For instance, many years ago, Amorah realized that she had been programmed that to sleep beyond a certain number of hours a night was shameful. Then she realized that even at times in her life when she allowed more sleep, she did not like to tell people about it because she was ashamed. So she worked at changing the beliefs. And when she gave herself more sleep, instead of feeling ashamed of it she began to say, "Good for me, I slept longer today." For a while it did not feel quite real, but now it does. Now when a friend tells her, "I slept until noon today," she spontaneously and sincerely says, "Good for you."

We want to address this issue specifically, about sleep and tiredness, because there is a cultural shame that is implied when an individual has the need for "too much sleep" or feels tired without having a "good reason."

As a child, many of you used sleep as your only escape. When you went to bed at night, it was finally a time when you could let go and not feel hassled or afraid or not feel as if you had to put on the face that mother and father would approve of, or that would keep you out of trouble. But sleep is intended to come from at inner space of natural surrender into peace, in which you simply allow your body to rest and your spirit to have a break from being in your body. So, even if you had a normal amount of sleep in childhood, if you did not feel a hundred percent safe, if you did not fall asleep feeling truly loved and at peace, your sleep did not satisfy you in the way it was meant to do.

Now you are adults. And as adults, you find yourselves feeling tired beyond what seems appropriate at times. You have thoughts such as "God, I don't know why I'm so tired!" or "What's wrong with me?" And these very thoughts and attitudes negate a simple, natural flow of the need for more rest, because some of you are just coming to the point in your life when going to sleep at night can genuinely be just a process of relaxing into a peaceful state with anticipation of nice dreams.

Falling asleep tonight can be an experience in which you lie with yourself, feel your own love flowing from your heart, and are nurtured by that. And as a result of simply feeling your own energy, and letting go of responsibility, you can fall into a deep peaceful place. When this happens, there is sometimes a need for your body and psyche to make up for lost time, so to speak. You need to give yourself extra hours for that type of sleep if you did not get it when you were a child.

You need to make it okay, that when you are tired and feel the need for more rest and relaxation, you guiltlessly give it to yourself. And do not give yourself relaxation just via time off; also do things you love, and simply be relaxed without worry about what awaits your doing.

to read a book, time to get caught up on a project, time to do the things you want to do. Very few people know what it means to truly sit and do nothing and just simply feel at peace. To stare out a window at a tree for a long time and be filled up with the awe and wonder at the beauty of the tree brings a deeper space of inner peace than reading about it.

As a child, awe and wonder are a part of your natural state of being, unless those things are snuffed out by disapproving adults or peers. A child can sit outside and watch a honeybee around the flowers for hours at a time and experience what adults work at for many years to experience in meditation.

Children have an ability to hold singular focus and presence in the here and now. Unfortunately, adults who have forgotten how to be comfortable with presence, awe, and wonder attempt to pull children out of singular focus. This is often done in the name of teaching children to be more responsible or not to "space out" so much: "Why are you wasting time just staring at a butterfly when you need to clean up your room?" The child is jerked out of its state of natural release, that state of natural relaxation and creative thinking, that spontaneous meditation or experience of adoration, awe, and wonder by adults who do not know how to deal with another person in the house who is simply being that real and that innocent.

To ask a child to do a chore is fine, as long as you do not make the child's natural, innocent way of being seem wrong in the process. Because the parents have lost their relationship to their own innocence and often carry great amounts of shame, anger, or other emotions as a result, the child becomes a reflection of what the parent feels he or she has lost. And this is a reminder of the burdens the parents are carrying internally. When a child is in that deeply present energy state, it impulses the parent to feel the absence of that state. So they try to change the child, because they do not know how to change themselves, or are unwilling.

When most of you were growing up, your parents genuinely did not have a clue about how to deal with their own areas of discomfort and pain. Therefore they tried to make the circumstances around them change to what they were capable of experiencing as conditional comfort. Of course, oftlinet his required that you, as their child, change and allow them to control you to make them feel comfortable.

At the very least, making you wrong gave them an outlet for some of their excess emotions, or gave them something outside themselves to focus on as the source of the problem. This distracted your parents from the fact that they were not relaxed and comfortable inside themselves. They were not in self-affinity and, therefore, did not know how to allow you to be.

When your inner child begins to heal and feel safe, it is a normal process of healing and growth to learn how to have truly peaceful sleep - sometimes for the first time in a whole lifetime. You may think you have slept deeply and well. But if that sleep came from a space of escape or relief, it was not as rejuvenating and satisfying as it is intended to be. Even if you think you have slept well, you may not know what it means to sleep so well that you wake up feeling peaceful, somewhat sensual, and even eager to start the day. There is pleasure in that time of waking up and simply lying there and enjoying the transition from sleep to awake in a slow and gentle manner.

The tiredness that you experience and the need for extra sleep are genuine needs of your inner child. And you will find the excess tiredness and chronic fatigue in your lives disappearing when your child feels nurtured, safe, and genuinely relaxed anywhere, not just in circumstances and places where safety is a known.

As long as there is fear -- in general, as long as there is something in life to avoid -- there will be tiredness. Even if your life is going along okay, and even if there is a semblance of safety and things seem to be good, if you are experiencing comfort by avoiding normal life situations out of fear, there will always be a level of contraction inside your body that holds in emotion. And that contraction takes a lot of energy to maintain, and it results in tiredness, sleep disorders, and even chronic fatigue.

You are not intended to work hard at being happy or creating comfort inn life. These states are a natural product of being in flow. How to return to natural or Divine Flow is very important to physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health. Therefore, understanding the natural flow of sleep patterns, tiredness, and creative energies, and how these relate to the freedom of your child-self, is another piece of the puzzle that makes up the Matrix of Divine Flow.

Take a moment to ask yourself, "When was the last time I just felt so at peace that I dozed off? When was the last time I fell asleep smiling or in a deeply nurtured state of being?" When you are experiencing wholeness, that will be the way you fall asleep each and every night. Until then, some of the extra tiredness is just simply a natural phenomenon of the process of healing. So release your ideas of "I had my eight hours of sleep; I should be okay." Let the right amount be what is needed in the moment. Find a way to adjust your life to give yourself that.

There are so many facets to the process of healing and releasing the past, and so many areas in which your thoughts are taken for granted as being real, or the way it is. And yet these thoughts and behaviors are often just more societal or parental programming.

So when you are tired, instead of being embarrassed to share it with someone, just say, "Oh, I'm tired. That means I need more peace right now. What can I do that makes me feel more peaceful?" Instead of pushing yourself to do, remember how to let go and simply be yourself. Or when you find that you are extra tired, remind yourself to stop avoiding the needs of your inner child self -- that is causing the tiredness.

Go in and talk to the child, and ask it what its emotions are. Ask it what its emotions are right now and what its needs are. Most of you have spent your lives avoiding dealing with that part of yourself because you do not know how to handle it. Most adults do not go to those inner zones because they do not know what to do once they are there. Once you learn this is true, it can become a great wellspring of peace and love to go there intentionally, because when you cease to avoid something it brings great relief and frees up your life force.

When you feel exasperated, and when you feel concerned that you do not know what to do, instead of brainstorming about it, just stop. Take a deep breath, and sigh on your exhalation instead. You will get much further than you will by trying to figure it out. A sigh can heal more than an overactive, chaotic mind. Blessings and peace.

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