Insomnia, an open window to awakening
The night has fallen long ago. Everyone is asleep, except you. The alarm marks tomorrow’s hour and it tortures you. You cannot sleep. You are experiencing what is called insomnia.
Unfortunately, you have already tried everything: changed position a hundred times, practiced breathing exercises, a bit of sophrology, soothing visualizations... But sleep does not come, it’s almost worse. The more you resist insomnia, the stronger it becomes, invincible, like that cartoon monster that grows after each attack. Powerless, you watch the spectacle of that little wheel in your head that keeps turning: a problem obsesses you, the future is imagined in a new version, the past compulsively revisited. In any case, earplugs are useless when you have to silence this noise coming from inside yourself.
"Yourself"? What is that? Have you ever asked yourself this question?
Who is this “I” everyone talks about?
Since it’s time to go to bed, I will start by telling you a little story. A hundred years ago, in southern India, lived a sage. It was said that in his presence, one felt a deep, infinite, and inexplicable peace. When he looked at you, everything inside you stopped. Silence imposed itself. He was a very simple man, wandering the mountain wearing only his dhoti and a simple wooden stick. Animals were attracted to him. Birds came to perch on his shoulders when he read, cows showed their heads seeking a caress. He was said to be a living liberated one, like the Buddha. All around, people crowded. The rumor of this master had spread worldwide, so much so that people came from all corners of the planet, attracted like a magnet, to see him, enjoy a bit of his presence, or ask him questions about life. Yet, he had not advertised and had sworn never to leave his little Mountain: Arunachala. For Indians, it represents the heart of Shiva, the first Yogi, the creator of the World. He must have known a lot to radiate such tranquility. But what did he know more than us? His teaching, which he offered to all those seeking answers about many things in life, was precisely not answers, but one and the same question: who am I?
In 1902, he broke his silence to answer a series of questions posed by a disciple and compiled today in a work whose title I leave you to guess: Nan Yar? (Who am I?). Here is its introduction:
“Every living being aspires to a happiness that no suffering will disturb; and everyone feels the greatest love for themselves. The cause of this love is happiness alone. Therefore, to reach this happiness, which is our true nature and which we experience every night in deep sleep when the mind is absent, everyone must know themselves. The best method to achieve this is the path of Knowledge, the quest of the Self through the question "Who am I?".”
And he adds, further on, to the question “how to silence thoughts”:
“By the question “Who am I? ”. The thought “Who am I? ” will put an end to all other thoughts, and like the stick used to clean the pyre, it will itself eventually disappear. What follows is the realization of the "Self".
Through this story, that of Ramana Maharshi, I offer you another approach to your insomnia. Here, it is not about silencing thoughts, controlling them, or replacing them with more pleasant ones. Nor is it about applying a technique to reach a more relaxed state. It is an investigation that consists of seeing what is really happening. By seeing what is, the illusion disappears by itself, the one that tells me I am something contracted, separate. It’s a bit like when we get scared seeing a human silhouette in the darkness of our room. We just need to see (by turning on the light) for the fear to vanish: it was only a pile of clothes on a chair. There was no one.
Back to our topic… I will spare you the livestock count.
Let go of resistance
You are lying in your bed, eyes closed. Thoughts follow one another. Sensations and images surely accompany them. This infernal parade captures all your attention, seems to contract you all around. At first, I invite you to simply observe these objects that appear and disappear, let’s call them “appearances”: thoughts, images, sensations, emotions. A bit like you would do when sitting on a park bench observing joggers. Do this for a minute or two. Without commenting or trying to name what appears. It takes no effort to let appear what arises. Consciousness, but you can also call it vigilance, allows everything that is there to be what it is, effortlessly. Even resistance to appearances, which is itself an appearance, is welcomed without reservation by this vigilance.
If you are able to observe these appearances, it means you are not these appearances but what observes these appearances. Isn’t it? In other words, you are consciousness or vigilance.
Now, allow your attention to lose interest in all these appearances to focus on vigilance itself, to consciously experience it.
It’s as if I asked you, at the cinema, to stop paying attention to the movie for a moment, to focus on the white screen behind. It is present before, during, and after the movie ends. No matter the movie, whether a romance or a drama, the screen remains white, silent, neither contracting nor resisting the projected images. It is free. Let attention return to this screen within you which is none other than consciousness or vigilance. Do not try to make it an object, because it is what you are, and what you are is formless, limitless. You cannot move a millimeter away from what you are. Whether there is noise or silence, the silence of what you are is there, always. Now allow your body to feel this silence. As if every cell were listening, and you let all attention melt into the vastness of your being. No effort, simply let attention rest at the source, rest where it comes from: this calm space where nothing is missing.
You experience this every night in deep sleep, but without being aware because the mind is absent, as Ramana said above. Now it is done consciously, and it is from the freedom of consciousness that it is possible to observe the little bike, now less sticky, more distant than when it was experienced from the illusion of separation. You are peace itself and it is enough to return to yourself to feel it.
Paradoxically, your difficulty sleeping may have opened the door to awakening.
I wish you a good night…
PS: If you want to go further in your experience of awakening, I invite you to read "Nan Yar - Who am I" by Ramana Maharshi, freely accessible on the internet in pdf version.
Many contemporary teachers also address this subject, the book “Living Awakening” by Scott Kiloby is easily accessible and its reading is accompanied by simple exercises to guide you step by step towards a more conscious life.
You can also practice with me around this perspective, during my video capsules Sleep Hackademy, where I combine meditation and Yin Yoga to facilitate your entry into restorative sleep.