Bridging Sleep and Meditation to Rediscover Our True Nature
Every morning, you have already taken the first step towards waking up. If you take the step of becoming aware, you will be meditating. The difference between sleep and meditation is, when you sleep, all your identifications disappear. You become an absolute nobody. Or, in other words, once your identifications are gone, you have gone back to your original nature. It is just that this process is wonderful, but it is happening in total unawareness.
You will see, on a certain day, even if it is just for an hour or two, if you fall asleep in a very deep way, the next morning when you get up, there is a new sense of life, awareness and wellbeing in you. Most people don’t get to sleep like that on a daily basis. Only on certain days, they sleep like that because even in your unawareness, if you touch that state of nothingness within you, that state of non-identification – when you are dreaming, you are still identified. Do you see that in your dreams you are still yourself?
Maybe in various fantastic situations but you are still yourself. So in your dreams the identification is still there. When you go beyond the dream and just become perfect sleep, on those days when you wake up, it’s wonderful. There is a completely new sense of freedom and well-being within you because you have been in touch with your original nature. You have been in a place where there is no identification. Something absolute has touched you but it happened in unawareness. If you achieve the same thing in awareness, then it is meditation. When you are awake, if you can be like that, that is meditation.
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