Pain Has a Hidden Meaning

During the Sunday morning meditation, I practiced using huatou method. Though I had some pain in my spine, I began to probe into the painful body sensations that arose: wondering, where do they come from, and what is their source? What I notice is that there is some special kind of pain that isn't really related to the physical body at all. Rather, this pain relates to the deeper doubt of feeling detached from oneself, or being split into a subject and an object. This is the existential pain that gives rise to all kinds of suffering. I believe that at the heart of all physical pain, there is a deeper perplexity that the physical aches only expose or somehow make 'obvious'. Without this perplexity, the pain is just a kind of phenomena.
   The other way to describe the 'hidden' pain is that it is similar to the frustration that arises when one is trying to solve a problem that appears to be unsolvable. No only does the problem itself create some agitation, but in a deeper sense, the problem poses a kind of 'split' that cannot be bridged in the moment. One way to resolve the suffering of that pain is to simply ask the question: in that moment, is there really an actual split between 'me' and 'the problem'? Or is this split just a creation of the mind?
    When I write this, I don't mean to suggest that the pain is made up or constructed by mind. Rather, I am suggesting that suffering from pain comes from an artificial boundary that I construct between 'me' and a particular sensation that seems foreign to me (or which I prefer not to have). I then forget that it is I who created this boundary, and then feel terribly split or at odds with the sensation I dislike. Had I been able to see through my tendency to split off from the pain, I may have found a better way to cope with it or to simply acknowledge it as energy of the mind.
    Another painful situation is that of being in a null place, or realizing that there may not be a tangible or measurable purpose in what I am doing in the moment. Here, the source of pain is similar; rather than taking in the experience fully as it is, I impose some object upon that experience and then conclude that I have gone astray from the object of my action. But what happens if I choose not to create an artificial goal, and simply let matters be the way they are? In that case, rather than trying to fight pain or objectify it, I can see the pain as a natural part of experience. In that way, I refrain from creating an artificial identity that resists the pain.
     After this morning's meditation, I am a little more convinced that 'pain itself' is never the problem in meditation. The problem comes before that, when I create an object and label it as 'pain'. Such a process makes the experience seem more tangible than it really is, which then exacerbates my struggle to rid myself of the pain. The opposite process happens when I have an image in mind of what I want to have. Rather than going back to the source of the image in mind, I objectify the image, treating it as a separate, external reality that I need to 'grasp'. Again, if I am able to see that the suffering arises from splitting of subject and object, neither pain nor pleasure are seen as substantial enough to avoid or pursue.