Rest Full Nesting 12/12/13 03:09:33 / 01.0 REM since last posting
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TO SLEEP OR NOT TO SLEEP… THAT ?!? IS.

Sleep has always been a ?!? for this one, these eye(s), 'this I' ('so to speak').

As the 'path' goes, such as it is, so far, 'I' have oft wondered if the bodhisatta or the Buddha or the Tathāgata ‬ ever truly slept at all much before or if ever again after His full and complete Bodhi?

In the interests of the kinds of sincerity and transparency
which I attempt to practice here at DhO
in the hopes of any assistance and of any assisting here
I have attempted to explicate all that is well and ill in this/my case.

I think I have, in this forum or another, encountered sometime somewhere one thread or another on eating, food or consumption and or another on waste, poop, wee or recycling.

I think I have seen more than a few threads on cycling and recycling. Occasionally I have even encountered one or another thread related to Rest.

I don't think I have very often run into a thread on Sleep and or difficulties with acquisition…

…so here is,…

one calendar day and one REM cycle since last posting,…

a thread on SLEEP

and with the greatest of ongoing Hopes a thread on the Blessed Hope of Some real qualities of

REST at the end of this, the Path...

Not a single tip?

WTF?

How do you arahants sleep at night? That's all I'm asking, cripey, even the Almighty Universal Omega One takes Sunday's off.

Huh, maybe you simply lie there then...

"Daniel, Daniel and the sacred harp, dancing through the clover, Daniel, Daniel would you mind, if I look it over..."

-triplethink

Hi Nathan,



Did you read this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783
Two historians, a psychiatrist, a neuroscientist and a sleep psychologist suggest that there's evidence people used to sleep in two shifts and that some people today do not adjust to an industrial-era 8-hr sleep.


And a friend swore by magnesium and zinc taken with something like warm oat- or almond-milk and honey. He said that worked like a charm. And there's some support for it here (but with melatonin included):http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21226679

Two tips. Good luck.

hi Katy;

Thanks for the links. I am familiar with most of this research and continue to keep an eye on anything related.

I never did sleep much. As a child my parents used to put me into bed at about 8 p.m. until I was about ten years old, after which age I could remain up until about ten p.m.. As I recall I always stayed awake a lot longer. I used to engage in what I now well understand to be samathavipassana and satipatthana practices while lying there for many hours each night.

I had my first digital clock at around age thirteen. At that point I became aware that I was typically awake until about four a.m.. Usually I needed to get up again around eight a.m. if not earlier for school and so forth. So it has typically been about four hours sleep/night throughout most of my lifetime. In my early teens we had a full size pool and diving tank at the high school and I liked to go swimming in the morning before classes at about six a.m. so at that time I was able to become unconscious at about two a.m..

In grade ten at about age 14 I had my first experience of the Jhana's and of the Void not long after puberty and that altered my life in nearly every way. Because I had no information to hand about what I had encountered I simply combed the libraries looking for any relevant information. I read a lot of the psychology, philosophy, comparative religion and so on available up to that time in the early 1980's. I was always a heavy reader and have read exhaustively at a post graduate level since a very early age. Drugs frequently came up in any references to 'altered states' so I determined that this should be a major area of study.

I read everything written at that point (mid 80's) on the subjects of drugs, drug experiences, drug cultures and drug warfare. So I was fairly well appraised before I began my personal investigations of those types of experiences. I won't digress into any of that here except to note that in the three and a half decades since I have found little use for any drugs apart from one specific application in this respect, that of assisting with sleep.

I have found that the use of about one gram of cannabis flowers at a semi-regular rate of about one day per week can extend my sleeping cycle to about six to eight hours per night which is comparatively very restful. Unfortunately the cultural climate in regards to drugs and drug use worldwide at present is, as it is.

In relation to meditation I would say the use of cannabis has also been useful for my purposes. I do not feel the need to hurry my 'progress' along 'on the path'. What I require is more time to process the nature of the experiences just as these are from moment to moment as these are already sufficiently quite profound and impactful most of the time. I am very sensitive to the thoughts of other beings, both near and far. Apart from being consciously aware I can also be physiologically affected by remote phenomena. I do all that I can do to not also have similar such effects in relation to other beings but all phenomena such as this is always a two way street. Some take the view that they exist in some sort(s) of 'phenomenological isolation' of one kind or another however I cannot readily take on this thinking without also entering into a kind of delusion or denial of aspects of my experience. I can adopt such a perspective when entering into either 'Hard' Jhana or unconsciousness - which typically involves a considerable presence of the mental quality most prominent in 'the realm of nothingness' so even this is typically more or less of an absorptive condition together with some generalized laxity of attention.

Cannabis use, even in very small amounts, once a week, has a 'clouding' effect on my perceptions and overall awareness. It affords an illusion of 'privacy' and 'separation' that otherwise is very difficult to maintain particularly in large public spaces with many people but no less so when alone in solitude. Jhana is less likely to become spontaneously deep or intense and the mental qualities that are magnified by deep absorptive concentration are likewise more readily inhibited by the regular use of cannabis in this kind of a way.

Some 25 years ago I moved to the remote north west pacific coast of British Columbia where a relatively liberal cultural climate readily tolerates regular casual cannabis use and accessibility to the drug was easily afforded. Apart from the limited social contact necessary in those regards I did my best to stay entirely away from people and continue with my studies and reflections alone in the forest. About a year ago I moved back to the continental mainland and to the province of Alberta where the general culture is far more conservative and any alternative sub-cultures are likewise far less 'relaxed'. It is therefore much more of a 'hot' drug war climate and attitudes are not as liberal or accepting of individual differences in general.

Consequently I have had to look for other ways to mediate the effects of these kinds of 'heightened sensitivities'. I do take a certain amount of supplemental magnesium daily together with a comprehensive mineral and vitamin complex which is tailored to my high metabolic rate. However this has not in any ways served to similarly tone down the sensitivities or extend periods of unconsciousness.

Having such a high metabolic rate and highly active forms of percipience and of sensory acuteness of various sorts in many respects I do not tolerate many carbohydrates or complex sugars and continued use would exacerbate hypoglycemia to a diabetic condition. A bowl of ice cream or plate of cookies will lead to a kind of grogginess as a consequence of an insulin spike but such approaches are more like a sledge hammer than a velvet glove and will be grossly counterproductive.

Ever since puberty I have had to accept that one or two nights a week I simply will not sleep at all. In periods of even more intensity I may not sleep for as long as ten days. When I was younger this body could tolerate these periods of more extensive high functioning activity more readily. I am fifty years old now and so the deficit of restfulness is beginning to have a more destructive range of effects on my nervous system and my body in general.

I accept these conditions as such and the fact that these conditions will shorten my natural life span. I have no concern about how many moments or breaths I may or may not yet have ahead of me. My interest with this phenomena as with any other aspect of being and becoming we are investigating as a group here is the general growth and expansion of human knowledge, wisdom and understanding. This is why I am always willing to be honest and open, whether people accept or reject what I have to say, I offer up the available facts, such as these may be, for consideration nonetheless.

Thanks again for contributing to the dialog in this area.

triplethink///nathan