In-Depth Explanation Using Meditation To Ease Sleeplessness

From the previous audio tracks on getting better quality sleep using techniques from Tantra and Zen this episode goes into the mechanics of how it all works and ties together. You can even listen to it while you are preparing to go to sleep so it is the last thought before you start to drift off.

Transcript

Hello beautiful people.

Welcome back once again.

My name is Douglas Grumman.

Thank you very much for joining me.

Today we're going to get into more of how to get a deep night's sleep and how to accomplish that using something like meditation and awareness.

You can call it Tantra.

You can call it Zen.

It's all techniques.

The word Tantra itself just means technique.

So I'm going to get into the mechanics of how this works.

So we mentioned in the previous audio track that the biggest problem facing most people with sleep issues,

And that's like almost 90% of the world's population,

That has sleep problems.

In fact,

They say that I think it's some ungodly amount of like 95,

96% of all New Yorkers have issues with sleep.

You have to wonder why that is.

What's the leading contributions towards that?

Is it stress?

Is it that you don't know how to settle your mind down at night and give your sense a chance to fall asleep?

Is it the lifestyle?

Maybe a lot of times our bodies have what they call sleep clocks.

If you set a regime,

Like a schedule,

And say,

Hey,

I'm going to go to bed at 9 o'clock every night,

And I'm going to try to sleep until 7,

Maybe 8 in the morning,

If time allows,

If work allows,

Of course.

But we have these built-in time clocks,

And your body will become adjusted to it if you set a regime and a routine that will allow you to go to sleep at a specific time and get a good night's rest.

I mean,

There are so many things that interrupt sleep,

And I understand,

Like I said,

I've had many nights of sleepless nights,

And it took a little bit of awareness and some meditation to help me realize,

Like I said,

What was the issue,

What was causing my sleeplessness.

Mine turned out to be a little bit of a chemical imbalance.

I became sensitive to things,

And learning to find out what those things were by doing an elimination diet helped me to realize that substances like corn and tap water was basically the root cause of all my suffering.

So my sleep issues were a little different than anybody else's,

But I did go down the same road as many of you have.

I took all the medications to help me sleep,

But even with the medications,

It just went down a bad path.

The whole thing,

The whole Ambien route just went down a bad path.

It took me to a place where I was sleeping way less than I did when I wasn't using the medicine.

It got so bad that the Ambien would put you to sleep sometimes,

And it's a controlled substance.

So I would go to sleep,

And then two hours later,

My body would wake up,

And I'd just be stuck there.

Now,

I can't really take any more medicine because it's a controlled substance,

And you only get 30 pills a month.

With that in mind,

I often chose to have a really good night's sleep and go back to sleep for a little bit longer,

So I would take another half of an Ambien and knock myself back out for a couple more hours,

And at least I was four hours asleep.

But my body kept,

Like,

I was getting electrical shocks and jolting me back awake.

Sometimes it even felt like somebody was sitting on my chest and compressing my lungs and sucking the air out of me.

I think that was all imagination,

But I just had that feeling about it when you wake up from an Ambien sleep.

So it wasn't long after that that I started practicing meditation,

And this whole thing about practicing meditation,

I want to go into it in a little bit of depth and share with you how it works.

You see,

Your mind has activity,

And then it has action.

Action is a positive thing,

And activity is,

You could call it a negative thing.

An activity is something that your mind does when it's bored,

When you don't have anything better to do,

And you're just trying to fill time.

Your mind goes in search of things to do when it gets bored.

This isn't a bad thing,

But honestly,

You could think of it as an empty mind is not the devil's playground.

I think people are confusing that with Alzheimer's disease and how an Alzheimer's person's mind is sometimes blank and empty.

But an empty mind is not the devil's playground.

It's actually the opposite.

A mind full of activity is basically the devil's playground,

Because that gives the devil some room to work with.

It gives him a way to squeeze in and create havoc in your life and cause schizophrenia and all kinds of other crazy things.

So an inactive mind,

A mind that is still,

A mind that is completely still,

And you become still by watching your thoughts.

You don't add to them.

Activity is something that your mind is doing,

But your actions,

What the mind is going to do in meditation is learn to calm down and settle down.

Just like when you step a foot into a lake and the ripples go everywhere.

If you let the lake just sit there and you watch the lake,

The ripples disappear,

The water becomes clear again,

The reflection of the moon can be seen once again.

And it's like I discussed in the previous audio track I made last week that you're using a thorn to take another thorn out of your foot.

But meditation is not really a thorn.

It is kind of the opposite.

It is like a band-aid.

It is something that helps you to heal.

And if you give something time,

Anytime you get hurt,

If you keep picking at the scab and you keep messing with it,

It's going to take a lot longer to heal.

So the same is with our minds.

If we can calm our minds and still ourselves inside and just be the watcher.

So you lie down to sleep at night and you close your eyes just like you do every night.

But this time you're going to be a watcher and you're going to sit there and watch your thoughts and just watch your feelings.

If you feel something in your toe,

You can put your attention towards your toe and be aware of this itching or this twitching or whatever's going on in your body.

It could be your toe.

It could be your hand.

It could be your knee.

You may have a sore back.

The trick is to observe these things and be aware of them,

But don't let them take over your consciousness.

Don't let it take over your mind.

Tell your mind that it's okay to have these itches and twitches.

It's okay to have whatever's going on.

But I guess I should add this also.

Like I said,

You're just lying there when you're falling asleep.

No postures,

No effort other than this action.

This action of what the mind's doing,

Of what your consciousness is doing.

This is the key that changes everything in your life.

And you'll notice once you start doing this that you'll fall asleep consciously.

Your body will be asleep,

But your consciousness could be still awake.

And what happens is your consciousness shifts into higher energies when you fall asleep.

Energy goes up what they call the chakra system.

Even if you don't believe in the chakra system,

Energy raises.

And it goes up into your throat and it goes up into your third eye.

And when your energy,

When you fall asleep unconsciously,

When your energy reaches the third eye,

That's when the dreams begin.

And it's this whole thing that goes on with that chakra,

The third eye chakra.

Your inner eye is seen and you have this wonderful,

Fabulous dream.

And in a lot of ways,

The dream is kind of designed to help you sleep better.

It is relieving tension from the day,

Is leaving something that went undone throughout the day that you needed to finish subconsciously happens at night when you sleep and when you're dreaming.

What's cool about this whole thing is that if you fall asleep meditating,

Then this energy goes up into the third eye and pass it and it goes up into the crown chakra,

Which goes beyond the dreamy state.

It's the deep sleep state.

And what's cool,

And I've read this somewhere,

That when you naturally go to sleep at night,

Say even without meditating,

You go into that period of deep sleep for about five to seven minutes and in those five to seven minutes,

There's a point,

A small point where your mind completely stops and becomes still.

It's about six or seven seconds where the mind becomes still.

And a lot of mystics believe that in those six and seven seconds is when you get refilled with energy for the next day.

So basically it is you touching God and God touching you and filling your soul with enough energy to go out through the next day.

And they've done tests,

They've done scientific tests on this and found that if they didn't let people get that deep sleep that they really suffered and they became irritable people and they became maybe a little schizophrenic.

It turns out your body needs that deep sleep.

REM sleep is deep,

But the sleep that I'm talking about goes even deeper.

And like I said,

Where it seems like you're trying to stay awake and do some action turns into inaction.

It's what the Chinese call wu wei,

Action without action.

So it's doing without effort,

If that makes sense.

I know it doesn't make sense,

But it will when you start trying to do it and when you practice these things and apply them in your life,

Then you'll find out that it's pretty cool.

A long time ago I started meditating all the way through the night.

And what happens is when you do that,

You wake up super refreshed and vibrant and full of energy and you wake up meditating just like you felt like the mind's in the same state as when you fell asleep,

When you let go.

And it's so much easier in life to fall asleep and let go when you're facing the right direction.

You can't see the darkness behind you anymore when you fall asleep meditating because you're facing the light.

Not a light that's going to keep you awake at night.

It's the light of awareness,

The light of consciousness.

A lot of people come to me and they say they don't have time to meditate.

And I'm like,

Nonsense.

I know you have families.

I know you have kids and things can get chaotic in a large household,

But everybody has the same silence when they fall asleep.

The same feelings of fear of death,

The fear of letting go.

It's all the same thing.

In fact,

Death and sleep are very almost synonymous to each other.

They're very similar in a lot of ways.

There's darkness involved in both of them.

But when I had my near-death experience in California many years ago,

Back in 1998,

I was being held down by a very,

Very large wave and it wasn't letting me up.

I got rolled and tumbled and I ran out of air.

I ran out of energy to sustain myself.

So a point came when I just said,

Oh crap,

This is it.

I guess this is the point in time in life where I die.

And for some reason,

I was okay with that.

The fear disappeared.

It's like I overcame the fear.

I just let go.

I saw this bright golden light and the light filled me with love,

For one.

But then I felt like somebody reached into the water and grabbed me by the collar of my wetsuit and pulled me to the surface.

But I got to the surface and I took a big grasp of air and I'm like,

Oh my God,

I'm still alive because I let go.

I let go of fear.

I let go of anything that was holding me back to this world.

I let go.

I don't think this happens for every single person who has this near-death experience because some friends of mine introduced me to a young man who actually did die and came back and he said,

I experienced nothing.

It was complete blackness.

There was nothing there.

I said to him,

Well,

What eyes did you have to see with?

He looks at me like really weird and I'm like,

I said,

Yeah,

Because the eyes you have right now that you're using to see me with,

They don't work when you're dead.

So what eyes did you have to see?

And those of you that meditate and raise your energy up into the throat chakra and then into the third eye chakra,

You're opening that eye.

And with opening that eye comes along a whole bunch of really cool things in life.

The eye is also a window of looking at intuition,

A window of looking at things in the world and seeing through all the darkness.

The eye opening up is a very beautiful thing to happen.

And it's kind of like a metaphor because really there is no third eye to say,

But all these things start happening and all these visuals start happening too in your conscious world when you meditate often and when you fall asleep meditating.

And like I said,

Try it tonight.

If not tonight,

Try it tomorrow,

But find the courage to let yourself experience this awareness.

So we're using a thorn like awareness to take another thorn out,

But eventually the awareness will dissolve itself and allow you to heal and heal that wound,

Like I said,

Like putting a band-aid over it and giving it time to heal up.

So your wound could be a sleep issue.

And like I said,

If you practice awareness and practice these meditation techniques that we've discussed in this track here,

If you apply these things in your life,

You'll be so much happier of a person and you'll be a centered person.

You'll be aware and conscious and you'll work better in the daytime.

You'll be easier to be around.

People will actually be magnetically drawn to you more because you start to shine.

And when you shine,

Then life becomes a lot more tolerable.

If you're trying to get off of a sleeping medication,

I would suggest trying to find a time,

Maybe like a spring break or a summer break or some time where you can give yourself three,

Four days to help your body to purge itself from the medication and get it out of your system,

Get it out of your bloodstream.

And then for your consciousness to be centered through these practicing awareness techniques that we've mentioned in this audio track,

Like I said,

You have to,

If you make a deal with the devil,

Then you have to pay the price and the price comes out in time.

Time heals all wounds,

In a sense,

And being chemically dependent on medicine to help you sleep,

Some people can't help it,

And I know that,

And it's heart-wrenching to even think that you might be addicted to a medicine.

But there is a light at the other end of the tunnel if you give it a shot.

The worst thing that's going to happen to you is you're going to have a couple nights where you may not sleep and you're going to be irritable,

You're going to be,

You're going to suffer a little bit,

But that's,

You know,

That's paying the price.

And after three or four days,

Your body will calm down.

You'll become centered again.

If,

Like I said,

If you've been practicing these awareness techniques of falling asleep and your life will be so much more peaceful and more vibrant and it's just a simple,

Subtle little thing that you're doing,

This action that you're taking with your consciousness,

It's time to tell your mind that you are the master and it is the slave.

The mind does what you tell it to do.

You don't basically,

When you lie down to go to sleep or when you're resting,

You don't need to keep running with your feet and keeping your feet moving,

No.

You allow your feet,

When you need your feet to get up and move and walk or run for you,

That's when,

You know,

The feet play their purpose,

But you don't need your feet at night.

And the same is with the mind.

There are times when the mind is not needed and you'll find that if you do this,

If you get into this action that I talked about,

Then you are more of a centered person.

You can think of it as the mind is always a tightrope between two mountain peaks or something.

And it's always tense and it always has this tension to it.

And mind itself is tension.

So going to sleep,

Meditating,

And being with your consciousness and being aware is letting the mind have that moment of relaxation and that moment of relaxation,

You'll kind of feel really cool about this because what happens is you step out of time.

When you step out of the mind,

You also step out of time and you'll sleep six,

Eight hours and you'll think you're only asleep for like 30,

40 minutes.

Your sense of time gets a little distorted when you step out of it and then you return to it and then everything becomes calm and it's easier to cope with life.

It's easier to move on and do other things.

And a fresh mind is what's needed to help make it through the day.

Like I said,

You use the mind when you need to and when you don't need to,

You give it a break.

It just makes sense that you give it a break and if you've never given it a break,

The choice is yours.

You can live a stressed out,

Sleepless nights kind of life or you can learn to overcome these things with a little bit of trust,

A little bit of awareness.

Like I said,

You are cradled by existence.

When you're facing awareness and using awareness,

You become cradled by existence.

It is the lap of God.

You're basically cradled in God's lap and God's always going to take care of you and everything's going to be okay.

So I say to you to learn this new art of let go,

A new way of letting go and falling asleep.

Allow yourself the dignity to at least give it a try and I promise you things will get much better in the future and not that we're thinking about the future.

Just allow yourself to settle down,

Become still,

Watch your mind and watch for the gaps.

Allow the gaps to happen,

The gaps between thoughts.

Allow them to happen and allow them to grow and allow them to grow bigger and stronger and more vibrant and like I said,

Be in a state of let go,

Be in a state of receptivity.

In all existence,

I am open and I am welcome to anything that comes my way.

Sleep or no sleep,

This is the way we're going to approach it and we'll put all the activities aside and just be on action until the complete let go happens and then you just slowly,

Softly open your hands and release yourself.

There's a story,

An ancient Chinese story of a man that was walking through the woods on a mountain trail and he heard a roar of a lion not far behind him and it gave him a lot of fear.

So the guy bolted.

He took off and started running away from the lion roar but he kept running and he kept hearing the roar behind him and he felt like the lion was chasing him.

So anyway,

He ran and he ran and he ran and he came to a cliff on the edge of the mountain and he felt like he was cornered.

So he slipped and he fell and he fell off the cliff and luckily he fell down a few feet and it was dark but he catched this branch of a tree that was sticking out from the cliff and in the darkness he held on to this branch.

The lion was certainly above him ready to pounce on him and below him he could fall to his death.

So he was really,

Really scared and he didn't know what to do but he just knew he couldn't let go of that branch no matter what.

His life depended on it.

So he hung there all night long.

As the morning sun started to come up and just bringing the first glimpses of daylight in,

The man looked down and he found out he was only a foot above the ground that was below him.

The cliff had another section to it and there was ground below him and he was safe.

All he had to do was let go.

And that's what you're doing in your sleep.

You're letting go very gently and trusting that existence is only a couple feet below you and you're going to be okay.

Anyway,

Okay,

I guess we'll wrap it up with this talk today.

Thanks again for listening to me.

This is the third track I've made for Insight Timer on better sleep,

Using awareness,

Using meditation,

Using Tantra,

Using Zen and all these beautiful awareness tricks that you can learn to help yourselves get a better sleep and live a better life.

So anyway,

Thank you again for joining me.

Aloha to all my surfing friends,

Namaste to all my spiritual friends and yeah,

That's it.

Y'all take care of yourselves and sleep well tonight.

Bye-bye.