Bad Sleep is Becoming an Epidemic: 1-in-3 are Victim of a Racing Mind
“The bad sleep epidemic: Forget insomnia, are you a victim of ‘semi-somnia’? Triggered by stress and computer use, this low-quality sleep is wrecking millions of lives…” Full article here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2238401/The-bad-sleep-epidemic-Forget-insomnia-victim-semi-somnia-Triggered-stress-use-low-quality-sleep-wrecking-millions-lives-.html#ixzz2DO5mVNKc
Looks like more and more people are suffering from poor sleep, where one might wake up several times in the night or just generally have only a light sleep throughout the night without every going into a deep sleep, and waking up feeling unrested. According to the above article, one-in-three Britons are suffering from these sleep problems. That’s a lot.
The reason for this interrupted or light sleep is that it’s because our minds are racing with information that keeps us up and keeps us from getting a good night’s rest. What’s interesting about this is what it shows us about our relationship to/with our mind. That we are essentially existing as victims to our minds, as our minds are racing and not letting us sleep properly, and we can’t apparently simply stop our mind from racing so that we can sleep effectively. How is it that we don’t even question the fact that we have so little directive control of our minds, yet our minds practically drive who we are in each and every moment. How is it that we’ve become so separated from that mechanism which we essentially allow to make all our decisions for us, and determine how we experience ourselves from one moment to the next, that things have gotten so out of hand that now our minds run amok to the point that our physical body and thus our daily living is compromised? And this sleep issue, is just one case where our separation from our minds is ruining our lives.
It’s actually taken completely for granted that we really have no power/say when it comes to the mind, as that’s how we’ve existed for so long, in this relationship of a victim of the mind, not able to actually direct the mind, basically at its whim, and like one of the suggestions in the article, is to take time to ‘allow the mind to wander’, as if this is really as far as we can go in working with the mind to come to some sort of solution, hopefully.
‘Too much exposure to electronics’ is pointed to as the cause, that there is so much information coming into our minds, in this age of electronics, that it’s like an information overload. And yet, what’s missed in this? How do we not have any say in how our mind handles information? And what is not looked at/investigated is what is our actual participation in our mind, while we go about our day, whether it’s while working, while using electronic devices, or laying in our bed getting ready to go to sleep. In the article there’s the suggestion to have a ‘black out’ time where you literally turn of all your electronic devices at a certain time of night and don’t turn them back on until morning. Yet this is rather limiting, what if we could use electronics non-stop all day and have no problem? We’re quick to find physical things that are the reason/excuse/justification for what we experience, yet usually fail to consider our own participation, and what we are actually creating ourselves. What hasn’t been considered is our mind-participation that is going on, meaning, what is taking place in our minds as thoughts, feelings, emotions, reactions, toward that which we face in each moment of our daily living. What kind of experiences are we experiencing within ourselves as a result of our participation in the mind? And is any of that necessary or beneficial to us? Or is it getting in the way of living, as this epidemic of sleep issues indicates?
What this shows is that it is really time for us to get to know ourselves as our minds, so that we can establish self-direction and self-will to no longer be subject to the mind, that is compromising our daily living and ability to function in reality, before it gets any worse, as the longer we wait, the more ‘out of hand’ it gets, as this ‘sleep epidemic’ shows.
For an in-depth look at how the Mind functions/operates listen to the Quantum Mind Interview Series on Eqafe starting with Step 1: Quantum Mind Self Awareness – STEP 1
At Desteni, we’ve been investigating the mind for many years to get to know how it operates, and have designed courses – the Desteni I Process Pro & the New Free DIP Lite course – for the purpose of walking an individual through a personal process of getting to know one’s own mind – in order to be able to direct oneself and one’s mind, and so one’s life/living, to no longer be a victim of one’s mind.
For perspectives and to ask questions and get answers from those who have been walking the process of getting to know/understand the mind for years now visit the Desteni Forum.
For fascinating perspectives on why it is we can’t sleep with a racing mind when our body is tired, and our relationship to the mind and our physical human body, listen to this interview also available on Eqafe: My Mind won’t Let me SLEEP – Life Review.
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Equality News 
Hello,
I don’t doubt that the sort of information overload that comes with heavy use of electronic devices can contribute to poor sleep. As can many aspects of modern life: electric lighting 24/7, trans-meridian travel, economic instability, and so on.
But when people start talking about bad sleep epidemics, I’m a skeptic. People toward the end of the 19th century were worried about insomnia becoming an epidemic then as well. The culprits were said to be city living and sedentary occupations involving too much “brain work,” among other things. Cultural historians have located evidence of sleep trouble further back in time, and medical writing from practically every era makes mention of it, too.
I hear it said that insomnia’s a modern-day affliction and that its incidence is on the rise, but that’s one bit of wisdom I argue against in my forthcoming book, The Savvy Insomniac. My guess is that insomnia and the racing mind that sometimes accompanies it has been a part of the human condition for thousands of years.
The primary point here is that we will find a reason/justification in the physical for what we’re experiencing, when within this we don’t even have a clue just how much we influence our experience through our participation in our mind. The only way to get real accurate feedback from the physical is to first stop all mind participation/influence, otherwise what feedback we get can’t be trusted, because we can’t be trusted to not create our own experience that has nothing to do with the physical reality.
Another point is that one in three people not effectively sleeping indicates a problem. Regardless of whether it has been worse or better in the past, it’s not actually irrelevant as not being able to sleep effectively is a problem. If it has been going on for all this time, all the more reason to investigate our relationship to sleep to see/get to know what is really going on here, which first requires to sort out our relationship toward sleep within our mind. It’s interesting how we’ll take the point of that ‘something that’s been around a long time’, and use that to suggest that because it’s been that way, then it’s not really an issue, when it really should be the opposite, and should raise a red flag, like hello, why do we still exist this way and have not yet found and implemented a solution?
So another point within this sleep/insomnia issue, is also the consideration of whether electronics do have an effect. Now, electronics do not create themselves and then put themselves around us and make us use them, so fundamentally first and foremost, we are always dealing with our own consequence of what we accept and allow in this reality. We use the electronics, we expose ourselves to them, so it’s essentially not the electronics that cause a problem. It is our relation to them and how/why we use them and expose ourselves to them. Now, this opens up a lot of dimensions into who we are, and how we accept and allow this currently reality to be, which is the topics for many blogs to come, in which we’ll eventually get around to opening up all the relationships that we’re existing as. Such points like, why do we expose ourselves to so many electronics? Why do we not ensure that we first know/are aware of the effects the electronics or anything in this world have before implementing them on a mass scale? What is wrong with our science that there are so few straight answers one way or the other, when the physical reality is based on mathematical equations? At the heart of these questions is our current monetary system, which has got us stuck in a never-ending drive for profit at the expense of life. Where our health is not considered before implementing products and devices on a mass scale, because profit comes first. And there’s money to be made off of sickness/disease anyway. Money is used to control science and distort the facts for the sake of making profit. Thus, we’re never really going to get any straight answers until we first sort out the mess of our money system, to where the starting point is the support of life, not the drive for profit at the cost of life.
Back to the sleep point, here’s a great interview that is extremely assisting and gives perspective on how/why it is we have trouble sleeping due to the mind racing, and fascinating perspective on our relationship to the mind and our physical human body, available at Eqafe: My Mind won’t Let me SLEEP – Life Review http://eqafe.com/p/my-mind-won-t-let-me-sleep-life-review which I’m also going to add to the body of the post as it really should be in there as it’s so relevant to this topic.
Thanks for the comment.