What I have been sharing in the last several posts on celebrating, grieve and forgiving is a guide for preparing the soul for its nightly journey to the Spirit.  Insomnia has much to do with the biochemical imbalances of our physical body and I will not be addressing them in this post. I do know that the more we prepare our souls for sleep, the easier it is to fall asleep and overcome the physical challenges to our deep rest.

WHAT IS SLEEP?

Sleep is a fourfold benefit. 

1. It restores your life forces. 
2. It integrates and archives the perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and deeds of your day. 
3. It brings insights and imaginations to your soul. 
4. It provides inspiration and strength for your coming day. 

The first two benefits happen in your body while it lies unconscious in your bed. These are how sleep works with the ending day.

The second two benefits require that your soul and spirit separate from and leave the physical body behind in the earthly world and return to the spiritual world for an inner renewal of self. These two are how sleep prepares you for the future, the coming day.

ENDING THE DAY

In the last posts about preparing for sleep. I suggested that we end our day with three practices: celebrating the day, grieving the day and forgiving the day. Each practice is a review of our perceptions, thoughts, feelings and deeds that formed our contributions, our relationships, our well-being and our moral development through the course of the day that is now ending.

A good friend who knows me well, kept asking me what was the fourth practice. For several conversations, I insisted there were  just three evening practices. There didn’t need to be a fourth. Then came the conversation when I realized there is indeed a fourth.

The fourth is the practice of letting go. Wow! 

LETTING GO OF THE DAY

Celebrating, grieving, forgiving are practices of the embodied or incarnated soul.  These are practices about forming a right relationship to the memory of the day. With this right relationship we can then release the day but releasing is another very separate and necessary practice.  Yes, I have a better, more conscious relationship to my day but I am still holding the memories and they are holding me to my body. I need to let go of the memories of the ended day to get a good night’s sleep.

Celebrating, grieving and forgiving are evening practices of love and the past. 

Letting go is the evening practice of freedom and the future.

The part of our soul that celebrates, grieves and forgives the past also feels a creative responsibility for the future. Letting go of the past frees our soul for the future. Letting go opens us to the soul blessings of sleep - wisdom and inspiration.

How do I free my soul from my body of memories so I can sleep? Be free to sleep?

HEARTFELT

The two aspects of letting go of the day are questions and intentions. They move our soul’s attention from today to tomorrow, from the past to the future.  

These questions and intentions must be felt in the mood of freedom, trusting the mystery of sleep. Yes, I wrote FELT!!! These are not questions formed by the intellect or intentions powered by the will.  These questions and intentions are formed within the beauty of the feeling heart.

QUESTIONS

If I ask a wisdom-seeking question before I go to sleep I am letting go of all my self-doubts and my judgments. Judgments are answers, not questions. I have confidence in the blessings of “sleeping on it.”  Sleep will bless you with wisdom…if you only ask the heartfelt future-focused question. You will wake up with insights and imaginations that light up your earthy existence. Your questions will engender responses that may be subtle, ironic, surprising. They will enhance and enrich your inner freedom for the day and perhaps the rest of your life.

I state my heartfelt intention before sleep in order to be open to spiritual direction and moral purpose regarding the coming day or the rest of my life. Intentions are not expectations. Intentions have a humility and grace.. Expectations are arrogant, self-righteous, or the opposite - filled with dark doubts and fragile insecurities. Spiritual Beings cannot engage with expectations. They only resonate with intentions. When I set an intention into my soul before sleep, I make sleep soul-inspiring, not just body-restoring. 

INTENTIONS

What is an intention for the future? I find my intentions fall into distinct categories. 

1. I intend to recognize and name what my next step is in my purposeful life. 
2. I intend to organize, prioritize and systematize the many elements of my future. 
3. I intend to evaluate and regulate my thoughts, feelings and desires. 
4. I intend to sacrifice my attachments and evolve my purpose.  
5. I intend to overcome the feelings of stress, instability, and scarcity.
6. I intend to risk the familiar and seek the surprise.

I do my best to choose one of these intentions and relate them to a specific issue in my life.  These heartfelt intentions are heard by my angel and evoke the inspiration of spiritual direction that comes because I have laid down my head and trusted my sleep.

The inspirations and insights are not found under my pillow when I wake up. There is no inspiration fairy rewarding my good intentions and answering my questions. 

Subtle things happen. I'll read a sentence, even a single word, and direction dawns. I'll be doing the laundry and a thought will pop up. Synchronicity. I need to be awake to the clues, the hints, the whispers. I move from a perception to an understanding. Sometimes I suddenly KNOW. 

SOUL ENLIVENING SLEEP

With these questions and intentions my soul shapes the unfolding of the further manifestation and fulfillment of the script of my destiny…the meaning and purpose of the coming day and the future of this lifetime. I receive all the spiritual inspirations for my contributions, relationships, well-being and moral development during the next day. I am re-minded of my core divinity. Freedom begins to dance in my soul. 

This soul enlivening sleep then allows me to be fully present to the new day full of energy and a well-organized sense of life.  Now my spiritually inspired thoughts, feelings and deeds can wisely incarnate, manifest and find meaning, fulfill purpose, and sing with new harmonies. 

This does not mean the day will be without suffering. Most of my inspirations and my wisdom has been wrapped in pain and uncertainty. This suffering keeps me striving and seeking. I find compassionate discovery beneath the drama or the boredom of my life. 

Heartfelt questions and intentions are the sweet dreams of letting go and trusting the night. 

What happens if you can’t find a question or intention in your heart? When that happens to me, I simply say with all my heart, “I trust the night. I surrender to the wisdom and inspiration of my sleep.” 

TRUE CONFESSIONS

What I have written is about the ideal preparation for the ideal soul sleep. It is not always the actual reality of ordinary sleep. I have plenty of nights when sleep is lousy, difficult, missing ... a nightmare.

Since I was inspired to look at the inner preparation for sleep, I meet sleep with less hunger, less urgency, less fear.  If I do these practices and ordinary sleep doesn't come because my biochemistry is too unbalanced, over-stimulated and inflamed by the day, I keep my soul focused on the practices and they calm me.

Comments and questions: email me.

A Book!

In contemplating sleep, I've also been contemplating waking. I realize I have a small book of insights on the thresholds between sleeping and waking to write.  Please send me your wishes for this book. What did these little essays of preparing for sleep provide for you? What more do you want? I will be so grateful to have your input. Tell me.

I also plan to explore how to take world events/tragedies into sleep. We cannot underestimate the importance of social consciousness and concerns calmly reviewed and felt at the end of our day. We can take world questions into our sleep. Can we do this free of reactive emotions and judgments?

If you have any questions or thoughts, email me.

Inner work is tough work and moving through the mysterious and labyrinthine pathways of your soul requires guides, tools, support, creativity, humor and perseverance. 

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Books, prayers, coaching, counseling, meditation, workshops, good friends...every kind of help is needed and available.  But ultimately, only you can do the work of becoming you. 

Let me help you with your Summer inner work of finding, knowing and becoming yourself… and making sense of it all. 

Every time I speak with you, my world makes sense.  I move from child to woman. I am so grateful.                 Lilia M.

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Conversations with Me

Is this your time to open up, express your pain, solve a life mystery, transform a crisis, take a leap, imagine a future, find self-compassion, balance inner extremes? 

Can I support you, guide you, mentor you, celebrate you as understand your past, find your center, make choices and shape your future?  I will listen with compassion and bring a grounded, creative and spiritual perspective for understanding the challenges, dilemmas, and possibilities of your life.

Why don’t you

schedule a complimentary 20 minute conversation here

Let’s talk about what you are seeking and how I can help. 

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Blessings & Imaginations,

Lynn