Stop Running from Boredom: Eckhart Tolle's Guide to Finding Peace in Solitude

There must be something to do or think about or worry about. Just endure it. And suddenly you feel alive without mental stimulus. What is boredom? Why this pervasive unsatisfactoriness that I feel everywhere but most intensely when I'm alone with nothing to do? Pervasive unsatisfactoriness that I feel everywhere but most intensely when I'm alone with nothing to do? What is this? It's called boredom. That's a good way of putting it. Pervasive unsatisfactoriness. And of course, there's a whole industry designed to help you not feel this pervasive unsatisfactoriness. In other words, to stop you from being bored. So you can always, as most people probably do, they always provide their mind with some kind of stimulus. And these days that's not difficult to do. It's available everywhere. So the mind wants to be stimulated. It's always hungry for the next thing. So when people get home from work immediately, the mind needs to go into the next thing. And once you've done, cooked your dinner and eaten your dinner, then the mind goes into what's the next thing. Is it television? Is it picking up a phone? Is it Internet? Is it emailing or texting? Teenagers too, and many others. There's nothing bad about it. It's fascinating. I recently started occasionally texting, and it's quite fascinating. But what is important to become aware of the mind's demand to. For food, for stimulus. And if you don't get it immediately, you get into a state of restlessness or pervasive unsatisfactoriness. As the questioner says, you don't feel at home, you don't feel there's something. Of course, that feeling is always there. It's obscured by the mind. So that means if you continuously feed your mind with these things, you never reach the deeper levels within yourself. You're stuck. You have to, at some point confront the unsatisfactoriness without continuously anesthetizing the unsatisfactionness and getting some kind of substitute for true aliveness. Because that's really what it is. You don't really feel alive, the aliveness. So you need some kind of stimulus to get a sense of being alive. So it's important to be able to just stop feeding the mind all the time. There's enough for the mind to do with the things that it really needs to do. And just sit with yourself and allow boredom to arise without running away from it, because that's your first. You're beginning to Go a little bit deeper. But first you need to send to feel that. And if you don't run away from it, you can actually go through boredom. It's like suddenly you're through. So it becomes a little obstacle there inside you. But if you don't run away, stay with it. Suddenly, before you know it, you've gone deeper into yourself. Especially if it might be helpful to feel the inner body while you sit. When boredom begins, boredom comes in. You can feel it. You start looking around. What's the next thing I can do or think about? There must be something to do or think about or worry about even better. And you stay and you notice that. And then you just endure that discomfort of the mind not getting enough stimulus food. And it's not that bad. It's just endure it and then begin to feel the inner body, the aliveness in your hands, your arms, your feet, your legs. And you've already gone through the threshold of the boredom into something deeper. And suddenly you feel alive without mental stimulus. Actually more alive than you could ever feel through mental stimulus. Because mental stimulus is always on the surface of who you are. Ripples on the surface. And now you go deeper and then you have the ability to sit or stand or lie and be at ease with the here and now. That's all there ever is. Life here and now. Being be at ease with yourself here and now. To feel at home here and now without needing to escape into some mental realm that's not here and now. Need to think about that. Need to play a video game. Need to watch this program, look at the magazine. At least you can see how people the mind consumes. See how they look through magazines, go to waiting rooms or into people's homes. Nowadays magazines in many cases are being replaced by the screen. But people still so they go a greedy search for what's the next. And nothing is quite interesting enough. It's always the next thing. So that's the dysfunction. And so the wonderful disability then grows in you of being rooted in the present moment in yourself without needing some mental external stimulus to make you feel complete or alive. In fact, it's only now that you really come to life. There was a famous French philosopher lived a few hundred years ago. Was it Pascal or perhaps who said all the problems of humankind can be traced back to man's ability? Man includes women can be traced back or have their origin in man's inability to sit quietly in a room. All the problems of the world can be traced back to your inability to sit quietly or at ease In a room, of course, the implications are deep and vast. It's not just sitting quietly in a room, but because sitting quietly in a room implies for you to be able to do that to, to sit quietly in a room, you need to be connected with that which is deeper in you than the mind. Otherwise you can't sit quietly in a room, you'll be bored. You may be quiet on the outside, but you won't be quiet inside. So you go within. Use the inner body as a starting point for going deeper and taking your attention away from where it's usually lodged in the thinking mind. So you go through boredom, into being, and suddenly you enjoy just being. That's an enormous awakening if you can just enjoy the simple fact of being. And then you, from that state of aliveness, of being, you, you can look around you and find pleasure and satisfaction in what you see or hear or perceive with your whatever sense, the little things around you, their quiet presence, the flowers, the table, the curtains, whatever is there, the sky through the window, the room, the totality of the room, the quietness. And it's all lovely. So you don't need all these substitutes anymore. You may still, of course, you still use the Internet, or you use it, but not anymore continuously, because you cannot stand being with yourself. You can't stand yourself. And that's the reality for most people. Think of that or realize what that means, how dysfunctional that is. You can't stand yourself, that's why you continuously run into this and into that and into that. And if a person who cannot stand him or herself, of course, what kind of relationships is that person going to have? If you can't stand yourself, then you're using others to make you feel a little better. But that doesn't work. And basically the inability to be with yourself gets reflected and projected onto others also. And there comes the ability of being with other humans, because at first you try to use them and then you can't stand them either. So you have to break through that mental barrier, because otherwise you spend the rest of your life not being able to sit quietly in a room. And as the French philosopher said, all your problems arise there from that inability. Because what that really implies is you are not connected with being, you are not connected with that which is deeper than the mind made personality, the thinker. So come home to yourself so that you can enjoy your own company, and then you can truly enjoy also other people's company, rather than use them as substitutes. Enjoy yourself as the expression implies. It all starts there. Can you enjoy yourself, your being. Otherwise, nothing will satisfy you, ever. Because you're not at ease with yourself. And you take your dissatisfied self wherever you go, into any relationship or any place.