Sacred Sleep

Yesterday was Easter, and I found myself thinking about Jesus. Interestingly, my first impulse was to make a joke. I noticed this is a common reaction I have when Jesus comes up, and as I reflected on why, I realized that behind the joke was a defense, and behind the defense, deep reverence.

The truth is, I respect Jesus deeply. If only we could all live more like him — with radical compassion, clarity, and courage in the face of injustice. Jesus was a spiritual revolutionary who challenged the power structures of his time, flipped tables, and offered grace to those cast out of society. He died horrifically for his beliefs—a torturous and humiliating death reserved for the worst criminals of the time. And he did this while holding love in his heart for the people who betrayed him and killed him. There is so much light and beauty in Jesus’s life and teachings.

But where there is light, there are shadows. And I think my defenses kick in because the shadows cast from Jesus’s life are long and dark in our society. The historical oppression, the misuse of doctrine to dominate and divide, the monopolies on truth that claim Jesus exclusively. Too often, the most beautiful teachings are co-opted to serve the most rigid forms of control—we don’t need to look far to see this alive as ever today in the highest levels of leadership.

This tension — between the light of the message and the darkness of its misuse — has shaped my inner conflict. But I’m learning to hold both.

I was reminded of all this while reading a piece in the New York Times Newsletter The Morning titled America Wants a God. It explores a surprising cultural shift: belief is on the rise again in the United States. After decades of secularization, more Americans are turning back toward religion, or at least toward spirituality. Not necessarily to churches, but to something deeper — a yearning for meaning, belonging, and guidance.

As the article put it, “Most people are wary of the government, the future and even each other, but they still believe in astonishing possibilities. Almost all Americans — 92 percent of adults — say they have a spiritual belief, in a God, human souls or spirits, an afterlife or something ‘beyond the natural world.’” Despite everything, Americans still believe. They’re looking for spaces to wrestle with big questions — about suffering, purpose, forgiveness, sacrifice. They’re hungry for mystery and grace.

This all deeply resonated with me. I've never fully identified as Christian, but I feel this spiritual calling. My path just looks different. I’ve found my sacred space not in pews or prayer circles, but in sleep and dreams. The night is my sanctuary.

Through lucid dreaming, I’ve glimpsed what I can only describe as the sacred. My inner life unfolds in that dreamspace — a state where symbols speak, the unconscious becomes conscious, and deep questions can receive profound answers.

I came to understand that lucid dreams are more than just opportunities for fun or flying, thanks in large part to Robert Waggoner, a pioneer in the field and author of Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self.1 He teaches that lucid dreamers can access a hidden reservoir of insight — something akin to the collective unconscious — with immense potential for personal transformation and growth. Raised in a deeply Christian household, Waggoner found that his dream practice opened a doorway to the divine, accessible to anyone regardless of faith. In a lucid dream, the conscious mind enters into a relationship with something deeper — co-creating the dream in a mysterious and beautiful dance. A space that is both deeply personal and transcends labels and creeds.

My path has been one that began with spiritual curiosity within a traditional framework, later passing through doubt and disillusionment as a young adult, and finally to a nightly practice of spiritual exploration that feels as sacred as any religious doctrine.

I believe deeply that dreams are not just neurological leftovers. They’re a form of communion. They hold up mirrors, whisper wisdom, confront me with my fears, and sometimes, offer moments of deep peace. I've had dreams where I felt the presence of something vast and loving, where I touched an intelligence that felt like it was both within me and far beyond me. If I had to name it (and I try not to name it, because it fundamentally transcends words and the conceptual mind) I might say God, or The Universe. Or maybe my Self, in its most sacred form.

This is why I believe we need to reframe the night. Sleep isn’t just a health hack or a productivity tool. It’s a spiritual practice. A portal. A homecoming to our true nature, and a chance to connect with something greater than ourselves, every single night.

And maybe this is why I feel a connection with Jesus — not as a doctrinal figure, but as a teacher of presence, compassion, and truth. I think Adyashanti alluded to it best in his book Resurrecting Jesus: Embodying the Spirit of a Revolutionary Mystic2 that Jesus wasn’t trying to start a religion. He was pointing to something timeless. Something we can all access. Something that lives not in buildings or creeds, but in the human heart. Jesus was teaching his followers to wake up to who they truly are, providing a map of awakening:

When you have a dream in the middle of the night, at the moment you wake up from your dream, you suddenly realize, “Oh it was a dream!” Yet the moment before you woke up, the dream was entirely real to you. It was as real as this moment. You wake up from the reality of the dream space to the reality of your everyday life, you're waking mindset.

In the same way, spiritual awakening occurs when you awaken from what you think of as your normal state of consciousness—awake, eyes open, moving about in the world—to your deep, essential, true nature. It literally feels like waking from a dream. It's as if you wake up from the dream of thinking that you're already awake in your ordinary waking state. When you are spiritually awakened, what you thought was an awake state now seems like a dream.

There's a shift from one order of reality to another. In a certain sense, the center of your regard shifts from yourself as a separate person to that which unifies us all. That's really what spiritual awakening is: a shift from seeing yourself as a limited isolated, separate person to realizing you are essentially that which all beings partake of, that which all being's essentially and truly are….The esoteric, inner spiritual disciplines of all Traditions are means of bringing about this awakening or of opening one to Awakening.

Interestingly, in a lucid dream this process of “waking up” to the illusion of the dream occurs directly within the dream state itself, and thus presents an incredible opportunity for spiritual growth that can be brought back into the waking state. This is a vast, mostly untapped resource for our spiritual development ripe for our exploration.

So this Easter I didn’t go to a physical church, I went to the church of sacred sleep. I slept with intention, and with reverence. I asked for guidance in the dreamspace. And I woke up feeling a little closer to the mystery.

In a time when so many are looking for belief, I believe the night is one place we haven’t looked enough.