Bored?

Disengage Yourself for A While

Pulkit Sharma

w hen was last time you experienced

boredom? Was it a few days back,
yesterday, today or now?How did you deal
with feeling bored- do you sulk and let it be, seek
refuge in any random activity, or do you find any
constructive way of being with your own self?
Many may consider boredom be a common feeling,
because an increasing number of people are
becoming chronically bored. They appear
disinterested in whatever they are doing; they feel
scared to be with their own selves and are
frantically looking for distractions.
These are the people who like to be on the move
and are constantly busy doing something or other.
Modern Technology and consumerist culture have
created novel and unmatched methods to kill time,
but do these really help? Usually
these distractions work as an
anaesthetic, numbing the discomfort
for some time. But sooner than later,
the person is back to the painful feeling
od monotony. Moreover, these
distractions seem to mimic drugs-
people get addicted to them, need
intense version of the feel good and
can’t imagine a life without them. In
long run, this sabotages their growth and evolution
because they are forever trapped in activities,
relationship and life choices that don’t make much
sense at a deeper level.
Let’s not forget that at times, there is a great value
in being disengaged and staying relaxed, silent, and
quite. Great discoveries have been made by people
when they were happily absorbed in solitude.
Alexander Fleming came back from a vacation and
observed that a strange fungus had grown on culture
.
he had left in his lab, killing harmful bacteria, and
this led to the discovery of antibiotics. Isaac
Newton was relaxing in the garden when an apple
fell, inspiring him to understand the law of gravity.
Percy Spencer found that the chocolate bar in his
pocket had melted mysteriously while he was taking
a stroll in front a vacuum tube and this gave him an
idea of a microwave oven.
The Guru Granth Shahib tells us that real treasure is
deep within us, but our mind makes us wander,
searching for it. By stilling the mind and connecting
with the deeper layer of our being, we can realise
our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual
potential. The starting point can be developing a
profound awareness of our breath. Once we learn to
breathe consciously, our breath becomes a thread
connecting our body mind and
spirit, uniting our individual
consciousness with the cosmic
consciousness.
Become conscious of your
breath for a second several
times during a day. Slowly,
conscious breathing will
replace unconscious breathing
and your inhalation and exhalation will become
deeper and full of intensity. This creates the ground
for the advent of higher consciousness in simple
acts of life. A time comes when you no longer need
artificial outer stimulation to feel good. For you
start finding pleasure in being with your breath,
yourself and the world around you. Remember the
divine is bliss, the world he created is inherently
blissful and this bliss in enshrined deep within you.
What you need is willingness, openness and
certitude to reclaim this innate bliss and rejoice in
yourself.
The writer is a clinical psychologist in Puducherry