I didnt want to say it earlier until it was reasonably consistent, but now I’m confident enough to say that its indeed possible…
Practicing consistently every day is not mere idealism but is actually practical!
The background is that for the past 29 years, the one thing I have never managed to do is wake up early
consistently. Sometimes even if I had an exam in my school/college days or even an important meeting or a
flight in my professional years!
Another time I had even arranged for someone to call me every morning for a few days. At other times, I
tried multiple alarm clocks, each kept at further and further distances. I had even kept a towel soaked in
water to freshen myself as soon as the third alarm rang. I had used psychological tricks like – “ok I
wake up immediately if theres some nice trip planned, so let me try to imagine: tomorrow I have a trip”.
Nothing worked. Even after I had faced several disastrous situations all because I had not woken up
as early as I was supposed to have.
[Thats because SanjayBefore8AM was a diabolical man who used all his wits and logic to succesfully achieve
his sole purpose in life, which was to sleep for 5 more precious minutes. He knew from past experience
that there would be a whole series of 5 more precious minutes after that, but that was best forgotten. He
would say for example that all that was the past, and every day is supposed to be a new day, so maybe
*today* after 5 more minutes he would *really* wake up – very refreshed, the 5 minutes would provide far more relaxation than all the hours slept so far. But in any case, he knew that SanjayAfter8AM would face whatever disasters would be the consequences, but that would be SanjayAfter8AM’s problem and not his.]
Even in my first Vipassana course, first few days I woke up at 4, after 4th or 5th day it deteriorated to
later and later (inspite of the Dhamma workers with a bell). And when I did, I usually had straightaway
written off the first early morning sitting as something like just a formality that I have to go through to get ready for the rest of the day. Needless to say, after I returned, I could’nt maintain waking up early for more than 1 or 2 days. Waking up was often an elaborate 2 hour process of less than methodically dragging myself out of bed.
And after almost 29 years of the habit of waking up late, I had ended up conceding a lot of concepts about
myself like like “I am by nature a late guy, nothing I can do about it” and “My naturual tendency is to be
inactive in the mornings and am more active in the evenings” and “some people are built that way (and I
am one of them)”.
Now, these self-imposed limitations and assumptions and so on seem to be gone!
So far since my second course, I’ve been waking up consistently, and more importantly – almost
effortlessly – between 4 and 6 AM which is nothing less than a miracle for me!
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One idea I had after going back was: I decided I must wake up at 4 AM every morning. This I had thought of
long ago also and had been unsuccesfull in implementation… But… this time there were some slight variations:
1) this would be absolute – it would not depend on whether I had partied wildly the previous night or
hiked up a mountain or had been talking with some relatives till late night. It would not depend on
anything at all, and I have to wake up every day at 4 AM, irrespective of everything.
I decided that consequtively, if I end up feeling very sleepy or tired during the day, I’ll face the
sleepiness or tiredness when it comes*, and not anticipate or worry about it.
[* strangely enough, this rarely actually happened… atleast nothing really out of the ordinary 😉 ]
2) I would sit for two hours from 4:30 to 6:30 instead of one hour, with a break inbetween.
[Doing this, I found that the second sitting was usually much better.]
For now to start with, I’m not sitting in the evening times except once in a way or a few minutes before
falling asleep.
So this was the plan. There is a saying – “aim for the sky and you will hit the mountain top”. So with this
plan, except maybe 2 or 3 days so far, I’ve been able to maintain between 1 to 2 hours every day so far.
Even in different (and what earlier had appeared to be very adverse) circumstances. For example there were
several days I had to take a bus upto Electronics City to work – it took 1.5 hours each way, and I usually
reached home quite late in the evening. But this, like many other situations, surprisingly did not prove to
be a deterrent. Now I’m in Germany for a while, and here the temperature is below 0 in the mornings, and
upto around 7 AM or so it almost looks like midnight outside. Ok though its warm inside the room due to the
heater, earlier the very thought that its so miserably cold and dark outside used to make me go right back to
sleep again!! 🙂 …but now I’m managing to wake up early here also.
So in case there is anyone who might’ve seen such limitations about themself, might see there are indeed
alternative possibilities as well…
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