When you're ready,
Let's get into bed and let's have an anxiety-free sleep.
Anxiety is definitely an epidemic and it often just arises from overthinking about the future.
So as you settle into bed tonight with me,
See if you can just draw your energy a bit more into your body and just really be here with me as you let go into sleep.
And don't worry,
The New York Times is not going to review your quality of sleep tonight.
In fact,
See if you can let go of any pressure to fall asleep,
To get enough rest,
Or to do it right in any way.
Allow yourself just to be in a really natural state tonight.
And with the lights off and the room temperature just right,
And with a nice blanket,
A good pillow,
And being really comfortable in your own bed,
Let's start to shut down and unplug and just rest.
And to begin us on that journey,
I want to share a little story that I heard,
A spiritual story about truth.
And it goes kind of like this.
There's a guy or a gal standing in front of a wall and the wall seems to be infinitely wide and infinitely high.
And this person is trying to get around or over the wall,
Always struggling,
Always failing,
Not really understanding that it's infinite.
And then there's the second type of person,
The person that maybe uses some psychedelics and looks through the keyhole.
Yes,
There's a keyhole.
Sees through the wall and then thinks that they're inside.
And then there's a third person,
And that third person is just sitting there very calmly and at peace in front of the wall.
And the other two look over and they're like,
Hey,
How come you're not trying to get inside?
Why are you not exerting any effort or finding a way in?
That's what we're here to do.
And this third person is a very unique type of person,
The Buddha type of person,
A Zen master type of person.
And the response is,
We're already inside.
And that is really where anxiety comes from and then where it dissolves.
When you realize there's nowhere to go,
You're already here.
And see if you can experience that in a very deep way as you fall asleep tonight.
You're here,
You're already here.
And that projecting all the time into the future is always trying to get around that wall.
Allow your body to get heavier into your bed.
Let yourself really feel the stillness of the night.
You can allow any anxiety to pass just like a cloud in the sky.
You don't have to feed it or heal it or figure it out.
When the Buddha had his awakening,
His enlightenment under the Bodhi tree,
He had the realization that now is the only moment.
It's always now.
As you fall asleep,
It's now.
And when you wake up,
It will be now.
If there is any anxiety in your body,
Allow it to start to melt away in the presence of now.
Notice that your body doesn't have to hold on to the future or the past.
As you fall asleep,
Allow your consciousness to dissolve into that deep unmanifested place we call sleep.
Tonight,
As you let go,
You don't have to solve anything.
You can be committed to being relaxed in this moment,
To breathing deeply,
To being present,
To falling in love with this moment as you fall asleep.
And from head to toe,
Just notice your body getting more and more still.
And as you let go,
You let anxiety go.
Just like if you were holding a bird and you opened the palm of your hand and it flew away.
You just let it go.
You can feel that gentle pull of the night.
You can feel your dreams calling you.
You can feel the stillness that wants to give you rest,
Inviting you in.
