Boredom...

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche used to describe boredom as two separate things:  hot boredom and cool boredom.  “Hot boredom," is associated with restlessness and a desire to escape, and "cool boredom," is spacious, refreshing, and even a delightful state that arises from relaxing into the present moment without needing to be entertained or constantly stimulated. 

I have very little experience with cool boredom and a PhD in hot boredom.  In fact, I believe that most of my life has been spent in this humid and heated boredom.  Which has left me, I can see now, in this state of perpetual vulnerability (not the good kind).  I keep being agitated and need to escape, which leads me to allow people and situations into my life which would be better left alone.

I do not think I am alone in this...I think most of us are most familiar with the hot boredom.  That feeling of restlessness, irritation, and a desire to get to “somewhere else.”  I know for me, I still am haunted by my own thoughts.  And I do a lot of things to avoid them, again, still.  I crave external stimulation and am always looking for something, anything out there that can bring me an inner state of peace.  It never works, but that has not stopped me thus far.

Cool boredom, so I am told, is a more open state of being.  It is not resisting the idleness of life.  It is not the automatic filling up of space and time in order to not be alone with one’s thoughts.  It is a relaxing into a deeper state of being.  Which is incredibly hard, if not impossible for me.  I need the entertainment and the stimulation.  Well, at least that is the story I have told myself, well, forever.

But as with most things, I can feel a shift happening.  I am choosing to be quiet and still more recently.  It is not out of virtue but because I was sick and now my back is injured so I have to be stiller than I would like to be.

I know the answers I seek are on that cushion I keep avoiding.  I know that the best part of my life comes when I sit mindfully on the cushion and wait for what is to present itself.  I know when I meditate, I develop a more relaxed and open relationship with my own life and experience.  But really, my reality, is that I am so hotly bored that I avoid the cushion altogether.  

It is a lot of work assuring that you are never still, never bored.  And the older I get, the more exhausting the endeavor.  I can definitely see the shift happening currently, and I will also own that I do not love it.  There is such a large part of me that just wants to dive back into my habitual response...but I know there is nothing really there except a lot of activity that leads me to places that are not boring, but are emotionally and psychologically draining.

Cool boredom means a release of the need to be entertained all the time so that one can find contentment in the here and now.  And the more I practice that, the better I feel.  And the more I practice being over committed to being entertained, the less present I am and the more exhausted I feel.

Cool boredom holds the promise of a more open relationship with the present moment without judgment and expectation ruling supreme.

Again, still...