Dear Diary,
In my surroundings I have a whole crowd of people who periodically complain that in the evening, upon settling into bed, sleep travels to them very slowly and very reluctantly. So today I’d like to try, as an offering, to lay out some practical, tangible-benefit-providing entry. Maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t, who knows me… :-)
The ability to fall asleep essentially instantly arrived in the first or second year after meditation and other spiritualities occupied my attention and curiosity. The times, I remember, were difficult – the empty refrigerator hummed in the kitchen, companies were laying off employees by the handful and nobody was burning with desire to hire them, growing debts weighed on my shoulders, so the main occupation was sitting day after day without work or food, suffering an endless barrage of darkest thoughts and emotions. I write and don’t even believe that what seems now such a colorful, full and generous life could be completely different – as if all that simply happened in a dream or formed in a wild fantasy. However, images from a neighboring country prove that there are no guarantees the bright period has arrived forever – only this time it could become not the work of an accidental global financial crisis, but the efforts and dreams of two sick individuals who dream of turning all planetary inhabitants’ lives into hell.
Be that as it may, I noticed that from the morning I’d start glancing at the clock and waiting for evening. Because in the evenings a rather tangible and then very useful miracle began forming – when turning off the light, lying down and closing my eyes, everything would suddenly simply disappear. The room with all its furniture disappeared, the house, the yard, the city and the world. Creditors and debtors disappeared. A past full of wrong turns and a frightening tomorrow disappeared. The bed I was lying on disappeared, the pillow on which I had laid my head, and along with them I myself disappeared – with my fears, obligations, self-reproach, history, name and other attributes. I began noticing the process precisely from the room disappearing – earlier, even with eyes closed I knew perfectly well – the room is here and I am in it. There stands the wardrobe, I feel it even with eyes closed, in the other corner the television, at the bed’s headboard the window, beside it the desk and so on. But perhaps that wardrobe is no longer there? Perhaps the bailiffs quietly carried it off in the dark for debts? You can’t see it, can’t hear it, can’t feel it. You simply know it was there or at least was there before closing your eyes and now you blindly cling to a certain image-based model in your head. An image-based model in which, in fact, you actually exist. Let go of that model and that’s it, you find yourself where you actually are when you’re in darkness and silence – in boundless peace permeated emptiness. An emptiness that instantly lulls and puts you to sleep, not letting you savor it for longer.
I believe that falling asleep is unspeakably difficult when lying down with closed eyes we don’t stop holding in our thoughts the image of the wardrobe, the room, the city, the country, the planet and the entire universe. Especially since it’s not fixed, but hurtling from bitter past to frightening imagined future. Can you imagine what size construction your little head is trying to hold at that moment? What percentage of brain resources does such complexity, variety and detail of the image require? About what instant sleep are you dreaming when your inner processor is loaded at a full hundred percent and even hissing overheated to red?
So, despite all the complexity written above above, the recipe is short and simple. You lie down, close your eyes, and everything that should remain is simply the act of lying itself. The wardrobe? Let go. Tomorrow? Let go. The attempt to fall asleep? Let go. The one lying down? Let go of even them and wish them a good journey. We sense only what is real at this moment – the lying-down process and savor it. And after a minute or two, we sweetly, sweetly fall asleep. The same mechanism works when waking in the early hours, turning to the other side – we see how inside a blockhead woke up with its “Oh no, I need to jump out of bed, read the news, run, drive, socialize, change the world!”, we kick it out of our inner space and immerse ourselves in savoring lying down, which soon again sweetly disconnects us.
Sweet dreams and a meaningful weekend! :-)
