Five Vulnerable Things Vol. 37
On hot boredom, hoarded gifts, and learning how to receive
Monsoon Season is a newsletter and podcast for self-mastery by meditation teacher and writer, Asa Yee. It lives at the intersection of culture, consciousness, and creativity. It is about the messy, beautiful, non-linear work of becoming, the courage to be seen, and the belief that the most spiritual thing any of us can do is be vulnerable.
Hi soul friends!
This has been quite the week. Between experiencing two rejections, one from a scholarship for a group cohort training, another from a podcast guest invitation, dealing with sharp chronic pain in my neck and shoulders, and having many expansive moments for the podcast, including hosting a very special guest, Olivia Wickstrom with 161 people joining us live for the episode recording.
I’ve been experiencing the full range of human emotion like a kaleidoscope.
It’s weeks like these that I feel the ten gallon capacity of my heart. Right when I think I can’t feel more, I stretch, and find room for life to slip in. It’s weeks like this one that I taste the fruit of truly letting myself be seen, as opposed to pushing, fixing, and trying to force the outcomes in my favor.
Now, five vulnerable things.
1. “Sit through the hot boredom til it becomes cool boredom.”
Lately my meditation sits have felt very hot. Not because it’s the middle of summer in humid, sticky South Carolina, but because my mind has been restless and agitated, jumping from thought to thought too fast to even catch, refusing to settle. I’ve been struggling to sit in the pocket of one of my favorite pastimes: being bored.
Pema Chödrön has been a teacher on my path for many years, and recently I heard her talk about boredom in a way I’d never encountered before. She was referencing Chögyam Trungpa’s The Myth of Freedom, which has an entire chapter devoted to boredom, and to why it’s actually a wonderful thing. His reasoning: boredom doesn’t feed the ego at all.
Pema described two kinds.
Hot boredom is the one we know intimately. It has a jumpiness to it, a wanting to bolt, a low grade panic that says get me the fuck out of here. Cool boredom is different. You sit there with the feeling of boredom and it’s simply no problem.
She admitted that when she first heard teachings on cool boredom, she didn’t have a clue what they meant. It wasn’t until she went to Mexico, to a place her parents had, that something clicked. What she found there was this: the suffering was never coming from the boredom itself. It was coming from the resistance to it.
That line hooked into my heart. Becoming a dharmic person, she said, is a quality of not grabbing for entertainment the minute we feel a slight edge of boredom coming on. It’s a practice of not immediately filling up space just because there’s a gap.
2. Give your gifts away.
Growing up in a South Asian, Bangladeshi household, it was law to bring something over to a guest’s house. It didn’t matter if it was the hundredth time you’d seen this person, you had to bring sweets, a giant bottle of orange Fanta (always a hit), or a box of perfectly ripened champagne mangoes. My mom has brought a set of bedsheets before. She’s even shown up with brand new pots and pans that had been hoarded in our hallway closet, because she panicked and didn’t have anything else on hand.
It’s also customary in our culture that the moment you bring something over, it gets opened and devoured, together. Not the sheets, but the edible stuff. Everyone gets a little, everyone gets a bite. It was considered rude not to share, rude to enjoy something alone instead of in company. And somehow it always tastes better with other people.
One day in high school, I went over to an American classmates’s house to work on a school project and brought a box of Ferrero Rocher, the Rolex of chocolates for Asians. I stood there waiting for her mom to open them, only to watch her smile and immediately tuck the box away in a cupboard. My heart sank. I’d been banking on enjoying those chocolates with them, and I kept glancing at that cupboard hour after hour, waiting for her to surprise everyone and pull them back out. I’m still waiting on those Rocher.
I share this story because so many of us are hoarding our gifts away, tucking them into a cupboard, never shared, never enjoyed with the greater collective. This week has been a testament to that. The more generous I’ve been with my gifts and abilities, holding space, connecting with strangers online, excavating their most vulnerable stories, the more I’ve enjoyed the visit. Because let’s face it, it was never about the gifts. It’s about the experience, and the feeling that arises when we exchange in good company and eat our fill.
3. Start with the grip, not the belief.
I recently left a voice note for a friend, updating her on the past few months of life (hey Divya!). I tried to paint a vivid picture without turning it into a podcast. At one point I distinctly remember saying, “I’m trying really hard to let go, and surrender.” I started laughing so hard.
I was going to TRY REALLY HARD to surrender.
I heard it the moment the words left my mouth.
Something I’ve noticed with clients, and with people I’ve had the pleasure of talking to, is that our language reveals so much about where we are not free. This happened again when I texted a few close confidants asking how I could change my relationship to money and call in more, and I wrote, “I’ve always been bad at money and money energetics.” There it is again. There’s the belief, being bad at money, or I want to surrender, and then there’s the attachment to that belief. That attachment is what turns the pain from annoying kind to the acute and unbearable stuff.
My friend Zoey gave such sound advice. She said it sounds like I’m ready to shed the old story. Most of us are. Where we sometimes trip up is trying to fix the belief itself, when we actually need to start with the grip the belief has on us. It’s like untangling a wire. You don’t start at the center of the knot. You look for the place where there’s an opening, a spot you can start to wiggle and loosen.
Because the truth isn't "I'm bad at money." The truth is I grew up around scarcity, and scarcity taught me to brace before I even reached for anything. So maybe the practice right now isn't fixing my relationship to money at all. Maybe it's just learning how to receive. To let something come toward me without flinching first.
4. The illusion of finding awareness
During a guided meditation last week, I heard the teacher say:
You cannot find awareness the way you find objects because awareness is not an object. It is the finder. Think of it this way: you are standing in a room. I ask you to walk towards the window — you can do that. I ask you to walk towards the door — you can do that.
Now I ask you to walk toward yourself.
Try it.
You cannot.
Every step you take is a step taken by you. You are always already where you are trying to go. This is the nature of awareness. Every attempt to find it is made from it. Every search begins and ends inside the very thing being searched for. The seeker is the sought.
— Hari
This is the kind of lesson that's easy to hear and hard to let permeate. So many of my "bad mental health days" happen when I forget this truth, when I mistake looking for awareness the way I'd look for a missing set of keys or a rogue sock. We exhaust ourselves in the search. But keys eventually turn up in the freezer, or on the counter the whole time. What most of us are actually looking for is ourselves. A sense of arriving. But, you can’t search for yourself forward or backward. Only inward.
5. What's been saving my neck.
I've been dealing with chronic pain in my neck for years, and the past few weeks it's been the worst it's been in a long time. I've been going through the icing and heating routine, doing all the usual things, but the thing that's actually given me relief is this 10-minute neck stretch routine. If you also carry tension in your neck and shoulders, this one has been a genuine life-saver for me.
MONSOON SUMMER Playlist
Making playlists is a love language, and I made this one just for you. It feels like biting into a sun-ripened tropical mango, barefoot. Sticky and alive.
Press play—enjoy!
About Me
I’m Asa. I am a Bangladeshi-American meditation teacher, writer, and podcast host.
I believe vulnerability is the most powerful thing we have. Not as a tactic, but as the actual portal to building a life and a business that feels like yours. The more honest we are about who we are and what we struggle with, the more we give other people permission to do the same. That is the whole philosophy behind everything I create.
Born and raised in New York. Living in Charleston. I am a cinephile, a mango connoisseur, and a chai addict. So glad you are here — make yourself at home. 🤎
Stay soft,
🥭 Asa
Until next time, honey!
What an honor it was to chat with you!! Trying really hard to surrender is the most relatable thing I've read all week. And the Ferrero Rocher story! Loved this one, Asa :)
Asa, this is so beautifully written! Thank you. Have a great weekend!🧡