Waking Up in a Busy World: Don't Go Back to Sleep

For years, copying other people, I tried to know myself.
From within, I couldn’t decide what to do.
Unable to see, I heard my name being called.
Then I walked outside.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the door sill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

-Rumi (Coleman Barks Tr?)
(https://apoemaday.tumblr.com/post/56153678473/dont-go-back-to-sleep)

Don't Go Back to sleep?

I stumbled across this poem yesterday in a selection of my own poems and I immediately found myself drawn to it. Then I awoke this am in early dawn and the words, "Don't go back to sleep" kept circling through my mind.

I did go back to bed with the intentions to sleep (I have been feeling exhausted and drained by what I perceive going on around me)...but the words just kept getting louder. "Don't go back to sleep."

So I got up; went outside and even stood on the doorsill (though not round lol) where the two worlds touch. And asked Rumi why the h*&^ he drew me out here so early in the am.(lol) Then the line "You must ask for what you really want!" hit me. And it all made sense.

Ask for What You Really want

I had just finished a book by Neville Goddard on the power of imagination yesterday right before I stumbled across Rumi's poem. I had also run across a few book passages, quotes and videos incidentally throughout the day that spoke to the idea of imagination and knowing and asking for what you really want...putting it out there. I had a friend at lunch who kept saying, "Be careful what you ask for" providing some challenging life examples that apply to that axiom. My daughter even brought up "the power of thinking and imagination" to me yesterday without prompting. Yet, somehow the line, "you must ask for what you really want" eluded me until this morning...and boom!

Now this is serendipity lol. I am being called back to the topic of using our imagination to create the world we want!

Dawn

When is our imagination most powerful ? When are we most likely to effect change in the way we perceive ourselves and our worlds thus changing our lives by rewiring our subconscious programming? At dawn!! When our brain waves are in what is said to be a theta state. That theta state is the doorway where the two worlds touch. It is a doorway between sleep and wakefulness...between the invisible and the visible, the manifested and the unmanifested...between the lives we are presently perceiving we are experiencing and the lives we really want. If you fall back to sleep you fall out of the "dawning of greater possibility" and go into a deeper brain wave pattern.

So what is Rumi telling us in the above poem that will help us live better lives?

We need to know ourselves and that begins with breaking away from the need to be like other people and our conditioned social learning that is ingrained in our subconscious minds. We need to step outside that level of perception and understanding.

In those early hours of the morning ( literally ) we are in a state where we can rewire and relearn because as we awaken we are in theta brain vibration.

So we do not want to go back to sleep and fall away from that ability

In the dawn of our new lives ( figuratively) as we "awaken" into a new understanding we are told secrets ...a spiritual truth emerges as we reconnect to nature, the moment...who we really are.

We do not want to slip back into the "dream state" of ego illusion.

People go back and forth between wakefulness and sleep all the time(literally and figuratively) ...but what we really want is to stay awake.

The people he could be referring to could be those that have passed on, the two worlds being this physical world and the spiritual one...implying that there is support for our achieving a better life from the other side?

The early hours are often referred to by many as the sacred hours or the hours of the Divine...the best time for meditation, prayer etc because we are then on the sill between the physical and the spiritual.

The door is open between what we think and what we create. I am not sure what he means by round?? I think of the womb of creation being pregnant and round with possibility but I am not sure if that has anything to do with what the poet intended.

The biggest take away I get from this poem...now that I have read it for the 100th time lol is that we must ask for what we really want. We must know what it is we really want beyond what we are conditioned to believe we want.

If we are not careful we will end up with things we didn't want, like my friend did, because we were not clear with our intentions.

Know who you are and what you really want. Ask for it passionately in the early hour of the morning and in that cusp between physically awakening and sleep. as well as spiritually awakening and ego-dominated sleep.