The pain-body wants to survive, just like every other entity in existence, and it can only survive if it gets you to unconsciously identify with it.
Eckhart TolleThe ego tends to equate having with Being: I have, therefore I am. And the more I have, the more I am. The ego lives through comparison. How you are seen by others turns into how you see yourself.
Eckhart TolleWhat you think of as they past is a memory trace, stored in the mind, of a former Now. When you remember the past, you reactivate a memory trace -- and you do so now. The future is an imagined Now, a projection of the mind. When the future comes, it comes as the Now. When you think about the future, you do it now. Past and future obviously have no reality of their own. Just as the moon has no light of its own, but can only reflect the light of the sun, so are past and future only pale reflections of the light, power, and reality of the eternal present. Their reality is "borrowed" from the Now.
Eckhart TolleThe brain does not create consciousness, but conciousness created the brain, the most complex physical form on earth, for its expression.
Eckhart Tolle