Theory: why do we need to sleep?

This one will be a bit philosophical. I don’t normally do this but the sudden thought I had last night while meditating really got me thinking on such a deep level that it gave me a headache. I haven’t had a ‘thinking headache’ since I was a child.

I remember I would try to understand the concept of time and space in relation to the universe. I was around 12 or 13 when I first remember spending time just thinking about time. I wanted to know where the world begins and ends physically and in-time. Then when I thought I had my answers I asked myself: “But what’s happened before that?” or “What is outside of our galaxy and where is the border of the universe and what’s outside of that?”. Let me tell you, I wasn’t the nerdy kind. I wasn’t interested in physics or maths or even philosophy. At that time I didn’t even know what quantum physics was. I just enjoyed questioning and challenging my imagination. Maybe that was my creativity being born there and then, who knows.

But let’s go back to my provoking thought from last night. The way our brain works fascinates me. The most intriguing part for me is that there is still so much uncertainty, so much to explore, to learn. Scientists and experts still don’t have a black & white answer to why our brains and our whole human beings need to sleep.  What we all seem to agree on (I’m no expert or scientist but a curious individual) is that at some point during our sleep cycle our conscious mind finally shuts up. That little voice in your head no longer throws negative thoughts at you, no longer questions your decisions or brings up possible reasons why you should worry. You stop destroying your own mood. I’m sure you’ve heard about things like ‘You are what you think’ ‘Law of Attraction’ and ‘Positive thinking’ and such. In a very brief nutshell: you get what you’re thinking about. More like how you’re thinking about it. You can call it religion, call it lifestyle, mind-set or whatever you want to call it, I’m not here to argue this part.

My thought last night was this: what if, the reason we all need to sleep and switch off the consciousness is to silence the negativity and stop destroying our chance for happiness? What if the entire universe feeds on the positivity, the good things, the creation of something amazing? I couldn’t find any actual statistics so I will guess a number now: at any point during a 24 hour period let’s say 20% of Earth’s population is asleep and the negativity is on hold. What if this is vital for our survival? If our positive and negative thoughts have an effect on our Universe then I would assume the positive ones would make a better impact for all of us. What would happen if we all stayed awake for 24 hours and let that little voice carry on with the negative talk? Would we notice a difference? What if the entire population would be asleep and I would stay awake? I have more questions but I let you come up with some other ones yourself.

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