Insomnia, a window open to awakening

Night has long since fallen. Everyone is asleep, except you. The alarm clock says tomorrow's time, and it's torturing you. You can't sleep. You're suffering from what's called insomnia .

Unfortunately, you've already tried everything: changing positions a hundred times, practicing breathing exercises , a little sophrology , soothing visualizations... But sleep doesn't come, it's almost worse. The more you resist insomnia, the more it becomes solid, invincible, like that cartoon monster that grows after each attack. Helpless, you watch the spectacle of this little wheel in your head that never stops turning: a problem obsesses you, the future is imagined in a new version, the past compulsively revisited. In any case, earplugs are no longer of any use when you need to silence this noise coming from within yourself.

"Yourself"? What is it? Have you ever asked yourself this question?

Who is this “I” that everyone is talking about?

Since it's time to go to bed, I'll start by telling you a little story. A hundred years ago, in southern India, there lived a wise man. It was said that when you were in his presence, you felt a deep, infinite, and inexplicable peace. When he looked at you, everything within you stopped. Silence was imposed. He was a very simple man; he roamed the mountains wearing only his dhoti and a simple wooden stick. Animals were drawn to him. Birds would land on his shoulders when he read, cows would show their heads in search of a caress. He was said to have been liberated alive, like the Buddha. All around, people crowded around. The rumor of this master had traveled the world, so much so that people came from the four corners of the planet, drawn as if by a magnet, to see him, enjoy his presence for a while, or ask him questions about life. Yet, he had not advertised and had vowed never to stray far from 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 exude such tranquility. But what did he know more than us? His teaching, which he offered to all those in search of answers on many things in life, well, precisely, it was not answers, but one and the same question: who am I?

In 1902, he came out of silence to answer a series of questions, posed by a disciple and compiled today in a work whose title I will let you guess: Nan Yar? ( Who am I? ). Here is his introduction:

“Every living being yearns for a happiness that no suffering will disturb; and everyone feels the greatest love for themselves. The cause of this love is happiness alone. Therefore, in order to attain 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 for achieving this is the path of Knowledge, the quest for the Self by the question “Who am I?”

And he adds, further, 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 that was used to clean the pyre, it itself will eventually disappear. This will be followed by the realization of the “Self.”

Through this story, that of Ramana Maharshi , I offer you another angle of approach for your insomnia . Here, it is not a question of silencing your thoughts, of controlling them or of replacing them with others more pleasant. Nor is it a question of applying a technique to arrive at a more relaxed state. It is an investigation which consists of seeing what is really happening . By seeing what is , the illusion disappears by itself, the one which tells me that I am something contracted, separate. It is a bit like when we become frightened by seeing a human silhouette in the darkness of our room. We only have to see (by pressing the switch) for the fear to vanish: it was only a pile of clothes on a chair. There was no one there.

Let's get back to our sheep... I'll spare you the livestock count.

Let go of resistance

You are lying in bed with your eyes closed. Thoughts follow one after the other. Sensations and images surely accompany them. This infernal parade captures all your attention, seems to contract all around you. First, I invite you to simply observe these objects that appear and disappear, let's call them "apparitions": thoughts, images, sensations, emotions. A bit like you would when you are sitting on a park bench watching joggers. Do this for a minute or two. Without commenting or trying to name what arises. It requires no effort to let what arises appear. Awareness, or you can also call it vigilance, allows everything that is there to be what it is, effortlessly. Even resistance to apparitions, which is itself an apparition, is welcomed wholeheartedly by this vigilance.

If you are able to observe these apparitions, it is because you are not these apparitions but that which observes these apparitions. Isn't that right? In other words, you are consciousness or vigilance .

Now allow your attention to shift from all these appearances to awareness itself, to experience it consciously.

It's as if I were to ask you, at the cinema, to stop paying attention to the film for a moment, in order to pay attention to the white screen behind it. It is present before, during, and after the end of the film. No matter the film, whether it's a romance or a drama, the screen remains white, silent, does not contract or resist the projected images. It is free. Let your attention return to this screen within you, which is nothing other than consciousness or vigilance. Do not seek to make it an object, for it is what you are, and what you are is formless, limitless. You cannot move one millimeter away from what you are. Whether there is noise or the absence of noise, 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 the attention melt into the vastness of your being. No effort, simply let the attention rest where it comes from: that calm space where nothing is missing.

You experience this every night in deep sleep, but without being conscious of it 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 bicycle, now less sticky, more distant than when it was experienced from the illusion of separation. You are peace itself and you only need to come back 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 would like to go further in your experience of awakening, I invite you to read " Nan Yar - Who am I " by Ramana Maharshi, freely available on the internet in pdf version.

Many contemporary teachers also address this topic, Scott Kiloby's book " Living Awakened " 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 Sleep Hackademy video capsules, I mix meditation and Yin Yoga to facilitate your entry into restorative sleep.