What happens when you are asleep?

Have you ever wondered about what happens while you are asleep?  From sleeping during class or work to those times when you are exhausted and fall asleep when your loved one is pouring their heart out to you.  It happens and most likely has happened to you.  I have a relative who is 80 and has insomnia.  She has had insomnia all of her life.  She takes cat naps here and there.  She doesn't seem to physically suffer because of it.  However, I cannot imagine being awake that much!  Then there was a classmate of mine in high school who slept with his eyes open!  Really spooky!  What does your mind see when you are asleep and your eyes are open?  While working as a chaplain in a Chicago hospital I became educated about chemically induced coma's in order that patients might heal.  Intentionally putting someone in a coma is hard to wrap my mind around.  I know it happens and the healing does work.  There was a story a few years ago who went into the hospital for stomach surgery.  She was given anesthesia but was still awake.  Only no one in the operating room knew it.  She went through the whole surgery as 'if she were fully awake.  Felt all the pain, heard all the comments and endured the procedure.  I cannot imagine being in that position.  Then we all know about little kids who are eating their spaghetti and fall asleep face down in their food!  More photos of that situation have been taken!  I don't know about you but there are several situations where I will NOT fall asleep.  On the Chicago L (subway), on Metro buses in Seattle, on a train anywhere in Europe and certainly not anywhere when the opportunity for self injury is present.  I wish I could control those situations.  Unfortunately for us, sleep comes when we don't expect it.  Yes, I know we go to bed to sleep and sometimes even use the couch.  The idea is to recharge our body, mind and spirit.  There are times when those around us are dependent upon our staying awake.  For instance your family and friends really do want you to stay awake when you are driving them around.  Also when you are using or holding any dangerous object or weapon.  But aside from all of the above, there is another more dangerous "asleep" situation.  It's when you are asleep to what is happening around you and with you.  Psychologically, the complacency that sets in causes us to dull our senses and opens ourselves up to many different suggestions that we would normally not engage.  Emotionally, the mentally asleep person can't seem to grasp the intensity or urgency of the one talking with them.  They have a flat almost bored attitude with others.  We are not in the 60's and do not (for the most part) contemplate our navels and wonder how the world grows our drug of choice.  That does not mean that we do not live oblivious to what is going on around us, to us and in the larger world.  Some do just that.  The chance that we have stepped into one or more of the examples I have given is very high.  The chance that we will do it again is even higher.  Within the spiritual realm we pretend and develop complacency in order to "deal" with reality of what is going on in our lives and the lives of those around us.  We "sleep" and do not attend to important issues like whether our neighbor is saved or not.  We sleep through the meaning of life from God's perspective rendering ourselves ineffective.  While people are awake to the dangers of numerous elements physically in their lives; they are asleep in their path of spiritual destruction.  Hell is knowing someone is not in heaven with you because you were asleep and said nothing.  Whoa!  What am I saying?  I'm saying that we can be asleep consciously or unconsciously and yet not care about those around us.  Though I'm not talking about physically asleep, I am talking about emotional, psychological and spiritually asleep people who have chosen to not care.  So, what does happen when we are asleep?  There are people who become physically injured, there are people who maligned, and there are people who are ignored.  Ignored"  Yes, ignored.  I'm not talking about Chicken Little but that would be a good analogy for this example.  When we are asleep we not only put others in harms way, but we put ourselves in harms way by our not paying attention to the warnings God and others have given us.  In the end we are held accountable for all that we have done and not done while here on Earth.  Will God find you asleep or awake when he returns to take his family home?  Even though you are physically awake, will you miss the train because you were asleep?  I pray not.