The Midnight Times

I love to write. Writing helps me to work with my feelings. Some people need to take time for them and withdraw into a place inside which feels safe to sort through their feelings quietly. Others need to or choose to go out and be with others to get past their feelings or to change their feeling tone. Others need to talk out loud to someone or just to talk out loud to hear their own voice describing what they are feeling. There are many types of people and many ways to deal or not deal with our feelings. For me, I feel things deeply, and writing helps me to identify my feelings and to even work through them.

A common feeling we all feel at times is dejection, rejection, feeling not good enough, and even feeling what we want to do may not happen, which can make us feel discouraged. The question is, what do we do with these feelings when they come up, and how do we deal with these feelings?

Most of us have times when we wake up in the middle of the night when our shadow side speaks to us. It often seems like it is these nighttime voices, which are often the most negative. That seems to be when we hear the voices in us which go over in detail the ways we have failed, or the ways and times we haven’t been heard or understood, or all those people who are no longer in our lives because of their passing or moving or just choosing to end the relationship, and so on. Usually these mid-night times, I will choose to call them, occur when we are actively working on some hurt feelings or dejected feelings or discouraged feelings or some not good enough feelings on an unconscious level during the day. These mid-night times and voices aren’t there to make our lives miserable, although it may seem like they are. They are there to show us what is actively going on deep inside of us.

When we have nights such as this, it is difficult to change the tone of our inner voices so that we can go back to sleep. Often at the beginning, we are in a half-sleep state, so these voices keep repeating. Then at some point, we become consciously aware of these negative voices and move more into a wakeful state. When this happens, many times, we choose to try just to go back to sleep or take something to put us back into a sleep state or get up and read or something like that. I have found that when I feel these mid-night feelings, and I wake up enough to be aware of them circling through my mind, I tune into what these voices are saying to me. Sometimes for me, it is a litany of people who are no longer in my life or times I felt I failed someone or different ways I blame myself or feel not good enough. When I recognize the pattern, then I see the mid-night time as a gift and not a curse.

It is what happens during the night in terms of dreams and occasions like the one I am describing where our unconscious is available to us. It is a gift in that we can then have a window into what our minds are working on during our wake state. The mid-night time is symbolic for the dark of the night. Like many of us, we don’t usually like going into the darkness of ourselves... yet it is by going there that we have the greatest opportunity to work through these very feelings that keep us awake. Instead of taking something to go back to sleep, or getting stuck in these circles of thought, can we have enough awareness to listen to these voices without blame, and go into a “noticing” state, where we just notice these patterns? Sometimes just noticing is enough to break the mental cycle and ease back into sleep. Other times after noticing, we might choose to look again at an old wound which is speaking to us. Then we have a place and a name for these thoughts, and we can rest.

Of course, we can do this process during the day as well. When we get a rejection letter or feel rejected by a friend, or don’t get the job we so badly wanted, or find someone unliked us on Facebook, we can recognize we feel rejected and whatever comes up for us, we name our feeling, and look to an earlier place and time where we were wounded, and talk us through these feelings through our own acceptance of ourselves. We are taking ownership of our feelings and our actions. It is then by taking action for us alone, our choice to take ownership and instead of berating us, accepting us for who we are and what we did or didn’t do, we both work through these feelings in us, but we also teach our future generations; our children, or nephews or nieces, our students, our mentees, etc. We are the future in that it is through us and our actions that we teach the next generation. Feeling dejected is no longer about that feeling, but about so much more. Going into our mid-night times, so to speak, is the way to the future.

To learn more about this healing process, to learn to meditate, or to learn about yourself through astrology, take a look at my website, see my offerings, and book a session. You can reach me at gail@bodypresencing.com, 314-995-9755.

What do you think meditation is? Listen to my Soothing Words on Meditation: