Boredom
This article explore the complicate relationship among : boredom and Surplus energy; urges; addiction; clarity of mind; clear conscience; guilty conscience, meditation.
People who meditation regularly, carries a larger capacity of surplus energy in compare with people who don’t meditate. What is the benefit of having a larger capacity of surplus energy?
For a country, there is a regular military force, there is army reserve. When the country get into war, it needs a bigger military force, the country can mobilize the reserve units. Instead of drafting citizen and get them training while the country is in war.
For individuals, some have a checking account in the bank, some also have a saving account. Some have a small saving; some have bigger saving. For those who have bigger savingin their accounts, when they have financial emergency, they can draw money from the saving accounts immediately, instead of applying for a load.
These are the benefits of having a larger reserve: military, personal finance. For a person who carries a larger mental energy reserve, when he is in crisis, e.g. when he is driving through an intersection, a drunk driver ignores the traffic light, ran through a red light,and T boned his car. Some of them did not survive. For those who survive, often said: “ the car came from nowhere. I felt the tremendous impact, the big bloom, then I fainted”. But for another drivers, who have a larger capacity of reserve energy at hand, scanned the intersection continuously, at the corner of his right eye, he saw a car running through the intersection. He surmounts his surplus/reserve energy either step on the brake or step on the accelerator or turn his steering wheel. He “luckily” avoided the crash or reduce the impact of the crash. We usually contribute his survival or slight injuries as “luck”. It is because people don’t understand the importance of carrying energy reserve or surplus energy.
Another example on surplus energy: sprain ankle.
When people step into a hole on a hike or trip on the uneven sidewalk. Some people sprain their ankle, some break their ankle, some fall down, some break their wrists when they land on the ground. We called these as “accidents”. We said some one is luckier than the others. Can lucky explain all the different level of injuries? And some don’t even get their ankles sprain, and some even avoid stepping into the hole. Can luck explain all the differences? I believe it is a matter of among of surplus energy the person carries while they are hiking, or while they step into the hole or walking on the uneven sidewalk. With surplus energy, the person can right themselves up in a split of a second. With less surplus energy, the person right himself in one second. That split of a second is enough to make the difference which we contribute to LUCK.
It is a common sense that we shall not talking on the phone while driving. But is that all. Anything else a driver can do to become more ready for emergency? Don’t drive while his alertness is impaired by alcohol, or prescribed medicine, or when he is tired. What else? Nothing?
People of the same age, same level of health condition can be quite different in the amount of reserve energy they carry. We notice people’s height, weight, skin complexion, gender, hair style, the fashion of their clothes, the band name of their handbags, or watches they wear. But most of us cannot look deep into their brains to know how much reserve energy he/she carries.
Increase your reserve energy
What factors affect the amount of reserve energy he carries? There are two factors: state of the mind and personality trait.
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- The state of mind factor is whether the person is under stress, something burdens his mind? He is in deep thinking; his mind is preoccupied. Those preoccupied thinking, even not talking on the phone, consume and deplete his reserve energy. This factor changes depends on the circumstance at that moment.
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- The personality trait factor: some people is able to carry a higher capacity of reserve all the time without feeling boredom. Those people wake up in the morning with lot of energy, can engage in low mental demand, tedious manual work without feeling boredom! They can sit down and meditate right after they woke up! It is harder to sit still when you are full of energy. Meditator can! When meditators carry reserve energy, they do not feel bored! Nor feeling restless. Generally, when a person carries a lot of surplus energy, he feels boredom. He has an urge to remove the boredom by engaging himself/herself with challenging activity which consume and deplete his surplus energy. If the person is driving on a non-challenging route, he/she would make a phone call, or planning something, or listening to a audio book. He feels better when his surplus energy are getting less. When his surplus energy is depleted, his boredom is gone.
But some other people are able to carry a larger surplus of energy without feeling boredom. Meditation can increase a person’s capacity for carrying a surplus energy.
The meditator woke up in the morning with plenty of energy, and could sit motionless in a lotus position, for 50 minutes or more. Meditation is a very boring practice. By enduring the boredom, instead of run away from it, meditators gain the opportunity to be in touch of the dirt underneath the boring, and consequently gain the opportunity to deal with those dirt. When the dirt are clean out, they gain the clarity of the mind. When their conscience is clear, boring is no longer necessary to protect their conscious mind from awareness of the dirt. It is because there is no dirt. You might wonder what if the mental dirt. The dirt are guilt, and self criticism etc.
Meditators are like camels and non-meditator is like horse. Camel has a larger capacity of carrying water inside their body than horses.
Boredom urges us to do something, so our minds would not be wandering into our guilt consciences.
The relationships between surplus energy, boredom, increasing distractable, urge to engaging in addiction, and guilt, self criticism are complicated. The human mind is programmed to protect our conscious mind from awareness of something that is not resonance with our self image. This mechanism is called self defense mechanisms. When guilt and self criticism is way above what we want to accept, our self defense mechanisms start their work to protect our ego images. The self defense mechanisms are denial, blaming and rationalization, projection. And I want to add two more: distraction. Urges of addictive behaviors e.g. drinking alcohol, or using drug, or sexual addictions, urge for gambling.
When people have surplus energy, we turn our attention inward to ourselves, our conscience. If we have suppressed guilt feeling, negative self evaluation, self criticism in our conscience, we might become aware of all those things. When we are doing simple tedious manual work, the task does not demand much mental energy, our mind is not challenged, then our minds start wondering into our conscience. If we have a heavy guilty laden conscience, our defense mechanism starts working to protect us from becoming aware of our guilt and self criticism. We start feeling boredom, we start looking for things to engage in, that is the moment we become very distractible. This is the moment we start feeling urges for our addictions. If we find something to engage in, or we follow our urge for addictions, our surplus energy is spent and depleted. We are saved from becoming aware of our guilty conscience.
Boredom is a feeling which urges us to find something for our wondering mind to engage with, so it will not wander into our guilty conscience. The more surplus energy we have, the higher the risk we have of wandering into our guilty conscience. If our conscience is heavily laden with guilt, our mind has to keep busy, so to prevent it from wandering into our guilt conscience.
I asked my patients who recently stop their addictions: alcohol, cocaine, sex, gambling: how do you deal with your urges? They all have the same answer: I Keep myself busy. They don’t allow themselves to have free floating surplus energy around. They have to engage every bit of their energy. Otherwise, urges will become stronger.
While they are fighting their urges. I help them to relieve their guilt conscience in therapy.
Meditators are not those who can shut themselves out of boredom. It is because they have dealt with their guilt, their conscience becomes clear. So boredom is not necessary. So that they can carry a larger amount of surplus energy.