Rejuvenation

The single source of real rejuvenation is nothingness.

Just a small taste of that during sleep each night refreshes our consciousness. Without it, the world is a dark place. With regular contact, the world becomes beautiful.

We understand ourselves as a conglomerate of complexities: personality, memory, aspiration, mind and body. These are all tensions, struggles, things, that occupy our energies all day.

Every night, we return to source, or should do, to rediscover ourselves in our essence.

At first, before falling asleep, we need to stop doing and let being take over. Then sleep comes of its own accord. You cannot make yourself sleep, it is a state of passivity. You allow it and it swallows you. You stop and it starts.

Then, as it takes over, you disappear further and deeper into it. Each layer you descend through leaves less of you. The mind, still active in dreams, eventually drops, too, until all of what constitutes you is absent. No more personality, thinking or tension. Just nothingness, a reconnection with source.

In a full night's sleep, this happens only for a short time, and, with our modern lifestyles, not nearly as much as we need it to. When we don't it get enough, we feel as if we haven't even slept. We may wake up more tired than when we laid down.

When we do commune sufficiently with absolute stillness, we wake up feeling vital. We live quality lives. Time out of ourselves brings us back with essential energy.

The other way to integrate with nothingness is through meditation. This does not imply any particular practice, posture or penance, just presence. It can come through sitting or lying still, being in nature, exercising, being creative, or doing your work mindfully.

Anything that silences the mind, takes you inwards, and brings a feeling of time standing still is meditative.

The difference between meditation and sleep is that in meditation you are conscious. In deep sleep, you are not there but you are not aware of it. In meditation, all the layers have fallen away, and you have disappeared, but awareness remains, crystal clear, unclouded.

Meditation rejuvenates too, and, combined with sound sleep, reveals what life really is. In time, the tensions lose their grip and blissfulness surrounds you as you go about your business.

Connecting with nothingness brings happy resourcefulness.