Carpe Nocem

Carpe Nocem - "Seize the night". As a society and as individuals, we tend to focus on daytime activities, seeking to get the most out of each and every day (or alternatively, on a not-so-good day, just looking to get through the day). Night is viewed as dark and scary, a time to sleep and await the next dawn.

Recently, I haven't been sleeping as well as usual. This happens to me during periods of change. I'm not sure why, but I imagine that it is because my brain is processing and creating new paths of neuro-circuitry. During one bout of change, I used to wake up, go down to the living room floor, put headphones on and listen to a poem by William Blake set to chorale music:

Heaven in a Wild Flower

To see the world in a grain of sand.

and Heaven in a wild flower.

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

and eternity in an hour.

He who binds himself to a joy

Does the winged life destroy:

He who kisses the joy as it flies

lives in eternity' s sun rise.

During this time, night was liminal, a time between day and my thoughts, when I was connected to my essential self. My night dreams were vivid, compelling, and complex. I still am drawing meaning out of them. Some nights, I would ask for dreams, seeking the direction that they provide. Other nights, I would ask just to sleep and rest.

Over the past months, insights have come in dreams but also when I am just falling asleep. I have solved problems, seen what needs to be seen, and decided. I am grateful when I look at out the moon, now low in the sky as the harvest comes. Stars, lightning streaks, street lamps and car beams create shafts of brightness in the night sky. I am finding that in the dark, I see the light differently and gain new perspective. Night is a time of mystery and meditation and I am as alive in it as I am in day.