Boredom is a state of mind. Peace is the nature of being. They can look the same, both involving the absence of the usual content of experience, but they are entirely different. One is emptiness viewed through the filter of memory. The other is your being’s experience of itself, and it is full.
When you fall asleep at night, first your perceptions leave you and, as a result, the experience of the world vanishes. Then your sensations leave you and, as a result, the experience of your body vanishes, leaving you in the dream state, experiencing just thoughts and images.
You do not actually transition from one state to another. You simply remain as you are, no longer clothed in perceptions and sensations, just clothed in thoughts and images. And then, in time, thoughts and images leave and naked being remains, all alone.
Meditation or prayer is exactly the same process; it’s like falling asleep whilst remaining awake. You turn away, first of all, from perceptions and sensations. That leaves you in a realm of thoughts and images. You then let go of your thoughts and images. You do not pass from one state to another. You take off the layers of experience and your naked, self-aware being stands revealed. You abide as that. You feel as if you have fallen asleep but remain wide awake.
You do not consider deep sleep boring. If deep sleep were boring, you would not look forward to it every night. You look forward to deep sleep every night because you know from experience that it is peaceful.
Boredom is a state of mind; peace is the nature of being.
Boredom is the absence of experience; peace is the presence of being.
Boredom is the blank screensaver; peace is the screen.
If someone were to remove a painting that had hung on a wall in your home for many years, whenever you looked at the wall for the first few weeks, you would see the absence of the painting. You would not see the wall as it is. You would see the wall through the filter of your memory of the painting, and you would impose its absence onto the wall. However, someone coming into your home for the first time would not see the absence of a painting, because they do not look at the wall through the filter of their memory. They would see the presence of the wall.
If you are bored in meditation, or in a state of expectation or restlessness, it is because you are viewing your current experience through the lens of memory and seeing it as the absence of experience. With reference to the content of experience, it will feel like a blank, empty state. But your being is not empty; it is not void; it is not nothing. It is only blank, empty or void with reference to the previous content of experience.
In other words, if you experience emptiness, blankness or boredom, you are still in your mind. You are experiencing a blank state of mind, or more accurately, you are experiencing your being filtered through your memory of the content of experience.
In other words, the peace that is the very nature of being is experienced as boredom when contrasted with the memory of experience. But in your experience of your self – in being’s experience of itself without reference to the content of experience – there is no boredom. It is pure peace. There is no agitation, no expectation, no longing.
Emptiness for the mind is fullness for being.
For the mind, objects are full and being is empty. For being, being is full and objects are empty.
