3:15 AM

Here's something perplexing. For the past six months or so, I have awakened, glanced at the clock, and noticed that it reads precisely 3:15 AM. This has been happening at least five mornings a week; sometimes it runs for a stretch of ten or more days in a row.

What is it about 3:15 AM?

I do find that once awakened, I feel a sense of intense calm. No buzzing sounds, nothing disturbing the peace and quiet, an almost indescribable void of disturbance or distraction. The house is silent. The world outside is silent. Even the usual low hum of the mind, the running commentary, the to-do list, the replaying of yesterday, is silent.

So, for much of this period, I have been getting out of bed and grabbing one of my journals. With pen in hand, I have found, without exception, that some of my most profound thoughts and creativity flow forth. What is entirely absent is any sense of tiredness or fogginess of mind that one would expect at such an hour.

There comes a point at which the calm is disturbed, usually manifested by a dull ringing in the ears. Once this minor disturbance, this call back to "normal" reality, begins, the peak of my creative energy seems to have crested. It becomes a more concerted effort to lay down my thoughts or to tap into the imaginative forces that were, moments earlier, so readily accessible.

One thing I have noticed is this: the length of time before the disturbance sets in has been noticeably expanding. At first, the calm lasted for only ten or fifteen minutes. That was roughly six months ago. Lately, the window has broadened out to around forty-five minutes. I am not sure what to make of this. Could it be that I am becoming more proficient at holding the focus and tapping into the creative force for longer periods? Or is there something else at work, perhaps a force outside of myself? Either way, I find it quite interesting that (a) the waking time is consistently precise, and (b) the period of calm has been expanding.

There is a long tradition, across many cultures, of treating the small hours before dawn as a threshold, the time when the veil is thinnest, when monastics rise to pray, when the mind is least defended and most receptive. I did not know any of this when the 3:15 wakings began. I am not sure knowing it explains anything. But it is at least reassuring to find that I am not the first to have noticed that this hour is different.

What, then, to make of the fact that the creativity goes hand in hand with the calm and quiet, or rather, with the absence of any kind of disturbance, such as the ringing?

I would be keen to hear what you might have to say about this, especially if you are experiencing the same.

May you find and keep the truth, life, and light.

~ Ron

Part of II. Past Lives and Practice