Dullness and insomnia

[wardMember]

I’m a lifetime insomniac who lives in a perpetual state of mild sleep deprivation. My meditative skill is somewhere in stage 2, though I haven’t really mastered stage 1 yet. As you might guess, strong dullness is my main obstacle. On the other hand, dullness is my best friend at bedtime.

My sleep technique, which I already sort-of knew but confirmed via a sleep self-help course, is to focus on the breath sensations while lying in bed. This helps to quiet the anxious monkey mind. Once I can focus the attention (e.g., can count at least 10 breaths), then dullness is likely to set in. The intention is to encourage the sub-minds to relax and quit projecting alarming thoughts/images into consciousness. When the projections become pleasantly hypnagogic, I can drop the intention to maintain concentration and drift into sleep. Sometimes this takes hours, or fails altogether.

One concern is whether I am giving the sub-minds conflicting intentions by focusing on the breath for both concentration and sleep acquisition. But I read in Culadasa’s book that the sub-minds are smart enough to recognize different contexts. So I’m hoping they will recognize that in meditation we are intending to increase awareness and at bedtime we are intending to let it go and yield to dullness.

I’m pretty sure that my sub-minds understand that bedtime is a special context. The simple act of going to bed causes them to switch into the insomnia program (anxious monkey mind) by default, even if I was drowsy moments earlier. This is what defines me as an insomniac.

[Anonymous]

Hi, Ward. Due to health reasons, I too have suffered from chronic insomnia, for the past seven years or so. My experience is that the sub minds do understand the context – ie, that you are not meditating formally, but rather intending to fall asleep. So I don’t think this will be a problem for you.

I hope your sleep difficulties improve soon!

Jeremy

[wardMember]

Thanks for the encouragement, Jeremy.

Today I was able to meditate for an hour without nodding off. There was strong dullness, but I was able to overcome it enough such that I would lose track of the breath only momentarily (not much vividness, though). After an hour, the struggle was so fierce that I decided to “quit while ahead” and end on a note of success.

It seems that I’m able to achieve stage-3 ability at least some of the time; today there was little or no mind wandering after I got settled in. The main obstacle is the hypnagogic content that springs forth and captures my attention.

Another obstacle is the numerous itching/tickling sensations that arise when I sit. Today I was able to refrain from scratching, and the sensations either faded or receded into the background. Occasionally another itch would arise, though, and I had the odd notion that a sub-mind was doing this deliberately to help me stay awake.

[Author]

Posts