Imagine …

You wake up. Wide awake. It is dark – middle of the night dark. You look at the clock on your nightstand.

2:10am. Aargh! You only went to bed two hours ago after putting in extra hours in an effort to catch up on your project. No luck either. You’re nowhere closer to a solution on the latest issue. You’re tired. No, exhausted! You toss and turn, your mind whirling with the details of the issue.

2:30am and you’re still awake. ‘Oh no! Don’t tell me I’m not going to go back to sleep! I can’t NOT sleep! I have so much to do tomorrow. I need a CLEAR head! I’ve got to sleeeep!’

3:10am ‘I can’t sleep! I can’t sleep! Oh no….! Tomorrow is going to be a dead loss if I don’t get some sleep!’

3:50am ‘I am not sleeping, I am not sleeping! This is not good. Disaster!’

4:15am ‘Sleep. Sleep. If only I can sleep and stop thinking about this %$£*&% project!’

4:40am ‘Sleep, sleep! Where are you? I need you… come to me…’ Yawn.

4:55am Zzzzzzz…

5:45am ‘BEEP BEEP BEEP.’ ‘BEEP BEEP BEEP’

That’ll be the alarm clock then, followed by hitting the snooze button several times, which means you’re late getting out of bed and late getting started.

Does this ring a bell? Has it happened to you?

Stop fighting!

A long time ago a friend of mine suggested that next time it happened, to just lie there, eyes closed, relaxing, letting my body rest as though I am sleeping, letting my thoughts drift… and even if I don’t sleep, I would have rested. And you know what? It worked. Just accepting being awake and not fighting it, worked. I did not even feel tired the next day.

Nowadays I keep a journal and pen handy and if I wake in the night with whirling thoughts, I write them down. One time I ended up with a to-do list. Unintentionally! It just so happened that everything I had written down were things that had to be done. There were thirty five of them! Thirty five!

Better out than in I say. I slept like a baby after that.

What you resist, persists

I wish I could say that I always take it in my stride when life throws me a curve ball. I don’t. But I have learned how to handle it better and bend with the prevailing wind. Years ago I would have lain awake night after night worrying about things I could do nothing about.  These days I write it in my trusty journal and go back to sleep, even if it is simply of the resting kind. I also have a few tools up my sleeve, processes that help me get to the bottom of what is really going on. And I trust the Universe has my back.

Trust

Trust. It is a big word and it takes a lot of courage.

Over the weekend I heard a story that sums it up rather well.

Buddha and one of his disciples had been walking along for some distance when Buddha felt thirsty and asked the disciple to get him some water from the lake they were passing.

The disciple went down to the lake. Just then a herd of horses came running down and started swimming across the lake, churning the water so it was muddy and murky.

‘I can’t give this to the Buddha,’ the disciple muttered to himself. ‘The water is muddy and dirty!’

He returned to the Buddha and explained about the muddy water that was not fit for drinking.

After a while, Buddha asked the disciple to go down to the lake again to get him some water to drink.

Obediently, the disciple went back to the lake. Again, he found the water muddy and not fit to drink.

Once more he returned to the Buddha and explained about the muddy water.

After some time, the Buddha once again sent the disciple down to the lake to get him some water.

This time, when the disciple arrived at the lake, he found the lake clean and clear and set about filling a pot with water for the Buddha.

Back with his master, Buddha wanted to know what the disciple had done to clean the water.

‘Nothing, Master, I did nothing.’

‘Ah!’ said Buddha, ‘But you DID do something to make the water clean. You let it be…. and the mud settled down on its own, and you got clear water!’

‘Your mind is also like that! When it is disturbed, just let it be. Give it a little time. It will settle down on its own. You don’t have to put in any effort to calm it down. It will happen. It is effortless.’

Let it be

That effortlessness requires trust. It takes a lot of courage to let it be when your mind is searching out all the options and possibilities of the future and what-ifs and if-onlys of the past, churning away in anguish.

The only peace is here, now, in this moment.

Let it be. The mud will settle. Eventually, you will see clearly and whatever action is required will arise effortlessly.

Trust. Do you have the courage to trust in that?