Meditation - Days 3 & 4

I’m checking in to let you all know that my meditation experiment is still going strong. I just haven’t had much time to write in the last few days thanks to finals. (I’ll be done on Friday. Yay!)

Saturday’s meditation was a bit of a challenge. I thought I would have 15 minutes to meditate in the morning before going to school to study, but Nick’s dad (who was sharing a ride with Nick and me to Seattle that morning) arrived at our house earlier than I expected. I ended my meditation after only 3 minutes. Not thinking that was long enough, I committed to finding time later in the day. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance to meditate again until right before bed. True to my promise though, I set the timer for 5 minutes and did it. Whew!

Sunday was the complete opposite; I had a lovely 15 minute meditation – my longest yet! I spent the first 5 minutes centering my mind and the last 10 minutes in mindful meditation, just focusing on my breath.

Before starting, I thought a bit about the boredom problem, specifically when and why I get bored. When I get bored is easy to pinpoint: it happens when I start to crave some new experience (something other than focusing on my breath) or when my attention is no longer distracted by something (and I can’t invent a distraction). When I’m not distracted or can’t find a new experience, I get bored.

The more important question, probably, is whether I should do anything about it. As a society we don’t value “slack time” very much, but embracing slack time and the resultant boredom is probably good for me. If I can’t tune into my own boredom without trying to make it go away, how can I expect to become sensitive to my other emotions and feelings? Winning the little battle against boredom in order to feel good in the moment then is a limited strategy. Like a long-term investor, I should probably just ride the ups and downs without getting too neurotic about it.

So, what to do? I’m going to continue my commitment to the 30 days of meditation (bored or not) and simply pay attention to the quality of the experience – without judgment or the desire to change it.

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