Dear friends,

I do not own this article or make any profits, but I found it very interesting to share this well written article. I have looked back in my life at all the people and many do they fit into this pattern. I also recalled what my teacher Kensur Rinpoche Jampa Yeshe had said about sleep and there seems to be some correlations. Do you think this article is spot on?

Tsem Rinpoche

***********

Intelligent People All Have One Thing In Common: They Stay Up Later Than You

There’s an electricity in the moon. A pulse, a magic, an energy. A bewitching entrancement unlike that of the sun.

The moon is for things unseen, things done in the shadows and beneath the fog. Under bridges and beneath bed sheets — it’s for wild hearts and unconcerned minds. It’s where plans are made in dark alleyways and secrets revealed under the soft haze of light coming through the cracks of closed shutters.

It’s when fugitives escape and kids run away. It’s when girls lose their virginities on torn leather seats and boys get into trouble. It’s when the suffering take their lives and the lonely seek comfort.

It’s when we fall in love — that passionate, all-consuming, purposeful love that always looks a little different in the light of day.

It’s by night that we see our true desires. We reflect on our moments of unhappiness and those yearnings that are momentarily blinded by the sun. It’s when we become poets and philosophers, martyrs and murderers.

It’s when we form regrets of days past and that profound hatred for those who hurt us. It’s when we choke on our tears through deep sobs that can only pour onto dark pillowcases.

The night is for passion. It’s for fanaticism, romance and trouble. It’s when your most tender, authentic and suppressed sides come out to play under the nonjudgmental eyes of the stars.

It’s for all those things you could never dream of doing by day, under the watchful eyes of the sun.

It’s no wonder night owls are more intelligent than those who hit the hay early. It makes sense that those who absorb the energy of the moon are more creative and open-minded than those who like to catch the early worm.

It’s only natural that those who go to bed earlier never experience the psychological and emotional changes that occur under the blanket of darkness.

According to ”Psychology Today,” (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201005/why-night-owls-are-more-intelligent-morning-larks) intelligent people are more likely to be nocturnal than people with lower IQ scores. In a study run on young Americans, results showed that intelligent individuals went to bed later on weeknights and weekends than their less intelligent counterparts.

In ”Study Magazine,” (http://studymagazine.com/2010/11/10/sleeping-late-sign-laziness-intelligence/) Satoshi Kanazawa, a psychologist at the London School Of Economics And Political Science, reported that IQ average and sleeping patterns are most definitely related, proving that those who play under the moon are, indeed, more intelligent human beings.

His analysis goes back to ancient times, asserting the idea that even in primitive years, people have been known to rise and fall with the sun.

Average brains were conditioned to follow this sleep pattern, while the more inquisitive, intellectual ones want to defy that pattern and create their own.

It’s an unconscious defiance that comes from refusal to acquiesce to the idea of mass appeal.

These findings are reported by “Study Magazine” as such:

Bedtimes and wake-up times for Americans in their 20s by IQ.

Very Dull (IQ < 75)
 Weekday: 11:41 pm -7:20 am
 Weekend: 12:35 am -10:09 pm

Normal (90 < IQ < 110)
 Weekday: 12:10 am -7:32 am
 Weekend: 1:13 am -10:14 am

Very Bright (IQ > 125)
 Weekday: 12:29 am -7:52 am
 Weekend: 1:44 am -11:07 am

Those with IQs less than 75 went to bed by 11:30 pm on weeknights in early adulthood, whereas those with IQs over 125 went to bed around after 12:30 am. This is no coincidence.

The data supports the notion that all night owls feel: the only real time for living is after everyone’s gone to bed.

Only after dark can we learn, absorb and study the effects of the day. It’s a necessary self reflection that few humans take the time to make.

There’s something to be said about those who fight the urge to sleep and explore that block of uncharted time that so many who always have their eyes closed will never see.

They Get Time To Daydream

All those dreams you can’t have during the day, when you’re snapped out of them by friends, family and work, are finally given time to run around.

Free to play in the open spaces of your mind, you can swim in all those thoughts you hid under your desk or behind mounds of paper work. It’s the most creative time of day, along with the most liberating.

It’s by the nightfall that your most uninhibited and passionate sides are explored. It’s the time to unleash your innermost desires and allow yourself the freedom that’s masked behind the taunting exposure of sunlight.

The night is for testing your limits and challenging yourself. It’s for discovering those passions you suppress all day and breaking down all those rules your parents made to protect you.

It’s the time to dig into those hidden corners of your mind and unknown trails of your subconscious. It’s a time of self-expression that can only be unlocked at night and evaluated by day.

They Are Anti-Establishment

Staying up late has been, and always will be, an act of rebellion. A defiance of the nine-to-five, the very habit of staying up late is revolutionary. Since ancient times, there is evidence that society condoned the night owls.

In the academic paper, “Why The Night Owl Is More Intelligent,” (http://personal.lse.ac.uk/kanazawa/pdfs/paid2009.pdf (You must read this)) published in the journal “Psychology And Individual Differences,” it’s widely assumed that for several millennia, humans were largely conditioned to work during the day and to sleep at night.

While those who defy the trend, are more likely to “acquire and espouse evolutionarily novel values and preferences than less intelligent individuals.”

These “novel values” become the building blocks of leaders. They are the makings of revolutionaries, inventors and explorers. They are the ones who makes sacrifices and defy the societal pressure to follow the masses.

It’s no surprise that those willing to stay up late, to explore the uncharted territory of night, are more inquisitive.

They are more apt to make discoveries and challenge authority. They want to expand their mind, not shut it off just because people tell them it’s time for bed.

They Are More Open-Minded

Things that happen at night are things you can’t get away with during the day. It’s the time of utter licentiousness, of underhanded transactions and unseemly occupations.

It’s when the bars are opened and the poets write. It’s when musicians pore over instruments, geniuses have their breakthroughs and artists come alive. According to “Esquire,” it’s also when you have the most sex.

Healthy sex lives and late curfews are indeed, positively correlated. Those reported to have later bedtimes were buying more sex toys and having more sex than their sleepier counterparts.

One sex shop worker believes that intelligence is correlated with open-mindedness, which in turns correlates with a more open sex life.

Those who are willing to stay awake, who yearn for the mysteries of nightfall, are exposed to an array of discoveries that those who stay asleep will never know. It’s those who are willing to test their limits and explore in the dark who will bring more light to the day.

They Are Proactive

The early bird may get the worm, but the night owl gets the whole jar. While the early risers may get up to see the first worm crawl its way to the wet surface, the night owl gets to them before they burrow under.

Getting up early is most definitely proactive, but staying up late is just as fruitful. Those who stay up get hours ahead, rather than the one or two an early riser gains.

There are things to be explored at night that early risers will never experience. There are ideas formulated and tasks completed that early risers never get to finish.

Because at night, there is dawn and a new day in front of you. But by morning, there’s just the bleakness of night and the daunting end of another day.

Source: http://elitedaily.com/life/culture/night-owls-creative-intelligent/686025/?utm_source=huffingtonpost.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=pubexchange_facebook

Why Night Owls Are More Intelligent Than Morning Larks

More intelligent people wake up late and stay up late

Published on May 9, 2010 by Satoshi Kanazawa in The Scientific Fundamentalist

Satoshi Kanazawa is an evolutionary psychologist at LSE and the coauthor (with the late Alan S. Miller) of Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters.

Some people are night owls, and others are morning larks.  What makes the difference may be their levels of general intelligence.

Virtually all species in nature, from single-cell organisms to mammals, including humans, exhibit a daily cycle of activity called circadian rhythm.  The circadian rhythm in mammals is regulated by two clusters of nerve cells called the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN) in the anterior hypothalamus.  Geneticists have by now identified a set of genes that regulate the SCN and thus the circadian rhythm among mammals.

However, humans, unlike other mammalian species, have the unique ability, consciously and cognitively, to override their internal biological clock and its rhythmic outputs.  In other words, at least for humans, circadian rhythm is not entirely a matter of genetics.  Within broad genetic constraints, humans can choose what time to go to bed and get up.  Humans can choose to be night owls or morning larks.

While there are some individual differences in the circadian rhythm, where some individuals are more nocturnal than others, humans are basically a diurnal (day-living) species.  Humans rely very heavily on vision for navigation but, unlike genuinely nocturnal species, cannot see in the dark or under little lighting, and our ancestors did not have artificial lighting during the night until the domestication of fire.  Any human in the ancestral environment up and about during the night would have been at risk of predation by nocturnal predators.

In the 10-volume compendium The Encyclopedia of World Cultures, which extensively catalogs all human cultures known to anthropology, there is no mention of nocturnal activities in any of the traditional cultures.  There are no entries in the index for “nocturnal,” “night,” “evening,” “dark(ness),” and “all-night.”  The few references to the “moon” are all religious in character, as in “moon deity,” “Mother Moon (deity),” and “moon worship.”  The only exception is the “night courting,” which is a socially approved custom of premarital sex observed among the Danes and the Finns, which are entirely western cultures far outside of the ancestral environment.

Extensive ethnographies corroborate these observations and suggest that people in traditional societies usually rise shortly before dawn and go to sleep shortly after dusk, to take full advantage of the natural light provided by the sun.  “Daily activities begin early in a Yanomamö village,” and “despite the inevitable last-minute visiting, things are usually quiet in the village by the time it is dark.”  Among the Maasai in Kenya, “the day begins about 6 a.m., when the sun is about to rise,” and “most evenings are spent quietly chatting with family members indoors.  If the moon is full then it is possible to see almost as well as during the day, and people take advantage of the light by staying up late and socializing a great deal.”  Among the Ache in Paraguay, “after cooking and consuming food, evening is often the time of singing and joking.  Eventually band members drift off to sleep, with one or two nuclear families around each fire.”

There is thus no indication in any of the ethnographic evidence that any sustained nocturnal activities occur in traditional societies, other than occasional conversations and singing, in these tribes.  It is therefore reasonable to infer that our ancestors must also have limited their daily activities to daylight, and sustained nocturnal activities are largely evolutionarily novel.  The Hypothesis would therefore predict that more intelligent individuals are more likely to be nocturnal than less intelligent individuals.

An analysis of a large representative sample of young Americans confirms this prediction.  Net of a large number of social and demographic factors, more intelligent children grow up to be more nocturnal as adults than less intelligent children.  Compared to their less intelligent counterparts, more intelligent individuals go to bed later on weeknights (when they have to get up at a certain time the next day) and on weekends (when they don’t), and they wake up later on weekdays (but not on weekends, for which the positive effect of childhood intelligence on adult nocturnality is not statistically significant).  For example, those with a childhood IQ of less than 75 (“very dull”) go to bed around 23:41 on weeknights in early adulthood, whereas those with a childhood IQ of over 125 (“very bright”) go to bed around 00:29.

Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201005/why-night-owls-are-more-intelligent-morning-larks

Please support us so that we can continue to bring you more Dharma:

If you are in the United States, please note that your offerings and contributions are tax deductible. ~ the tsemrinpoche.com blog team