A cardinal sin on the spiritual journey is becoming uninterested. Boredom means you're off-center, you're disconnected from the place of growth and movement and creativity. Because the spiritual journey is essentially a creative journey, playing itself out in a million ways in your life, but only if you are curious and engaged with your own experience.
When your story stops being interesting even to you, when routine overtakes exploration, then you know you've stayed in one place too long. Maybe it's one place in your mind, thinking and re-thinking until there's nothing left to know. Or maybe it's an emotional trigger that gets triggered over and over until you're just exhausted from the endless repetition. But you know when you've reached that ending place, when something has become old and tired, and even its familiarity isn't a comfort.
Step out into something new, or step within into something new, but when you feel bored and your creative energy is gone, stop pumping the same dry well for more of what it offered up before. Feed your soul, your mind and your heart with newness and inspiration. Sometimes you need to stop thinking and go for a walk. Sometimes you need to talk with an old friend and sometimes you need to make a new friend. Sometimes you need to change your medium, to use pictures instead of words, or feel instead of think.
Some of us are fine with routine and sameness. Some of us are comforted by things staying the same. But those of us who chose the spiritual journey have a spirit of adventure that must be honored or we begin to wither. The muscle of personal growth demands to be lithe and limber and strong. It demands not simply that we create but that our lives are an ongoing work of creation. And it is in this ongoing work of creation that we are closest to G*d, that we are participating in the most fundamental and divine activity of them all..
When your story stops being interesting even to you, when routine overtakes exploration, then you know you've stayed in one place too long. Maybe it's one place in your mind, thinking and re-thinking until there's nothing left to know. Or maybe it's an emotional trigger that gets triggered over and over until you're just exhausted from the endless repetition. But you know when you've reached that ending place, when something has become old and tired, and even its familiarity isn't a comfort.
Step out into something new, or step within into something new, but when you feel bored and your creative energy is gone, stop pumping the same dry well for more of what it offered up before. Feed your soul, your mind and your heart with newness and inspiration. Sometimes you need to stop thinking and go for a walk. Sometimes you need to talk with an old friend and sometimes you need to make a new friend. Sometimes you need to change your medium, to use pictures instead of words, or feel instead of think.
Some of us are fine with routine and sameness. Some of us are comforted by things staying the same. But those of us who chose the spiritual journey have a spirit of adventure that must be honored or we begin to wither. The muscle of personal growth demands to be lithe and limber and strong. It demands not simply that we create but that our lives are an ongoing work of creation. And it is in this ongoing work of creation that we are closest to G*d, that we are participating in the most fundamental and divine activity of them all..
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