Celebrating The First International Day of Yoga
Yoga_Life_Winter_2015_WEB
Yoga_Life_Winter_2015_WEB
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NIGHT BLINDNESS<br />
met only with a sputtering restlessness that conceals an under -<br />
lying exhaustion. Beyond damaging our waking conscious ness,<br />
the use <strong>of</strong> counterfeit energies further damages our nights<br />
by disrupting nature’s essential rhythm <strong>of</strong> activity and rest.<br />
But we can take something for it. Evening appears to be the<br />
most common period <strong>of</strong> substance and medication use in our<br />
world. We consume vast amounts <strong>of</strong> alcohol, marijuana, anti -<br />
depressants, sleeping pills, and tranquilizers to modulate our<br />
restless waking energies, and, even more so, to blunt our uneasy<br />
encounter with dusk and darkness. <strong>The</strong>se substances may help<br />
us temporarily negotiate our discomfort with night, but only at<br />
a terrible cost. Many <strong>of</strong> us routinely view the night only through<br />
bleary eyes.<br />
Unfortunately, what is called sleep medicine – that branch<br />
<strong>of</strong> the health sciences specialised to treat sleep disorders –<br />
<strong>of</strong>fers little help with our night blindness. By tightly framing<br />
night, sleep, and dreams as strictly objective and scientific<br />
phenomena, sleep specialists drain these experiences <strong>of</strong><br />
anything personal or subjective, let alone sacred or spiritual.<br />
Sadly, sleep medicine also segregates sleep from her biological<br />
sib, dreaming, consigning the latter to status <strong>of</strong> unappreciated<br />
stepchild. (It is, after all, sleep medicine, not sleep and dream<br />
medicine.) Most sleep specialists relegate what is left <strong>of</strong> night<br />
to autonomic mechanisms – reducing sleeping and dreaming to<br />
molecular machinations that are about as personally meaningful<br />
as recharging a battery.<br />
Viewed through such a narrow and rigid lens, sleep and<br />
dreams become experiences we believe we can and must manip -<br />
ulate and control. We seek medical and mechanical solutions to<br />
what are essentially lifestyle and consciousness problems. In lieu<br />
<strong>of</strong> an honest confrontation with our frenetic drive and fear <strong>of</strong><br />
darkness, we are <strong>of</strong>fered a tantalising array <strong>of</strong> designer sleeping<br />
and waking pills. In bed with the pharmaceutical industry, sleep<br />
medicine itself remains in a fitful, dream-deprived sleep.<br />
More than three decades ago Andrew Weil called our<br />
attention to the concept <strong>of</strong> night-time consciousness. In his book<br />
<strong>The</strong> Marriage <strong>of</strong> the Sun and Moon, he explored the innate,<br />
universal human drive to experience nonordinary forms <strong>of</strong> con -<br />
sciousness. To balance our ordinary waking, daytime, or “solar<br />
consciousness,” Dr. Weil encouraged us to intentionally open<br />
to a darker, more mysterious night, or “lunar consciousness.”<br />
Lunar, or night consciousness, encompasses sleep and dreams<br />
but also includes dark or shadowy aspects <strong>of</strong> waking awareness.<br />
As a culture, we have failed to achieve the necessary<br />
balance between these separate but equally important realms<br />
<strong>of</strong> consciousness. “Like night and day,” solar and lunar conscious -<br />
nesses have become increasingly polarised. <strong>Day</strong>light is dominant,<br />
overvalued, and even deified, while darkness is dismissed,<br />
devalued, and <strong>of</strong>ten demonised. From divine light to light beer,<br />
things associated with the metaphor <strong>of</strong> light suggest goodness.<br />
We want to shed light, see the light, and lighten up. Our<br />
associations with metaphoric darkness, on the other hand, are<br />
suggestive <strong>of</strong> confusion, struggle, immorality, and outright evil.<br />
We want nothing more than to avoid dark times, dark nights<br />
<strong>of</strong> the soul, and, <strong>of</strong> course, the dreaded “prince <strong>of</strong> darkness.”<br />
Our struggle with night is ultimately a struggle with denied<br />
aspects <strong>of</strong> our own darkness. Confusing the literal darkness <strong>of</strong><br />
night with the metaphoric darkness <strong>of</strong> life, we blindly project<br />
our feelings about the latter onto the former. We then mitigate<br />
our fear <strong>of</strong> darkness through the excessive use <strong>of</strong> evening light,<br />
effectively extending daytime’s custody deep into the night and<br />
seriously eroding our night consciousness. Indoors and out, our<br />
nights are lit up beyond reason – beyond what necessity and<br />
safety might dictate. Like a frightened child, the planet sleeps<br />
with its lights on.<br />
In the end, sleep and dream disorders are largely symptomatic<br />
<strong>of</strong> this deeper fear <strong>of</strong> night and its damaging segregation from<br />
day. In our attempt to excise darkness from our lives, our very<br />
consciousness has been cleaved. With the loss <strong>of</strong> night, day loses<br />
its partner in the sacred dance <strong>of</strong> circadian cycles. Adam loses<br />
Eve. Yin is torn from yang. And activity becomes dangerously<br />
devoid <strong>of</strong> rest. We lose our sense <strong>of</strong> the basic pulse <strong>of</strong> night<br />
and day – our precious awareness <strong>of</strong> life’s natural rhythms.<br />
Ultimately, we lose our experience <strong>of</strong> the lovely, seamless<br />
continuity <strong>of</strong> consciousness, our sense <strong>of</strong> oneness.<br />
Night-mindedness<br />
Nyx, the forgotten primordial Greek goddess <strong>of</strong> night, pictured<br />
on the cover <strong>of</strong> this book, is calling for resurrection. And there<br />
are unexpected gifts to be found in the dusk and darkness she<br />
brings, if we choose to be more night-minded. Night has been<br />
celebrated and sanctified with rich social and sacred rituals across<br />
cultures and time. Whether it is the initial transition through dusk,<br />
the experience <strong>of</strong> sleeping and dreaming, or the coming <strong>of</strong> dawn<br />
and awakening, each phase <strong>of</strong> night <strong>of</strong>fers sacred and healing<br />
possibilities. And, as we will see, a more honest relationship with<br />
night also <strong>of</strong>fers vital lessons about our need to rest by day.<br />
Perhaps the greatest gift <strong>of</strong> becoming more night-minded<br />
is the restoration <strong>of</strong> a kind <strong>of</strong> night vision – a fundamentally<br />
different way <strong>of</strong> seeing or perceiving. Because sleeping, dreaming,<br />
and awakening are non-ordinary states <strong>of</strong> consciousness, their<br />
exploration calls for non-ordinary ways <strong>of</strong> perceiving – a kind<br />
<strong>of</strong> nocturnal lucidity. Nocturnal is a way <strong>of</strong> seeing in the dark,<br />
a kind <strong>of</strong> third-eye sightedness. We can clearly see night only<br />
through such a spiritual wide-angle lens. And when applied<br />
to our view <strong>of</strong> day, this expanded frame restores a sense <strong>of</strong> the<br />
big picture to our lives. It restores the numinous.<br />
Having survived the Holocaust, my mother learned to dis -<br />
tinguish the literal darkness <strong>of</strong> night from metaphoric darkness<br />
– what has been referred to as shadow. Certainly one does not<br />
have to suffer from post traumatic stress disorder, or anguish in<br />
any form, to receive the gifts <strong>of</strong> night. <strong>The</strong>y are available to all.<br />
Night itself is the best sleep medicine. We cannot heal our<br />
sleep and dream disorders without first healing relationship with<br />
night. And in healing night, we discover that night itself is healing.<br />
Darkness is a healing retreat, a carbon filter for the soul. If we<br />
surrender to it, the night will inhale our shadowy fears, <strong>of</strong>fering<br />
precious personal insights in return. Beyond all <strong>of</strong> the psycho -<br />
logical and biomedical complexities associated with it, we come<br />
to discover that sleep itself is a spiritual path, dreaming a means<br />
<strong>of</strong> walking this path, and awakening its gracious gift. We come<br />
to learn that there is something we can safely place our faith<br />
in – even in the dark.n<br />
Rubin R. Naiman is a psychologist and clinical assistant pr<strong>of</strong>essor<br />
<strong>of</strong> medicine at the University <strong>of</strong> Arizona’s Health Sciences Centre.<br />
email: rrnaiman@gmail.com<br />
YOGALife |Autumn/Winter 2015<br />
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