In Sleep...

(I) How many thousands... Are at this hour asleep! O gentle sleep, Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down And steep my senses in forgetfulness? Shakespeare In sleep I am always alone. No bed is large enough to contain all my tossings. I awake again and again in the night, and feel darkness as a weight upon me. Even when I push against it, it only presses harder and threatens to take my breath away. I am scared to see my exhaled breath dissolving into mere air. Something alien and malign tries to exhaust my reserves of breath and render me hopeless. Or so it seems. Perhaps it is my self, contrary and confused, that exacts these hostile measures... Only near dawn do I sink into a vexed sleep that mocks the repose I long for. Oh, in what detour of darkness do my sweet dreams reside? (II) Oh Sleep! It is a gentle thing Beloved from pole to pole! To Mary Queen the praise be given! She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven That slid into my soul. Coleridge In sleep, I am always with others. Blessed spirits hover over my sleeping self, they quietly sing music only pure souls hear as they lie motionless in the currents of night. Friends appear in dreams repeating their kind gestures from daylight. My mind, counting all blessings, never tires of adding another and yet another. But eventually that beautiful moment arrives when body and mind surrender their consciousness and soul and heart take over and purify awareness of what is and what will be. In this deepest place of sleep a Mystery awakes and spreads its wonder through all sleeping beings. Imagine Homer's asphodel garden released from the confines of Hades. Imagine yourself holding Aeneas's golden bough as you ascend with the other souls in a mad rush into the Light. Imagine Persephone and her maidens flying through the Dark Lord's realm, and inviting you to land with them in her loving mother's fields of wheat and barley... Imagine any paradise that fulfills the summons of your soul, and it will be as real as the sources of Light in the blazing sun and Apollo's shining being... Near dawn, all these images, however real they seem at night, will vanish in cascades of falling light, and the ascending light will raise those real things we treasure and hold dear in our bodies and minds, in our souls and hearts.