Sleep Challenges

Since the last post several things have happened in relation to the new practice regimen that ended up being new meditation practice challenges. The deep meditation experience I had seemed to have messed up my sleep quite seriously. I couldn’t sleep for a few days after it and started getting seriously sleep deprived. After consulting with the teacher, I adjusted my meditation schedule and lightened the practice load. Apparently, you are supposed to go straight to bed after the evening meditation. I was doing mine a few hours before sleep so I was doing things after meditation which caused the mind to go up and down too many times before bed ultimately confusing it about the mode it’s supposed to be in.

Since then I am going to bed right after evening meditation and am able to fall asleep pretty quickly. However, I wake up every night around 3:30am fairly wide awake. Not wanting to get up this early, I try sleeping more into the later morning but end up waking up every half hour which makes the sleep very light and not restful at all. This has been keeping me in a slightly sleep deprived state for weeks and I can’t tell if this is an intended state due to the deepened practice. It also makes me hesitant about increasing the meditation time since it seems that deep meditation cuts into the sleep needs for some part of my body. Next I might try just getting up when I wake up in the night and maybe meditate in that state, then sleep later in the morning or day if I feel sleepy. I never was a napper in my life but this may be something I will need to adjust to. 

Although trying to sleep into the morning has been working somewhat ok in terms of not feeling drained throughout the day. I just can’t pinpoint a time where I can wake up and still do a morning meditation practice. I tried waking up at 7am, meditating for about 1.5 hours and then doing a yoga postures practice. Meditation in the morning is interesting because you are still close to being in your subconscious state but your energy is not up so you can’t really stay as present and concentrated. 

Current Regimen

From what I understand from the teacher, even before the morning meditation you are supposed to raise the energy as without that proper meditation can’t happen. But that also doesn’t feel right as doing intense exercises in the morning is tough. The body is still asleep. I tried doing yoga first thing after waking up and then meditation, but that didn’t feel ideal. I think I’m just slow at waking up in the morning. Might just sacrifice the morning meditation practice for now and just do the presence + breathing meditation as part of the yoga practice in the morning for now.

Evening practice currently consists of 45 minutes of static Qigong, 30 minutes of pranayama and around 1.5 hours of meditation that is spent on the 4 topics of investigation, 4 enlightened states of consciousness or 12 stages of dependent origination and then remaining time on anapanasati. Closer to the end I am getting a pretty still state of consciousness but as before I do feel I need to extend the time into 2 and 2.5 hours mark in order to truly close the gap to the state of contemplation. I will be gradually moving towards that time and carefully see how that affects my sleep.

Negative Karma Manifestations

The state of the mind throughout the day has been varying. There had been some manifestation of negative karma in the past couple of weeks. First I decided to go do a walking practice in a park a driving distance away from my place. I usually do it in a park right nearby but thought to change it up and go to a part where I haven’t been in a long time. Well that day there was a heavy snowfall but that didn’t stop me from driving to the park.

I was talking to a friend on the phone on my walk and was still talking to him through my headphones on the drive back. I was coming to a intersection and started slowing down for the red light but then I noticed that I am not breaking fast enough and once I hit the breaks completely the car started skidding. Turns out the snow already made an icing on the road and the intersection was on a subtle declining slope. So I ended up rear ending a car in front of me. At a very slow speed and with a minimum damage to their rear bumper but since I tried turning away at the last second, the damage to my car was to the right side and completely demolished the body there. 

It was interesting that during the whole ordeal I didn’t really experience any emotions. There was no fear or worry. There was a family in the other car and a man that I talked to turned out to be really nice and also not very emotional about the whole situation, just disappointed. We exchanged information and shook hands at the end and went our separate ways. I did have to pay a lump sum for my own repairs and that thought did come back to me a few times but again I didn’t feel too troubled by it, as if it was just something that needed to happen that way. I did think a few times about what I should have done differently but even that didn’t seem that useful. 

Of course I could have realized that the snowfall adds the risk and taking the car for such a frivolous activity that day was completely unnecessary but that didn’t phase me because I’m usually a good driver and with the 4 wheel drive the car control is usually excellent. But in truth this accident revealed my overly high risk tolerance. I’m overly confident and not careful enough in oh so many areas of my life. But that seems to be my inherent feature as if that is simply my level of sensitivity. Not sure if that is something that can be improved or modified but I will strive to stay more mindful of this factor.

Then shortly after that I got the flu. Its symptoms were fairly mind this time but debilitating nonetheless. It made a dent in my concentration and I lost energy with bad habits as a result. This started a spiral of disrupted concentration where I could barely practice and study with poor quality for about 2 weeks. I started feeling fairly weird as there was a cognitive dissonance due to me not being able to stop my actions even though I knew they were going against the precepts I’m supposed to abide by. Eventually I was able to muster enough willpower and move myself away from that behavior and spend more time studying Dharma. That helped move the consciousness back into the right direction. Hoping it will stick this time and I will be more vigilant and strong in future manifestations of bad karma. One is supposed to withstand such cases with upeksha aka detached equanimity.

Something like this seems to be naturally happening every once in a while as if the stability of the routine somehow gets too stale and things get shaken up. I feel I just finally was able to get back on the horse and stick only to productive activities throughout the day. Back to spending most of my free time studying Dharma and then practicing what I can in the morning and evening. The goal is to maintain meditative concentration throughout the day and stay present to practice mindful behavior.