{"id":17066,"date":"2023-02-05T22:01:46","date_gmt":"2023-02-06T03:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gornahoor.net\/?p=17066"},"modified":"2023-02-05T22:06:57","modified_gmt":"2023-02-06T03:06:57","slug":"embracing-insomnia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/?p=17066","title":{"rendered":"Embracing Insomnia"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was a boy around 10 years old, my parents would drop me off at the Boston Museum of Science<\/a> on Saturday mornings while they went shopping. There would be a children\u2019s lecture program and afterwards I would wait for them in the library. My favorite topics were mathematics and astronomy, which were conveniently next to each other in the Dewey library classification system.<\/p>\n

I loved to dream about far off stars, which used to have exotic names like Sirius, Antares, Betelgeuse, Canopus, Arcturus, or Regulus. Those names are now being replaced with dull standardized names. It\u2019s a moot point anyway because few stars can be recognized with all the light pollution today. The stars have gone the way of the armadillo, tortoises, racoons, etc., that used to wander around the neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

My favorite books were the four volumes of the World of Mathematics<\/em>; the four dark blue volumes contained pages of mysterious symbols that revealed secrets of the universe to that boy. One of my favorite chapters was about Rene Descartes. I read that he was allowed to remain in bed in the morning in order to give him leisure time to meditate. It became a habit which he followed throughout his life, finding it \u201cconducive to intellectual profit and comfort.\u201d<\/p>\n

As an adult, during the cold months, he would retire to a heated room where he meditated all day. That was the source of his philosophy. Strangely, Socrates used to meditate in the snow although there are a limited number of snow days in Athens. There have been other cold weather philosophers like Nietzsche or Evola who preferred the mountains. Nevertheless, metaphysics began in warmer climates.<\/p>\n

Alone with the alone<\/h2>\n

Unlike the young Descartes, I was never allowed to tarry in bed. Hence, time for meditation had to be planned. A few years ago I developed insomnia. Not that I was a worrier who could not get to sleep, but I would wake up in the middle of the night. With nothing to do. At first, I would get up to read or watch and old movie. When sleep seemed to be returning, I would go back to bed.<\/p>\n

Some 18 months ago, I complained to the doctor who then prescribed a strong soporific medication. After reading the side effects, I decided to keep the insomnia; after all, it isn\u2019t fatal.<\/p>\n

That is when I learned to embrace that solitary time. The nighttime is so quiet and still. There is no sensory experience other than the flow of thoughts. I used that time to meditate on deep topics, watching the thoughts play with each other. Occasionally, fresh thoughts would be revealed from unknown sources. The benefits of such meditations exceed the reading of many books. This form of meditation is also called \u201cmental prayer\u201d, as described by the Venerable Louis of Granada<\/strong> in Summa of the Christian Life<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Mental prayer is any form of meditation or contemplation of the tings of God \u2026 Meditation is of inestimable benefit to the soul, for as the study of human sciences is the principal means of acquiring human wisdom, so the consideration of divine things is a very important means for attaining to divine wisdom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now I look forward to the time to be alone with the Alone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That is when I learned to embrace that solitary time. The nighttime is so quiet and still. There is no sensory experience other than the flow of thoughts. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15574,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17066"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17070,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17066\/revisions\/17070"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}