L1/L2

It’s got to be because I’m co-writing this blog ….

But it used to be oh, sometimes 3:10, or 3:30, or on a really good day, even 4:00 before I’d experience the BIG WAKE-UP and know I was done for the night. But now, as reliable as ants at a picnic, my eyes open at exactly 3:15. Not 2:59 or 3:14, but 3:15. I stare at the illuminated numbers on the clock and think about Bill Murray’s character in the movie Ground Hog Day. It’s a sick, cosmic joke – at the stage of life when I feel I need more sleep than ever – it’s becoming more and more elusive.

The last few mornings I’ve been contemplating a comment by Wayne Dyer – something along the lines of “if you find yourself waking at odd hours, think of it this way …. perhaps the universe is using the only time it can to get through to you. Consider that it’s urging you to get out of bed and use that time wisely.” After a righteous dissing of the good doctor, (“yeah, well, he doesn’t have a 9-5 job”, “he wakes up to the sunrise in his beach house on Maui,” “he can get up at 3:15 because he can take a nap at 10:00 ….”), I remember that he’s also a very wise man and just maybe I should listen to him.

I roll out of bed wincing as I hit the squeaky spots on the hardwood floor wondering if I’ll ever have them memorized. My cats look up at me with squinty eyes; even my nocturnal animals think this is crazy stuff.

For many years now I’ve been having an early morning dialogue with my higher, more evolved self – she is L1 and I am L2. L1 lives our perfectly manifested life in northern California in our perfectly manifested, down-to-the-last-detail house near the redwood forests. We communicate via a special email account. She writes me from the future and takes great pains to tell me about the life waiting for me there. She tells me what she does all day, what the weather is like, what she’s reading, what new fabric she found at a craft fair that is just right for the couch in the den. I note with a twinge of jealousy that she’s always happy, always content, always well-rested, and has always just done an hour of Bikram yoga.

I write from the here – wherever that may be – and tell her about my days, my struggles and concerns, how I’m progressing (or not), and sometimes, even about the little victories. Most of the time I solicit direction and wisdom from her higher perspective – and what has come of this pre-dawn dialogue is nothing short of astonishing. I have no doubt that it is the combination of the stillness of the hour and not being fully awake that allows me to open a blank email and allow her to talk to me.

I have just enough coffee to be a functional typist, and then quietly clear my thoughts (fortunately there aren’t many at that hour) and open my heart. I type until there’s nothing left to say and I do not read it until the next morning. L1 is a much better writer than I, and speaks with a voice and vocabulary that is most definitely not that of L2. Not only do I have no recollection of taking the dictation and what was said, but the advice she gives is always dead-on and jaw-dropping in its clarity.

So the next time you find yourself wide awake at what seems to be an un-Godly hour, try changing your perception to embrace the hour as quite possibly the most sacred time of day. Rather than lying there silently cursing the dark and your inability to sleep, choose to be honored that, just maybe, someone magnificently wise and greater than you has awakened you for the sole purpose of having a talk.

Now how cool is that?