humidity, wakefulness & meditation

I don’t excel at sleeping. I really never have, but now in middle age, my sleep is interrupted constantly. I’ve decided to not fight it, embrace my natural rhythms and see how the universe wants me to use my extra waking time. Last night was no exception.

I went to sleep around 10:30 and was wide awake at 2:50. Our cat, Karen was sleeping soundly next to me. My husband is gone and I don’t mind waking up Karen, so I felt free to roam. I got up to pee and I noticed that all of the windows were covered with the soft, haze of humidity.

The whole world seems to be trapped in heat and haze right now.

I wondered how I could photograph Cape Cod’s humidity in the middle of the night without leaving my bedroom. I took a few shots. The camera wasn’t capturing what I could see. I decided that wasn’t the inspiration I was searching for, not at all what the universe wanted me to do in the middle of the night on August 9th.

I decided to get back into bed and listen to a guided mediation on the INSIGHT app, which I highly recommend. I have a favorite voice, Sarah Blondin who guides me with her Live Awake series. I consider her a very close friend. Sarah’s voice and words have provided so much, well, insight and spark since I downloaded the app in January.

This morning at 3:10am I chose Life is Kind. Here is the start to her meditation.

Though we are strangers, we are kindred in spirit. There’s no difference between us. We are the same.

We are here in the name of our hearts, in the name of opening, in the name of unstitching what has overtime grown closed within. We are each here in the name of reuniting with our soft centers. It is the place we are most alive, most accepted, most whole.

It is where we seek refuge from the from the weight of the world.”

I fell back asleep shortly after these lines and had a remarkable, beautiful and kind dream.

I’ll share that dream with you tomorrow.

 

Beware of this brain glitch.

The way our brain equates repetition for truth.

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YOU ONLY USE 10 percent of your brain. 

Eating carrots improves your eyesight.

Crime in the United States is at an all-time high. 

 

NONE OF THESE STATEMENTS ARE TRUE.

They FEEL TRUE because of repetition. 

Crazy, huh?

Slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward.”  

—Hitler in Mein Kampf

“But the facts don’t actually matter: People repeat them so often that you believe them. Welcome to the “illusory truth effect,” a glitch in the human psyche that equates repetition with truth. Marketers and politicians are masters of manipulating this particular cognitive bias—which perhaps you have become more familiar with lately.”

Source: Wired.com Article by Emily Dreyfuss

After I read this, I wondered…

What can I do if I notice my brain is on autopilot?

Pinch myself?  Snap a rubber band on my wrist?

OR…

Seek more sources to confirm or dispel my TRUTHS?

Let me know if you come up with a trick.

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SOURCE:  WANT TO MAKE A LIE SEEM TRUE? SAY IT AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AND AGAIN.

by Emily Dreyfuss


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