This, from yesterday:
“And after all that, I remembered what I really wanted to blog about today and it was this: the nights have blended into the mornings and left the night adrift in a sea of nothingness. I would like to find a way to reclaim the night as part of my life.“
…still has me thinking.
The reality of it is that, for the last couple of evenings, I was picking up the soap to wash my face as I got ready for bed and it made me think that I’d be back here in the morning, eight hours later, doing exactly the same thing but I wouldn’t have done anything in between except to fall into a sleep in which I’d be largely unconscious of the world. In effect, I might as well have been dead for those hours for all the good that they did me.
So it made me want to reclaim the night for myself.
But, of course, that puts me in a bit of a dilemma. I mean, we must sleep in order to refresh and revitalise our bodies and minds. And we must get good quality sleep, which usually means that we’re oblivious to … well, to everything. Ideally, we should fall asleep in one position on the bed and wake up in the morning in the same position having been thoroughly oblivious to our bodies in the meantime. And yes, I know how rare that is. I’m a good, deep sleeper, but even then I have to turn over every now and again and maybe even pay a midnight visit to the loo.
So, between the pillow of oblivious sleep and the soft place of insufficient sleep, where should I lie?
Let me tell you a story:
I got this tape from the library many years ago that promised to hypnotise me into being a better person while I slept. I’ve never liked the idea of being hypnotised. I don’t like the thought of something or someone else controlling me. I once went to see a hypnotist perform a stage act in which he invited members of the audience to come up on stage to be hypnotised and so, being contradictory, I went up on stage, pretended to be hypnotised and did all kinds of weird, but harmless things, like eat an onion whilst thinking it was an apple (not as unpleasant as you’d think) or dancing like a crazy person (not unlike every other night down the club to be honest) etc. etc. Anyway, at the half time break I decided that I fancied seeing the rest of the show from the audience and so I ignored the hypnotic suggestion that’d been implanted in me to come back to the stage when the hypnotist clapped his hands (or some sh..tuff like that) and even ignored him when he came into the audience and put his face in my face and … anyway, I just stayed in the audience with my friend. Like I said, I don’t like to be hypnotised. I resist. Successfully. So anyway, back to this tape that I got from the library. It was designed, like I said, to hypnotise me in the night while I was asleep and so I put it in the trusty tape player that’d never given me a moment’s grief in all the years I had it and then I fell asleep to the white noise at the start of the tape. The hypnotist’s voice was designed to play when I was asleep and my mind was open (vulnerable) to suggestion. Of course, part of me didn’t want this to happen. I wanted the benefits of being a better person without the drawback of being under someone else’s control. So guess what I did? Yep, I broke the tape player. When I woke up in the morning I found that the tape player had, inexplicably, stopped working just before the part on the tape where the voice started hypnotizing me. Rather than be hypnotised, my …psychic energy (or whatever) had reached out and stopped the tape player from working. I can’t think of any other explanation for it. So I took the tape back to the library and made myself a better person by other, more conscious means. Needless to say, the tape player started working again as soon as the taped hypnotist had been banished from the house.
The moral of the story is that I don’t want to listen to anything in the night while I’m asleep in the hope that I’ll learn stuff by osmosis (or whatever).
So, what else can I do at night to make sure that my sleeping hours are not wasted?
Suggestions (please)?
Research:
- Choose your Hypnotist: https://rothpoetry.wordpress.com/2022/06/14/choose-your-hypnotist/
- Hypnotized: https://bluejayblog.wordpress.com/2023/01/04/hypnotized/
- 3 Hypnotic ways our Focus is being Manipulated: https://mamalava.wordpress.com/2022/12/09/3-hypnotic-ways-our-focus-is-being-manipulated-this-christmas/
Robert C Day 
An interesting story! Thanks for linking my poem.
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Hey, wait – don’t I know you? 🙂
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The question is is sleeping wasted time?
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The question, for me, is: how can we make our daytimes worthwhile?
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I worked with a Jungian Spiritual Director recording and interpreting my dreams some years ago. It was very revelatory…..a bit more than I expected……but very helpful. There are books on dream work, not sure if all are equal, but I still get self knowledge from dreams though I don’t work as seriously with them. Our subconscious works hard all night and has treasures for us if we keep a pad and pencil by the bed and begin being open to “remembering” our dreams.
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That’s very useful to know, Eileen – thank you. If you could remember the name of a good book to recommend to me then I’ll be sure to read it. I love reading.
I remember my dreams quite readily, but am never sure how to interpret them. Strikes me that most of the advice is like horoscopes and I simply can’t believe that one size fits all in that way. I need to find more personal and complete interpretations that tell me something useful (and actionable) about me. I’m not asking for much, am I! 😀
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Yes….I’m with you on the Horoscopes and there are a lot of approaches to dreams. Most dreams are simply housekeeping…..about the everyday little things. But once you start working with them , you begin to get some heavy input. In my dreams a “shadow” person showed up. She was sort of a dwarf and had very little affect. Gradually, I realized she represented an undeveloped rejected side of myself. She reappeared often in my dreams. I realized that what she represented was a side of myself that felt inadequate in practical matters of normal life and that when around someone much more adept at those, I used sarcasm to “cut them down to my size.” I am a very outgoing friendly, usually kind person, so I really resisted accepting this. After a somewhat negative hour with my Jungian Spiritual Director, I went to visit my mother in the nursing home. She was in an advanced stage of Alzheimer’s and usually comatose, so I just sat holding her hand or rubbing her forehead. Her roommate had also never responded to me or anyone in my hearing. As I was sort of praying in my head, saying, “God, I’m a nice person. I’m not like my “little person” in my dreams am I?” At that moment the roommate raised up on her arm , looked straight at me, and said clearly, “You’re not who you thought you were, are you?” With that she lay back down and never said another word to me before she died a couple of weeks later. Well, needless to say, I accepted my “little person” and began to try to help her grow and to keep her from being sarcastic! This was over thirty-years ago and I have both accepted my less adept side enough not to “cut down” others and actually have become stronger in that area and much more comfortable with people with talents I don’t have. I have more “shadow” sides, but am less inclined to take out my insecurities on others. Also at 85, I’m glad to know God can use us in our very last moments to make a difference!! Most of my books are out of date, but I’ll check with some younger people who work with dreams. It’s a bit scary, but there’s lots of “gold” inside us to be discovered also. And very freeing to not have to be perfect.
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You sound like a great person to know, Eileen. I hope I’m more like you than me when I reach the part fi your life that you’re at now.
I’m going to pay more attention to the recurring dreams I have (hardly any more, to be honest – they stopped when I was younger). Wish me luck. And come back to me about books. 😊
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