We need our sleep

"The fool sleeps

As if he were already dead,"

— Siddhārtha Gautama

There are two kinds of sleep. One kind is nourishing and sustaining. Without a good night's rest our health is drastically compromised. One's risk of diabetes increases with lack of sleep. We need to awaken from the other kind of sleep or it's as if we are already dead.

In our modern fast-paced world we are sleep deprived. There is little time, we feel, to get a good night's rest: Way too much to do. The problem lies in not getting enough quality sleep. This makes it hard to be awake to the rest of life.

The opposite is also true. We need to be more fully awake or it is hard to be able to get a sound, rejuvenating sleep: too much undone to rest well. Science is finding that to live our life well we must be more fully aware of the reality that is our life. Be awake and rest well.