I’m a big fan of that moment, just before I fall asleep, when something washes over me and I fall into painfree sleep. I can only put it down to the possibility of the sub-conscious taking over the default nerve processes, which have been subject to conscious control whilst awake. One of two events seems to occur, either the nervous system opens the neurological gateways for releasing natural pain killing chemicals, or it simply puts its signalling on hold. I find it hard to believe that it shuts down its signalling, when an injury whilst sleeping would cause pain and wake us. So, I’m more inclined towards the gateways being opened as an explanation. And that’s what it feels like, its like a unifying event occurs within us which gives us a ‘complete’ cozy feeling just as we doze off. This is probably more noticeable by anyone with a chronic painful condition, and more so when no medications are involved.

The big question here is…..why doesn’t this happen when we’re not sleeping, or just about to fall asleep. A probable explanation for this might be that, whilst awake, our conscious being is allowed to assume dominance over the sub-conscious, and it won’t allow the sub-conscious to instruct reactions which it doesn’t quite ‘understand’. Alternatively, there is also the issue that the sub-conscious, ‘knowing’ that its defense systems are perfect, won’t allow any ‘corrupt’ conscious control, which might compromise the integrity of its own endeavours, and so it stops short of finishing its task. There are no such barriers when we sleep. It might simply be that the day belongs to the conscious, and the night belongs to the sub-conscious. Either way, to me, when the sub-conscious is in control, it does its job well, and wins all arguments. When the conscious is in control, we seem confused, in pain, and open to all sorts of irrational responses.

One would normally assume that the sub-conscious processes, because of their nature as our primary defense, would take precedence all the time. This obviously doesn’t happen. Perhaps the sub-conscious has the ability to allow the conscious to be the dominant decision maker whilst awake, just so it can guage what our reactions might be if left to fend for ourselves. This would depend on our sub-conscious system being pre-programmed to allow for irrational responses, as a continual learning technique, on the assumption that our conscious being is capable of behaving like a wayward child. There’s nothing to say that it doesn’t have such-like properties, except our arrogance in assuming that our conscious awareness is somehow perfect.

So, just to get all this straight. The sub-conscious system is perfect, and reliable, and it offers us a painfree sleeping event. The conscious system, which overrides this whilst awake, is imperfect, unreliable, and it doesn’t know how to unlock neurological gateways to painkilling chemicals. There must have been a time when both these systems meshed together and worked for the greater good. There seems no sense in just accepting that they’re inherently designed to conflict with each other endlessly. Perhaps the one has had to evolve, over the millennia, to counteract the inconsistencies of the other. Where they both meet in conflict is where the sensation of pain is manifested. If the sub-conscious is capable of going about its business whilst we sleep in a painfree manner, then it is also capable of achieving similar results when we are awake. Unfortunately, its way is blocked, and that blockage is signalled to our conscious being in the form of pain. If all this sounds in any way probable, perhaps the solution lies in somehow allowing the sub-conscious to have dominance whilst awake. I’m not one to bother myself with Eastern Mysticism, but maybe those Sufi Whirling Dervishes were closer to the answers than we would care to imagine.