Getting over boredom in your practice

[Vandheer]

Just like working out, occult training can feel like a chore sometimes. After a certain while it does start to feel like doing the same thing over and over.

How do you get over the issue? Problem isn't the lack of discipline in the question mind you, or the lack of progress. I am more talking about how things get stale after a while.

Another question I have in mind, do you guys relax in order to meditate, or meditate to relax?

 

[Accipeveldare]

Just like working out, occult training can feel like a chore sometimes. After a certain while it does start to feel like doing the same thing over and over.

How do you get over the issue? Problem isn't the lack of discipline in the question mind you, or the lack of progress. I am more talking about how things get stale after a while.

Another question I have in mind, do you guys relax in order to meditate, or meditate to relax?

I relax in order to meditate. The more you relax, the easier it is, and the more relaxing it becomes

 

[Pyrographer]

Just like working out, occult training can feel like a chore sometimes. After a certain while it does start to feel like doing the same thing over and over.

How do you get over the issue? Problem isn't the lack of discipline in the question mind you, or the lack of progress. I am more talking about how things get stale after a while.

Another question I have in mind, do you guys relax in order to meditate, or meditate to relax?

I find it helpful to focus on an adjacent side quest. It could be learning about a different practice, even if you don't intend to follow it. Or dig further into the minutiae of your practice. Try to figure out the gears behind the watch face. Doing these things helps to reignite that spark. I spend some time exploring local traditions and getting to know their practices. The Narragansett Tribe here in New England has been very open with discussing their ancestors practices. Same with the Abenaki in Vermont. It's fascinating to learn about and sort of cross reference beliefs and traditions.

Meditation is related. I treat it as a tool for communication. Sometimes a deep meditation is used to draw knowledge, inspiration, or clarity regarding my path and learning. Physical exhaustion is another tool I use. It's sort of the yang to the yin of meditation if that makes any sense. I often find clarity and receive messages through physical labor. Both are extremely useful when done at the appropriate time.

Many different paths can be learned and practiced without instruction, tools, props, etc. It just seems to take a bit longer. You have to be open to spending a lot of time exploring and finding out what you are being called to do. This is the role meditation plays in my life. It's almost like feeling someone knocking on the door and having to put myself in the right state to answer it.

 

[HoldAll]

I always do Geoff Grey-Cobbs NAP before meditating, it helps me to relax any muscles I didn't even know were tense (for some reason, it's always the right thigh). So far, meditation has been an endless source of fascination for me and I can't imagine it ever becoming boring - not that I can't wait to get on my cushion each day, it's just astounding how much useless garbage is going round and round in my head at all the time (what I used to call 'thinking' ), and once you try to remove all that trash, it starts to fight back. Amazing, all that to and fro in my brain.

I'm a plodder by nature so I don't really mind doing the same exercise every day for months, or you could also say once I've settled into a routine, it's very hard to switch over to new things. I tell myself, "Ok, you've been doing the LBRP twice daily for almost a year now, wouldn't it be high time if you added the Middle Pillar one of these days?" but I seem to be stuck somehow… I guess I don't get bored so easily as you. It was the same in the gym, always the same machines in the exact same sequence, as if I was afraid of any variations.

Maybe you need a challenge that includes ascending levels of proficiency to climb, like in a computer game or a martial art where you have grading exams to earn higher and higher belts. I don't think hopping from one occult field to the other in search of ever more intense titillations to stave off your boredom is the answer, you'll only get more jaded. Have you seen that "Energy Work: 101, 201, 301, 401 and 501" file I posted last year? That would be such an example where you progress from one level to the next, give it a try!

 

[Pyrographer]

I don't think hopping from one occult field to the other in search of ever more intense titillations to stave off your boredom is the answer, you'll only get more jaded.

I'm not sure if this is referencing what I posted, but in the context of this thread it seems to be. If that is the case, I need to clarify as I was in no way suggesting OP hop from path to path. It's more of seeing reflections of your work in unexpected places. I hope no one interprets my suggestion as to mean to try following someone else's traditions or adopt them as your own.

 

[HoldAll]

I'm not sure if this is referencing what I posted, but in the context of this thread it seems to be. If that is the case, I need to clarify as I was in no way suggesting OP hop from path to path. It's more of seeing reflections of your work in unexpected places. I hope no one interprets my suggestion as to mean to try following someone else's traditions or adopt them as your own.

Oh no, @Vandheer posted something similiar before, so I just tried to put myself in his shoes. That path hopping I mentioned looks like a seductive and even logical option in such cases, one that leads nowhere in my opinion, but I thought that one up myself without any inspiration from other posts in this thread - no slight whatsoever intended.

 

[Galahad]

Just like working out, occult training can feel like a chore sometimes. After a certain while it does start to feel like doing the same thing over and over.

How do you get over the issue? Problem isn't the lack of discipline in the question mind you, or the lack of progress. I am more talking about how things get stale after a while.

Good question but difficult to answer without a deeper knowledge of the situation.

It is worth remembering that the mind is not the same thing as Essence. The mind has largely been given to us by a society which wants it to run the programs useful to that society. Those programs run very, very deep. The mind also has an inbuilt firewall that will "protect" against any programs which might put the mind to uses other than those socially approved. This ranges from "magic isn't real" to "this is boring, give me something more exciting". This is why any genuine spiritual Work, where we train the mind, is so difficult. Your feelings of boredom may well be part of this; the mind trying to sabotage Work that it knows, subconsciously, is yielding fruit, even if it's not visible yet.

That being said, if a practice has been going on for years and has become completely arid and nothing is changing after persisting with it, I would then say it's time to throw a curveball and work through one curriculum of a completely different system for a few months. Then return to your original practices. If they immediately bore you again, it might be that you've outgrown that system, that there's nothing left there that resonates with you. If, on the other hand, you feel energised by them you'll find that your practice is better than before and you'll probably see the practices in a new light.

Another question I have in mind, do you guys relax in order to meditate, or meditate to relax?

Relax to meditate. Relaxation is a good thing anyway but it also, ironically, puts us in a place where we can make relaxation work for us. However, it's also important to relax without meditation. We should spend time "doing nothing".

 

[Vandheer]

It is worth remembering that the mind is not the same thing as Essence. The mind has largely been given to us by a society which wants it to run the programs useful to that society. Those programs run very, very deep. The mind also has an inbuilt firewall that will "protect" against any programs which might put the mind to uses other than those socially approved. This ranges from "magic isn't real" to "this is boring, give me something more exciting".

Yeah, perhaps I am suffering from "forces working tenfold to out me back to sleep" per Gurdjieff here.

I follow Initiation Into Hermetics, a structured approach isn't what I lack. There are other sources I use for training too, like that Mouni Sadhu book I always mention, but I always work them in sync. So it ends up being the same excersise more or less.

Lack of results is not a problem either.

Have you seen that "Energy Work: 101, 201, 301, 401 and 501" file I posted last year?

Thats a good fucking share, man. I always like "here is what you will do" type of papers. 501 seems pretty fun to do. Do let me know if you have more of this.

 

[HoldAll]

Thats a good fucking share, man. I always like "here is what you will do" type of papers. 501 seems pretty fun to do. Do let me know if you have more of this.

You might like this one then, just groundwork exercises, no frills, much less complicated and involved than the old Bardon IIH wringer.

 

[Amadeus]

I have felt this a lot, especially in the past. Boredom, everything getting stale, I had many struggles for years.

Decided to look for a good solution and then I figured out the right approach.

I created a systematic approach. Mainly, I keep to one specific core practice, together with a side quest and some side-side quests. At first maybe the core practice takes 50% of the time, others 20-20-10%. After a while I change the %'s and make the side practice the main one. This makes the whole thing much more interesting. Maybe 50+20+20 and the 10% something new, experimentation, many ways to set it up.
The %'s change on the go, might stick to one practice for x days, weeks, months, then change, again and again. I like to call these "streaks".

"Relax in order to meditate, or meditate to relax?" The second option. Meditate to reach altered states and relax.

 

[Anziel_Merkaba]

The trick is to make your practice a part of your life in the same way as taking a shower making dinner. When your practice is integrated into your life and not a "lets go out and do this" sort of thing, it becomes internalized, which has two main benefits.

First, it becomes something that you won't randomly stop doing even if you lose the "fun value" of it. Yeah it might lose the sparkle of novelty, but if you aren't just getting into the practice for novelty then you don't need it to be novel. One could even argue that getting into the practice for the novelty is the wrong approach to take (I don't think so myself, but I can see where some would make that argument).

Second, when your practice is internalized in that way, it actually becomes stronger in some ways. When your practice isn't just a part of your life, and is something "other", you are differentiating it from your normal self. When it is fully internalized and not an "other" thing, you don't have the psychological separation from it, which is incredibly beneficial to directing your will into your workings and letting them work, especially if you do a lot of theurgy or higher-self operations.

 

[IllusiveOwl]

Practice is the most engaging and exciting part of my day. During mundane hours, it's just a matter of roboticslly doing and saying the right things, like balancing a spoon of oil while going from point A to B, while trying to look around at at least enjoy it to some degree. But when I practice? That is a completely different experience.

How do you think those rituals got written? Who did those magicians learn those rituals from? How about them? The authors of the original rituals created them through living intuition, the process wasn't boring or routine in any way to them, they were interracting and dancing with the living energies of our cosmos.

Meditation isn't about relaxation for me, though you do need to be calm and collected in the same way you need to be when flying a helicopter. Meditation is a live and dynamic process of insight and development, a connecting and merging with your inner flame and a direct interfacing with reality in a way that you can't while an ego.

Perhaps your boredom is a sign that you need to move on to another more intense or intuitive stage. Maybe you're blocked in some way or have fallen back asleep to a degree.

Magic fucks with the very essence of life itself, if you're doing it right I can imagine it being as boring as working with fire

 

[Zineth-Pagnae]

do you guys relax in order to meditate, or meditate to relax?

I´d say Yes... I mean, If you can voluntarily induce relaxation in yourself, either to mitigate unease, to maintain a balance or for another reason, I suspect that would at least partially involve some sort of meditative technique, simple or complex as it may be, and conversely, if you consistently engage with meditative practices, relaxation will likely ensue, and so it´s a cycle that self-potentiates. And as cycles often do, one that invites the meditator to learn to find a kind of balance within it.

 

[beardedeldridge]

Just stick with it. Discipline is just continuing to follow a path even when you don’t feel like it. In my experience, you eventually just power through it. One time I took a few days (secluded, mediation, fasting, etc…) and focused on finding guidance on a new path forward when it felt like that wasn’t the way to go. Geomancy/Tarot/Cards/Bibliomancy/Conjure all kept coming back with the same answer, mostly what I had been doing but with a change in focus. It wasn’t really what I wanted to hear but once I accepted it and moved on with no reservations about the path, the fog of boredom just disappeared. ymmv

*I usually relax to meditate, mediation is the tool but relaxing isn’t the goal.

-Eld