Stillness is Boring?

I seek stillness, peace and calm in my day to life. I do yoga, I meditate, I walk in the woods, I sit by the wood stove.

Why then, for god's sake, am I bored? I pondered this with my teacher recently. It went something like this...

My teacher was looking at me in that way she does when she knows I am on the verge of grasping something but am not quite there: with compassion and the fortitude to let me come around to it in my own timing.

I had been complaining again about the boredom in my life, so much quiet time, so much stillness, so much silence. I was feeling uneasy, could feel myself grasping for something, fantasizing about how to reach the heights of thrill through speed, rushing, pushing and doing.

My teacher, she was just smiling. She said, "Just sit with what you call boredom."

"What?" I thought.

"Sit with it, there is something there for you in the word," she went on, still smiling.

I looked at her smiling and a light bulb of epic proportions blinked on in my head, alive and buzzing with the knowing of direct experience. I replied, "Are you saying that I am looking at boredom in the wrong way?"

She said, "Hilary, everything you seek (peace, calm, quiet- a slower life) you have found." And I said, wide eyed, "You mean I've been labeling those things boredom and haven't been aware that I'm already there?!"

She laughed. I laughed in abject surprise. I'm not really bored. I'm peaceful. Only thing is, I've also been addicted to thrill. Which is why peace got confused with boredom.

What a freaking revelation!

And it's no wonder, in a society like ours, so externally focused on the next big thing, material possessions, Hollywood, speed, technology, doing, doing doing, that I got confused when I finally found what I had been looking for.

The valuable lesson that I learned is that BEING does not feel like DOING. BEING just is, it isn't good or bad or boring or thrilling, it just is.

I humorously value the "boredom" in my life much more now and when I feel the pull to seek the thrill, I settle back into my breath, sink a little bit further into being and smile.

I invite you to ask yourself about your own "boredom." You may make some surprising discoveries.