“The partner of boredom is addiction. Passion has no opposite. In passion, addiction and boredom are one.”
False gold will only cut your feet and bind your wings, saying “I will remove your difficulties” when in fact it is only dregs and defeat in the robes of victory. So run, my friends, run fast and furious from all false solutions. Let divine passion triumph, and rebirth you in yourself.”
RUMI
Boredom
A sense of boredom can be the first layer of each contraction and is also often the energetic substance between the personality and the Dark Night of the Soul. This crust of dullness and non-activity is fundamentally defensive. It says: don’t come here, there is nothing to be found. Yet if we stay a while in the experience of boredom, what can emerge are the first sparks of anger and fear. There can be an annoyance, a restlessness, or a subtle sense of dread. This is normally when consciousness is withdrawn to pursue pathways which promise most pleasure. When we stay a little longer, the sense of boredom can become almost uncontainable. It is not ‘nothing’, but a suffering that could lead to a kind of violence, just to feel ‘something’.
When the freeze of boredom forms a backdrop to the personality to prevent a falling into the trauma-zone of The Dark Night of the Soul (and the liberating light of Being behind that), then there can a lot of trapped vitality in the psyche. Such people can talk very fast, be nervous and generally speedy. When they can unthaw some of the boredom, letting the dense energy express the anger, fear and longing that has been compressed, an integration begins which relaxes the whole psyche and opens channels for a more attuned flow of expression.
Patterns of boredom, like addiction, are the sentient forms of patterns of stress and release, which are part of the biological drive towards survival. In this, they are inherited on a cellular level and when we can loosen the walls of resistance around feelings and emotions, this can allow a re-patterning of stress reflexes that can transform the personality, from the inside-out. Don’t be deterred by boredom: it’s not an end-point but the start of a new dynamic, beyond the known patterns of evasion and dependency that limit personal potential.
Addiction
Addiction is generally associated with substance abuse. However, addiction goes beyond physical substances: we can be addicted to other people, to forms of stimulation, to food or to anything ‘out there’ that gives us a temporary sense of satiation and relief from the suffering of craving. Addiction is the psychological mechanism that espouses patterns of temporary relief from the unendurable stress suffered on the inside. We are all addicted to collective patterns of thought, behavior and conditioning. These patterns of addiction – in which relief from the stress deep inside us is sought from the world outside of us – have taken authority over our direct experience, and by default, over our sense of truth.
Addiction has an atmosphere, which includes despair, dependency, disempowerment, senselessness and primal rage. The craving for satiation and relief is a distorted form of passion. Yet rather than moving with the alchemy of suffering, passion is identified as sourced in the ‘outer’ world. Substances or objects on the outside gain authority over inner experience, increasing dependency, imbalance and the loss of proportions.
As the addictive cycle spirals away from our True Nature, it increasingly exposes a sense of lack and unquenchable craving, which in turn generates greater rage and anxiety around the perceived source of satiation. The intense restlessness of an unfulfilled craving, whether physical or psychological, is generated by the field of the unendurable contraction, often experienced within the energetic freeze of boredom.
Some degree of addiction is at play in all psychological suffering. Both addiction and mental disorder are sourced in trauma.The invitation is to take the struggle home to its existential depth, through withdrawal from the addictive substance. This is a movement of trust in a power beyond the perimeters of the suffering, Separate Self.
Passion emerges where a Nondual Quality is released in alignment with universal need. This doesn’t have to be a remarkable occurrence, as it happens to all of us daily and is part of our deeper sense of purpose and the release of unconditional vitality to nurture and sustain the whole. Yet the pure potency of passion is often released from the ground zero of disillusionment, the space of burn-out that many associate with despair.
While passion can resemble the rush of addiction, it arises from the Source of life as it expresses through form as part of life, and in this, it’s supply is infinite. Passion has the power to shake loose the shackles of both boredom and addiction. The seat of passion recognizes impermanence and therefore is intrinsically free of contraction. When we move out of the seat of passion we are unhooked from the restraints of identity, social norms, conditioning and the survival of the Separate Self.
Passion is an unconditional movement through form, guided by the pure power of care. It is the alchemy at the basis of the personality where suffering transforms to love and takes form as service to the whole. The word passion, in Latin, is synonymous with suffering. Often, our passions are born directly within the area where we have been able to liberate a Nondual Quality. For example, in working with orphaned children after we have been to the pit of loss and abandonment ourselves; or in dedicating ourselves to freedom, after we have suffered the core of psychological and physical slavery and found that our freedom propels us through the gateways of slavery and liberation. To put it another way, we could say that our greatest curse, through the alchemy of passion, becomes a blessing to the whole.
Because passion is always of service to the whole, it doesn’t get entangled with private identity or reward. It moves beyond the illusion of the Separate Self. Passion doesn’t hold back its gifts but lets them express freely – irrespective of acceptance or rejection. Its reward is found instantly in the bliss of its own movement and the joy of togetherness. Passion is the movement of Nondual Qualities into expression, and the simultaneous reception of Nondual Qualities through all the veils of the psyche back to the Source. In this way, passion is an accelerator of both individual and collective evolution.
How does Passion promote physical wellbeing and heal disease?
