A
Geomantic Slice of Science on the Art of
Sleeping
Written
by Patrick MacManaway
For the corporate capitalist, sleeping is an
irksome bother. It is neither cost-effective nor
high in productivity, and provides minimal
opportunity for social or political advantage.
Generally it is experienced as a race to reach
unconsciousness with an adequate share of quilt
and blankets before one's mate begins to snore.
Consciousness is gratefully reclaimed through
the intervention of an alarm clock, and affirmed
by the ingestion of coffee and / or other
available stimulants.....
The dreamers amongst us, on the other hand,
would draw us into the magic and mystery of
sleep as time to hang out and party on the
astral, to dance with other selves, and to drink
deeply from the (oft murky) fountain of
perennial wisdom and engrayenment.
One well-known Greensboro-based Geomancer
assures us of the need to get "grubby" and sleep
outdoors. Why should this be? Is it an
expression of pathological personal perversion?
Or a nostalgic echo back to past-lives warmly
recalled from the paleolithic?
Let us take a furtive peep behind the veil of
the mystery of science and see if, as Odin
clutching the Runes, we can bring back something
of actual value to enhance our daily practice of
the Art of Sleeping.
Geomancers understand the cyclical nature of
time. So do physiologists. Our body - exquisite
temple of consciousness and unconsciousness -
has innumerable overlapping and interwoven
cycles: of breathing; of heart-beating; of
eating and digesting; of cellular growth,
replacement and repair; of fertility and
child-bearing; of wakefulness and sleeping.
These are all co-ordinated and synchronized as
the music and choreography of ballet.
Living as we do in intimate and inevitable
relationship with our environment (and not in
fact in an exclusively self-referential vacuum
as reductionist medicine would have us believe),
our body has developed a wickedly cunning,
dazzlingly sophisticated, and beautifully
elegant (yes, this applies to you) method of
keeping our internal bodily cycles appropriately
in time with the dance of the daily, monthly,
and yearly cycles that occur around us. (To
ensure, for example, that we don't hunt woolly
mammoths out of season...)
The key to keeping us in step with the cosmic
dance is the pineal gland (or third eye). By
varying the relative quantities of the opposing
hormones serotonin and melatonin, it switches
biological cycles on and off, slows them down
and speeds them up, and keeps us happy jivers
bobbing and weaving to the rhythm of
earth-momma's heart beat. The cunning part is
that placed in a vacuum and shielded from all
outside influences, the pineal would run us on a
241/2 hour day. That means that it has to check
in with mom every single day and reset itself,
ensuring a constant synchrony with our
environment.
Now the pineal has two ways of hearing the
earth's heartbeat, both of which our western
society has brilliantly found ways of evading,
leaving us dependant on stimulants such as
coffee and depressants such as alcohol to drive
our biological sleep / wakefulness cycle rather
than leaving it in the capable hands of the
pineal.
The first way that the earthbeat is heard is by
responding to natural sunlight. In some species
the pineal is placed so as to directly see the
light. In humans, it does this by receiving
fibres from the optic nerve which carries
information from our eyes to our brain. It is
particularly the blue-green frequencies of light
that the pineal responds to, which are present
in natural sunlight but absent in most
artificial light (unless you have "full spectrum
light bulbs" installed). So those who are unable
to spend significant periods of time outdoors,
for example during the winter, and work under
artificial lights live in a state of perpetual
darkness as far as their pineal is concerned.
(This gives rise to the so-called Seasonal
Affective Disorder or SAD).
The second way that the earthbeat is heard is
through the pineal's sensitivity to daily
fluctuations in the earth's magnetic field,
called the geomagnetic field. This is a field
whose magnetic flux lines run from the magnetic
north to the magnetic south pole, extending
around us and reaching out into space where it
encounters the solar wind, - a constant stream
of charged particles that emanate from the sun,
leading to a compression of the geomagnetic
field on the side of the earth exposed to the
sun and an expansion on the dark side of the
earth.
This compression / expansion cycle gives rise to
very subtle, daily fluctuations in the
geomagnetic field, which the pineal can "hear".
Unless of course you choose to live in an
electrified environment where the ever-present
subtle hum of 60 Hz from your house wiring
circuits blocks out any chance of hearing the
earthbeat.
Also significant is that the body depends on
periods of deep sleep to implement crucial
phases of cellular growth, division and repair,
and protein synthesis. During these periods we
are particularly dependant on a predictable and
quiet electromagnetic environment for the
messages between cells and between the brain and
the body to be clearly heard. This communication
can be distressed and distorted by the
electromagnetic fields given off by domestic
power circuits, as well as by the distortions in
the geomagnetic field caused by water veins,
geological faults and some mineral and crystal
deposits.
Let us jump back, hastily and horrified, through
the veil between science and common sense, and
see what this might mean. For optimal,
health-generating sleep we would do well to seek
out places of minimal electromagnetic
disruption. This means away from water veins,
geological faults and other strong geomantic
energies such as energy leys. It also means
sleeping in a non-electrified place, either
outdoors or in a part of the house that is not
wired or that has had its power circuit switched
off (demand switches are available to do this).
It means saluting either the sun or your
full-spectrum light after rising. Altered states
of consciousness are of course available through
exposure to electromagnetic fields, either power
frequency under power lines or earth-generated
at sacred sites, but for sleep this is only
smart if done consciously and occasionally for
specific effect.
Dowsing out the best available place to sleep is
undoubtedly one of the more important aspects of
the Art of Sleeping.
Most important of all however is to ensure an
adequate amount of the quilt and blankets and to
reach unconsciousness before one's mate begins
to snore.
Whole Earth Geomancy
Dr. Patrick MacManaway
4076 Shelburne Rd., Suite 6
Shelburne, VT 05482-6676
802-985-2266
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