Self-awaken

Lately I've been practicing waking up without an alarm. I don't know exactly how it works but when I tell myself that I need to wake up at a specific time, my mind, body -or my unconscious- make it happen. It could be that I just wake up naturally, rested, yet I've tested this on different ocassions at different times. It doesn't work if I have only slept very few hours, though. One time I tried to wake up without an alarm to go to the airport at 3am. Having gone to bed at 12pm, the only thing that could have woken me up after three hours of sleep was a startling alarm. 


When I have more time to rest, I can experiment with waking up on my own. One time I woke up at 7am and told myself I wanted to sleep a bit more till 8:30am. I went back to sleep without setting up the alarm. Right at 8:29am I woke up, feeling rested and wide awake. Another time I told myself to wake up at 5:00am and one minute before 5:00am, I woke up. It's not always a pleasant awakening. Sometimes I have bad dreams that wake me up right at the time I set, other times I need to go to the bathroom, and at times I dream I'm stepping on something and trip and wake myself up with the jerk of my leg. Yet most of the times is just feeling rested and awake. 


How does it work? It's not like I'm constantly looking at the clock checking the time. I sleep soundly and wake up one minute before the set time. My eyes cannot see the time, first because I have to raise myself from my bed a bit to see the clock in my nightstand and second because my eyes are closed when I'm sleeping! :) This is what I do: before I go to sleep I tell myself a few times, "I want to wake up at 6:30am" I imagine the time in my clock and go to sleep confident that I will wake up at that time. If I have something I cannot be late for, I set up my alarm as a back up, but most of the time I turn it off before it sounds. I wake up in such a good mood when I wake up on my own!


I wonder if this a symbol of what I'm trying to accomplish in my life, to be awaken, or in my case, self-awaken. I'm trying to find within myself ways to awaken to spirituality without looking for things outside of me (validation, degrees, material things). One of the ways to experience awakening is by listening to my body's wisdom. Our bodies posses immense information about what is beneficial for us and what is not. We tend to ignore it or mask it by neglecting ourselves, over-working, over-indulging, over-everything. My intention is to listen more to my inner wisdom and trust that I will wake up without stress when the time is right.