Being in the sandstorm is like your mindset suddenly shifts from the place when you understand what is happening to a complete chaos where nothing seems to make sense and nothing works. In this state your brain tries so hard to figure things out and makes you act immediately.
And you know, it is really helpful to realize those behavioural and thinking patterns, become an observer.
When you are in this sandstorm, there is nothing you can do to immediately shut down that panicky mode, because these are automatic processes and no one can stop them at will. But the way to make them pass is by letting them run for as long as your brain thinks it needs to run it, while seeing them for what they really are.
An observer is someone who is not judging, who is supportive, and not trying to change anything.
No doubt this is one of the least pleasant moments, but the sandstorm comes from emotions, and emotions are fleeting by their nature. That means that we won’t be in this state forever, our psyche is plastic, flexible, it is always changing. We can have different moods or different thoughts – and that’s normal. In fact by trying to stay in the same state all the time, we step on the path of struggle, because it’s against the nature of our mind.
Chasing clarity can become another rabbit hole, too. Clarity comes from the place of facing the reality and seeing things for what they really are, it is not a goal but a “side effect”. Clarity as such has no impact on our sleep, it just allows us to let go of trying to control sleep and that makes things easier (sleep still comes on its own terms).
Sometimes we can allow imperfection be. There are so many things in life we have little or no control of which makes it impossible to escape errors. In fact errors are what make us learn. If we wouldn’t get speedbumps on our way, we wouldn’t truly learn that insomnia can’t harm and we couldn’t learn how to let go of control. On this path we don’t need to make sure that we do everything right. I find that an impossible mission and I think everyone are going making the same “mistakes” that allow them to learn.
By allowing yourself not to do everything right or perfect, you aren’t doing anything wrong!