The Magic of Embracing Boredom
Back in 2010 when I still lived in London, I attended my first ten day silent Vipassana meditation retreat in the lovely rolling countryside of Herefordshire.
Obviously no phones are allowed during these retreats, as well as no talking (both prospects I was enthusiastically looking forward to, curiously enough). Also, no paper and writing/drawing/painting tools to document your insights and aha moments. Nothing.
The morning sittings began promptly at 6am. For the first three days, from dawn until just after dusk, the practice involved observing the breath. It wasn’t controlled breathing or pranayama or any other sort of breathwork. Simply sitting and watching the breath rise and fall at its natural rhythm.
I say simply…
…and as you might imagine, it was anything but.
My thinking mind went bananas. Absolutely out of control berserk. The utter boredom of sitting and observing the breath move in and out of my nostrils for three days, of gently bringing my awareness back to it, to the heinously dull present moment, every time I noticed my mind had run off into the past or the future was beyond treacherous.
And honestly, on several occasions I thought I was going stark raving mad. To observe the antics of my thinking mind, its insatiable addiction for distraction and diversion, to be anywhere but here now, where nothing was happening, was as alarming as it was illuminating.
Eventually, my attention was naturally drawn to the subtle, almost imperceptible space between each exhale and inhale. And then at some point on the third day, my mind and its machinations grew tired and fell silent.
I say silent - but wow, what a “roaring silence” - to echo the name of the excellent book on the Tibetan practice of Dzogchen meditation.
Dropping into the much-maligned state of boredom - the unassuming emptiness of the present moment - was a portal through the eye of the needle, into a mythic ocean of loving Mystery that wasn’t “out there” but so intimately, essentially in here, as the natural state of being.
Image from Ram DassOf course, little monkey mind got all worked up about this taste of magnificence and started grasping greedily at it: “More, more! Don’t let it stop, ever!”
And gently, back to the breath.
But despite its appetite for distraction + distaste for boredom, little monkey mind emerged changed: a bit unsettled and circumspect, because it had had a glimpse of what its relentless craving for diversion was keeping it seemingly separate from. Except of course, there was no separation, just the passing clouds of aversion and grasping.
What’s a monkey mind to do?!
A few years ago, I began learning + practicing somatic - or body based, sensation based - modalities. As someone with a body + nervous system that’s gone through the wringer of chronic Complex PTSD (CPTSD) symptoms, these practices were a game-changer. Not only that, by creating more capacity in my nervous system, they helped me integrate what I had been learning, practicing and experiencing for a very long time in the realms of the esoteric and the spiritual.
What had once been “too much” for a contracted, traumatized nervous system to fully integrate, and which had therefore been relegated to (mostly) intellectual abstractions, now became a deliciously subjective, embodied exploration into the Magical Mystery Tour of Being.
All of which to say: it’s all well and good for me to tell you that you’re mythic, full of magic, meaning and mystery, and for you to have glimpses, perhaps even regular glimpses, of this Truth. But the body, the Earth-based part of us that exists in this-here physical realm, that holds the echoes of intergenerational trauma, needs space + time to release imprints + patterns of false beliefs for us to truly embody this Truth with our whole multi-dimensional Self.
So: know that you’re a rainbow. But above all, allow yourself to gently explore into feeling it - however that is for you, moment by moment - being it, and doing from it.