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THE ART OF SLEEPING |
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> An essay on the art of sleeping |
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A Geomantic Slice of Science on
the Art of Sleeping
Written by Patrick MacManaway
For the corporate capitalist, sleeping is an irksome bother. It is
neither cost-effective nor high in productivity, and provides minimal
opportunity for social or political advantage. Generally it is
experienced as a race to reach unconsciousness with an adequate share
of quilt and blankets before one's mate begins to snore. Consciousness
is gratefully reclaimed through the intervention of an alarm clock,
and affirmed by the ingestion of coffee and / or other available
stimulants.....
The dreamers amongst us, on the other hand, would draw us into the
magic and mystery of sleep as time to hang out and party on the
astral, to dance with other selves, and to drink deeply from the (oft
murky) fountain of perennial wisdom and engrayenment.
One well-known Greensboro-based Geomancer assures us of the need to
get "grubby" and sleep outdoors. Why should this be? Is it an
expression of pathological personal perversion? Or a nostalgic echo
back to past-lives warmly recalled from the paleolithic?
Let us take a furtive peep behind the veil of the mystery of science
and see if, as Odin clutching the Runes, we can bring back something
of actual value to enhance our daily practice of the Art of Sleeping.
Geomancers understand the cyclical nature of time. So do
physiologists. Our body - exquisite temple of consciousness and
unconsciousness - has innumerable overlapping and interwoven cycles:
of breathing; of heart-beating; of eating and digesting; of cellular
growth, replacement and repair; of fertility and child-bearing; of
wakefulness and sleeping. These are all co-ordinated and synchronized
as the music and choreography of ballet.
Living as we do in intimate and inevitable relationship with our
environment (and not in fact in an exclusively self-referential vacuum
as reductionist medicine would have us believe), our body has
developed a wickedly cunning, dazzlingly sophisticated, and
beautifully elegant (yes, this applies to you) method of keeping our
internal bodily cycles appropriately in time with the dance of the
daily, monthly, and yearly cycles that occur around us. (To ensure,
for example, that we don't hunt woolly mammoths out of season...)
The key to keeping us in step with the cosmic dance is the pineal
gland (or third eye). By varying the relative quantities of the
opposing hormones serotonin and melatonin, it switches biological
cycles on and off, slows them down and speeds them up, and keeps us
happy jivers bobbing and weaving to the rhythm of earth-momma's heart
beat. The cunning part is that placed in a vacuum and shielded from
all outside influences, the pineal would run us on a 241/2 hour day.
That means that it has to check in with mom every single day and reset
itself, ensuring a constant synchrony with our environment.
Now the pineal has two ways of hearing the earth's heartbeat, both of
which our western society has brilliantly found ways of evading,
leaving us dependant on stimulants such as coffee and depressants such
as alcohol to drive our biological sleep / wakefulness cycle rather
than leaving it in the capable hands of the pineal.
The first way that the earthbeat is heard is by responding to natural
sunlight. In some species the pineal is placed so as to directly see
the light. In humans, it does this by receiving fibres from the optic
nerve which carries information from our eyes to our brain. It is
particularly the blue-green frequencies of light that the pineal
responds to, which are present in natural sunlight but absent in most
artificial light (unless you have "full spectrum light bulbs"
installed). So those who are unable to spend significant periods of
time outdoors, for example during the winter, and work under
artificial lights live in a state of perpetual darkness as far as
their pineal is concerned. (This gives rise to the so-called Seasonal
Affective Disorder or SAD).
The second way that the earthbeat is heard is through the pineal's
sensitivity to daily fluctuations in the earth's magnetic field,
called the geomagnetic field. This is a field whose magnetic flux
lines run from the magnetic north to the magnetic south pole,
extending around us and reaching out into space where it encounters
the solar wind, - a constant stream of charged particles that emanate
from the sun, leading to a compression of the geomagnetic field on the
side of the earth exposed to the sun and an expansion on the dark side
of the earth.
This compression / expansion cycle gives rise to very subtle, daily
fluctuations in the geomagnetic field, which the pineal can "hear".
Unless of course you choose to live in an electrified environment
where the ever-present subtle hum of 60 Hz from your house wiring
circuits blocks out any chance of hearing the earthbeat.
Also significant is that the body depends on periods of deep sleep to
implement crucial phases of cellular growth, division and repair, and
protein synthesis. During these periods we are particularly dependant
on a predictable and quiet electromagnetic environment for the
messages between cells and between the brain and the body to be
clearly heard. This communication can be distressed and distorted by
the electromagnetic fields given off by domestic power circuits, as
well as by the distortions in the geomagnetic field caused by water
veins, geological faults and some mineral and crystal deposits.
Let us jump back, hastily and horrified, through the veil between
science and common sense, and see what this might mean. For optimal,
health-generating sleep we would do well to seek out places of minimal
electromagnetic disruption. This means away from water veins,
geological faults and other strong geomantic energies such as energy
leys. It also means sleeping in a non-electrified place, either
outdoors or in a part of the house that is not wired or that has had
its power circuit switched off (demand switches are available to do
this). It means saluting either the sun or your full-spectrum light
after rising. Altered states of consciousness are of course available
through exposure to electromagnetic fields, either power frequency
under power lines or earth-generated at sacred sites, but for sleep
this is only smart if done consciously and occasionally for specific
effect.
Dowsing out the best available place to sleep is undoubtedly one of
the more important aspects of the Art of Sleeping.
Most important of all however is to ensure an adequate amount of the
quilt and blankets and to reach unconsciousness before one's mate
begins to snore.
Whole Earth Geomancy
Dr. Patrick MacManaway
4076 Shelburne Rd., Suite 6
Shelburne, VT 05482-6676
802-985-2266 |
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