"Awake" versus "Asleep"...

I have heard the moment that someone gains Enlightenment sometimes referred to as "waking up."

I've been thinking about that a lot this week as I went through my daily routines, or at least tried to remember to do all the things I _wanted_ to be on my daily routines.

And somehow I got to thinking about the opposite of waking-up... I began thinking about falling-asleep.

I don't know about you, but I can't seem to remember ever actually falling asleep.

I don't mean the getting into bed and curling all comfy under the covers and waiting. I mean the actual moment of falling asleep; I just can't seem to recall a single time where I was aware that I was falling asleep.

I can remember laying in bed, my mind a-rush with all the things that had to be done the next day... colliding with evaluations of all the things that had been done today and wondering how they could be done better in the future... gaining closure on some things... planning modes-of-action for others...

...And then the very next moment I remember waking-up from a dream late at night to let my fifteen year old puppy outside for her nightly potty-ing.


The similarities struck me: between falling asleep... and forgetting that I had planned on doing "exercise Y" "X-times a day" this week... or that I wasn't going to allow myself to get so sucked-into the rather invigorating challenges of my day-job that I worked extra hours off-the-clock at the cost of meditating or vocal or instrument practice.

And the similarities between never realizing that one was falling asleep and one had forgotten a life-altering "truth" one had found during a meditation, a vision, a seminar, a spiritual journey of any kind... well those similarities really hit home.


It made me wonder: Is a lot of my own life spent in that twilight where it's almost like I'm "nodding-off" again and again... and again? Do I have these flashes of understanding and these commitments to bettering myself, to healing my wounds, to fixing my flaws... only to not even notice that I've fallen asleep until I get jolted awake again?

And with life so full of distractions: responsibilities, commitments, obligations, work, church, friends, pack, choir, play, work again, cleaning, cooking, more work, family, my own work for myself... not to mention Netflix Streaming, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, iPhones and all the um-teen (or "um-hundred?") different little things saying "Lookit Me!" at the tops of their little electronic voices... it's no wonder so many of us feel so "zombified" and end-up too tired to meditate, or exercise, or just generally take care of ourselves where it truly matters.


It made me wonder: Is "waking up" a little like "no longer nodding-off" and retaining those moments of clarity and lucidity? Seeing... understanding... and _remaining_ within that space?

- Amadhia

P.S. As a side-note, this is one of the reasons I got so interested in guided meditations: for those times I _needed_ the benefits of meditation, but felt so exhausted or fatigued that I didn't feel I had the strength to keep my focus where I needed it to be, (and knowing that "Practice makes _permanent _.)

This was especially so when I was going through the darkest parts of my recovery after the dis-illusion of my marriage and I was suffering deeply from PTSD. I needed the mental-emotional strength-building that meditation brings, but I had a hard time keeping my mind on any one track for long.

A _good_ guided meditation (for _you_ as an individual) is one that connects with your own personal ethics, energies, and direction. A _good_ guided meditation does the focusing for you, and so long as you keep at it regularly, eventually your mind will take on the same strength and focus of the things you are using to nourish it.