When You Don't Feel Like Meditating

Instead, I tried to sit with the feeling and tried being curious about why I didn’t want to meditate (is this the right way to deal with these feelings?) […] So for most (all actually) of the session I sat there trying to feel what was behind those feelings.

100% correct intuition. That’s what I’d do. If you want some further pointers I’d get you to do this:

1. Notice the actual feelings of resistance, aversion, and boredom and just sit with them wherever they are. Notice where the feelings are in the body and just focus there for a while. And just keep lightly scanning the body for wheverer you feel resistance/tightness.
2. A way I like to coax out the body feelings is like this. I’ll mentally say to myself: “boredom, where are you?” I’ll scan the body and within 2-3 seconds, my mind will just “jump” to wherever it is in the body. I just rest awareness there and notice the sensations.
3. Going deeper, once you’re at the sensations, notice how they appear. Is it tension, tightness, is it a “big” sensation or a “small” sensation? Does it ripple out further? Or is it a kind of heaviness that makes the body feel like its “dragging” down on itself? Just sit there and notice it all.
4. Eventually, start focusing on these body sensations and see what they’re made of. Normally, they’ll be like pixels, dots, vibrations, tiny little pulses, however it appears to you. Do not try and force yourself to see them as pixels/vibrations/etc. just keep watching until they break down on their own. Keep doing this for whatever sensation arises in the body associated with boredom, etc.
5. Now turn your focus to the mind. The mind has two broad aspects with which we’ll work. First, the mind has contents E.g. “thinking of an apple”. And the mind has quality E.g. “scared, bored, etc.”. Usually, they’re connected. “I am afraid of this apple” or “I am excited to eat the apple”. Start to see how the mind moves around content and quality. Does quality proceed content? Or does content proceed quality?
6. Next, you can start to see how the thoughts themselves arise, and where from. Just watch the mind. Try landing your mind on different contents and notice mental quality. Try landing your mind into different qualities and notice the contents change. You can experiment with this in your day. When its time to meditate, and you notice the mind quality of boredom with the content of meditation. Try switching the content. Try thinking of videogames or something fun. Notice how the quality changes. Now change the quality to anger, and notice how the content changes to something else.
7. After doing this long enough, you can start to notice that the link between boredom and meditation is not some magical link that’ll always exist. The mind qualities and contents just keep spinning in this crazy circle. The mind thinks itself into problems and then invents artificial solutions for them. E.g. “I’d rather be doing something fun instead of meditating because meditating is boring!” But eventually that fun thing becomes boring too? So it really fun? Is it really going to always be fun forever? Could this be the same with meditation, but from the opposite perspective? Hmmm… I wonder :) Eventually, you’ll notice how the mind constructs your reality.

Another cool exercise I like to do with emotions is this:

1. Do steps (1), (2), and (3) as above. Sit in the emotions.
2. Now as you’re sitting in this emotion, expand your awareness to the body, and the surrounding environment. Keep the “emotional body feeling” in the center of awareness.
3. Now you have a big integrated field of awareness with the emotion felt at the centre, notice how reality starts to change. E.g. when you’re angry, noises might be very grating. When you’re happy, noises are light and wispy. Notice how emotions colour your reality. But also keep in mind, these are the very same sensations just being filtered differently because of the emotions.
4. Now, and this has to be eased into gently, notice how the way you see the feelings of emotion is coloured by the very emotion itself. This one is a bit hard to wrap around. But I’ll explain with an example. When I am happy, my feelings of happiness feels extra special, like they’re something precious and to be preserved. But then I go deeper into the happiness, and I find fear. Fear of losing this precious feeling of happiness. And I find greed. My mind wants to be happy all the time no matter what. The good emotion has to be kept, protected, and never let go of. I’m trying to “hoard” the emotion. This is subtle clinging to emotions, and aversion to change. The sensations of happiness themselves are not all happy!
5. Notice this and just sit with it. With your boredom, you can just notice how behind boredom there might be anger, sadness, happiness, fear, etc… Just accept these sensations and do not do anything. There is nothing wrong with this. This is the way things are now. Do not interfere with anything. Let the mind unravel itself after it’s worked to notice it all.

Given your PTSD, I’d encourage you to do this gently and safely. Always meditate from a position of mental health. A little bit of existential dread is OK and to be expected on the path. However, depression/anxiety/panic attacks/dissociation means there’s something not good happening. You will know when things are painfully good (leading to growth), or painfully bad (leading to deterioration).

All the best on your journey, my friend! :) Let me know if I need to clarify anything here.