Falling Asleep
or Waking Up: Which Am I More Afraid of?
Recently in a
group meditation, I found myself giggling irresistibly – hardly appropriate
behaviour some might say. In the
background, we were playing a CD entitled “Holy Harmony,” an especially soft,
gentle, lullingly repetitive, vocal ensemble.
For some reason, I was reminded of a skit from the Canadian SCTV comedy
show popular in the 1980s. In it, one of the comedians, Eugene Levy, does a
take-off of the generation of American singers called “crooners,” Bing Crosby,
Dean Martin, Perry Como, among others.
When I was growing up they were still household names. Perry Como was probably the most mellow of
the lot. He took crooning to a whole new
level of slow, smooth, and quiet.
In the skit, Eugene
Levy wears a silk dressing-gown with a natty cravat and carefully-styled
hair. He is reclining on a bed facing
the audience. As his musical
accompaniment plays, he attempts to produce some vocals, but the effort is
almost too much. He is scarcely able to lift his head off the pillow. Occasionally, however, he rallies and utters
a few barely audible notes..... You get
the picture..... The height of
mellow.
As my giggles
subsided, I wondered what it was that actually seemed so funny. Somewhere in the laughter, I realized there
was an aversion: an aversion to inertia, to not doing, to giving up, to falling
asleep.
In spiritual
terms, “falling asleep” means forgetting the truth of who we are, that is, our
oneness. “Falling asleep” is believing
the misperception that we are separate entities. On this occasion, however, my aversion to
falling asleep felt more like an aversion to not being separate, to
loosing one's identity. So which is
it? Do I want to be separate or one? Am
I more afraid of waking up than falling asleep......? At least I can try to be honest. Maybe that's a beginning.
Annie