Sleep is a natural process, and "trying" will have no positive effect. But it's not funny when you're tossing and turning. Now, in the daylight, there seems something comically absurd about the very idea. Instead, just rest comfortably, not minding, and use this attitude as a way of placing yourself in nature's hands. In other words, don't watch yourself, don't monitor yourself, don't become a commentator on your dilemma, and, above all, don't keep looking at the clock.

The key to achieving this frame of mind is a total lack of self-consciousness. Therefore, the attitude you should adopt once you've gotten into bed is that which I call "not minding." This is the principle of least action and maximum efficiency, and it's the one to use when we want to fall asleep. Nature functions with effortless ease, invariably taking the path of least resistance. The Earth doesn't try to go around the sun, nor does the seed try to sprout into a sapling. There's a very profound reason for this: Trying is not the way nature functions. Trying will probably aggravate the insomnia, because the harder you try and the less successful you are, the more frustrating the whole enterprise becomes.

Of course, with insomnia so prevalent, most of us have tried to force ourselves to sleep at one time or another. By trying to force it to do your bidding, are you trying to "whip" sleep? The ancient Persian king Xerxes whipped the ocean when it refused to obey him. It just won't work. You may have thousands of employees at your beck and call, you may be president or the queen, but you can't make yourself go to sleep in anything like the way you can make yourself climb a stairway or memorize the multiplication tables. You can't command sleep. You can't will sleep. All the techniques in this work are based on a single idea, which in my opinion is the single most important fact about this subject: You cannot force yourself to sleep. While always keeping in mind the larger perspective we explored before, let's introduce some practical methods you can use for creating better sleep. Sleep is such a basic experience that improving it will automatically take you to a higher, more fulfilling experience of life. All sleep problems and many diseases occur because we are no longer synchronized with this self-referring part of nature's intelligence, which is one of effortless ease and bliss and happiness.

And it's not going to be difficult at all, because all you have to do is to get back in touch with the natural forces at work within you. You will learn how to live in harmony with the cycles of nature, riding the waves of nature's rhythms. In this article, therefore, you will not only learn how to get a better night's sleep, but by doing so you'll discover how to get fit. It can only become imperfection if in some way we interfere with fundamental truth. Because that perfection is inherent in nature.