Oh there you are my friend,
Welcome back to the Grounded Sleep Podcast.
When you're ready you can start getting into bed if you're not already there.
And for this episode of the Grounded Sleep Podcast,
I would love to just share some stories and journeys from my life recently as you fall asleep.
So hopefully they're a little bit entertaining but mostly boring.
Before I do,
I want you to get into bed,
Turn the lights off,
Do all the things that need to be done until you can be in a really relaxed place to fall asleep.
When I was a kid,
I really didn't like to eat food and I'm still kind of that way.
Sometimes it's more of a nuisance for me than pleasure.
And I was pretty small and I remember my father would tell me he saw a monkey walking home from work.
Yes,
A monkey.
And that if I wanted to hear about the monkey and what it did,
I had to eat my dinner.
And so,
Oh,
I wanted to hear about that monkey.
So I ate my dinner and guess what?
Turns out the monkey jumped around a lot and was playful.
So if you want to hear my bedtime stories,
I want you to turn those lights off,
Eyes closed.
Take some deep breaths with me and really start to relax your nervous system,
Your energy.
Let's put the day aside and just start to allow ourselves to drift off.
So I recently went to go see Eckhart Tolle speak,
One of my favorite teachers.
I first started meditating when I was 16 by reading The Power of Now.
And that's a story I've told many times.
And I've seen him before,
But 18 years ago.
So it was nice to go back and sit in his presence and listen to him talk.
It felt really good to be in front of such a beautiful master and someone who's just very much themselves.
Eckhart doesn't wear any fancy clothes or claim to levitate or anything like that.
He's had the same message for decades,
Which is to be present.
And so right now,
As you let yourself fall asleep,
Can you allow yourself to be present?
It's a beautiful thing to fall asleep in the energy of presence.
And I'm sure you've had the experience of when you go to sleep,
That you start getting pulled into the past and into the future.
Even right now,
If you notice that,
Just let your breath move slowly and allow your body to relax and melt into your bed.
So as I sat there,
Listening to Eckhart speak,
That invitation to be present was just as powerful as it was when I heard him speak 18 years ago,
And it was just as powerful as when I read his book when I was 16.
And that invitation is here for you as well right now.
So seeing Eckhart recently was a great joy in my life.
And so you can create the future from the present.
It's when we get lost in the thoughts about the future.
That's when we go unconscious and we lose ourselves to the movies in our heads.
If that happens to you as you're falling asleep,
Just come back again and again.
You can surf your breath back into your body.
So as you're falling asleep,
I'm just sharing some recent stories from my journeys.
I'll be spending a month in Spain.
I go there often.
I really enjoy the tapas and the people and the energy.
And then I'll be celebrating my grandfather's 95th birthday with him and the grandma and the family in Florida.
And when I look at my own life and I go to create with some intentionality,
I try to keep in mind a sense of balance and fulfillment.
When it comes to balance,
We all need to fulfill and work on many areas of our life,
Whether it's our physical wellbeing,
Family,
Relationships,
Creativity,
Spirituality,
And one of the parts of our life that takes up the most time,
Sleep.
There is no balance without sleep.
Tonight,
As you fall asleep,
Set the intention at a deep rest,
A really deep rejuvenation will help you find balance.
And when we feel balanced,
When we feel grounded,
That's when it's easier to feel fulfilled.
Slowly allow your body to get heavier,
Let yourself start to drift off.
And like every being in the world,
Your life has a lot of value and meaning.
And the more you pay attention,
The more intentionality and mindfulness you live with,
The happier you're going to be.
I once saw a cosmologist explaining the expansion of the universe,
And he put little dots on a balloon with a marker and they represented stars.
And then he blew up the balloon,
And as the balloon filled with air,
Every dot,
Every star got bigger and also further away from every other star.
And what he was showing was that there wasn't really a center to the universe,
That as the universe expands,
Every star is in a way a center.
So,
In this paradox of life,
You are equal to the infinite number of beings out there,
And you're also the center of the universe.
Don't let that go to your head.
Perhaps your breath gets a bit slower and deeper,
And you can start to allow yourself to feel the quiet stillness of the night and that connection to the universe.
The universe awakens and becomes conscious through you,
And it also falls asleep and becomes unconscious through you.
Allow yourself to relax as you cross that bridge from consciousness to unconsciousness.
Allow yourself to start to cross that threshold into the deep night.
As you begin to fall asleep,
You can feel that restfulness wash over your being and just start to let yourself go into the deep,
Deep stillness of the night.
