Oh do I know the feeling! Especially during this pandemic. A low, under-the-radar anxiety interrupts my sleep most nights. I wake up with scattered thoughts about any number of things. It’s not about the coronavirus, specifically, but it’s a silent howl of something related — social isolation, fear of what the future holds, nightmares about my next visit to the grocery store…
A meditation teacher of mine once told me, ‘Never believe the thoughts you have in the middle of the night!’ (Unless you’re a creative, then write them down!). If I could’ve told Beefy not to believe the thoughts and dreams he was having when he howled, I would have. Instead, I just gently scratched his head and let him rest. And there I noticed it again, the relationship I’ve touched on in previous posts — me to my dog, me to my mind.
I started this post thinking that I would write one single sentence: ‘Beefy howled in his sleep last night.’ And that would be enough. Because to me, that IS enough. It’s adorable and heartbreaking. And I relate to it. That’s all we need sometimes to bring ourselves back to that vulnerable center of ourselves which is the aim in so many spiritual practices. But as always there’s more to it.
The way I treat my dog is the way I should treat myself. He howled, half-asleep, sounding like his batteries were running low, so I went and comforted him with a soft placement of my hand on his head. This simple circumstance and gesture — comforting Beefy as he howls in the night — is just another ever-important reminder of the relationship we could have with our own minds. When he howls, I don’t need to change it or explain a way out of it (both because I can’t — he’s a dog — and there’s no need). I’m forced to just be with him, with the experience. My mind does the same type of settling down when I bring the presence of my awareness — compassionate awareness — to it. I’m awake in the middle of the night, I notice my worrisome thoughts, and I simply bring a gentle, caring awareness to them, to what is happening in the moment (my version of howling) and I don’t try to explain it or push it away. It just is. Beefy’s howls just are. As his owner, that’s simple for me to understand. I’m just saying ‘it’s okay’ to myself, no matter what I find, and my awareness gives my mind a gentle caress on the head.
Whether this feels ‘woo-woo’ to you are not, there’s no denying that you have a relationship to your mind. Human beings not only react to situations, but we also react to our reactions. So we have no choice but to be mindful of this relationship. And once we become aware of it, we might as well choose the relationship that benefits us the most — kindness, compassion, care.
In examining this relationship we have to our minds we become the guardians, caregivers, and trainers to ourselves, much like we are to our pets. Practicing this beneficial relationship with them enables us to practice it with ourselves. We build trust or self-assuredness that we (our minds and our awareness and/or our pets and ourselves) will be able to handle any number of difficult experiences — night terrors being only one.
Beefy howled in the middle of the night again last night… helping me help myself get back to sleep in a time of crisis.
