Every morning the daily miracle.
This joy you feel is life.*
~ Gertrude Stein
Early morning bedtime hours are a time when my unconscious is awakened through introspection.
On August 1st, about three years ago, I did not want to get out of bed, and I didn’t—not for a pleasurable feeling but for a mental and emotional block. Why was I here—in India—a half-continent away from America? Knowing that I had to do something, I intuitively began reviewing my adult life situations, repeating this each morning. Had I made the right decision with every change? Through August 30th, my daily conclusion was that none of my previous experiences could have brought me to my current state of growth. Then on August 31st, a needed insight arrived. Waking, I firmly swung my legs out of bed and announced, “I am here to serve.” “What is the difference between darkness after dusk and darkness before first light?
Recently, I had asked myself this after months of waking early with my inner body feeling like a lake ruffled by wind. Having made my question conscious, I remembered a first visit to an Ayurvedic doctor who had explained that my body type is vata and had given me information about its characteristics. Many of them I had followed, but now one that I had paid less attention to came to mind: the times of day for vata energy to be at its lowest are the hours between two and six, both a.m. and p.m. Suddenly I understood my sleeplessness after three a.m. But there is serendipity. Understanding the “why,“ I am more able to relax back into sleep with the self-quieting practices I had formerly used until first light. Now when I awaken, my inner body is a still lake.
“To the extent that we suffer at all, it is always ourselves that we suffer from.”*
My realization is, “Looking inward is our most important decision for discovering the source of our physical and psychological discomfort.”*
Elizabeth Roberts, Honoring the Earth: A Journal of New Earth Prayers (NY: HarperOne, 1993).
*Thorwald Dethlefsen and Rüdiger Dahlke, The Healing Power of Illness, trans. Peter Lemesurier (Rockport, MA: Element Books, Inc. 1991), 220.