Not good at sleeping?
I wake up often during night.
Sometimes, I fail to sleep and stay up almost all nights.
I recently started learning a healing technique, and I asked my healing teacher about it.
He said to me
“You are not good at sleeping. What made you become like that?”
That was a big surprise for me
because I never thought about my difficulty sleeping
as “I’m not good at sleeping”.
Because he asked me that question, I went back to my childhood memory to see
if there was any incident that made me not good at sleeping.
Then I remembered when I was younger, I tried to stay up as late as possible.
It felt like I was missing out something if I went to bed early.
I questioned my thought “I don’t want to go to bed early.”
The situation was I was in high school,
I wanted my parents to go to bed early so that I could play a video game.
How did I react when I was believing “I don’t want to go to bed early”?
In answering to that question, I realized that I was looking for a way to
retrieve my power.
When my parents were up,
I could not do anything I wanted to do.
However, once they were in bed,
it was my free time! I could do anything!!
I decided to stay up late to feel powerful.
Now after this inquiry, I know that I don’t have to stay up late to feel powerful.
What I wanted was to feel powerful even when my parents are up.
How can I say No to them when I want to say no.
Being able to do what I want to do when everyone is asleep is not healthy.
Then I realized it was not about sleeping.
It was about respecting myself.
When people tell me to do something, can I take sometime and consider if I want to do it or not?
It is like answering to a question “How are you?”
After doing The Work, I started asking myself “how am I?” when people ask me the question.
Just like that.
When people tell me to do something, I will take time to ask myself
“Do I want to do it?”
That is my living turn around.
I think I will have a better relationship with sleeping from now on.
Aki
For more information about The Work, visit TheWork.com
You might want to read the Introduction of The Work of Byron Katie by Stephen Mitchell.
2 Comments
Pournami
There is so much wisdom in what you have written, I really appreciate how you show us what you’re discovering in your own journey with The Work…
Just like how you discovered that staying up late was a way to retrieve your power, I find that when I don’t sleep at night, it’s because I usually want to stay up and read a novel…
In my case I despised going to school the next day because I felt it would take away my time to do the things I really want to do…
I love your honesty and vulnerability…Thank you so much for sharing!
aki
Thank you, Pournami, for connecting with me.
I love finding myself doing The Work. My innocence, my thinking’s innocence.
Without my thought doesn’t mean my thinking was wrong.
Without my thought doesn’t mean I was wrong when I was believing my thought.
There’s so much freedom in finding ourselves through inquiry.
Thank you for reading my journey…