Protection at Night

Q: "Sometimes at night I feel a presence near my bed. It seems like a person is standing in the room. I become so frightened that I try not to breathe, remaining absolutely motionless. Sleep is impossible at these times, though I would welcome it. Part of me feels so silly. Am I making it all up?"

A: Of course not; there is often a presence near us. The space around us is filled with beings, all the time. In a moment of unusual sensitivity or weakness in an atmosphere of deep, quieting stillness we can become aware of one or more of these beings that surround us. The reason they seem to be so real and intensely present is that they are, more in some places than others. Denying this reality would be trying to counter fear with ignorance. Your feelings are real and they're triggered by a sense of something that can't be seen. To tell yourself there is no reason for your feelings is ineffective. Your feelings won't change from fear to contentment by your will.

The first thing to do is to center yourself in your body. The reason you're aware of the spirits in your room is that you've become transcendent to some degree. To be aware of energy and vibration, you have to be identified with your self as energy and vibration. If you center yourself in your body again, as you do during the day, you will tune your awareness away from the vibrational and toward the physical. One way to center in your body is to feel your heartbeat. Concentration on your physical sensation will tether your imagination.

Your physical existence is a refuge from any spiritual influence. You exist physically and the spirit doesn't, so you have a domain where you cannot be affected, except by your own mind. By focusing your attention within your body, you become impervious to undesirable vibrations.

At the mental level, it is more difficult to separate yourself. When your mind is open you will pick up the thoughts of the spiritual beings around you. This happens during the day as well, but then you are active and now you are passive, so now the effect is exagerated and seems to be uncontrollable. But you can still direct your attention wherever you wish. The phenomena is sustained by your interest, so the key to turning it off is to become disinterested in it and turn your attention to something that is interesting: your heartbeat and your breath.

There is another level to the experience -- the emotional level between the mind and the body. Your emotions are experienced as bodily sensations, yet they are not physical. Your emotions are affected by your attention, but your emotions set your mind's direction. Our emotions connect to other people directly, independently of our minds. When this late-night experience is only mental, it's annoying but not compelling. It's the emotional level of this experience, your fear, that is so disturbing. So there must be an emotional aspect of the solution.

Think of the non-physical beings you love: ancestors, masters and saints. If you know a living person who has a powerful spirit or heart, you can think of that person too. It's the love you have for these beings that forms the connection by which you can summon them. Fill your room with the presence of many entities that will neutralize the disturbing presence. Harmony is always stronger than disharmony because harmony is interlocking and self-reinforcing. Place the beings you summon at the corners of your bed and at the door. You can lie safely in the arms of those spiritual beings you love and enter sleep peacefully.

By Puran Bair, author of "Living from the Heart" (Random House, 1998)
(c) 1999 by The Institute for Applied Meditation, Inc.
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