By Elizabeth Herman | Posted: May 05, 2020
Do you ever compare your situation to the two million people who are imprisoned in the U.S.? Would you prefer free access to everything whenever you want it? To many Americans, it may seem like quarantine feels like incarceration.
But if you can use meditation and other strategies to live every new moment without looking back at past memories, it can help you to cherish each day, even when your routine gets boring.
In a new video, Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar discusses lockdown life: “Are you bored? You’re not bored? If you’re not bored, you’re not intellectual or sharp. Any sharp, focused individual, any dynamic guy would get bored. See how many minutes and hours you get bored while you’re at home now.”
Furthermore, he says, “A dull person doesn’t get bored. Buffaloes don’t get bored. They keep lying down. But someone who’s very sharp wants everything quick and gets bored quickly also. So, what’s the science of boredom? Why do you get bored?”
The science of boredom
Gurudev goes into depth about causes of boredom: “Your intellect can’t stand repetition. Boredom is an outcome of repetition. So if you’re intellectual, if you’re sharp in your attention, if you’re dynamic, you can’t tolerate repetition. Repetition leads you to boredom. But while your head, your intellect, rejects repetition, your heart loves repetition. When we take certain things for granted, when we make them part of our lives, we don’t get bored. Nobody says, ‘I feel bored every day.’ Do you ever say that? Do you say, ‘I feel bored drinking the same chai every day?’ You don’t! You drink the same tea every day! You don’t get bored. You watch the news every day! You don’t get bored, despite hearing very similar news every day.”
“So when you make certain things part of your life, they don’t bore you,” asserts Gurudev. “People, when they accept doing the rosary, it’s a repetition! People go to temple, to church, to mosque; they pray, and listen to the same music and don’t get bored.”
Although some repeated actions can provide stability and solace in life, Gurudev acknowledges how monotony can drag a person down, saying “These repetitions don’t bore you, but certain other things get to you, and you get bored, and boredom is the worst thing that can happen to you, because in boredom, your whole energy is down. You get into a sort of inertia. Not only that, but you also spread inertia to everybody. Would you like a conversation with somebody who is bored about everything? No! You like the company of people who are enthusiastic. Do you create enthusiasm in yourself and others? We have to ask this question to ourselves.”
Exploring your transformation from boredom and inertia to energy and enthusiasm can happen if you try some effective techniques. Click the image above for more details and begin your journey from head to heart.
Your heart and your head
To renew and reinvigorate yourself, Gurudev recommends that you stop allowing your intellect to pull you down. “You know, when you’re bored, you don’t want to look at anything. You don’t want to listen to anything. A sense of withdrawal symptoms comes up. When you get bored, nothing appeals to you. Then you get into frustration, anger, and then depression, finally. And repetition with emotion is accelerating. Repetition, intellectually, is boredom.”
If you can move out of your intellect and focus on emotion, you can go beyond the difficulty that your head has with repetitiveness. Noticing your boredom and shifting into your heart, you can start to enjoy the musical quality of routine tasks. As he explains, “Boredom is that common thing between your heart and your head. When you’re bored, you’re in your head too much. This boredom can be a bridge from where you can move from your head to your heart. No song, no bollywood song or bhajan goes without repetition. Music can’t happen without repetition. So, repetition can energize you.”
How to get out of boredom
This may seem ironic and surprising, but the only way out of boredom is through acceptance of it. The more you seek an escape, the more it will engulf your thinking, but if you hold it close to your heart and love the boredom, it will transform beautifully.
“You’re looking for something new, something exciting, something that can take you out of it, but you know there’s no end to it. Instead, if you embrace the boredom, it will act like a bridge for you to move into another dimension,” says Gurudev. He offers the following tips:
Meditate: “Meditation is that bridge between head and heart,” he continues. “If you sit for a few minutes, ready to embrace the boredom, you’ll slip into deep meditation. Otherwise boredom can put you to sleep, you see? Either you sleep and become more inert, or you use this moment of boredom to dive deep into meditation.”
Be 100% bored: “In fact, you should get bored about everything in life! Total! Can you?” asks Gurudev. “Then, you’re done. When you’re done, you’ll be enlightened. If you get totally bored about everything in life, suddenly you find a spring of life. Then, nothing bores you. You can keep saying the same thing again and again. Nothing bores you. Because you start coming to the very present moment.”
Honor each moment and give. “Let go of your memory, and like a child, every moment is precious. Honor every moment. Here, your emotions and feelings wake up. You suddenly start feeling great, and this can come from a state of giving and contributing. A giver is never tired. A taker gets tired. If you’re looking for joy, charm, and some excitement from outside, you're bound to get bored and tired.”
Use your heart. “Do you know that when people fall in love, they don’t just say, ‘I love you’ once?” asks Gurudev. “They repeat. People write on a card, ‘Oh, I love you, I love you, I love you.’ Every bit of the card they keep full. Have you ever seen people who have fallen in love? You might have done it yourself. Love loves repetition. But your sharp intellect doesn’t tolerate repetition, because your intellect is stuck with memory.”
If memories keep coming back, they can stop you from perceiving your true feelings in each new moment. The memories stay in your thinking mind, rather than in your constantly beating heart. Each beat of your heart brings something new and fresh, beyond old memories. As Gurudev observes the heart’s relentless forward movement, in contrast with the intellect, “Your heart doesn’t remember anything. It keeps repeating, it keeps repeating the same thing. We’re all born with both a beautiful intellect and a great heart. Don’t ignore either of them. Meditation is the way to enrich both and not get bored.”
You can make the journey from head to heart starting today, tuning in to Beyond Breath - A FREE Breath & Meditation Online Session With a Live Instructor. This can help you see the newness already happening all around you, to move beyond boredom without seeking anything from the outside.
Elizabeth Herman writes, offers writing support to clients, teaches, and volunteers for a better world. She has a PhD in Rhetoric, Composition and Literature. Find her on Facebook or Twitter.
