Watching Werner in action, I wonder how he does what he does with such
velocity and alacrity, two days straight, over sixteen hours each day,
with very, very little sleep.
The question arises: What's the basic requirement for sleep in a
transformed life? The evidence is more energy, more alacrity, more
aliveness, more zeal, and more drive than you ever imagined is
obviously possible with fewer hours of sleep than you ever imagined.
Before I participated
Werner's work
for the first time, I needed (that's the way I said it) to
sleep at least eight hours a night, and on most weekends at least ten
hours a night. I had it that my body needed that much sleep in order to
function effectively.
Since then, three to four hours of sleep is more than adequate for most
nights, and some nights I don't sleep at all.
There's no formula or rule to make up here. I once slept not in order
to sleep but in order to escape life - even though I wasn't aware I was
doing it at the time. In transformation, I'm clear there's nothing to
escape from, so that particular aspect of the "need" for sleep just
disappears.
All that's left is to sleep in order to sleep. In choosing life,
I want to be awake. That's it. When I choose to be awake over
choosing to be asleep, my body still needs to rest and sleep, but the
degree of that need is dramatically less.
In
Zen
it's said: "When hungry, eat. When tired, sleep.". So I've trained
myself to sleep intentionally.
Try this process Werner Erhard invented: When you go to sleep at night
(ie whenever you go to sleep at night for however many hours you
allocate to sleep), say to yourself "I'm going to sleep right now. I'm
going to sleep powerfully. I'm going to wake up rested and refreshed at
exactly ...", and then say the time you intend to wake up. It's OK to
set an alarm clock too, although you may find you don't need an alarm
clock, and you may wake by yourself just minutes before the alarm goes
off. I call this "power sleeping" or "intentional sleeping".
I love my life. When I sleep, I miss so much of it. So I prefer to be
awake. Being awake and alive comes down to a matter of choice. What my
body really needs in order to be rested is far less sleep than I once
believed.