffected by distressing things might be saints - or they might be psychopaths.
That doesn't sound good at all to me, unless "upset" means something like depressed or anxious. Emotions like frustration, sadness, concern, and so on are part of what happens when a human being has their preferences blocked. I can postulate cognition without these emotions, but it no longer seems like human cognition.
I think that part of the problem is exactly that people suppose that, if they are truly upset, they must be anxious or depressed. However, while emotions like sadness or frustration can be directed towards constructive action, this rarely occurs with anxiety and depression. It's not even that the latter are stronger, I think: more that they are disabling, rather than envigorating.
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Yeah this is why I specified non-voluntary. I'm certainly not advocating for nobody ever experiencing pain again, or totally ignoring it. But as you grow in mindfulness you can say, stub your toe, then go into a kind of state where you still perceive the pain but don't let it affect your mental state.
Actually don't psychopaths usually rage out and have uncontrollable urges? Sure they don't feel anything for other people, but that doesn't mean they don't feel anything.
Again I'm not advocating that 100% of the planet becomes an enlightened monk, but if people wished to pursue that lifestyle and could, or could even dip in and out every now and then, I think it would lead to a lot of human flourishing.
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