A Dialogue on “The Importance of Sleep” with Company Directors, HR Staff (Yokohama Japan, 2023)

[A Dialogue on Sleep with Company Directors, Yokohama, 2023]

On the topic of sleep importance (from the third dialogue: Workplace and Individual Wellbeing)

GC: Why have we put such an extraordinary amount of emphasis on sleep? What does it mean to be asleep? And what does it mean to be awake? Are we awake right now?

Participant: Yes, we are here talking and concentrating together.

GC: I mean, when are we really awake? Is it when my wife calls me and tells me the baby is sick and I take immediate action to go home, pick them up and take them to the hospital? Is it when my boss calls me into their office and tells me I’m fired? Is it when a relative calls me and tells me there has been an accident? Do you see what I mean by awake?

Participant: Like an urgency to act on something.

GC: Right. Is that when I am really awake? Or am I awake all throughout the day? Do you see the difference? How many of you rely on coffee to give you a boost of energy to get you through the day? Or perhaps a shot of stimulation from a nature walk, listening to a motivating TED talk, or putting on some “Rocky” music?

Participant: Is that something you used to do?

GC: What I did is not related to this conversation but yes. Not that I would any more! That’s part of what we are exploring here. What does it mean to be awake? Am I awake when I am running around putting out fires? When I am managing a financial crisis? When I am needing to discipline employees? As long as I am in that tiresome energy of “getting though the day”, forging ahead, setting goals and trying to achieve all of them by a certain time, and yelling at your directors for not meeting their targets, can I be awake?

Participants: That is the life of what we do here! It’s company life to deal with all of that.

GC: I understand. The question I am asking is, in that “dealing”, sorry, is that “dealing” being awake? What happens when you go home? You have more to “deal” with, don’t you :). Do you deal with your partners? Kids? Do you deal with cleaning the bath, or cooking dinner, or washing the dishes? I am also dealing with stresses of life, anxiety, fears, right? How many of you need to become experts in managing stress?

Participants: Haha that’s a funny question! All of us :).

GC: Why? Why are we spending our entire lives, most of us, finding ways to get through the day, managing stress, trying to stay calm, occasionally running to the top of a mountain or going to the beach. Do you see what I am trying to get at here?

Participant: Are you saying that our current way of life is not awake?

GC: Oh, much more but yes let’s start with that because we want to get to the question of sleep. How can one be awake when we have so much stress and “dealings” throughout the day/ Is this how we want to live life? How can I be awake at all if I am always “dealing” with life? Can you be aware throughout the day of all of these “dealings” and the impact it is having on my mind, my body, and those around me?

Participants: I mean, we do see all of this, but I guess we’ve never asked if there is another way or a better way of doing things.

Participants: That’s why we have wellbeing programs, stress management, coaches and apps and we’ve introduced these throughout the organization.

GC: Yes understand all of that. Why is it necessary to have all of these?

Participants: I guess what he is saying is that are we really addressing the problems or just working around them all of the time?

GC: Yes exactly, and what is the relationship of that to being awake? Is there any relationship?

Participant: Well that goes back to the question of what does it mean to be awake?

Participant: Which is what? What does it mean then?

GC: Are you waiting for me to answer again?

Participants: [Laugh]

GC: No please I am not here in the capacity as your teacher, coach, or whatever. We are talking through this together and trying to understand it together from a perspective of looking with a mind that is free as we discussed in the previous topic. Is the mind able to realize during this only in this dialogue, only at certain times of the day, only when dealing with crisis’s? Do any of you own a cat? Or am I sure that some of you have probably watched the many videos of cats online.

Participants: I have a 2 cats.

GC: How long have you lived with your cats?

Participants: 3 years; 8 years; 1 year; just recently.

GC: Oh almost half of you have cats at home! Okay, I don’t mean to pick on those whom have had cats for a while :). What have you noticed about how your cat watches the birds?

Participant: Always very alert and focused! Their eyes are dilated! There is a certain intensity about the way they noticed them.

GC: And this happens every day! For those whom have had cats a long time, you would think they would get bored at a certain time in their life! Do they?

Participant: They don’t seem to! It’s as if they’ve seen them for the first time every single day!

GC: Yes, yes, exactly. And at other times throughout they day, you will either see the cat as kind of resting with eyes closed but paying attention somewhat, or completely out of action and in deep sleep. So, in asking what is sleep, we must also understand what it is to be awake, right? So, I ask all of you again, am I awake, or in every action throughout the day, I am allowing the past to dictate what I do.

Participant: Sorry could you say that again?

GC: Okay sure. I am asking you to ask yourself, am I awake, or am I always acting on things on the way I have done them before. In other words, I am not really awake in the current moment, but recalling, repeating, acting, managing, deciding on the way I have done it in the past.

Participant: Not sure I quite understand.

GC: In other words, if I am recalling past techniques, past dealings, managing or diverting away from stressful situations I have experienced in the past, trying not to get hurt which also has been experienced in the past, trying not to hurt others in my dealings, trying to stay competitive do that I don’t fail which is comparing to another incident in the past - all of that “past” processing happing in the current moment is keeping me asleep as I speak.

Participant: Are you saying…

GC: Wait please just let this sink in for a moment before asking a question because something was said that has tremendous importance to the significance of sleep. I said, as long as I am acting, thinking, deciding, doing from my past experiences, which includes stress, challenges, anxiety, hurts, then how can I be awake? I am drawing from a state of the past which is not alive in the present unless I myself pull it into the present which is nothing but a state of sleeping.

Participant: So I am actually asleep during the day?

GC: Asleep because you are acting based on past experiences and knowledge. Got it so far?

Participant: I think so. You are saying that I can’t be awake if I am acting on past experiences, dealings, repeating each day as if the past day was the same, etc.

GC: Yes but it’s not me saying this and then you are trying to understand what I am saying so you can embed this knowledge into yourself. Please true to see the truth of this for yourself, not because I said, but because you can see yourself doing this. Can you?

Participant: But what do I do with that knowledge then? Am I always asleep?

GC: You ask, what should you do with that past knowledge? Yes, exactly. It’s still needed isn’t it? How does one navigate the fact that one is really asleep and can one be aware of this at times or throughout the whole day? Maybe I am asking too much! Sorry.

Participant: I think the past is needed when we need to rely on ways to do things, knowledge that we need to get things done, cooking, cleaning, etc. But when we let those past experiences come into our actions, and I mean the experiences of pain, anguish, fear especially, we can’t bring them into the present.

Participant: It’s like there is someone in HR I don’t like [laughs], no-one here by the way!

GC: Thankfully or we’ll all be in trouble!

Participant: …but let’s say I don’t like them for some reason in the past, and suddenly they walk into a meeting I’m in, and I bring along all my perceptions, past experiences, negative dealings, difficulties from the past into the meeting and my thoughts are always affected by all of that in my listening and talking with that person - that’s the problem.

GC: Yes exactly - you are projecting from the past, and therefore, you are asleep because that past is chewing-up all of your time in the present with emotions and memories. Now can one see this as a fact, and therefore not let it interfere with the present, and together understand that I can also use knowledge where it is necessary so that both are moving together. Does it make sense?

Participant: I need to be aware of the past as it happens…

GC: Awake :).

Participant: What you were saying last time about Meditation, is this what you were referring to - the ability to see the past and everything that comes with it and being aware of that, you know it doesn’t interfere with the present.

GC: You got it - freedom from the past. If you bring that into any conversation, then we have real meditation. Not the meditation of sitting down, practicing breathing, focusing, watching one’s thoughts, etc.. etc. I’ve done all of that and it’s rather meaningless when it comes to practicality. I won’t go into that again here. So let’s get back to the question of sleep. We now understand what it is to be awake. I call this the art of awareness - the state where you are watching, without the interference of the past. You are freely listening, observing, watching what is going on in the outer, and the inner, I am watching my reaction to kudos, or my reaction to criticism. So, what is sleep as you understand it_

Participants: Resting. Getting shut-eye! Turning off for 7 or 8 hours - if you are lucky [laughs]! State of dreaming.

GC: Do you need to dream to know you are asleep? Are dreams just thoughts and collections from the day perhaps processed at a reduced speed and comprehension?

Participant: I heard it was a good sign to dream!

GC: Okay let’s forget about all the information we have about sleep, and how many hours is enough, and so forth. We are trying to question with a mind that is free from the past so let’s put that aside for now. We talked about - what was the word we used earlier?

Participants: Dealings?

GC: Yes that’s it. We talked about dealings which we have throughout ones day. Don’t I carry those into the night as well? Who has trouble sleeping? Trouble in the sense that you are often still thinking about work when you go to sleep - what so and so said to you, how so and so behaved, what I need to accomplish tomorrow, what I couldn’t do today. Or perhaps you were troubleshooting all day are still lines of code on a screen at night! We carry our daily “dealings” into the night where the brain is trying to rest. Since it doesn’t have rest during the day, it tries to bring about rest at night through dreams, continued thoughts, and so forth. So if your mind is not settled throughout the day, it carries over at night and this sleep quality, which we often talk about, is a tired quality of mind - it’s resettles. Sleep need not be induced by extreme, um, tiredness or exhaustion. It need not be induced by some drug. Sleep should be easy to fall into and without the continuation of thought, past memory, projections, etc. That’s quality of sleep.

Participants: How do we get that quality of sleep because it’s what we all want for ourselves, our employees…

GC: Indeed. To achieve this meditative state, surely you know of it. Haven’t you ever trekked on a hill before sunrise or at sunset? In the morning, you might gentle trek up a mountain and you start to here the birds whistling, the gentle ruffling of leaves, the first signs of daylight. You are surrounded by nature. You’ve lost track of your silly phone or urgency to look at your watch devices.

Participants: [laugh]

GC: Please stay with me. You are there engulfed in nature, absorbing it all in when you see the sun peaking through the horizon for the first time of the day. It’s glistening light. The extraordinary colors. Somehow in that stillness or quiet moment, you felt you were surrounding by the whole universe. There was no projection into this moment. There is no seeking. It doesn’t require you to sit in a certain way, or focus on breathing.

Participant: If we stay that way during the day, nothing will ever get done!

GC: Won’t it? Aren’t we talking about where knowledge has it’s place and where it does not? In that sense, if you mind is organized in such a way, then the quality of your sleep is ten-fold! I’m not merely asking you to be just empty here. You will still get things done won’t you?

Participant: Yes, I see - just without all of the previous correlations with things from the past, people who have done things to me, or simply just putting out fires. Yes, yes, there is a sense of things being fresh like the cat.

GC: Yes, like the cat.

Participants: There’s a fresh energy even though you have done something or seen someone the same way over and over again.

GC: Yes. When you are watching a flower grow, you don’t introduce stimulants and steroids to enjoy the watching faster! You simply allow it to be what it is and stay engulfed in it. Just like when you listen to another human being, you don’t bring in their heritage, skin color, upbringing, what school they went to, etc. All that clouds what is. So sleep, therefore, is when the brain is quiet and therefore there are no dreams. It’s regenerating a refreshed energy which comes only when you mind is not occupied with “dealings” throughout the day.

Participants. Doesn’t this also relate to biases, or rather unconscious biases? The way they pull from the past?

GC: Yes, but that is a different talk - please book me again :D.

Participants: [laughing]!

August 4th, 2023, Yokohama Japan.

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