“The strong sensations we generally label as pain are inherent to living, but we can work with the quality of our experience in relation to these sensations.  If we resist them, our resistance actually intensifies the sensations and thus creates additional pain.  Another common way we intensify pain is by taking it personally and having a ‘why me?’ attitude.  If we can relax into pain as a natural part of living that everyone experiences, and let go of the self-judgment that something is wrong with me because I’m experiencing pain, we can alleviate our suffering to a large degree. Much of our suffering is caused by attachment to our sense of a separate autonomous ‘I’ that can somehow achieve a permanent state of affairs with only pleasure and no pain.” ~ Robert Kull, Solitude