One of the most consistent exercises I give to my private clients, especially when summer begins to end and autumn begins to arrive, is to get bored.
To create space in the calendar of total nothingness and aloneness.
And to actually do nothing.
Many spiritual people will fill up moments of nothingness with another spiritual practice or technique, but when I give this exercise I tell clients to even leave that.
1. Just sit on a chair, or a couch, in your home (don’t go anywhere new or exciting).
2. Stare out in front of you.
3. Allow yourself to be absolutely useless.
4. Do it for longer than a few minutes.
The only commitment, or technique:
No distractions. No phone, no snack, and also no excessive thinking or contemplating.
Just feel yourself, your body and your senses, and be present with what comes up.
And surely, something will come up.
In fact, for many people, doing this is a complete purge. Hugely uncomfortable.
All of a sudden, we get faced with all the discomfort, just under the surface, that we are not feeling through our constant activities.
Negative self-talk, thoughts about all our unfinished to do’s, hunger, tiredness, boredom.
Maybe anger, sadness, anxiety.
Physical discomfort.
Old memories.
A clever mind that will tell us to do something and begin another ‘useful’ activity.
Addictions.
A temptation to seek pleasure.
Don’t listen.
Don’t move.
Just feel what presents itself to be felt. Shout if you need. Cry. Punch a pillow. Feel tension. Stay with it. Even if just for half an hour.
Be with it regularly until you no longer want to run from your own silence.
Maybe it won’t be overnight, but overtime, to do this regularly, will clean out deep layers of the mind.
Creating breakthroughs and new peaks of consciousness.
To then return to another layer of suffering, repeating the cycle.
Gradually cleaning up unnecessary weight that we carry.
In Yoga it is called ‘tapas’; a willingness to burn in the fire, in the heat of suffering, to allow inner Union to take place.
Not to punish ourselves.
But because we have realized that if we cannot find peace in our own aloneness, we don’t find it anywhere else.
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