Myths about awakening and enlightenment

When you are witnessing all night (and of course all or the day) you are enlightened

To begin with there is no me that can get enlightened. For the second there are different yoga techniques whose aim is to learn how to be awake at the same time as the body is sleeping. Read for instance Christopher S. Kilhams "The Five Tibetans" in the chapter about conscious sleep (a part of yoga nidra), page 84 in the Swedish translation (I don't have the English version). There you find a description of step two in yoga nidra when you after mastering a relaxation technique will learn how to keep the mind awake all the time while the body is sleeping. It says that it takes months to learn this, but there is hardly any connection with enlightenment.

Yogananda demonstrates yogic sleep

I saw a funny movie on Youtube where Yogananda shows how to sleep in the right way, something that we westerners cannot manage. I assume he means something like the conscious sleep of yoga nidra. Witnessing during sleep can also be mixed up with the superficial kind of sleep that you can experience because of anxiety and tensions. In this case the mind is very active which prevents you from letting go and having a deep sleep.

When you or the me disappears it is possible for the enlightenment, which as always been there, to come out. No matter what the experience is in the outer or inner you are the same. Whether your body is asleep and there is no awareness of the outer Presence, the deepest reality and what you truly are, does not disappear. The experience of an outer or inner is not important. When awakening happens the witnessing disappears. There is no longer someone who witnesses something - there is just one wholeness. As long as there is a me there are problems to solve and things to achieve.

The perfect being. The perfect one who never makes any mistakes - the spiritual superman.

Beware us of this! All these descriptions of dead unattainability. The awakening is so much about being ordinary and that life is exactly as it should be right now. The mind and the body will never be perfect. This simple fact is so beautiful. Physical weakness and vulnerability together with an open heart that is the whole world. To cry, laugh, and sharing the life with all beings without holding back, concealing anything, or controlling anything. To dance along in the the dance of life, intoxicated by the force and beauty of life. To just as the wind follow what is natural without a thought of the next moment. Just this vulnerability and not trying to be something or someone special. It is enough to be here, right here and nowhere else. There is not anything else and you are always here, available for life and everything that enters your way. You have your personality with all its limitations, but Presence is shining more and more clear through you when every moment you relax deeper and deeper, bow down deeper before the miracle of life and when you overflow of the gratitude of just to exist and being alive.

The unbelievable and unattainable perfect habits. You sleep maximum two hours, never have an evil thought, you always think that everything is beautiful and you are completely untouched by everything in this changing world.

Depending on you body, your personality, your temperament, your activity you will need more or less sleep. Some people try to keep awake or sleep very superficially and thus live in a tense and and unnatural state. I read a story about a zenmaster's description of awakening. "You sleep when you are tired and you eat when you are hungry". So simple and so wise!

Further on the most incredible eating habits. For example one meal a day consisting of a few spoons of rice a little ghee (purified butter). You eat as much as you need and you enjoy the food. This reminds me of another zen-story:

Once a zen master was sitting at a tea (chai) shop and was drinking tea together with his disciples. One very sensitive and observant seeker that wanted to meet the zen master saw him sitting drinking tea in the crowd of many other people. The seeker went right up the master, bowed down and asked the master of giving him the honor to share his deep wisdom. Surprised the zen master asked the seeker: "How could you find me among all these other people without even asking for me?". The seeker answered: "I saw that you were the only one who really enjoyed his tea."