April 6th, 2025

Sleep is sacred

I suspect that everyone wants deeper, more restful sleep, because everyone intuits that it will make them happier and more energized during waking life.

Before learning proper sleep hygiene habits or protocols, it’s important that you first rework your view of sleep. You must recognize that sleep is a sacred act, **and must be taken seriously as such.

Sleep isn’t just a means of supporting you on the material plane — boosting productivity, inspiring creative breakthroughs, or recovering after intense exercise.

No, it’s much more fundamental than that. It’s one of your only opportunities to reconnect with the Divine — the Source of all peace and wisdom.

Stripping away the metaphysical terminology, sleep is the one time in most people’s day that all of their problems and thoughts disappear.*

No hopeless anxiety or financial concerns. No chance of betrayal or bitter rumination. No critical self-analysis or hyper-rationalization. No risk of injury or punishment.

When you enter dreamless sleep, you enter the deep void of blissful eternity, entirely unaware of — and invincible to — everyday stressors.

This makes sleep a (near) perfect way of escaping the matrix, meaning it should be coveted and treated as holy.†

* That is, without them needing to drown them out with activities like retail therapy or latching onto other people’s drama.

† I say “near-perfect” simply because it’s accessed unconsciously. Once you’ve learned how to properly meditate, you can learn to enter such a void state consciously.

Practice

Honoring sleep as a sacred act requires more than just knowledge or philosophical agreement — it needs consistent action.

1. Create a sleep sanctuary. Make your bedroom a space dedicated to rest. Remove electronics (use an old-fashioned alarm clock), dim the lights an hour before bed, and add elements that promote calm (soft textures, soothing scents like lavender essential oil, or a gentle white noise machine).
2. Develop a bedtime ritual. Signal to your body that it’s time to transition to the space of sleep. This might include:
   • Taking a warm bath or shower
   • Doing some gentle stretches (I suggest shoulder stand or plow pose.)
   • Reading something (preferably fiction or boring; not on a screen)
   • Saying a brief prayer — see {Mind} below
3. Set an intention as you lay down. Rather than falling unconscious by default, consciously enter sleep with gratitude and purpose. Try silently affirming: “I genuinely want to enter sacred rest in order to reconnect with the Divine source.”
4. Track your experience. Each morning, briefly note how deeply you slept and how you feel upon waking. Over time, I’d bet that you’ll notice a very specific patterns — the more seriously you take sleep, the deeper and more rejuvenating it will become.

Crafting your own prayer

​Last week I began explaining why praying is so hard, technically speaking.

To summarize: Because we have not cultivated the skill of concentration, the mind easily switches topics, forgetting that it originally sat down with the intention of praying, not selfishly thinking about itself for twenty minutes.

It was then suggested that new meditators begin with time-tested prayers, such as the Lord’s Prayer or the Gayatri Mantra. After all, frameworks help keep the mind in-line, giving it a yes/no metric as to whether it successfully prayed or not.

Over time, though, it becomes increasingly important that one transcend these scripted prayers and begin to speak from the heart. One can only go so deep in meditation and prayer before they hit a “wall of authenticity” — the point at which using other people’s words to speak for you is no longer an effective tool for going inward.

At this point, the devotee must pivot and learn to let the prayer emerge from deep in their soul rather than the pages of a book.

Doing so well requires three understandings:

1. What you really want is peace, not status, possessions or immortality.
2. The only way to reliably maintain peace is by giving up selfishness.
3. Prayer is primarily about removing attachments to the objects that keep you selfish.

With these anchors in place, authentic prayer becomes effortless: “Lord, you know me. You understand me. You see that deep in my heart that I want peace above all else. I’m ready to shed these greedy tendencies. Strip my mind of its attachments. Let me purified of all my worldly desires. Please. No more selfishness. I’m ready. I’m ready.”

Practice with me below or stay tuned next week where I’ll be discussing the difference between detachment and non-attachment.

(Note: These meditations will become pay-walled in two weeks time.)

Meditate

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me lay an invincible summer.” — Albert Camus

Who told you that this pain and confusion would last forever? No one. And yet you silently believe it; otherwise, you wouldn’t be so upset right now.

Anything that arises will eventually pass away. Buildings, bodies, galaxies. Careers, countries, lovers. Pain, pleasure, doubt. Everything you see, feel or imagine will one day be gone.

Soon.

You know this.

And yet you’ve forgotten again, haven’t you?

Reframe your circumstance. Contraction and death and ignorance are necessary precursors for expansion and life and Knowledge. You — yes, You — stand aloof to the terror and tragedy of duality. Unobstructed by its darkness. Invincible to its chill.

Journal