Cure A Restless Mind On A Sleepless Night GF Live 12-07-24

The more any thought pushes you to run toward a time of some anticipated rest, the more you should work to slow down to see the following truth: with one hand, an unconscious self points to a “peace just ahead,” even as its other hand is stirring up some form of anxiety that you might not get there!

Transcript

Our topic for today is The Sure Cure for a Restless Mind on Sleepless Nights.

The Sure Cure for a Restless Mind on Sleepless Nights.

I wonder if you've ever noticed the strange discrepancy.

Here we are coming into what's intended to be a joyous time of the year and for most of us the stress and anxiety are heightened not the peace and well-being.

That's what we're going to talk about.

How to have a quiet mind that allows you to rest at night.

I have a couple exercises but before I get into them I need to set the stage which I will do with a short story.

Take a nice deep breath everybody and let's let's see what kind of trouble we can get into.

So this is a story about a young a young boy.

His name is Paul and we'll put him around the age of seven or eight years old and his mother and father want him to be exposed as much as possible to the natural life.

They live in an area where not too far from them there are beautiful canyons and towering mountains rivers and lakes and they understand from their own experience how important it is for a child to be immersed into nature as above so below.

It's a way in which a child begins to experience natural relationships with natural beauty that stirs in them something in their soul.

So they decide that they're going to ask a boy if he'd like to go on one of these outward bound adventures and when he first hears about this he's not going to be with his parents to be with strangers eating dehydrated stew and God only knows what kind of country he's not that excited but his mom and dad talk him through it and it gets to the point where he wants to go.

So not too much longer he finds himself up in the mountains with a couple dozen strangers boys and girls roughly his own age an experienced guide or two and several junior counselors to make sure nobody wanders off and gets into trouble.

Now in case you've never been through something like that they're not easy for a seven-year-old.

It's scary away from home,

Strange sounds fill the night,

You're not in a you know with walls you've got a tent and so it's not unusual for these children to be to have fitful nights to not rest toss and turn and then in the next morning next day be kind of grumpy and whiny.

And after three or four days which is natural the counselors expected they noticed that Paul the hero in our story doesn't seem to be going through these same things like everybody else.

So one of the junior counselors that had a nice relationship already with Paul pulled him aside and said I wonder if you would share with me what it is that allows you to be at rest.

At night I see you're sleeping you you're not tossing and turning is there something you can share with me maybe something the other kids could know?

And Paul says look I tell you what but you have to promise not to tell anybody if I tell you the answer to what you're asking me.

Counselor's kind of surprised by the response but he wants the trust of the boys so he says sure I guess so what are you talking about?

And with that Paul leads the counselor back into their tent and pulls out from under his sleeping bag a powerful pocket-sized global satellite phone.

He shows it to the counselor and with pride he says you know my dad gave me this just before I left so I could talk to him whenever I needed to.

My dad gave me this just before I left so that I could talk to him whenever I needed to.

Now I hope that the lesson is obvious as I've intended it to be that the little boy in our story was able to be calm and have good night's sleep because he was connected.

He was connected to his father meaning to a sense of security and well-being that all he had to do was push the button and he had an immediate relationship with all the things that reminded him and helped remind him as his father would that you don't need to be afraid I'm with you at all times don't worry.

So this idea of being connected as relates to the story provides us if we can accept it with an insight about a principle about the true nature of being at peace throughout the day and the nights and for the sake of it I'll just say we can think of this as peace through connectivity.

Peace through connectivity.

Now let me bring you in first are we getting the gist of this story or do you understand why we have this these parables if you will and with that in mind if it is and hopefully in your heart I know because I'm with so many of you so often that you have restless nights.

You either can't go to sleep or you wake up in the middle of the night and your mind is racing your emotions are taught and as a rule most of us don't know what else to do except lay there and think through what our thoughts are telling us needs to be resolved at two o'clock in the morning because we don't know what else to do and we can't connect yet but God willing by the time we're done with our material today you will we can't connect the fact that our nights are restless because every day we run through our day we don't we're not so aware of the restlessness in our daytime when we're rushing or anxious because our mind in quotes awake to its own justification for why it feels that way continually believes it can justify the way it feels by what that same mind that's causing the disturbance promises the temptation if you'll go do run get think this through resolve it then you'll be able to rest so that mind and everything that occupies us during the day captures us do you think it just shuts off when you lay down in your bed a mind that's forever trying to catch and hold on to some image some hoping thing seen that if you could just claim it you'd be able to rest our restless nights are the continuation of our stressful day and they both of them are the the painful effect of being disconnected from a true self a divine life if you want a light of real life where as a result of this separation our nights and our days are filled with what feels like and I ask you to see it when you're laying there in bed they're filled with what feels like an endless search a struggle for what we've imagined will make us whole and bring an end to this restless soul so we're not connected to real life we're connected to the sensation of life a sensation that is ceaselessly generated by an unconscious nature that seeks a way constantly to escape its own fearful sense of being separate from life can you not see what occupies your mind all day first imagining powers possessions position all of which are assumed as the mind imagines them that if we could be acquired that we would at last feel secure strong well enough in ourselves that we could have some kind of peace and quiet some kind of rest never suspecting that whatever that little moment of pieces that comes when we're able to piece together our life according to what we've imagined that it's just going to fall apart like it always does and then that mind is what we go to bed with and in something that doesn't know what to do with a disturbance that it creates for itself as it imagines itself needing something that will make it whole when if you have been an aspirant of any kind at all you understand that not only is unity integration holiness not only is it not outside of you but it is always an already present within you but we get captured where these all too familiar unwanted feelings of I claim us and we believe they are who we are in that moment because there's so much pain and disturbance behind them that we are essentially we feel compelled to try to resolve them and they can't be resolved by the mind that creates them Katie let's bring up the first of the key lessons please the more any thought pushes you to run toward a time of some anticipated rest the more you should work to slow down to see the following truth with one hand an unconscious self points to a piece just ahead even as with its other hand is stirring up some form of anxiety that you might not get there this restless sense of self with all of its associated thoughts and feelings is a kind of dark psychological package that we know and think of as being ourself but it's critical for your spiritual growth assuming that's why we are together here for you to understand there can be this nature knows nothing at all about the piece it imagines this nature knows nothing about the piece it imagines because what disturbs it is that it cannot get life to align with the image it has of that piece so that it can be and take part in it this is the true restless heart this is the the nature of the mind that cannot sleep that's so disturbed all the time bring up the second key lesson please Kate you can neither control nor change any anxious thought or emotion that rushes in and sweeps you off of your feet because this sense of yourself suddenly in a struggle to escape a psychological storm is itself a part of the squall it's now trying to outrun now let's start putting this together here I am here you are laying in bed maybe you your pet your head your head hits the pillow and what are you occupied with everything's carried over all of the petty fears the concerns the resentments the regrets the doubts the hunger the worry all of that active in the in the mind in the brain when you lay down so that literally you get into bed surrounded by that'd be great if you could see it you get into bed surrounded by worries you're never alone in your bed nor is even with forget if you have a partner you're surrounded by doubts concerns and not one of these disturbing states not one of them that is in your bed with you meaning bedded down in this mind and heart as it is exists not one of them exists without the life that as we are bedded with them we lend them every time we identify with and then connect our sense of self to the world of their unresolved concerns none of which those concerns are yours and this is very key let's slow down a little bit these restless thoughts and feelings are always promising if we will entertain them that they will lead us through association to some circumstance or idea that will reconcile them so the restless nature promises that if we'll get involved with these thoughts and feelings that it will deliver us from those dark states but here's the point our resistance to these restless thoughts and feelings is in fact an unseen form of identification with them write it down resistance with any unwanted thought or feeling is a form of identifying with them it seems when we resist a thought or a feeling struggling in bed to find some peace it feels like we're separating ourselves so that we can see those thoughts and feelings better and then have a better path to producing the peace we seek but the fact of the matter is that when we identify with these thoughts and feelings because we're trying to do what trying to push them away so let's I mean literally you are in bed creating a wrestling match with an unconscious nature responsible for the endless appearance of the very thoughts and feelings that you say are disturbing you so not only do we get into bed with a restless mind and a restless heart a hungry ghost trying to find something that'll resolve its restlessness but our resistance to the experience of these thoughts and feelings that resistance is a wrestling match we're not separating ourselves we're not gaining insight there is no insight in resistance none resistance negates witnessing so that instead of being able to see and understand our actual relationship with these negative restless thoughts and feelings we're actually in a match where we the more we try to overcome them by thinking through what they give us to think the more we try to overcome them by thought the more overcome we are by thought and the more overcome we are by thought the more we resist the consciousness laying out these waves of anxious thoughts and feelings and the more we resist the more complicit we are in the continuation of that restlessness of that unconscious nature that is busy doing what it does with us unaware that whatever that identity is that it's laying out there is has to be fixed has to be resolved must be free from this all of it is the way it engages us in an unconscious struggle a wrestling match with something that we always wind up being pinned by not escaping so we're looking almost as if we were standing over our own bed at 2 3 4 in the morning or whatever time you go to bed and the mind just won't stop and we're looking at ourselves but we're looking at ourselves not through the nature that says it can see what's wrong and what needs to be thought through we're looking at ourselves through another order of being that can recognize that whatever is busy resisting life in us isn't doing so as it promises to bring an end through reconciling all of these I don't I don't know how to get to you how many nights do you want to lay in bed tormented go to sleep with visions of sugar plums and wake up next to a spider beside you allegorically speaking if we want to rest from ourselves we have to learn how to connect our attention with a higher level of consciousness that's already whole with another level of being that has a kind of peace not just with itself within itself but with the past with the future and whatever the moment may bring it is already unified with everything that will pass into it and through it so it need not fear because it is connected just like young Paul was connected to his father through a global satellite phone and therefore didn't fear lying in the dark you and I are intended to be in a constant communion with our celestial father with the divine life with love whatever you want to call it but we're not connected to that because we have been conditioned brought into a world where everything that we saw about everyone in it with virtually no exceptions all we saw were people scrambling to try to resolve this disturbance in themselves that they take as being not only themselves but that they must be the ones who resolve whatever that pain or problem may be and again the more you try to overcome something through resistance the more you are overcome by the unconscious nature that looks at life apart from it and believes that the pain that we're in is produced by some circumstance outside of us now we're looking at and I'm I'm looking at I'm looking at Frankie that this big Tom he literally jumps right on the bench like four feet from me and he sits there and I think he thinks I can hear him because he when he sits there his little beat goes like this he's really saying guy stop doing what you're doing let's get busy and throw some grain out we need new self-knowledge we need new self-knowledge but not knowledge in the sense of new some just some idea we need to be able to connect what we are shown as being true to how it shows up in our life for the positive effect of it or the negative effect of it so here's new self-knowledge our body our physical body which at one level includes its higher centers these higher centers in ourself are already awake and they are always in the present moment they are already awake and they are always present in the moment now how do we know that's true because that would even accentuate wouldn't it what we're talking about if these centers if the higher parts of ourself that are already in relationship with the divine meaning with the cosmos above and below and the circulation of that life light and love then what where are we well when you go outside and you have that epiphany in nature you see something that takes your breath away whereas we often speak of the observer and the observed are momentarily connected in that moment there's no you there there's just this extraordinary quiet sense of self there's just a beauty that isn't just in the eye of the beholder but the beholder doesn't exist apart from what it's looking at so it's a unity and the experience of that unity is made possible through these higher parts of ourselves that themselves are instruments of that unity waiting if you will for us to change what we're connected to and begin to understand the necessity of connecting ourselves to this higher body to this natural spiritually natural relationship with life as it's intended to be lived so this is why I told the story about the connecting point about the capacity to be in a relationship consciously with a field of energy with a light and a life that is already present within us that the darkness comprehends not but that we have had intimations of its sweetness of its quietness and it's part of what us if it does it all to a work like this because we understand though we don't understand why you you know as well as I do who in the name of God wants to lie in bed at night or get into bed at night or wake up in the morning doing what your mind didn't rest it just goes on and it goes on because in one respect there's no governor there's a Pharaoh in this land of darkness and it's full of promises about freedom but instead of freedom it gives you tells you to make bricks without straw so that our connection is to an unconscious nature that we have been deceived into and conditioned to believe has the power to release us from the captivity that living in its world subjects us to so we need to join these higher levels not intellectually not in some fantasy spiritual fantasy Jesus Moses Buddha Muhammad not through dulling the mind with practices but with understanding as best we're able to how it is that we have come to this place where we can't rest bodies bodies always tense I talked about this just last week in class why is my body tense why am I where are my facial muscles taught what is this anxiety I'm describing it to you only during the day the mind creating this pain is constantly producing justifications or promises that if we just go through the suffering of this restlessness of being this hungry ghost that one day will satisfy will be satisfied and it doesn't happen because it can't be satisfied so how do we connect ourselves I'm going to give you two simple practices they are a kind of exercise the purpose is not so that you become adept at the exercise the purpose is a so that you can see the need for the exercise as you practice it that's the one true thing about practices that are real the more you practice what is true the more you see the need to practice it because the practice reveals to you where it is that you have been outside of the presence of God outside the divine light believing that your own thoughts and feelings illuminating the past calling it a problem or pointing to the future as a path to freedom that that's the real darkness and that's what we've been connected to is that identity we need to find another completely different order another sense of ourselves so I have two of these practices one for lack of better words we can call it a prayer of the body a prayer of the body that will be the first one I talk about and the second prayer if you want to use these words is a prayer of heart and mind one body one thoughts emotions let's take the first one I'll go through this slowly and I think what I'll do is that we'll just take the first part of it and do it together right while we're online so that then you can understand how the rest of it works so here I am and by the way this can be done anytime you wake up in the morning you want to meditate that's great these are good anytime but they're especially helpful for those of you who cannot fall asleep or who cannot go back to sleep once you awaken isn't it true haven't you seen this I and I'm not professing anything special about myself but I honestly I can remember more than 25 or 30 years ago it dawned on me that my mind is going to do what my mind wants to do and most of the time my mind is doing something that I don't want done to me and I realized that unless I was able to reclaim my mind unless I literally was able to do with my mind what I wanted to do as best I understood it at the time then my mind was going to keep doing to me what it does and there be no end of that pain because it was painful to me mind always talking always a problem always going somewhere always some new promise gone going going so this this exercise that I'm going to give you in part has come from that understanding as well the second one so here's what I call a prayer of the body you're in bed at night you haven't gone to sleep yet that's fine if you have gone to sleep and you wake up and you see I want you to I want you to have a new experience of yourself I want you to realize that you are not lending your attention to your thoughts and feelings that have awakened you they are sucking you into their world you can feel the draw only the draw of thoughts and feelings that are seeking to reconcile themselves by the way by getting you involved in them so they're accentuated that that sense of self needs to be recognized as an absolutely useless exercise on your part so this exercise is laying there or waking and you're aware of this thing trying to draw you in part one as consciously as possible you're going to become aware of your right foot as consciously as possible you're going to sense your right foot do it with me right now sense your right foot use your attention to sense your right foot now the truth is God help us a lot of us don't have the attention of a gnat and that's a problem I'm going to talk about this in length tomorrow but if you can sense your right foot and once you've sensed your right foot then move your attention over to your left foot and sense your left foot once you've sensed your left foot now I want you to sense your right and left foot at the same time sense your right foot and your left foot together it's a very distinct sensation there's no thought in it but there is a very clear awareness of something in ourselves that is newly aware of ourselves but not by thinking about it but rather entering into a union a communion of a field that allows us to sense our body now our body is in real time our body exists because it is constantly being fed by a divine presence by a celestial set of forces so our body is the real-time connection to this planet and this planet is a real connection to that which has created it etc etc I don't have time to go through the iteration with you so I sense my right foot then I sense my left foot now I sense both of these feet together once I have that sensing now I sense my right leg do it and as soon as I can sense my right leg I move my attention over to sensing my left leg as soon as I have a clear sense of my left leg now I bring my attention into sensing my right leg and my left leg at the same time again a very distinct feeling a distinct sense of oneself now if you can get this just listen I'm going to start with my right foot left together right leg left leg together then I'm going to bring my attention and my awareness up to my right arm I'm going to sense my right arm just as I sensed my right leg and right foot and then I'm gonna sense my left arm I'm laying in bed I'm using my attention I'm not letting it be taken into thought and I'm bringing my attention into the awareness the sense of my body my body being connected to what is giving it life so I sense my right arm my left arm then I sense them together this is all done in in quietly now I take my attention and I sense my right ear and just like I sense my right arm left arm right leg left leg now I sense my right ear and then I go and I sense my left ear by itself do it sense your left ear once you've done that now sense be aware of both of your ears at the same time again there's a very distinct sensation to this kind of awareness there's a unity in it and we're brought into it now the last part is the right eye sense the right eye then sense the left eye then sense them together there's interesting things by the way for some of us for instance it's a lot easier for me to sense the things on my right side of my body then then I can on my left side that's because it's one side is overdeveloped all of this will is grist for the mill you you'll be surprised at all the things you'll learn once you've gone through the physical iterations of this and you've sensed your eyes together now you're going to withdraw your sense from this body in one respect you're gonna bring the whole awareness sensing of the whole body into your awareness you're gonna sense the whole of your body and you're just going to relax into that sensing because the truth is if you've done that properly your mind has already stopped running it stopped racing and believe it or not the the right part of you wants to join in this connectivity because there's real food there's real energy there's real life it's also the end of searching it's the end of the belief that something's going to deliver me from my sorrow my pain my past free me from the fear of the future because when I'm truly present to myself there is no past and there is no future to tempt me into and you repeat this exercise laying in bed you do it properly and I promise you you will find a relaxation that you can't find any other way and likely you will fall back to sleep but you'll fall back to sleep in a unified state that's why if you do this before you go to bed when you're laying there instead of letting your mind run off helter-skelter trying to resolve the things that it can't and then having all of these crazy dreams filled with images that are the residue of incomplete experiences instead of all that you will gradually enter into and invite at the same time another kind of peace that passes understanding so that's the prayer of the body now the prayer of the heart and mind I call it thou art the thou art prayer I actually wrote about this in one of my books I think the lost secrets of prayer it's called the thou art prayer what is the thou art prayer it happens like this again you're laying in bed at night you can feel yourself agitated restless you wake up you feel the same thing you you start like this you use your attention to bring yourself as best you can into yourself and you start with the simple words thou art and then you run through literally the alphabet thou art and then you take the letter a thou art what letter what what word would you give to the divine about thou art back in the day my mind I would go thou art the absolute thou art Almighty but not just the words you're letting your mind using your mind using your attention thou art the absolute you need to feel as best you're capable what something that is Almighty would be it's not imagining you already have a corresponding part to every word that you will use to describe the divine because in truth in describing the divine you are describing that which was made in its image within yourself thou art the absolute thou art Almighty you must use your mind and your heart together to feel that each time you speak and those words to consciously what does it mean thou art the absolute next letter be thou art the beginning thou art beauty not mental God don't make this mental thou art the beginning ah my mind understands and my heart can grasp the idea as best I'm able from my own work from your work it's always beginning in fact right there in that moment it's beginning thou art the breath that I take so there you are in the mind thou art the breath I take and you and you you're present to your own breathing you're in your body you're sensing yourself you're sensing a relationship between heart and mind the next letter see thou art the creator what do I feel about the queen thou art creation do I love nature thou art creation and I let my mind in my heart meet in an awareness that they are brought to so that in that attention to these centers they enter into a relationship with themselves that by and large we know nothing about our mind and heart is never connected virtually never connected now we're going to do the work to create a connection so that these higher centers can begin to be fueled given the energy they need to reveal to us their awake state what it's like to be in their presence thou art the Christ thou art compassion then you go on letter D thou art the door of life thou art the everlasting thou art my friend and don't don't let this become mechanical this prayer of mind and heart is to bring the mind and heart together in a shared field of energy beyond the opposites because when you are doing this properly just as with the body without any real effort on your part you're connecting the heart and mind the body with the capacity you have to witness what is brought about as they are united as they're married and you're establishing through this work with your attention a completely new order of awareness one that maybe you've only had moments outside in nature now I'm inviting you to go into this nature that sleeps within us and realize on one hand the necessity of negating our unconscious relationship to its constant struggle and through the awareness of that working as diligently as you can as you have to I promise you for a while this will not be easy to do but compared to the difficulty of living from a nature that lives in the dark there's no alternative if you persist you'll discover there are parts of you that on one hand are waiting to drink from this field from these energies just as you will see beyond the shadow of a doubt that there are parts of you that want no part at all in this piece that now you understand where to seek it and what you must give up to enter into it don't be dismayed if that turns out to be the case instead become the witness of the dismay that belongs to an unconscious nature that doesn't want you to enter into a relationship with this divine field you catch yourself there you are you're running through the prayer the body of the prayer that I described or you're doing the thou art exercise and maybe you start to relax and the next thing you know your mind is dragged you into something that you don't want to be a part of and the beauty of these exercises is that the more you experience directly this conscious relationship through a new kind of connectivity the more obvious it becomes to you what the old connectivity was like and how it delivered you to captivity not to the freedom it promised you're there as the witness to it you're seeing it you can bring these sleeping parts of yourself into this awakened relationship and allow that relationship to do for you what you've been unable to do for yourself you will see that there are parts of you that don't want to see and when you see that you'll know everything that you need to work at

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