Imagine You are on Your Life Sailboat that is traveling the Ocean of Life…
What would make your journey in life smooth and enjoyable?
Certainly a lot of sun, clear sight, no riffs, maybe some other Sailboats filled with friends and a grateful heart towards the Creator of this beautiful scenery.
Energy Level and Emotional Balance
How about waking up every morning, being grateful for your gorgeous journey in life, thanking the Source of Creation for all the beauty around you and starting the day fresh and energized?
I found this picture of the Ocean of Life in the book “Modern Ayurveda” by Constanz Kiffmeyer (in German). He uses the picture of the Ocean of Life to explain the journey of life.
He writes, that people have an energy level and an emotional well-being. The energy level corresponds to the level of the Ocean of Life:
- If your energy level is filled, in other words the level of your Ocean of Life is high, then the riffs are below the water and your ship travels smoothly on the Ocean of Life. You wake up with a smile in your heart and you feel happy and grateful for life. The sun in your heart is shining throughout the day.
- If the level of the Ocean drops too low then the riffs appear, sailing and navigating becomes more difficult and you feel a rising stress in your daily life. The riffs symbolize your fears and your worries.
- Sometimes there is one rock sticking really high out of the water, even if you have a high energy level. You could certainly blow this riff up by a concentrated effort such as psychotherapy or other methods. The explosion will cause some waves in your Ocean and it feels a little bit shaky on your sailboat. This is ok, it is only temporary and the Ocean smooths out again and you continue your journey joyfully and peacefully.
- The longer you are on a high energy level, the smaller the riffs below the surface become. Natural erosion will diminish the riffs: fears, worries and some mental/emotional patterns are not longer useful for you. You can still go and work intentionally on one or more of the deeper lying riffs if you want to.
Increasing your Energy Level with Sleep
It is good to care for your life-force-energy reservoir in your system, which I think of as the Prana. If you have enough Prana and if it is circulating freely in your system, you feel happy, at ease and joyful.
There are so many ways of raising prana and removing obstacles in your system so that it can move freely for a feeling of health, ease and joy. Methods may include attention to nutrition, yoga or selfless service. This blog article focusses on one means: sleeping well.
Going to bed early, best before 10 pm, is a wonderful way to fill your life force (Prana) reservoir. Constanz Kiffmeyer writes, that in Ayurveda each hour before midnight counts double.
Everybody benefits from going to bed early. Especially people with back pain can use early bed therapy to get relief. Those, who are feeling depressed or feeling as if they are caught up in a monotonous routine will highly benefit from going to bed early, too. The whole system calms down and the body has a chance heal. If you want to enjoy time with your friends out later at night, you can go to bed early e.g. 5 out of 7 nights.
Sleeping is a habit and you can change your habits. If you do something for 3 days in a row it will feel natural on only the 4th day into the new routine. Even if you don’t sleep right away, the body still relaxes. If you have a lot of work, it is healthier to get up earlier instead of working in the night. Do it for a couple of days in a row and see how you feel! This is your scientific proof.
Increasing your Emotional Balance with Sleep
Just sleeping regularly and early already has such a positive influence on your nervous system and refills your energy reservoir.
If you want to work consciously on your emotional balance during sleep, consider this: Usually your subconscious remembers the last thoughts and emotions before going to bed. They influence the quality of your sleep. Often you will wake up with the same quality of feelings and thoughts as when you fell asleep.
To make the best out of your sleeping time consciously:
- State out load, what troubled you during the day. It is good to state it, not to dwell in it, but just to make it clear. In this way, your subconscious, your thinking mind and your Higher Self hear it. And troubling emotions want to be heard, they are like little kids. Better to listen to them early than pushing them aside. Then, they would only becoming louder.
- Then ask your Higher Self to transform these thoughts and feelings or relieve some body symptoms and to find a solution. One teacher, Lee Harris, uses the phrase “Please let that move during sleep” and then you can in addition specify, e.g. “Please let me wake up with an idea of how to solve this and that”. Even if you wake up and don’t remember the solution consciously, be sure, the answer is there and you will act accordingly.
- State in present tense how you want to feel when you wake up. Say thank you three times and fall into sleep with happy thoughts, knowing that you left everything to a higher Intelligence or Source.
There are some spiritual authors, e.g. Anne Brewer, who write, that you visit your spiritual guides and teachers during your deep sleep phase and learn from them how you best proceed in your daily life.
That’s the reason why you sometimes wake up, feel very clear and ready for the day and sometimes you missed these precious encounters just because you didn’t have these deep sleeping phases. There are many more theories as to what sleep encompasses on a spiritual level. Anita Briggs has a method, called conscientious sleep.
If you agree with this theory or not, just stating your intention to all of your selves, your subconscious, your thinking mind and your Higher Self will make such a difference for sleep.
Go ahead, try and evaluate the result. The Sun of Life is in your Heart.