One of my kids was a sleepwalker for years.
I’d hear him in the hallway at night or in his bedroom. I’d leave my room and find a blanket-covered child standing still and staring at the wall, or looking under his dresser, or peeking behind posters on his walls. I’d pat his back and say, “Let’s get back to bed,” and then I'd help him into bed. He’d have no memory of it.
We haven’t noticed him sleepwalking in a while, perhaps 2 years. So last week, while cleaning up before bed, I had a thought: “I miss our little sleepwalker.” Sure enough, at 1:30am that night, he walked upstairs, entered the bathroom, and was about to shower in his sleep.
He had awakened me from a beautiful dream I couldn’t remember. All I knew was that I was present to perfect peace. Absolute perfect peace.
Perfect peace as I opened my eyes. Perfect peace as I got up to help him back to bed. Perfect peace as I returned to my bed.
Then, walking back to my own bed, Clunk! A thick glob of dread hit me in the chest and started to spread within me.
I saw it happening: I saw the thought about my morning schedule, I saw the dread fire into existence within me, and I saw the dread's energy starting to spread within me, like tainted blood. I then saw my mind begin to start weaving thoughts about it - to handle it, to analyze it, to deal with it...
The full mechanism of the mindbody reaction machine began churning.
And yet…I was still present to the perfect peace I awoke into. It was as if that perfect peace were my fundamental nature, and the dread were just an unwelcome item that plopped into the space of my perfect peace.
It’s like my existence is a bowl. The space within that bowl is the space of perfect peace. Fundamentally, that’s exactly who I am and who you are.
Then, the dread firing into existence in my heart dropped right into the bowl of my being, like a sticky, golf ball-sized wad of bitter dough.
When I saw this dread as an object of my experience and not something that defined me or dictated how I needed to think and act, something magical happened. I was able to just be with it.
I let it be there without messing with it. I let it be there without trying to figure it out. I let it be there without adding energy to it.
Because of my daily practice of seeing this moment as perfect, I even brought wonder and compassion to the dread.
When my attention got compassionate and interested, I was actually excited to get back into bed and explore this dread within me in a new way - not as something I needed to handle, but as a part of my experience that I could explore and learn more about.
And then a funny thing happened rather quickly as I got back into bed: the dread dissipated, I became present to that perfect peace again, and then I fell asleep.
Each time we enter deep sleep, we return to that space of perfect peace that we are at our fundamental level. Perhaps that's why peace is something each of us craves: we crave it because we are it, and living a life of stress, fear, frustration, and overwhelm is so dissonant with the nature of our fundamental Self.
Relieving uncomfortable emotions so we can feel our best and be our best isn't luck, by the way: it's the result of mastery. I've put in the reps over thousands of hours of personal development, training, and coaching, and I've got a black belt in this.
It's also my life's work, through transformational conversations, to free others to feel their best and be their best. If you'd like to give yourself a boost along the path of self-mastery, reach out and let's connect.
With Love. ❤️🙏