Sleepy Minds

I woke up this morning at 4:30. I felt wide awake for a few minutes and thought it should be no problem to get out of bed at my usual time - 5:30.


Then I started to feel warm and heavy and began to fall back to sleep.

But I had a concern in my head that someone had gotten into my home.

A part of my mind was awake but the rest of my mind and my body were falling asleep.

I imagined (dreamed?) a person was standing above me - he wanted to attack me.

My body was paralyzed, because it was asleep, but a part of my mind was awake. (What part of the brain controls whether the body sleeps?)

I wanted to push him away but the worried part of my mind couldn't make my body move. The connection between worried part of brain and body was completely dulled.

I knew it had to be a dream, there couldn't really be a person standing there intending to attack me but not actually attacking me as my mind tried to convince my limbs to move.

If "I" knew it had to be a dream, which part of the mind is the "I"?

The worried part wanted to argue with the "I" and tell it to stop being a slacker, let's wake the body up and get rid of this crazy stranger.

But the "I" wanted to be somewhere else. Somewhere my body couldn't take it. It knew it wasn't being a slacker and we were in no real danger, so I fell back to sleep.

Let go and trust the "I."

Is "I" like our own personal Jiminy Cricket, our conscience? What is our conscience made of? Energy? Awareness. What's awareness?

It makes me wonder about our brains, minds, bodies, how they all work together.

Part of me was trying to wake my body up to fight off the "attacker."

Another part knew it was a dream and there was no real threat, or there would've been a surge of adrenaline, and I would've woken up, right? Who would've made the decision to start the adrenaline rush?

Why do we say we "fall" asleep? It's like falling. Where do we go? Why can't we remember? Why are dreams so vivid when we're in them and right when we wake up, and then when we go to tell someone we can't remember them anymore or the details are so bizarre we can't make it a coherent story? Even though we just lived through this crazy experience?

Where are we when we dream? In bed? The body is in bed.

Do we go to the same place people under anesthesia go? Because those people are not in that bed. They're somewhere else. They come back, but we can manipulate it with medication.

Is anesthesia sleep the same as sleep sleep?

Will I be able to sleep tonight?

If you have any answers, and even if you don't, let me know what you think.

I know you've got some interesting things to say about this!