Tolle argues that thinking is an unconscious practice in many humans, who do not think so much as experience thinking, which Tolle likens to the experience of circulation or digestion. Unconscious thinking can be problematic because it “is conditioned by the past,” and the same repeated thoughts lead to a continual reenactment of the past (129).

Emotions, which take place in the body, become identified with ego “when you identify with them and they take over you completely” (132). When a negative thought occurs, it sends signals to the body, which responds to the stimulus as though it were a real danger. This response leads to a disruption of the body’s harmony and, on a long-term basis, to poor health outcomes. There are also deeper, positive emotions, which are “states of being” and the kind of “love, joy, and peace that are aspects of your true nature” (137).

Tolle calls the human “tendency to perpetuate old emotion” and the unwillingness to let go of the past, which leads to the “accumulation of old emotional pain,” the pain-body (140). People have different degrees of pain-body, according to their personal and ancestral lived experiences.