Mind tricks.
It's a week now since I started this blog. That first day I'd had about 3 hours sleep and felt exhausted. I could barely imagine then that I would ever sleep through the night again, or even have the energy to do everyday things. This is something that fascinates me in a way. Why are we so forgetful? Why when we feel tired or scared or things seem to be going wrong do we forget that we've felt like this before and it turned out to be nothing to worry about?
When I feel connected to life I can see that what seem to be problems are just in fact interpretations, or more accurately misinterpretations. In her book Loving What Is, Byron Katie writes about a person seeing a rope in the desert and thinking it is a snake. Then the person realises it's a rope. Katie says that after this the person can never again see it as a snake again.
I'm not so sure. I know that I have had the experience of seeing that something I am afraid of isn't real, only to find myself later doubting and getting caught up in the fear. I've seen the same thing happen with other people.
Perhaps it's because we still fight the fear, and try to stop it? In A New Earth Eckhart Tolle refers to this as the pain body: "…the remnants of pain left behind by every strong negative emotion that is not accepted and let go of…" He sees this as a form of energy that lives in the body, and says that there is a collective version of it experienced by peoples or nations who have endured great suffering. Tolle sees our society's general fascination with the shocking and upsetting aspects of life (as featured daily in news bulletins) as feeding these negative emotions that we keep fighting. The way out is in: allowing the emotions instead of fighting them.
I agree with him. Whenever I feel caught in anxiety it is because I have fought the first flickers until they become flames. And by the time they are flames, it becomes harder to remember that the fire is all in my mind. There's nothing to worry about, and never was. The value of using a few techniques instead of just one is that it gives the mind less opportunity to create fires. And this is also the value of repetition. I'm not sure if this analogy will make sense to anyone else, but basically it seems to me that if we let our minds run riot they go round creating fires (or anxiety, or anger) over nothing. But when we stop and notice this, the chaos ends. It has to because we see through it. And sometimes we see through our stories quickly, other times they seem more real. For me, the story that I had difficulty sleeping felt very real and almost impossible to change. What has changed for me this week is that: it no longer seems so real.
So maybe that's all it is. Sometimes it seems more real again and I feel some doubt that this program will work. Yet, as I repeat the exercises in I Can Make You Sleep, they are gradually becoming easier, and I expect them to go on getting easier. It's simply a matter of sticking to it.
Day/Night 8.
One of my kids was ill, so I got to bed late. For a number of reasons there was quite a lot on my mind that would in the past have been enough to keep me awake and have me waking in the night. Instead, although at times I did seem to come to a sort of semi consciousness, I slept right through till the alarm went off. It's too soon to celebrate, but I have my fingers crossed. (Which makes typing a bit difficult!)
When I feel connected to life I can see that what seem to be problems are just in fact interpretations, or more accurately misinterpretations. In her book Loving What Is, Byron Katie writes about a person seeing a rope in the desert and thinking it is a snake. Then the person realises it's a rope. Katie says that after this the person can never again see it as a snake again.
I'm not so sure. I know that I have had the experience of seeing that something I am afraid of isn't real, only to find myself later doubting and getting caught up in the fear. I've seen the same thing happen with other people.
Perhaps it's because we still fight the fear, and try to stop it? In A New Earth Eckhart Tolle refers to this as the pain body: "…the remnants of pain left behind by every strong negative emotion that is not accepted and let go of…" He sees this as a form of energy that lives in the body, and says that there is a collective version of it experienced by peoples or nations who have endured great suffering. Tolle sees our society's general fascination with the shocking and upsetting aspects of life (as featured daily in news bulletins) as feeding these negative emotions that we keep fighting. The way out is in: allowing the emotions instead of fighting them.
I agree with him. Whenever I feel caught in anxiety it is because I have fought the first flickers until they become flames. And by the time they are flames, it becomes harder to remember that the fire is all in my mind. There's nothing to worry about, and never was. The value of using a few techniques instead of just one is that it gives the mind less opportunity to create fires. And this is also the value of repetition. I'm not sure if this analogy will make sense to anyone else, but basically it seems to me that if we let our minds run riot they go round creating fires (or anxiety, or anger) over nothing. But when we stop and notice this, the chaos ends. It has to because we see through it. And sometimes we see through our stories quickly, other times they seem more real. For me, the story that I had difficulty sleeping felt very real and almost impossible to change. What has changed for me this week is that: it no longer seems so real.
So maybe that's all it is. Sometimes it seems more real again and I feel some doubt that this program will work. Yet, as I repeat the exercises in I Can Make You Sleep, they are gradually becoming easier, and I expect them to go on getting easier. It's simply a matter of sticking to it.
Day/Night 8.
One of my kids was ill, so I got to bed late. For a number of reasons there was quite a lot on my mind that would in the past have been enough to keep me awake and have me waking in the night. Instead, although at times I did seem to come to a sort of semi consciousness, I slept right through till the alarm went off. It's too soon to celebrate, but I have my fingers crossed. (Which makes typing a bit difficult!)
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