Why You Should Embrace Being a Boring Person
Especially during and after a spiritual awakening
It’s been almost six years now since I entered into a spiritual awakening. I have been through the Dark Night of the Soul phase , and got to know my inner child and her core traumas. I did a lot of inner work these past years and discovered a lot of things about my conditioning.
I experienced many positive and negative side effects from my spiritual awakening. Being the best effect that I learned to always go with the flow and appreciate all things life throws at me, even the negative parts. I feel generally very at peace on a day-to-day basis.
But one negative side effect that I have a hard time dealing with is how boring it made me.
Of course, boring is a subjective feeling and maybe should not be perceived as such. But the truth is that it’s hard for me to just have fun since my spiritual awakening.
From extrovert to introvert
I used to travel a lot — to 45 countries to be precise. I loved this part of my life because I loved meeting new people and going on spontaneous adventures. I was always up for a last-minute party and would hardly say ‘no’ to any new experiences that could make my life more interesting.
I would consider myself quite an extrovert before my spiritual awakening.
Most of the time, I was easy to talk to and didn’t have a hard time engaging in conversations. I didn’t often speak about serious things and was generally just easy to be around.
But after my spiritual awakening, I turned into a complete introvert. The people I used to hang out with bore me with their shallow conversations. I didn’t want to engage in gossip anymore, and I realized that a lot of my interactions with people were based on that.
Parties also didn’t interest me anymore. I was very aware of the damage I was doing to my body by consuming alcohol and/or drugs. And going sober to a party turned out to be not nearly as fun for me.
No more parties
Looking back at it now, I used to love partying because it gave me a reason to escape my ‘real life’. The weekend was the moment to unwind, dance, and let go of everything. This often involved getting drunk and/or high and partying till the crack of dawn.
The next day, I would be useless because my hangovers would prevent me from doing anything active the day after. I didn’t really care, though — I had nothing better to do anyway. Sunday was ‘Netflix and food order day’ during my party years.
But when I discovered spirituality in my life, I wanted to absorb all the things I could learn about it. A whole new world opened up to me; from trance-like meditations to lucid dreaming and Kundalini activations.
My Saturdays now consisted of going to healing ceremonies or taking plant medicine.
The Shadow Side of an Awakening
But a real spiritual awakening eventually forces you into the Dark Night of the Soul. After all, the entire reason you entered into an awakening is to get to know the real you.
For me, this meant going deep inside my childhood wounds and the reasons why I was always traveling, or actually running away. I discovered a lot about my toxic patterns and shadow sides.
During that time, I completely isolated myself.
I had so much going on in my mind that I could not bear being around others. Let alone hearing their gossip, or dancing the night away.
I spent complete weekends alone in my house , going deeper and deeper into the shadows of my being. Some might have called it depression, and in hindsight, it might have been close to that.
All I wanted was to spend time in nature and with myself. I had no motivation to work or spend my time with people who were not open to anything spiritual.
Boredom and spiritual awakenings
Being bored and feeling boring is a part of the awakening process. It’s hard to let go of the person you once thought you were, and sometimes you miss them. I sometimes wish I could go back to being that carefree, happy backpacker that I used to be, not questioning every little thing that happens in my life.
I guess that feeling boring around others is a natural reaction if you compare your life with your previous friends. Looking at their Instagram stories might even worsen that effect ; it seems like the whole world is having fun except you.
And I think this is exactly where the lesson lies: you cannot compare your life to somebody else’s anymore.
Your life is unique and so are you.
Everything always happens at the exact right moment , and that includes your spiritual awakening and being boring for a while.
It doesn’t help to dwell on the past and the person you used to be, they no longer exist. And that is actually a good thing. If you learn to fully accept yourself at this very moment, you will also attract the right situations in your life.
High sensitivity
I discovered that one of the reasons that I became boring is because I got hyper-sensitive to a lot of things around me. One of them are cities. I feel the chaos and intense sounds and lights deep inside my body, and it overwhelms me.
I am very aware of the environment I place myself in, and if that emits a lot of negative energy, it directly affects me. Nightclubs also tend to have a lot of bad energy often, many people there just want to escape their lives (no judgment here, I was one of them for almost all my life!).
Being around negative people also impacts my personal energy. I tend to take on and feel their problems inside myself. My spiritual awakening made me a lot more empathetic, and absorbing energies is a direct result of that.
I now prefer to spend time alone and not be influenced by so many energies around me.
Boring and happy alone
I think that one of the main reasons why awakened people tend to feel boring is because they learned to be happy alone. Our whole lives, we have learned to distract ourselves with external things. We always strive for the next best thing, and it’s very hard to enjoy the moment right now.
But if you have passed through the Dark Night of the Soul, you have learned to be happy with just yourself. You no longer need all those distractions, and you can genuinely enjoy your own company.
In the beginning, it was really hard for me to have nothing to do on the weekends. I felt shame when people asked me what my plans were for Saturday night — I literally had none.
Being alone in my house on a Saturday night amplified my feeling of being boring. I knew all my friends were having fun and getting drunk, and I was just sitting on my couch with a self-help book or watching a spiritual documentary.
It was only when I forced myself to go to some parties that I realized: This is not me anymore. I can’t pretend that I like to party any longer , it just makes me feel further removed from the people around me. And with that, further removed from myself.
Being boring helped me discover my gifts
There is one beautiful silver lining in feeling boring after your awakening: you have more time to discover your unique talents.
Imagine all that time you used to spend chasing happiness (in alcohol/drugs, sex, or money), material things, and achievements. And once you reached it, the next thing was already waiting in line.
But after your spiritual awakening, you know you don’t need to chase any of those things anymore . You are simply whole as you are right now. This leaves you with so much more time to discover your gifts.
Maybe you are a great musician, love painting/drawing, or unmask the hidden writer in yourself. Being boring helps you to really develop that side of yourself.
In my case, I realized I can express myself in written words better than with speech. I discovered that my body and my health are my best allies, and allow me to practice all the outdoor sports that I love.
Becoming friends with my body and my mind gave me so much gratitude for the boring parts in my life. Because in exactly those boring moments, I forced myself to do something just for me, whether that be meditation, yoga, or journaling.
Trusting my intuiton
Of course, I still think about those fun, carefree moments that used to define my life when I was traveling a lot. And yes, I do still miss that person as well.
But one result of my spiritual awakening is that I learned to trust in my intuition. And my intuition tells me now that I am just happier right now while being boring. It might be an extended version of the ‘cocoon stage’ of the spiritual awakening process, and I am not sure if this is going to last forever.
I still have hope that at some point I’ve done enough inner work to be able to simply just have fun again, but until then, there is nothing wrong with being boring.
If you’re craving a deeper connection with yourself and feel ready to begin again, I highly recommend this course. If you’re longing for a reset, this might be just what you need.