The idea that we each have any answer we have ever sought already inside of us is pretty spectacular.
When so many people live with depression, unhappiness, grief, anger, pessimism, fury and despair…if we really had all the answers inside us, then why don’t we find them?
I know one reason for me has been BECAUSE I’M TOO BUSY BELIEVING EVERYTHING I THINK!
I wasn’t asking myself very good questions. Or any questions! I was just feeling frustrated, scared, nervous or sad. Just FEELING.
The mind is racing as if it’s trying to find the perfect answer ASAP and discarding most potential ideas as “not good enough”. Like an obsessed dog chasing its tail!
Stress feels like thinking, then quicker than lightening having a feeling that isn’t fun or peaceful, then thinking something about THAT, then feeling again…like a ping pong ball game going 204 miles per hour. No room for slowing down and relaxing.
I remember Byron Katie talking about sleep to someone who had trouble with it, and I loved coming across the very same topic again not long ago with a client.
I recalled a man being upset about his lack of sleep. Katie said that in the middle of the night, when he couldn’t sleep, he could say to himself “how do I know I’m supposed to be awake? I am!” and that he could then do The Work.
These words rose up before me when at one point in my life when I had trouble sleeping. I would wake up every night around 3:00 am as I was traveling through my divorce. I was so unbelievably exhausted, I had never had trouble before sleeping my entire life with the exception of an occasional bad dream or worrisome situation like everyone does sometimes…but it was rare. Until then.
In the middle of the night when all was very quiet and it felt like all the world was asleep and everything was closed…I would be there with myself in full view. Nowhere to go.
I would start to write out my thoughts. They were very repetitive. I’ve been abandoned, I can’t stand it, I won’t make it, my life is ruined, I will never be the same again, I can never succeed, I need more money, this is a disaster…
The fear was terrible. The grief was horrendous.
However, not everyone wakes up because they are afraid. But everyone who wakes up and WANTS to go back to sleep, and cannot, always has some kind of problem with their thoughts.
If only the mind and “thinking” could be turned off….then I could sleep!
We all know, it’s impossible to turn off the mind with will power, or force, or demand, or pushing. Have you noticed how the mind keeps on going like the Energizer Bunny Grand Pooh Bah of The Universe?
No….the only thing that’s ever worked for me is to investigate what I’m actually thinking, believing, repeating over and over, ruminating on, and dwelling in.
This investigation can include, if you don’t find super stressful beliefs plaguing you, what you believe about SLEEP.
Let’s say you aren’t terrified out of your gourd like I was…and you STILL wake up at 3:00 am, or you toss and turn and think.
You might have a thought or two that is pretty stressful about sleep itself. I need to sleep now, I will feel awful tomorrow (as usual), I hate my mind, I can’t stand this, I have to find the answer to this sleep problem, this life is not working with lack of sleep, I don’t know what to do, I’ve tried everything.
One of my favorite questions in the investigation of thought is to ask “what would I be afraid of, if I didn’t have this stressful thinking?”
So in other words, if I wasn’t stressed about NOT SLEEPING? What’s the worst that could happen?
I’d just accept lack of sleep, eternally! I’d be wasted and drained and never enjoy life, forever! I’d always be worried every night when I lay down! I wouldn’t try to solve this problem! I’d feel hopeless!
Bruce Di Marsico, who was another wonderful inquirer with a little different flavor than Byron Katie, asks “why would NOT being stressed about something mean these terrible things would happen….or that change would NEVER happen unless you were stressed?”
What if I questioned all my angry attack thoughts about sleep and me needing more of it? What if I really imagined NOT being bugged about lack of sleep anymore…What if I imagined not having the thought “I need to sleep, I want to sleep, I hate my mind, here we go again”.
When I discovered that 3:00 am is an amazing magical time to do The Work because there are no distractions…that is when I found hope for the first time that I might have my own answers inside of myself.
I started finding turnarounds to all my painful thinking, even if I didn’t whole-heartedly believe them…I am not abandoned, I am found, I can stand this, my life is being born anew, it is so exciting that I will not be the same again, I am succeeding and I can succeed, my life is an amazing adventure, everything is possible. WOW.
Giving up being against something, even against not sleeping, can be frightening and weird and unusual and difficult. Of course I want to sleep, jeez! I hate not sleeping!
“Throughout the day you actually hit the edges of your cage. When you hit these edges, you either pull back or try to force things to change so that you can remain comfortable. You actually use the brilliance of your mind to stay inside your cage. Day and night you plot and plan how to stay within your comfort zone. Sometimes you can’t even fall asleep at night because you’re too busy thinking about what you need to do to stay within your cage: ‘How can I make it so that she will never leave me? How can I keep her from ever becoming interested in someone else?’ You’re trying to figure out how to be sure that you won’t hit the edges of your cage.”~Michael Singer
Today, I love myself in this moment with compassion for trying so hard to stay inside my own comfort zones and not ever ask myself if things were really as bad as I thought they were. Worrying, pacing, hand-wringing, wondering, mulling over things, distrusting, anxious…
It never occurred to me to ask myself if it was true.
Love, Grace
