Dreamless Sleep as a Spiritual Practice
a place where God is found
"The most evolved state of consciousness is deep sleep.
Every being, big or small, will get a chance to experience the
bliss that comes when the mind and self-merges. In this state,
the ego is dead and you become one with pure consciousness."
-- Sivana East
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"Acclaimed Britsh composer Max Richter has written a new landmark recording: SLEEP is 8 hours long – the equivalent of a night’s rest – and is actually and genuinely intended to send the listener to sleep. "It’s an eight-hour lullaby," says its composer, Max Richter. The ground-breaking new work is scored for piano, strings, electronics and vocals – but no words. "It’s my personal lullaby for a frenetic world," he says. "A manifesto for a slower pace of existence."
In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat , for God grants sleep to those he loves (Psalm 127:2) Sleeping as Communion with GodFrom the perspective of process theology, ordinary waking consciousness is but the tip of the experiential iceberg. We enjoy our own lives unconsciously as when we are sleeping; and we receive God's fresh promptings for our lives unconsciously as well. Indeed we may well be responding to God while we sleep: even as we might miss the mark while awake. If any this is true, then perhaps ordinary waking consciousness is overrated. Perhaps one of the values of staying awake during daylight hours is that we can go to sleep at night, resting in God's spacious arms. We best give sleep its due as a spiritual gift in its own right. It may be the most intmate form of prayer we know: communion not petition. It may be holy ground. (Jay McDaniel)
Letting the Breath Come In'As we lay ourselves down to sleep at the end of this long day, may we commit to waking tomorrow into that precious liminal space of possibility, to keeping the planning at bay for a few moments longer in order to let the breath come in.'
Krista E. Hughes, Plans - or Vision? Real Spirituality for Real Life * "Some planning is necessary, but too much constricts my life—and my spirit...Process-relational thought affirms a God who has a capacious vision rather than a definitive plan. While there is certainly an ordering that takes place, the process-relational cosmos moves forward with spontaneity, novelty, and a sense of open possibility. I remind myself this because when I cling too tightly to my plans, I am working against the very cosmic flow of which I am a part." -- Krista E. Hughes, Plans - or Vision? Real Spirituality for Real Life 
When We Sleep
The living body asleep, so great a sum of beauty that a billion zeroes follow it, the eyes sealing the head so tightly during those moments that the infinity of possible heavens inside can be clearly perceived by anyone; when you watch us sleeping, when you see the purest architecture of the ear, the explicit faith of the knee, the old guiltless unforgiving adoring sweet momentary tremble of claim in the breast . . . Aren't you sorry? Don't you love us? Rogers, Pattiann. "When You Watch Us Sleeping." The Iowa Review 17.2 (1987): 23-24. Web. Available at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview/vol17/iss2/6 |