Snoring and the Universe

by Nancy Grossman

I’ve been reading the biography Come Be My Light on the life and pain of Mother Theresa. It is disturbing to me how much she talks about wanting a life of suffering. Of course she believed in suffering with a joyous heart and smiling face, and she was doing it for Jesus. I do not at all understand what she means by suffering, maybe because I’m not Catholic, but I am Jewish, and we’re suffering pros. The only difference from what I can tell is that we don’t want to suffer; we don’t think it’s noble, just inevitable.

What makes me keep listening to this often disturbing book on tape is that I do understand her passion for connection to something greater – she called it Jesus, and I call it Source, or Spirit, and I’ve had some wonderful experiences that have shown me that that belief is not a pipe dream. I experience Spirit, Source, God, that energy, whatever you want to call it, all around me, and I know in my heart of hearts that It is possible to connect with and count on that non-physical, indescribable, unexplainable energy, and one of my primary life goals is finding ways of actually bringing that more fully into my life.

That being said, and I know this might sound like a non sequitur, but trust me, it isn’t, I snore. I’ve known this since 1999 when I was taking a class with my sister and we were sharing a hotel room with two other people. The first morning that we all woke up together there were uncomfortable silences that I did not really understand until my sister enlightened me. I promised to do my best not to snore. I even got some breathing strips. That night she woke me many times. A few of those times I knew I could not have been snoring because I hadn’t really fallen asleep yet, and I knew that I had been silent. “Not so,” said she.

I recently did another workshop in LA for a week and put on our class’ Facebook page that I wanted to share a room. I confessed that I snored. A wonderful young woman responded with the comment: “I want to share with you. I don’t listen very well during the night.” And she must not have listened very well, or maybe she was too polite to say anything, or maybe I stopped snoring, but there were no complaints, no problems. Then alas, a month later I was in another situation with a woman who woke me up so often during the night that I began to be afraid to go back to sleep. I even tried one night to sleep sitting up which worked for about 30 minutes. I tried breathing strips, a netty pot, and finally I got my own room.

She’d mentioned a concern that it seemed as if my breathing were stopping when I slept, so I called Kaiser and set up an appointment to be tested for sleep apnea. The earliest appointment was more than seven weeks away, a few weeks shy of a vacation I am taking with my daughter where we will be sharing a room. I wanted to handle this and I do NOT want a CPAP (an elephant like device that one wears when one sleeps – not this ONE – this one will NOT wear that horrid, noisy thing). I want a mouth guard that I learned about while regaling my volunteer-mates with the tribulations of being a snorer.

I called Kaiser every day from that point forward to see if there had been a cancellation and asked that someone call me back to make sure that I had other options besides the CPAP. Now this is where we go back to my original point.

There is a process I learned about from a spiritual channel called Abraham-Hicks. Using this process, the Placemat Process, one takes a placemat, or a legal sized piece of paper and draws a line down the center. On the left side of the paper one writes “Things I will Do Today,” on the other side one writes “Things I would like the Universe to Do.” On this particular day I put on the Universe’s side, “Get me an earlier sleep appointment.”

Later that day I answered the phone and it was Kaiser. I asked the man on the phone about getting the bite plate device and he said that they could prescribe them, but that they’d try to get me into a CPAP.

Kaiser Man said “Listen, I’m going to tell you how to work the system. Once you get a diagnosis, call your primary care provider and have her prescribe an appointment with a sleep doctor. They can prescribe them.”

I thanked him and said, “Oh, by the way, can you see if there have been any cancellations, my appointment isn’t until October 9^th.”

He said, “I can fix that. Hold on a minute.” After about a minute and some mumbling to himself he said “How’s September 4^th?”

“That’s awesome! Thank you so much!” I replied. “By the way, what’s your name?”

“Eden,” he said, “like in the Garden of.”

I laughed and knew this had been the Universe doing what I asked it to do. When I give out my e-mail address I always say “Nancy – N.A.N.C.Y., Eve, E.V.E, like in  Adam and…” So the Garden of Eden gave Eve as in ‘Adam and…’ a gift that day, and I thanked the universe for handling this item on its list in such an elegant and enjoyable way. I wonder what else it would be willing to do for me. Believe me, I’m packing the list!

copyright 2012 by Nancy Grossman-Samuel