By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

I remember learning how to float on my back. “Just relax,” they told me. 

But when I relaxed, I folded in half and headed toward the bottom of the pool butt-first.  If I stiffened, my whole body went under. If I kept kicking or moving my arms, I wasn’t floating.

I discovered there was a trick to it – a relaxing without caving in, an ease and feeling of surrender to the water. It’s a sweet spot that’s a lot like meditation. I don’t know if floating made my mind still or if I had to still my mind in order to float. But there is a trick to it. I’ll call it coasting the edge.

It’s the same edge that you coast when you’re watching the sunrise or sunset. You stay still for quite a while, as there’s nothing to do but watch and wait.  The colors play across the horizon, brighten, darken and disappear.

Except, did you see it all? Or did you get so still that you lost track of the outside? There’s a trick to it.  To truly enjoy the sunrise, you have to settle inside, yet still perceiving the glory playing out in front of you.

This is how you get enlightened — inside and outside at the same time. The magical moment where it is easiest to learn how to do this is at the ending of your meditation period. It is so magical that it has a name – vyutthana…

This is why some of you like to stay in bed after the alarm goes off. Or you don’t want to use an alarm at all. What’s happening?  You wake up but you don’t move, hoping to drift back to sleep – but not really all the way to sleep, just sort of halfway in, coasting the edge.

This is a meditative state called turiya – it’s very close to enlightenment. It’s full of bliss, but it is unfortunately unconscious bliss. You drift on the edge for a little bit, then fall back asleep. You might use a snooze alarm to wake you again, so you coast inward again… and maybe again… how many times?

I call this snooze-alarm meditation. And when you do finally get up, you’re heavy and slow, a little dense and thick. It’s hard to get moving. That’s because you chose unconsciousness over Consciousness.

But if you get up early, especially before the sunrise, you choose Consciousness. So many of you are already waking up spontaneously at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. You may call it the middle of the night.  Yoga calls it brahma-muhurta – the body of God. It is two hours…