The Instructor 2.9.80

“Blessed is the man,” says Wisdom, “who listens to me, and the man who keeps my ways, watching daily at my doors, guarding the posts of my entrances.” “So let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake,” says Scripture, “and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who are drunk, are drunk at night,” that is, in the darkness of ignorance; “but since we belong to the day, let us be sober. For you are all sons of light and sons of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness.” “But whoever of us cares most for true life and genuine wisdom stays awake as long as possible, keeping only what is useful for his health; and that is not much, when it has become a good habit.” The practice of discipline begets perpetual wakefulness from labors. Let our food, then, not weigh us down but lighten us, so that we may be as little harmed by sleep as possible, like swimmers with weights hung on them; on the contrary, let sobriety lift us, as from the deep below, to the surface of wakefulness. For the descent of sleep is like death, carried by folly into insensibility, cutting off the light by the closing of the eyelids. Let us, the sons of the true light, not shut this light out of doors, but turn it inward to ourselves, lighting the eyes of the hidden man, beholding the truth itself and partaking of its streams, so that we may clearly and wisely receive the revelation of true dreams.