Your Yoga. Falling Asleep and Waking Up.

There are two very important moments in everyone's life: falling asleep, as we enter sleep, and waking up, as we emerge from it. By using these two moments well, you can greatly improve not only your meditation practice but your whole life: its quality, meaningfulness, harmonious flow, the joy it brings, and so on.

Most people miss the opportunity offered by these two very important parts of their lives. As they fall asleep, they think about and replay the events and problems of the day. On waking from a night's sleep, they start thinking and planning all over again: how to solve their problems and how to conduct their material life today…

What is this like? It is like shooting an arrow from a bow. You draw the bowstring and shoot in your chosen direction; the arrow then flies, obeying the energy of the shot and the archer's intention. In this example, “drawing the bowstring and choosing the direction” is the moment of waking or falling asleep. It is the crucial moment that gives the impulse to everything that follows: the flight of the arrow.

If someone thinks about problems and their solutions on waking, the “spring of the mind” winds itself up for precisely those activities. It is as though the person hypnotises and programmes themselves to follow that day's programme. And so it continues throughout life, until death…

Let us try to change something in this repetitive process. To do so, use the technique I give below.

Waking up

Waking can happen in different ways. You may instantly become aware that you are awake, or consciousness may slowly oscillate between sleep and wakefulness until you gradually wake fully.
However you wake, the important moment is when you begin to be aware of yourself and to make movements with your physical body under your own control. The very first minutes are favourable for beginning the waking technique.
That is the moment to start.

The waking technique

First of all, do not think about the “achievements and great deeds” you plan for the day. Be like a clean, white sheet of paper on which the Divine will write its finest work today. Today, you will not be the one writing on this sheet: the Divine will. Think in precisely this way. Feel yourself to be a pure, snow-white sheet of paper, and offer yourself to the Divine so that it, rather than you, may write its finest creation: your day today. Let go of every idea about how you will spend the day. You are a clean, white sheet of paper resting without resistance on the Creator's desk, willingly ready to receive whatever the Creator writes in magical ink.
Next, feel yourself: you exist—this very you, right here, right now. Become aware of this. Say to yourself, “Hello! At last we have met! Now I will not let you wander off for long…”
Then meditate. If you practise Distance Meditations, do the meditation for your level or the introductory Feeling Energy meditation. You can also use any other meditation offered on this site, or one you like from another system of development, provided it genuinely helps you.
After meditating—and, most importantly, after reaching a meditative state—you can begin your usual activities. But do not leave the meditative state itself. Let it continue and sustain it throughout the day. After this practice, doing so will be extremely easy.

Notes

Many people will probably forget their intention to practise this technique on the first morning, or remember only about ten minutes after waking, when the moment has passed. This may happen the next morning too, and for some people even on the third or fourth. Do not worry. When you realise you have missed the moment, note it more attentively and instruct your awareness to remember the next morning, at the moment of waking. Sooner or later, you will remember on waking and perform the technique. After that, everything will be much easier.
You may remain lying down, but it is better to sit up in bed with your legs crossed—in lotus, half lotus or a simple cross-legged position—with your back fairly straight and your hands resting on your knees or wherever they feel comfortable.

Falling asleep

This technique does not depend on whether you go to bed early or late. It is suitable whether you retire at 10 p.m. or at 2 a.m.

The falling-asleep technique

It is best to prepare for sleep after your evening meditation. At the very least, sit quietly for a few minutes, contemplating the Infinity around you.
Then lie down in bed as you normally do before a night's sleep.
Do not think about the events of the day just ended. They no longer matter: they are gone forever, and there is no point bringing them back to life in your awareness. They happened, played their allotted part in your life, and have now gone forever with this day.
Feel this important point: today was a small lifetime. Morning was your birth; the day was your life; now night is coming, and it is your small death. Feel this closing stage of the day in precisely that way: night is a small death. You leave everything behind, just as a dying person leaves everything. You cannot take anything with you. Before long, you will fall asleep and enter an entirely different world, taking neither your material possessions nor even your dense physical body—nothing. Everything will remain here, absolutely everything. Even this body will remain here, while your bare essence alone leaves it and enters another, subtler world.
Experience this as consciously as you can.
Feel how this experience frees you from earthly concerns and bustle, opening you to Eternity and to something immensely powerful and boundless, whose presence is always sensed in one way or another at such moments.
Be open to it, and fall asleep with these thoughts.

Note

Do not think of death as an end. Think of it as a stage followed by another world and another reality.

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