What Is Sleep?

A Simple Example

Working on the computer in my living room, I reach a point where I need to input my credit card information. My wallet is upstairs, in my bedroom.

I lay aside my computer, get up, and bound up the stairs two at a time to get my wallet. Then, with my wallet in hand, I race back down the stairs, flop back down in my seat and resume my task.

What happened in this little ‘in between’ moment? Did my life ‘stop’ in some way while I got my wallet? Does going up or down stairs somehow ‘not count’ as part of my existence?

Certainly, I did not remember myself as I raced through this ‘interruption’, bent only on getting back to my task.

This is a very small, simple example of a moment of sleep. In fact, most of our lives (and most of our sleep) consist of these ‘inconsequential’ moments. If I think about it, and observe from this perspective, I am confronted by the realization that, in fact, most of my life passes in sleep this way.

It is helpful to take the simplest things when trying to understand the nature and extent of this sleep. Standing up and sitting down, getting in and out of cars, tying one’s shoes, taking out the garbage. These moments are so simple that very little or no attention is needed to carry them out. One’s head and one’s feet need not be in the same place, as Elizabeth I would say; one’s attention can wander anywhere. At the same time, such moments are so abundant that we are given a remarkable and almost uninterrupted series of opportunities to become more awake, to ‘gather ourselves’ in the present moment.

While seemingly mundane and unimportant, these are the moments that really matter.

What simple moments of sleep can you observe today?

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Image: William Blake, Elohim Creating Adam