Transcendental Sleeping

I am a super crappy Buddhist. Pretty sure it would be very good for me to manage to meditate but the majority of the time, I can't. When I do try, about every tenth time I manage to turn my stinking yakking brain off. It's amazing when that happens and if I had to give it a very short description, it's as if time slows down. My mind is working slowly and my perceptions are working normally but there is not feeling of anything being rushed. For me, that's a pretty amazing place to be considering that most of the time I have a sense of impending rush. And worry. And stuff.

Today, though, I was trying to steal some sleep. I work nights, late night, all night, and my son was sick with the flu so instead of going to sleep at 8am or so, I kept my son from morning to mid-afternoon. Managed to get my son and I fed and my own developing case of the flu was progressing nicely. Mostly, we hung out on the couch and watched movies. I napped a bit during that and my son was feeling well enough, and nice enough, to allow me a bit of rest.

Finally, after dropping him off with his mother, I got to go home and get in bed. Putting aside the normal "no Mr. Joe in the bedroom" policy, I allowed the fuzzy dark lord of cats on the bed. It took a while to get to sleep and since I was so far off of my usual sleep schedule, I woke up from time to time. Here's where it got odd: usually, when I am trying to get some sleep before work, I toss and turn and look at the clock and am amazed as every time I look, it is a half hour later and soon, my time to sleep is over. This time, as I would look at the clock, after lying around relaxed and languid and being careful not to dislodge Mr. Joe, I would look at that clock and five minutes would have passed. This happened over and over and honestly, it felt as if I had dozed and napped for an eternity. Each half hour took a couple of hours. It was wonderful. And my hyperactive mind, slowed, slowed and left off it's usual fussing and buzzing.

It felt like my more successful meditation attempts but was much longer in duration.

Now the question is: Why? Why today and why in this manner? I am sure the subjective impressions of relaxtaion techniques and of meditation differ so I will not claim that what I felt was particularly transcedental or profound in any way. It would be nice to experience it more often though. So, what was at work? I was ill. Just a bit, not "want to die" ill, but not feeling wonderful. I was hungry. I was very tired from the interruptions to my schedule. I was a bit disoriented from those interruptions. Thinking about it, I can't help but think about the fact that many traditions of religion use stress and deprivation and disorientation and then enforced solitude to move people out of their everyday state. Campbell recounts cultures in which participants in rituals use special languages and journeys and deprivation to cultivate a transcendental state. Maybe I did it by accident.