waking
(see deep sleep): “true morning,” an avowed apogee of existence around which some would pretty much organize their lives; “death and birth embraced,” both conscious, both meaningful; arguably, a cult. The sleep may be as artificial as it gets — but the waking comes “piercingly” natural: similar to explay’s realizative snap but incomparably primal, holistic, protracted, it’s like soaking in light — “looking at the sun through your fingers,” “a morning of undeserved breathing depth.” Isn’t it something “we were meant to have all along,” what deep sleep is for (forget life extension)? A newborn is prewired to learn, adapt, socialize — a waker, to understand, rething, enlove: all the freshness and excitement of born childhood but spared of its hardships, insecurity, angst… transluced if not cured. ■ Human wakers are no “little adults,” may be indistinguishable from borns by behavior or ability (better at some things, worse at others — quantitatively); many aren’t fully aware of their status or won’t own up if they are. The “crave the rules, hate the exceptions” development stage is less pronounced in wakers but it’s been observed to decline in borns as well; perhaps due to their behavioral stability and lower anxiety, wakers tend to lead in children’s groups but the correlation is moderate. ■ To skeptics, the human wake-up glow is narrowly somatic, gives or proves nothing; “questionably harmless,” our deep sleep addiction may be accelerating the cultural selection for “childhood-compatible” — an unhealthy resonance threatening “extinction of the adult.” (Does it take a world sleep wake-up to reverse the descent?) But then coming to emerges as the key to subjective being: Minds are complexities that unfold by constantly awakening from their past, and don’t we all; history, ever since writing, is us waking up, that’s why it runs so fast. Now in the Everday: are we for the first time fully awake?