“You won’t be able to control your thoughts. They are like birds that fly from your grasping hands. But if you relax, those birds may perch on your shoulder, and then you can walk, taking them where you want them to go.”~Horoscope, December 8, 2010
When I opened the paper this morning and read my horoscope, I didn’t so much laugh as I felt resigned, perhaps even redeemed. Redeemed from a night when sleep would not come. Or at least would not come at the ‘proper’ time. This is the second night this week when I have done battle with my eyelids. Monday night I also had bizarre sleeping patterns, finally getting up at four in the morning and giving in to the circling thoughts that kept my mind too busy for sleep.
I am normally a ‘very good sleeper’ just as I am a ‘very good eater’. I listen with all the compassion I can muster to many of my friends who struggle with insomnia. The nutritional and physical gymnastics they go through to get a good night’s sleep frankly exhausts me. But last night, when my brain would not stop its work, I began to feel a kinship with them like never before. I can chalk it up to stress, the general work load that is December, the pattern of the moon, what I ate, what I didn’t eat. But mostly I think it was a mixture of creativity and anxiety.
The creativity comes from many projects that are in a state of transition….dreamed but not yet in motion or realized. The anxiety comes from the same source……big thoughts that are swimming in my gray matter but not yet fully formed. Ever had this experience? The difficulty with not being able to turn that part of your brain off for the sake of sleep is that, in the nocturnal state, our vulnerability begins to add all the other worries we carry just below surface. The little pain becomes something grave. The door we see opening suddenly smacks shut. The people we are sure of in our waking hours can seem less our allies in the fog of sleeplessness.
So in this hyper-thought place, I decided to do the only thing I knew how to do. I began being present to my own breath. Holding myself as still as possible, I began riding the wave of the energy that gives me life. Soon I realized that my breathing had become a prayer: “Let sleep come. Let sleep come. Let sleep come.” The Spirit and I had come to an agreement and we were co-existing.
The Buddhists refer to my nighttime experience as ‘monkey mind’. But today’s horoscope gave me a different image, one I find helpful. Birds. The thoughts which were flying around could have been the harbingers of creativity that need a nest in which to rest. My real work is to relax enough, to breathe deeply enough, to allow them to perch on my shoulders so I can hear their song.
Are they doves? Crows? Chickadees? Cardinals? I’m not sure. But if today….or tonight…finds you unable to focus the gifts of your thoughts, I invite you to imagine these invisible thorns allowing them to become companions. Companions with wings set to travel with you through the ups and downs of this cold, winter day.
Who knows what message they might deliver, what Advent song they might sing?
