Worlds Apart

Our materialistic focussed world has driven a wedge between our inner and outer worlds. We sojourn internally every time we sleep but how much of that world do we remember or understand. Our current lifestyle sends us exhausted to sleep until we are wrenched back out again by the waking alarm clock or smart phone. For my spiritual health, I need to reclaim my territory as it is the basis of all health in the outside world.

So let's start to break the habit of undervaluing 'what lies beneath' and begin some practises that will help me reestablish my connection with myself. I have been thinking about my sleep patterns and am about to change them. I follow a spiritual discipline that encourages early morning meditation, beginning at 4am. I have been doing it for years, because I like the results it brings in my life. Clarity, stability and peace of mind to name a few.

It's always slightly bothered me that I rarely recall my dreams. I have always thought that they were very important and even though I have tried to cultivate a habit of writing them down when I awake, have never succeeded in this. I guess my understanding of its benefits haven't been so clear to me. I'm going to begin trying again but with some new ideas I have been having, as an incentive.

I believe in the Golden Age of mankind, a time full of virtue which ensured peace and harmony on the Earth. I've been thinking a lot about that time, what it was like, the day to day habits and activities. I've reached a conclusion that we don't have the same sleeping patterns there. There would be no need to as everything is in harmony, there is no pain and suffering and what ever we need is available naturally. So, easy stress free days. No crashing in to bed at the end of the day, exhausted.

Our minds were pure, our thinking clear, clean and powerful, so matter, the whole world including our bodies were new and energetic, hence our bodies would not need hours of sleep to repair and replenish themselves. So we would have drifted in and out of sleep, except we wouldn't have called it sleep. We would have drifted between our inner and outer worlds, effortlessly and often during the day. It would have been a two way street. A constant taking inside from the outer world and bringing outside from the inner world. Fashioning matter in the outer world from creative ideas of the inner world. Our inner worlds are fluid, free, rich and unlimited, not restrained by space and time. Fertile soil for creation.

Sleep Before the Fall

In the coming time of perfection, where life consists of fun and games, where everything we need is provided for, what need will there be for long exhausted sleep? Even a few hundred years ago, in the west at least, sleep patterns were different. A first and second sleep seems to have been the norm, with creative, energetic times in between the two.

At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past, a book by Roger Ekirch, reveals that until modern times, when artificial lighting, especially street lighting, allowed us to stay awake longer, a lot of people would go to bed around sunset. The time spent sleeping was split into two sections – known as first sleep and second sleep. See also: biphasic and polyphasic sleep

So in The Golden Age, a time when human beings were at their most virtuous, when human toil was unknown and life was lived without labour or fear, sleep patterns would have looked nothing like they do today. Today we often collapse exhausted into bed after hours of activity which more likely than not, drained us of our physical and mental energy, only to be awoken unnaturally by an alarm clock or iPhone app.

In a virtuous world, night time would be a safe environment in which one could freely wander and socialise with human, animal and plant without unease and fear of harm. Even the animals at that time, freed from the concern of being eaten by vegetarian humans and other animals, exhibited a nature of gentleness and curiosity towards the other occupants of planet Earth.

I wonder if, in those times, there was even need for bedrooms, as privacy was unheard of and any sleep that was required, could be had at any time, at any place, safely and easily. Being free from regimented days, timetables and schedules, we could nap when and where we pleased.

In those times, the difference between the wakened and sleep states would be very blurred, as we meandered between the inner and outer worlds. The 'sleep' state would bring unbridled creative energies into play, free from space and time we could conceive in such a way that our creations would be unbounded and unlimited. Emerging from that state of consciousness we would replicate our inner world into the outer world, producing the most wondrous arts, dance, song and architecture to share with others.

How wondrous night times would have been in that glorious age. With the changed planetary positioning, Saturn as the exemplary sun and a night sky brimming with the other planets within the system, up close and personal, sleeping would not be an option for everyone. What a delight nighttime would be. Wandering in forests under reflected planetary lighting, laying on soft grasses gazing at a unpolluted night sky overflowing with heavenly bodies.