Perchance to Sleep

by Nancy Pickard             

A friend of mine, down on his luck, was staying in my guest room. His temporary lack of residence wasn’t the worst of his problems, however; insomnia was. I can’t remember how much sleep he was getting, but it wasn’t much—an hour, a couple of hours, or none.

This had been going on for more than a month.

He was becoming silent, depressed, and afraid.

I’d known him for years; we’d once been sweethearts. Ordinarily, he was a vigorous, cheerful, delightful man, a house painter and a poet, an adventurer who climbed glaciers in Canada and kayaked in the Gulf of Mexico, a man who could cook you a great meal as he regaled you with his latest stories from the wilderness. He often lived in his car to save money for those trips, and didn’t complain about it, because these were his choices and he loved the rewards they afforded him: beauty, physical challenge, solitude,

This situation was different. This was hardship.

I didn’t know how to help beyond lending him the room in which he lay awake.

He’d tried countless solutions for the insomnia except those that required money he didn’t have. He was still working every day—up on his two-story ladder, hanging on with one hand, painting with the other, while his body ached, his eyes barely focused, and his brain fuzzed over.

He felt desperate by then.

I felt what I thought was empathy for him.

And then, one night, I learned what empathy really is.

The early part of the night on which this “thing” happened seemed ordinary. “Ordinary,” anyway, for a man who couldn’t sleep and a woman who couldn’t help him. I had worked my job that day; he worked his. I can’t remember if or what we ate for dinner, and whether he cooked it or I did. I just remember he went to “his” room early. He didn’t have much choice, really. He was too exhausted to stay on his feet, or make conversation, or even watch TV. He was a big reader, but not lately. Hard to read when your eyes won’t stay open. So he went to bed, where his eyes might close, but not to sleep.

Eventually, I, too, climbed the five steps to the second floor.

At the top of the stairs, there was a hall leading straight forward.

The bathroom was the first door on the right, then came the guest room where he was, on the left, and directly across from that, the bigger bedroom that was mine. The “thing” happened when I got almost to his door.

Up to that point, everything was familiar and “normal.”

But then something happened that has never happened to me before or since. For only a moment, I felt in every fiber of my being what he was feeling. It wasn’t sympathy. It wasn’t anything like any “empathy” I’d ever felt or heard of. It was dramatically deeper and more “real” than that. I felt every bit of his exhaustion in my body, I felt his pain from his hair down to his feet. I felt his despair, his frustration, and his fear.

At the same time, I *didn’t* feel it.

I know I’m not describing this well, but there’s no way to say it. There isn’t even a word for it that I’ve ever found. The best I can do is to say that I’ve felt various degrees of sympathy, as most of us have. I’ve been empathic to the point of picking up other people’s moods or energy, which is also a common experience, as far as I know. And I’ve heard a few people say they have to be careful about their sensitivity to other people’s pain, for fear of hanging onto it.

This wasn’t like any of those.

Far from being afraid of repeating the experience, I would LEAP at the chance to do it again.

It was an exhilarating, joyful thing.

It was pain without pain, and how can that be?

How do you describe pain that you feel but don’t experience? Or should I say pain that you experience, but don’t feel?

I can attest that the experience was on me and in me, and then it was gone.

Faster than a finger snap, and full of my friend’s suffering, but without causing me to suffer.

It wasn’t distressing, it wasn’t scary, it didn’t hurt, and it left me feeling joyful as I walked on to my room, and went to bed. I was so happy. I knew to my bones that he could sleep now.

I went to sleep, too, content, amazed, and grateful.

I knew “I” hadn’t done it; the only thing I had done was stand there while healing passed through me.

In the morning, I waited at my kitchen table for him to come down.

He came down smiling! He walked into the kitchen and said, “I slept all night! I had the best sleep I’ve had in ages!”

I had been a channel for healing, and now I was healed, too, of my worry.

It gave him health; it gave both of us peace of mind.

The insomnia never came back.

I didn’t tell him my role in it. His life hung on science and philosophy and house paint and poetry, but not on God. I had a feeling he wouldn’t be able to believe me, and I didn’t want to spoil his moment or mine. Years later, however, I let my ego get the better of me, and I took a chance and told him. He didn’t believe me. He was polite, but disbelief was in his eyes. My consolation is twofold. One part is the wise old saying, “You can get a lot done in this world if you don’t care who gets the credit,” although in this case I give the credit to the Holy Spirit. The other part is my hope that if he ever hears a similar story it will ring a distant, but familiar bell.

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It is impossible for a child of God to love his neighbor except as himself. That is why the healer’s prayer is:
Let me know this brother as I know myself. [CE T-5.I.4:4-6]

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