Don't Go Back to Sleep

Rumi, the legendary Sufi mystic and luminous poet from the 13th century, famously advised, "Don't go back to sleep." He was referring to the idea that most of us, most of the time, are essentially sleep-walking through life. We're "asleep at the wheel" whenever we're allowing our old, unconscious stories and programs to run the show. Many of us, for example, are absolutely convinced that we are victims of one thing or another. It might be a parent, a spouse, the government, a job ... it doesn't really matter. The point is that whenever we believe we're at the affect of something outside of ourselves, we appear to be helpless. In other words, we're a victim. I'm deeply familiar with how scary, confusing, desperate, and hopeless a person can feel when they're experiencing life from this perspective. I feel great compassion for those lost in the wasteland of victim-consciousness. I've spent much of my own life there, so I'm intimately familiar with the phenomenon.

I don't, however, spend nearly as much time lost in "victim land" as I used to. Rumi's whisper, (for that is how I "hear" him) "Don't go back to sleep," has called to me since the first time I came across it some 15 years ago. Like many people, I have been in the process of "waking up" for decades. For much of my life, the moments of sanity that would come after reading a seminal book such as Handbook to Higher Consciousness by Ken Keyes Jr., would be followed by long stretches of getting hammered every single night with alcohol and the drug or drugs du jour. Over the years, I gradually began to spend a bit more time awake. During those times, I would plead with myself to not "let" myself get lost in fear again, but I always did. Always, sooner or later, I would "catch" my consciousness fast asleep in the la-la land of fear and lack. It was depressing. I was sure there was something broken in me, and that other people (smarter, wiser, cooler - whatever) didn't have this problem.

To make the whole process even more fun (not!) I would proceed to emotionally beat the hell out of myself for "forgetting" yet again and getting lost in fear. Perhaps not surprisingly, these tirades didn't help much. I just wanted to run away from this vicious inner critic who seemed hell-bent on making my life miserable. And so I would get lost in drinking again, and around and around on the hamster wheel I'd go. There were a lot of years that I thought sure I would be drinking until I died. Finally, after many more books read, workshops and retreats attended, and the vast unconditional love of my sweet JoAnn (not to mention a severe illness) I stopped drinking. This was over six years ago. I can't begin to tell you how grateful I am to be alive now. I'm awake far more often, and for much longer periods, than I ever thought possible.

Yet I still "catch" myself asleep from time to time. Now, you might well ask, "Who is it that sleeps, and who is doing the "catching?" What I have come to grok is that who I really am, the eternal, changeless, non-dual "I Am" never sleeps. That core part of me, my animating spark of God-Goddess who breathes my heart, also never judges, never makes me wrong, never "catches" anything. "I Am" pure conscious-awareness. When "I" Awaken, what is actually happening (at least from "my" perspective) is that my stories of who I think I am drop away. I relax into clear seeing. (For much more on this idea, see Arjuna Nick Ardagh's beautifully compassionate book, which is named, oddly enough, Relaxing into Clear Seeing.)

As it turns out, who I think I am, the personality or ego who navigates this body through meat space, is nothing more or less than the collected stories of the life lived in this body. It's now abundantly clear that whenever I feel the slightest judgement or fear, the "I" who is aware of those feelings is, at some level, fast asleep. I can choose to gently, kindly, lovingly awaken any part of me who sleeps, with no need to make that part wrong. You see, this is the dance of life embodied. We Awaken, we sleep. What's most important is not whether we fall asleep again once we begin to Awaken. That's pretty much inevitable. Rather, it's how we are with ourselves when we "notice" our sleepy little heads.

I suggest that a far more effective strategy for staying Awake now is to love ourselves unconditionally even when we fall asleep, much as a parent loves to watch a beloved child lost in slumber. Notice, at our core, how innocent we really are. Choose love, unconditional love, for the sleeping one, and when it is ready, it will join with us once again in the Awakened state. After all, there is only One of us here.

Perhaps, instead of admonishing ourselves, "don't go back to sleep," we can tenderly love ourselves Awake. Again and again, as many times (lost in no-time) as it takes ... love ourselves Awake. Whenever we notice that we're Awake, choose gratitude. Choose to feel, with all of your vast, limitless heart, the true wonder of the moment. This is our birthright, our destiny, and perhaps the greatest gift of life.