The Night Life

I will begin by saying this essay was inspired by a fellow blogger who wrote about being sleepless, struggling with insomnia. I am up a few hours later reading her blog, and she got me thinking... out loud!

When I was young, I was a night person. My children are today. But I wasn't a night person to party... being a writer most of my life, the night was when the muses were out, and with the help of music, I was able to touch the infinite possiblities... to fly beyond the boundaries of our gravitational pull, and touch the sky. I was able to climb out of the whirling chaos of daily thinking, and worrying, and was able to let go of the beast that tries to suck our spiritual and emotional energies out of us... stress.

So I have a special affinity for the night time. I once read that the hours between 3 and 5 am are almost "magical" and I have had the opportunity to put that to the test many times. I still love the peace of the early morning. And when I do enter those magical hours in my concious state, I still feel the magic!

But I have had to learn to balance that with my daily needs of having to take care of job and family, and I have not always been successful. Lately I sleep pretty well, but I have always gotten up two or three times in the night (my thanks go out to the soda pop creators of the world and my deep passion for bubbly liquids!)

My blog friend talked about the difficulties of falling asleep that she has. How I can relate to that as well. Somedays you just wish you could flip a switch, and the brain noise would instantly shut off. I've got another very special friend that doesn't sleep most nights as well. Business troubles consume his mind most nights. I can relate there! I am self employed, and many are the nights devoted to how to catch that elusive dollar bill! If only I could figure an honest way to bill all the time I have worked on client's issues during the sleepless hours! (I understand lawyers have figured it out...)

I would suggest to my sleepless blog friend the wonders of drugs and alcohol, but she has been much smarter in her life and has avoided those pitfalls! She'll never know the joy of waking up beside the toilet and not remembering how you got there!

So do I have an answer for her? I know what has worked for me, but we each walk life a little differently, and I don't know if my remedies would be of much value! But some years ago, I began simple meditation. I'm not talking about the Hollywood version of meditation... lots of chants and candles and sitting weird and mumbling. I'm talking about simply focusing on stilling the muscles of the body first, and "letting go" of thoughts. Like anything, it takes practice. When we are used to letting the mind go hither and yon around our brain pans, it takes a great deal of patience to open some kind of window in the head and let the thoughts go out of that instead of bouncing around in the space between our ears!

I have always been a very abstract thinker, and am very good at visualization. These are tools I can use to help me "let go" of the daily grind. My favorite vision with letting go of thoughts is to see them as clouds drifting away... being a sky person, this is the easiest visualization for me! I have written many peices about "inner peace." Most of us are so caught up in this life that we don't even know how to begin the search. My first steps toward success was to "let go" of the media. Talk about shoving stress down our throats! But I also have had to learn to "let go" of those things that most consume my thinking... at least for a little while. To realize that everything we think today is absolutely important and has to get done will be meaningless a year from now helps me gain perspective, and helps me cling less to todays thoughts... at least in the moment. And it is the moment that is all we are ever given to live in, if you think about it!

My friend talked about living the past and the future and today all at once, and all the time! That's a lot of thoughts to be cycling through in any given moment, and I'm sure all of us relate to how that works! Computer speeds are nothing compared to the speed of this marvelous brain we each have! We can worry over a lot of stuff in a matter of moments somedays! The trick that has worked for me is to realize I can shut off all noise... for one second. With a little practice, I can then shut off the noise for 2 seconds.

And once you get a feel for "hearing silence..." a whole new world opens up...

More on that later!