Sleep Tracking and Beyond

I recently got a small health tracker to wear on my wrist. After the first night, it informed me that I had slept for eight hours. It showed periods of deep, REM, and light sleep. It estimated my heart rate throughout the night and gave me a score for the quality of my sleep.

What is Sleep?

Science has many answers. Memories are consolidated, emotions are processed, tissues are repaired, and the brain performs essential maintenance. Sleep is important.

Many spiritual traditions, however, speak about sleep differently. Rather than seeing it as a time when consciousness is diminished, they say that consciousness is expanded. The physical personality recedes into the background and our higher self becomes more accessible.

Some mystical Christian teachings describe sleep as a temporary return to God. Some Hindu traditions say that deep sleep offers a glimpse of our true nature beyond the individual self. Dream yoga traditions within Buddhism believe that consciousness continues its journey while the body rests.

Our waking life is not the whole story.

Recall

Physical life requires a particular type of consciousness focus. During the day, our attention is directed towards a world that requires action. In sleep, that focus changes. We loosen our grip on the physical world and return to a less restricted reality. 

Everyone does this, although not everyone remembers. Much of our nocturnal activity remains beyond conscious recall. That’s okay. We remember what is useful to remember.

In my own experience, the dream state is extensive, rich, and complex. I typically wake with many memories of conversations, places, and experiences. In addition to the normal processing of daily events, emotions, and challenges, there are many other trips. 

I frequently meet people from my past — relatives, friends, sometimes people I would never assume would appear in my dreams. Sometimes we talk. Sometimes we have adventures together. There is definitely a sense of continuing relationships that may have seemed to end with some type of physical separation.

Not all dreams are pleasant. Some involve conflict, confusion, fear, or difficult situations. These are purposeful. Realities can be explored, and possibilities worked through in the safer spirit world. I’m sure you’d rather go through some things in spirit than human form, and wake up in one piece!

There are other experiences that are profoundly otherworldly. Encounters with unusual beings (unusual to us, not to them), luminous intelligences, teachers, and spirit guides. Everyone meets up with their helpers, although most don’t remember much. Everyone has their own spirit guides who are ever eager to assist whenever the door is open.

Beyond Tracking

So even though my tracker is monitoring physical statistics, it is also peeking into the non-biological dimensions of sleep, where we connect with our home before physical existence came into play.

One day, what the tracker is monitoring — the body — will give up the ghost. Once again, we’ll be slap bang in the middle of that world we visit in our sleep. That familiar, exciting, ever-expanding world of non-dimensionality.

Consciousness Series