You Can't Handle Five Minutes Alone
I used to reach for my vape before my eyes fully opened. That first hit of nicotine was my transition from sleep to whatever version of myself I thought I needed to be that day. Sometimes I’d wake up at 2 AM and hit it, knowing it was destroying my sleep, but feeling like I had no choice.
The addiction wasn’t just chemical. It was existential. I wasn’t seeking nicotine. I was seeking completeness.
Your morning consciousness reveals more about who you are than years of therapy. Most people contaminate this information within seconds of waking up because they can’t handle what they’d discover in those quiet moments.
Between sleep and full social programming lies a narrow window where you meet your authentic self. Before your brain remembers what role you’re supposed to play, what problems you’re supposed to worry about, what identity you’re supposed to maintain, there’s a moment of pure, unfiltered reaction to existence itself.
Here’s what’s really happening: you’re either harvesting this information or desperately escaping from it.
The first morning I didn’t reach for the vape, I realized something disturbing: I didn’t feel like myself. Not tired, not groggy. Fragmented. Like some essential part of me was missing until I got that nicotine hit.
I wasn’t addicted to nicotine. I was addicted to feeling complete.
Your first impulse upon waking reveals everything about your relationship to consciousness itself. The person who immediately reaches for their phone is outsourcing their morning consciousness to whatever algorithm decided what they should think about first. Instead of meeting their own mind, they’re importing other people’s thoughts, problems, and agendas.
The person who reaches for food or sugar is using physical comfort to avoid psychological presence. Their body wakes up in its natural state, and they immediately need to change that state.
The person who reaches for any substance (vape, cigarette, coffee, marijuana) is medicating the transition from unconsciousness to awareness. Something about unmedicated morning consciousness feels threatening enough that they need to alter it within seconds.
Here’s what I figured out about my vaping routine: Even while I was doing it, I knew it was stupid. Waste of money, terrible for my health, I’d watched the Huberman podcast explaining how I’d basically handicapped myself. But I kept attributing my sense of normalcy to the substance instead of recognizing I’d trained my body to feel incomplete without it.
The morning consciousness audit revealed the mechanism: I wasn’t seeking the nicotine for what it gave me. I was seeking it to stop the seeking. The moment I got my hit, the desperate searching stopped, and for a brief moment, I felt like myself again. But “myself” was just the absence of that artificial craving I’d created.
People who don’t immediately reach for external stimulation upon waking, who lie there for a moment, reach for water, or get up and move their body, operate from a fundamentally different relationship to their own existence.
I now look forward to those first few minutes of waking. I let my body settle and notice what thoughts emerge before my defences activate. The problems that surface first, the emotions that arise before I remember who I’m supposed to be, the random insights that bubble up, this is unfiltered psychological data.
Sleep processing continues during the transition to waking. Dreams, emotional residue from the previous day, and unconscious problem-solving all present themselves in this window. Most people immediately contaminate this information stream by reaching for external stimulation.
The practice isn’t complicated: Sit with whatever your mind presents for five to ten minutes before changing your consciousness. Notice what feels important. Pay attention to what your body wants before your mind takes over. Track what thoughts emerge when you’re not actively generating them.
People who grab their phones within seconds of waking are training themselves to be passengers in their own minds. They’re choosing algorithmic programming over conscious awareness every single day.
If sitting alone with your thoughts for five minutes feels scary, you’ve identified the exact problem. Your fear of your own mind is why you need external stimulation to feel normal. The resistance isn’t information; it’s evidence of dependence.
The people who immediately make excuses for avoiding a 5-minute practice are exactly the ones who need it.
“I’m not a morning person.” “I need coffee to function.” “I don’t have time.” These aren’t personality traits. They’re avoidance strategies disguised as practical limitations.
What would happen if you identified as someone who could sit with their own consciousness for five minutes without needing immediate relief? What if you didn’t need external substances or stimulation to transition into your day?
Calculate what you spent last month on morning dependencies. Coffee runs, energy drinks, breakfast sandwiches, constant phone upgrades to feed the scroll addiction. Now multiply by 12. That’s your annual unconsciousness budget.
You already know you’re spending money to avoid being alone with your thoughts. The financial cost isn’t the real problem; it’s what that spending represents: paying to stay unconscious.
Your morning ritual creates your identity programming. The person who reaches for water first operates from different underlying assumptions about existence than the person who reaches for their phone. The person who sits quietly for a few minutes lives in a different psychological reality than the person who immediately starts moving to avoid presence.
These choices create predictable results. Some lead to consciousness expansion, others to unconscious reactions. The consequences don’t care about your intentions.
The morning consciousness audit reveals whether you approach your own mental content with curiosity or fear, comfort or avoidance, interest or immediate escape. This pattern shows up in every area of your life.
What I discovered after quitting everything (nicotine, alcohol, sugar, fast food, and adding intermittent fasting) shocked me completely. My creativity exploded. Those morning consciousness audits revealed insights that had been veiled for years. I’d been reaching for substances to hide from feelings, to avoid doing the actual work of examining my own patterns.
The morning window wasn’t just diagnostic anymore. It became generative. Creative solutions emerged. Problems I’d been avoiding suddenly had pathways forward. My mind, no longer immediately medicated, started producing instead of consuming.
This entire body of work, everything I write about consciousness and authentic living, emerged from those quiet morning moments after I stopped medicating the transition to wakefulness.
Tomorrow morning, before you do anything else, sit with whatever emerges for five minutes. Don’t try to direct your thoughts. Just notice what surfaces when you’re not actively managing your consciousness.
What’s your first physical impulse when you wake up? What does your body reach for before your mind engages? What thoughts emerge before you remember your daily concerns? What emotions arise before your social programming kicks in? How does your body feel before you start changing its state?
Your resistance to this practice reveals more about your consciousness than the practice itself. If you can’t sit alone with your thoughts for 5 minutes without entertainment, stimulation, or distraction, you’ve lost control of your own mental processes.
Your morning consciousness contains information about who you actually are beneath who you think you should be. Most people spend their entire lives avoiding this data.
Your morning ritual is both identity and creativity programming. The person who reaches for external substances to feel functional operates from scarcity consciousness. The person who can sit with their unmedicated mind operates from abundance consciousness.
What are you medicating away?
The Blue Collar Monk
Neil Bishop works on utilities infrastructure while maintaining a disciplined I Ching practice at 3:33 AM every Sunday. Through Soul Fragments, he transforms personal struggles into practical guidance, bridging ancient wisdom with contemporary challenges. His approach focuses on earned insights rather than theoretical knowledge - consciousness work grounded in real-world experience rather than spiritual performance.
Love this. Seems crazy that solitude can feel like one of the most radical acts, these days
You writing is raw and emotive, it has pain embedded deeply which makes it achingly beautiful and you present it with such strength and grace, allowing your reader to feel your tender soul and the struggled you have won, great writing