Being up at 3:30 is not the business, it’s a momentary lapse in my subconscious that says, “wake up, there’s stuff to think about.” Maybe that is why I practice so diligently for equanimity, why I do the meditation, be precise in the moment. 3:30 am has never been a friend of mine, for years it was the tipping point to knowing there was going to be no sleep. The silent calm of the world outside of my carnivorous cave that ate me alive from the inside out. I would peer through the window to the glow in the sky that was lit from the city lights, it was never dark at night back home. A few stars, hopeless dreams, no sleeps – just me, alone once again, twisting in the thin sheets of mindless dribble I scratched away at. Papercuts, pining for sluts, empty cups stacked to the ceiling, searching for something or someone to save me! Drunk and disorderly, spun up quite horribly, watching the minutes click by! 3:30 am has never been a friend of mine.
That theme has carried over into my life today, almost 20 years later and 3:30 am still haunts me. It still takes from me, not like a thief tho, more like a strong-armed robbery. There’s nothing smooth or casual about it, I wake to turn my phone over to see the time, 3:30 in glowing fashion and all hope for a good night’s sleep slowly drains out of my heart and into the night’s abyss. I make my way to the bathroom, I urinate, I eat some Tums, head back to the bed knowing full well restlessness will be waiting for me once I hit the sheets. My legs will start, sliding on the smooth 800 thread count sheets, I’ll shut my eyes and watch my breath (I fall asleep in meditation all the time so sometimes this works) but then my head will get involved. It’s like an unwanted guest staying on your couch after you just put a vase of flowers on your kitchen table. You look over to the disarray of your living room, the faint smell of insanity tickles your nose hairs. It’s 3:30 says your head, time to wake up and feed me.
Then the thoughts start coming in, one by one, like the soup lines of the Great Depression (no I wasn’t there but I’ve seen pictures and read books and boy oh boy what a sad miserable time it was for so many). Each thought holding a bowl to be filled with emotion and attachment and desire and fear, each bowl owned by unmanageability and obsession and insanity. Work needs to be fed, clients need to be fed, daughter needs to be fed, ex-wife needs to be fed, friends, family, woman, money, retirement and last but not least, self – self needs to be fed. The last being the worst of them all, self. The ugly truth of self is that it is never satisfied, it always wants more or better or softer (like 800 thread count sheets isn’t like sleeping on a pad of soft butter). Self lives in fear and eats high cholesterol meals in the presence of projection. Self thinks it can see the future and actually manipulate it to its desires. Self is cunning, baffling and quite powerful when given the opportunity and 3:30 am is a great time for all of this.
Today's 3:30 adventure was of work and being pulled in 4 different directions, trying to please 3 different clients with only 2 of us on deck. It’s a math problem that includes the time continuum, a rabbit’s foot, tea leaves, 800 thread count sheets and the tears of tiny mice not wanting to be crushed by the big bad world. I know not the answer and why 3:30 am thinks it’s time to get out my lined paper and number 2 pencil I’ve no idea. But this is just how it is and I will deal with it as best as I know how, by surrendering. I mean that’s what we do right, to uncontrollable, to dominating, to obsessive and compulsive, we surrender. We raise that white flag and let it all go, we realize that we cannot meet everyone’s needs, we cannot make everyone happy and that self can be a little bit too self-centered. It says nothing of who we are, it is not a shortcoming, it is just a reality, no matter how hard we try, how resilient our resolve is to produce, sometimes, most times, we are powerless.
I knew nothing of this in my younger years and the wisdom of this has been a slow growth too boot. It has taken years upon years to master this surrender thing, so many teachers, so many heartaches, so many 3:30 am’s to learn me the soft, delicate love of surrender. I know it now but forget it often, it comes and goes as seconds tick by at times. Other times it stays true and points me towards my true north, never faltering or leaving my side. Those are the times where I am most happy, most content and most free. What would it be like if I surrendered in all areas of my life? The question that is asked when deep in the first step, the answers most all the same: I would be happy, I would feel free, I would be content, for myself it would be that I truly trust in my higher powers will for me. That my faith in the process and devotion to being in the moment had combined into one action, surrender.
There’s not much I can do for making myself fall asleep, if 3:30 wants me, 3:30 gets me. I can however choose not to obsess on thoughts through acceptance and surrender, through seeing the thoughts and letting them go (as I’ve learned in meditation). I am grateful for 3:30 to be honest, as trying as it might be in tiny moments, it gives me the opportunity to work on my spiritual conditioning. Especially when it’s weeks of 3:30, that’s when the real work come in, that’s when we really see how spiritually centered I am. Can I still be kind, loving, patient and compassionate to myself and all those around me? Or will my anger at the lack of sleep spill over into my relationships, my equanimity. Will I lash out at loved ones and innocent bystanders and make them victims of my selfishness or will I surrender and have acceptance.
It’s always important for me to be self-aware, to not be caught up in life’s happenings and franticly handling choices, but its particularly crucial for me to be self-aware in times of anguish and distress. To move slow, to be precise. My head goes through life at a breakneck speed, formulating and decerning, adding, subtracting - all the while missing the beauty of being alive. I can always be clearheaded if I choose to be, if I settle in on the moment and be with it, watch it and let it go to experience the next one. Unattached to what was, a good night’s sleep and bad night’s sleep, either way they are just night’s, nothing more, nothing less. They are just experiences that have happened.
“What was before is not now, what is not now was not before”
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