A Series of Meditations on Self-Flagellation
Philosophical Musings
Self-Flagellation is multilayered like most things in this world. Causing a form of harm to yourself while putting yourself in a meditative state is an interesting idea. On one hand, while meditating you are building or developing yourself on a higher realm, depending on the type of meditative you might even be completely untethering yourself from this plane. However, while committing self-flagellation you are causing physical harm to the body by tying yourself down to it. In this experience, the aspirant is pulled in opposing directions. There is also a duality here trying to obtain spiritual mastery of oneself while submitting yourself to a base emotion like pain. I’m curious to see if this duality is needed for one to truly progress or if it’s just a way to perform acts like meditation at an even higher level.
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Self-Flagellation is a funny idea, hurting oneself you would think goes against our natural coding, and to a certain degree, it does. In fact, that might just be one of the secrets to the act, overcoming the body's natural urges to gain mastery of it. This is not a unique idea to self-flagellation. Fasting and body suspension are other examples of ascetic acts. As I haven't mentioned it yet, now may be a good time to point out that this idea is called asceticism. Forcing your mind to overcome basic urges allows you mastery over the body, and according to the people who invented Kung-Fu mastery of the body is required to achieve mastery of the mind. But they are far from the only ones who preach this, just the flashiest to name drop. Other notable ones, for example, the desert fathers, who decided that living in civilization was too comfortable, so they moved into the desert outside of Egypt to live. Other examples if you are interested in reading more about are Incan priests and Muslim Sufis. Mastering the physical body is an important act as a student of the arts. However, this divine decree is a mystery that is layered like a fine lasagna so I don’t pretend to know most of the reasons however the first couple that comes to mind is that mastery of the lower things like bodily control is needed to get before you can pass beyond this. Gaining complete control over the physical body is needed to finally shed it and ascend past this. The other idea is that a lot of you are actually stored in your subconscious. Physically we see this through things like your heartbeat, breathing, blinking pain, mentally we see this through your emotions, and belief, spiritually we see this through your intuition, your connection to your higher self. While that is all but a comprehensive list that should showcase how much is controlled by the subconscious. Gaining control of your subconscious which is stored in the body will give you full control of a lot of yourself so you may progress more.
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One benefit of Self-Flagellation is the ability to overcome pain through the act. While doing it time and time again you become able to null the pain caused by these whips… (or sword if you're this guy https://imgur.com/gallery/hz1V0he ) This is an interesting idea that by doing an act such as causing you pain again and again you overcome it. Pain in my opinion is a rather worldly thing being tied to this material world we live on. The idea that subjecting yourself to a thing time and time until you surpass it is rampant in almost everything we do. Scared to speak publicly, do it a lot until you overcome it. Disappointed by the lack of ice cream in the house, expose yourself to this daily and you will no longer be sad. Moving away from emotions we can see this in physical things as well. Working out has a similar process. Doing a workout might make you sore today but the same workout will make you less sore each time you do it. So, if we expose ourselves lifetime through lifetime to all the worldly things that tie us down here we will slowly gain mastery of these things and they no longer shackle us. With this train of thought, abstinence from things, will not empower us but do them until they no longer hold us will.
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The mind-altering effects of self-flagellation is another rabbit hole I’d like to dive down, albeit briefly. Meditation, especially depending on the type of breathing you are doing, can cause physiological effects. Common ones are decreasing respiratory rates, heart rate, and blood pressure as well as plenty of other wonkier ones. However, during self-flagellation, you are administering short doses of pain which causes an increase in heart rate, respiratory rate, and blood pressure. On top of those two opposing forces, as I mentioned earlier, the body's natural response to pain is to release a flood gate of endorphins into the body. These acts together flood the body with a lot of mixed reactions and if I may be so bold as the speculate, I reckon this act of flooding the system with opposing forces actually make it easier to tear down the body's mental barriers and allow you to do the work more freely then you would otherwise be able to
Very interesting... I am reminded of a certain understanding of Kant as flagellating himself with reason in a suspiciously orgiastic sense... perhaps there is a kind of intellectual self flagellation aligned with the Priest caste?