Recently, I inadvertently started thinking a lot about the true nature of "sleep".
Oftentimes, when doing third eye meditation or during periods where my third eye is generally very active, I have trouble falling asleep.
I also feel like I experience two distinctly different kinds of sleep, for the sake of clarity I dubbed them "third eye sleep" and "passout sleep".
In these periods of high 3rd eye activity (which seem to become more intense, continuous and frequent as time goes on) I oftentimes stay awake reading forums like this one (alternatively playing vidya, which I am increasingly growing tired of) until I pass out from exhaustion.
When this happens, I will feel groggy and low energy no matter if I slept seven or twelve hours and I can not remember my dreams (or if I had any at all). In the cases where I do remember my dreams, they are oftentimes the ones where you feel like you are moving through molasses, have intense mental fog and can't seem to express what you want to say (if anyone can relate to what I mean) I dubbed this "pass out sleep".
"Third eye sleep" in contrast happens when I manage to go to bed after an appropriate amount of hours awake, or alternatively by being awake for a few hours after "pass out sleep" and then going to sleep again. Meditation before sleep helps as well, although that makes it harder to fall asleep as it gives me lots of energy.
In this type of sleep, I have wildly vivid (I cannot overstate how vivid these dreams are, even if what happens is hilariously absurd I most often cannot tell the difference) dreams, which are very rarely of negative nature and most often revolve around complex social situations. I feel like in those dreams I act much more like my "awake" self and feel more in control, even if I am not lucid. I also remember almost all of my dreams in good detail (at least I think so).
After this type of sleep, I feel extremely well rested and a sense of inner well-being even after only a few hours.
Some random thought-snippets on why I think this could be somewhat worth looking into:
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IMO sleep is a topic that is not very much discussed beyond the formulaic "omg I feel so tired" or people bragging about how little they slept last night, and it seems very obvious that there could be some metaphysical shenanigans going on during this time. I would love to be able to master the art of sleeping correctly.
I could rattle on and on about this topic, but I am going to limit myself to what I wrote above for now. Any insights and discussion on this topic are greatly appreciated.
V