​Mental Health Awareness Week is approaching here in NZ. And it seems, on the whole, that we are becoming more attuned to the increase of anxiety and depression so many of us are now experiencing, either first-hand or as a friend or family member. In fact, as I write this, I can immediately think of at least two people who recently found the struggle too much to bear: Anthony Bourdain and Greg Boyed. And I am both sad and grateful to them. In death they have brought more attention to this issue. They make us pause and consider our own lives and what we might do differently to support those in such severe distress that taking their own life seems the only way out from under.

The stats certainly do shed light on the staggering reality of our mental health issue - (and I say “our” because it’s not just a matter of telling those struggling to deal with it, but a question of how we all come together to meet this issue.) In NZ, there is an alarming increase in the number of suicides, with 660 people killing themselves in 2016/17. And this number is on a steady yearly rise. To put these stats into perspective - the Ministry of Health reports that, amongst Maori men, only heart attacks and lung cancer caused more death than suicide. For non-Maori men, suicide is only superseded by heart attack as the leading cause of death.

Seriously, there are more men taking their own lives because of psychological distress than dying from stroke, car accidents and diabetes. And although women may not suicide as often as men, they are more likely to experience, and therefore be living with, anxiety and depression than their male counterparts. The Mental Health Foundation reports that, “These disorders [not a word I would choose] are in fact the leading cause of health loss amongst women in NZ.”

But the real question here is, what do we, as a community, do about all this? How do we actually meet those people that we share our living rooms and offices with? Those people feeling desperately overwhelmed that we share a classroom with? Our own children, friends and partners?

Many people, for no fault of their own, (maybe even the majority of people) simply do not know how to help and really be there for those feeling overwhelmed in life. If we’re honest, we might realise we don’t necessarily know how to be there for our own selves, how to meet our own thoughts and emotions. So if this is you, you are not alone. Maybe it makes us uncomfortable and we just want all this to go away, or for that friend to get over it. Or maybe we just don’t know what to say, so we offer solutions like “You have so much to be grateful for.” Or, “Go outside and get some fresh air. That will make you feel better.” Not having experienced such states of distress, we may not have an understanding that approaches the life experience of those who do. And as human beings, we generally want what seems bad, negative, or uncomfortable to go away. This is human nature in action. But we can learn to respond in a more compassionately powerful way.

I regularly see people in iRest meditation sessions that are dealing with acute or chronic stress. This is what I know for sure from both my mindfulness-based work with anxiety and depression, and my personal experience living with them: trying to push away the uncomfortable only serves to make it grow into a stronger presence in your life, just like adding fuel to the proverbial fire. And that fuel is emotionally expensive for all involved. It’s exhausting to pretend nothing is wrong, or to live in a state of war with ourselves.

Trying to hide from, refuse, bury, or paint a positive picture over what you are experiencing is psychologically and emotionally costly. Anxiety and depression (and the beliefs behind them) need to be seen, heard and connected to, just like the people in our lives who deal with them do.  

So here are some real-life ways to become the safe landing place for the people in your life who may be in pain, and the emotions and beliefs that you yourself might be feeling outdone by:

• Really listen - that is, listen without the intent to change or make go away what is being said to you, what is actually here now. And if that intent to change arises, as it will, put it to the side for now so you can be there for that friend in need without it interfering with what they are sharing. This is how we show up for others, really present. And it’s how we show up for ourselves as well. Listen to yourself. What do you need for balance and health?
• Ask open ended questions like:  “Can you tell me more about that?”, “How do you feel when….?”, “And what is that like for you…” Instead of negating what is being experienced, these questions offer a welcoming of the reality of the distress and the person living with it. What we are willing to be with, we eventually move through. This way of engaging in conversation makes room for suffering rather than fighting it. Wouldn’t you rather be welcomed as you are rather than be told to be different?
• Body sensing tends to calm the nervous system. Thinking kicks it into gear. If you have anxiety, stress or depression, spend some time sensing into your body and/or breath. Notice how your hands feel in this present moment. Stay with them for a bit, just sensing into and from them. How does your breath feel rising and falling? Or feet on the ground as you walk? Sensing takes us out of our narrative mind and into the body. The story adds more pain and suffering into the mix.
• Notice the small ways in your life that you experience the tiniest degree of okayness, or maybe even ease, of safety, or some flavour of enjoyment. You don’t have to manufacture these, or make yourself think positively, which generally doesn’t work - just start noticing what you already experience that feels OK. (I like the sun on my face, so I notice when that shows up in my life and take a minute or two to soak that in). If you do this once per day, you’ll start to notice a difference.
• Normalise thoughts/emotions/sensations for yourself and others. In meditation we see that there is no “bad” thought or emotion. We may not enjoy this particular sensation or thought, but it is inherently neither good nor bad - it just is. Our ability to witness and watch our emotions and thoughts highlights that they are simply content here. Having a suicidal thought does not make you a bad person. It is just another thought being produced by the brain. We don’t ask for a thought to appear, it just does. Depression may be something you experience, but it is not who you are.
• Practice stepping back and observing your thoughts and emotions, observing yourself and your judgments. All of these have less hold on us when we can see that we are the observer of them. And it’s OK that we feel and think this way. Making room for them, watching them like you might look at clouds in the sky, can take the intensity and sting out of the equation. It can give us room to make different choices and to see that we don’t have to buy into the self-judgement, guilt and shame that often hitch a ride along with our stress.

Mental health is everyone’s responsibility - not just the ones who are suffering. The way we speak to ourselves and others, the way we fully meet (or fail to meet) what, in this present moment, is making itself known, is the difference between thriving and suffering. Can we stop aspiring to just being happy every moment of our lives and realise that happiness is only really possible because of the pain that exists in contrast to it? Life is not always black or white: there is an awful lot of grey in the mix too. And that’s not just normal, welcoming all of it is how we live in harmony with life itself. There is pure perfection in all our imperfections as well.

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​If you’re thinking of embarking on formal meditation training, or maybe trying meditation for your own personal practice, here are a few points that highlight what makes iRest stand-out from what can feel like an ocean of offerings:
​

1. ​​It’s a Comprehensive Path of Meditation. The iRest protocol consists of ten “steps” or ​points of inquiry that allow us to investigate the entirety of the human experience. First we establish a solid ground of safety, intention, and connection to life’s purpose and meaning. This embraces questions that, for many of us, we’ve asked throughout our entire lives: What do I want for myself? How can I live my best life? How can I meet life’s challenges and not be overwhelmed? And with iRest we learn how to immediately begin tapping into the ground of wellbeing that supports us when we feel ready to make these inquiries.

           We also learn how to meet, greet and welcome the physical and energetic bodies, how to be              with difficult emotions, thoughts and beliefs and not become identified with them. We                          explore joy, peace, well-being and the sense of I-ness which claims all our experiences.                        (Setting it apart from traditional yoga nidra, there is an entire step in the protocol which is                      dedicated to the exploration of this filtering lens of I-ness). 
         
          Ultimately, iRest can be anything from a “study” of how to become a more fully-functional,                  resilient human being who knows how to meet life authentically, to a complete path of                          meditation for enlightened, awakened living. How you bring the practice to life is entirely up to            you.

      2.  It’s an Evidence-Based Meditation Protocol. The iRest protocol has its origins 
           in research conducted at the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre (WRAMC) in 2006
           on the efficacy of iRest yoga nidra meditation for treating soldiers suffering from
          Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). iRest is based on ancient yogic meditation practices                  but was modernised into this 10-step protocol by Richard Miller, who is himself a clinical                      psychologist, researcher and yogic scholar.

          This initial research study at WRAMC was so successful that it’s now part of the weekly                        treatment program at the Deployment Health Clinical Center at Walter Reed. It has since                      been endorsed by the US Army Surgeon General as a Complementary and Alternative                          Medicine (CAM) and, to date, there are nearly 30 research studies on the effects of using                      iRest in healing trauma, chronic pain management, sleep intervention, depression, and more. 

          iRest offers a unique combination of ancient teachings that have very successfully been                        modernised by drawing upon the latest understandings from neuroscience and psychology.                Thanks to Richard Miller, the practice continues to evolve and subtly adapt as new                                  understandings within science unfold.

          Click here for a complete list of iRest Yoga Nidra research. 

      3.  iRest is Trauma Sensitive.  As mentioned above, Richard Miller developed a protocol 
           that has been proven to help alleviate the symptoms of PTSD. Part of what makes the 
           practice trauma-sensitive is the focus on developing a strong sense of  inner resource - 
           a ground of safety and security that we learn to nourish and come back to whenever it’s                       needed. This inner resource is grounded somatically until it becomes part of our everyday                     life, readily accessible. With this in place, we may then be ready to meet what feels broken                   and in need of healing. 

          iRest teachers are also trained to use trauma-sensitive language that is very permissive for                    the student or client. Instead of telling a student what to focus on or what emotion/belief to                  explore, the student themselves decides what they will greet and welcome, and only when                  they feel ready to make that inquiry. While the teacher may at first seem to be guiding the                    practice, it is more accurate to say the teacher safely holds the space while the student or                    client takes the wheel - so when you practice iRest, you are definitely in the driver’s seat! 

          We can often feel out of control in life, especially after suffering trauma. The entire iRest                        protocol helps us re-establish proper relationship with our feelings, emotions, thoughts and                beliefs so that we keep them in healthy perspective as messengers telling us when we are on              or off course - in or out of harmony with ourselves. 

          (Level II study includes training on how to offer practices for special populations such as those            suffering from PTSD, sexual abuse, chronic pain and more. Richard Miller’s book - The iRest                  Program for Healing PTSD: A Proven-Effective Approach to Using Yoga Nidra Meditation and                Deep Relaxation Techniques to Overcome Trauma) is a great resource for more information on             using iRest for trauma, and to get a sense of how the practice works.

     4.   iRest is Mindfulness ++.  Of course when you’re meditating, feelings, emotions, and thoughts 
           have a way of flooding into the foreground, seemingly “getting in the way” of the practice. 
           With mindfulness, we learn to acknowledge these movements, noticing them, witnessing
           them as phenomena within Awareness. 

          But sometimes noticing and coming back to breath, for example, just isn’t enough. Isn’t it true              that some emotions and beliefs seem to be lifelong companions? And in iRest we open to the              view that maybe, just maybe, these visitors have something they need to impart - some                        message perhaps about how we’re living our life, how we may be off course or off-centre, and            pointers to Awareness itself.

         With iRest we learn how to proactively engage with these messengers in ways that welcome               them fully into the practice - into our lives as our friends who may need an ear. We learn 
         how to use opposites as a way of embracing the entirety of experience - the full range of 
         emotion and cognition acknowledging their existence along a continuum of expression. We                 also learn how to skilfully invite these visitors in for conversation. There are a range of tools on             offer for use when and if the student senses this is the right course for them.

    5.  Connecting in Co-Meditation.  What does this mean? In simple terms, during trainings we 
         learn how to safely and skilfully meet another human being, moment to moment, in one-on-               one co-meditation. Applying the protocol, the  practitioner becomes the container for the                     unfolding of the client/student’s meditation experience. We become the listener, the witness of           their experience, offering potential avenues of exploration that they might use if they decide it             is in service of their practice.

         I can honestly say that for me this is the most powerful aspect of my work with iRest in the                  community. This way of using the protocol has profoundly impacted my ability to meet                        another’s difficulties from an inexhaustible ground of wholeness. The simple act of being fully              met, seen, and heard without judgement or agenda often has a profound impact on the people            who come to see me in this capacity. And, in a sense, aren’t we always in co-meditation with              ourselves? So this is an essential part of learning to meet ourselves in this same way - freeing               ourselves from guilt, blame and self-judgement.

   6.  High Degree of Training.  The iRest Teacher Certification Program is, on average, a two-year                  process. So whenever you attend a class or course run by a certified teacher, you can be                      confident that they have undergone a supervised training process that ensures a certain                        standard of embodied understanding of iRest. There are two levels of training as well as writing,          teaching and reading assignments, and a minimum attendance of two retreats/immersions over          the course of study. There are only a handful of senior iRest trainers worldwide, and they have            all spent many years steeping in this meditation practice. 


Finding the meditation “system” that’s right for you is an important decision - not one that’s to be considered lightly. Becoming a certified iRest teacher was one of the best decisions of my life. More than just study, it provided a constructive path to embrace self-compassion and release judgment. It led me to embodied understanding of living meditation in everyday life - a complete perspective change that lets me live and breath in a way that’s much more harmonious with my authentic self. But it all starts with just one step - attending a local class, picking up that book about iRest, listening to some practices on youtube, or going to immersion or retreat. I encourage you to try iRest on - see if it fits in a way that works for you!


Una Hubbard is a Certified iRest® Teacher based in Wellington, NZ. She’s been offering classes, workshops and co-meditation sessions since 2013 and regularly assists as Staff Manager at iRest Trainings in Australia and New Zealand. She has teamed up with Neal Ghoshal to promote and share the path of iRest Yoga Nidra Meditation in NZ:
www.yoganidra.nz​

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For many of us the countdown to the Christmas holidays has begun. The traffic is congesting, the queues are growing and expectations for that break are taking shape in our minds. For some this is a much-loved time of year. But for others, it's one of the most challenging - financially and emotionally not at all merry and bright. No matter which side of this fence you tend toward, here are some tips for staying mindful during this time of the year:

• Be true to how you feel - Maybe you miss your family or a grieving the loss of someone close to you. Sometimes the holidays can highlight what we feel we are missing in life, especially if we are separated from those we love.  Meeting how you feel, (the sadness, the grief, the loss) is the first step in allowing those emotions to pass through you. Whatever we ignore will persist, whether that's a task put aside for later, or an emotion buried that morphs into something larger and eventually more unwieldy. 
• Practice heartfelt listening - This is a time of year when we're often surrounded by friends and family we haven't necessarily seen for some time. This can be challenging as we come face to face with family expectations, how we want others to be around us, how they expect us to behave around them, etc. But it's also a chance to reconnect - or even truly connect for the first time. We often communicate to tell, to relate to - can we communicate to simply be with instead? Set an intention to listen wholeheartedly - observe your thoughts, judgements, beliefs as they arise. Ask others how they feel about what they're telling you and notice how they respond to you because of this. Observe the impact this has on you and your overall sense of connection. And then repeat step one.

• Ask what you most want for yourself - As the New Year approaches we naturally start to think about how we want to improve ourselves. Enter the New Year’s Resolutions, which we all know often fail. My meditation teacher, Dr. Richard Miller says, “self-improvement is a subtle form of self-hatred” because it implies you’re not good enough - that something’s wrong with you. Why not instead ask what you truly want for a fulfilling life? If you want to lose weight - what’s the real reason for that? What core value would be fulfilled by this achievement? Take time to connect to this essential mission in life (which in iRest® we call heartfelt desire). Let it light you up with purpose and influence how you interact with the people around you, even before the New Year arrives. You might be surprised to find that you’re already living it in a myriad of ways.

​Let me know how it goes!

​You know that moment at the end of a long day when you've come home from work,  you get to sit down in a comfortable chair, and let yourself relax? You take a long breath, a sigh of relief, lingering into your exhale.  

This lingering breath at the point of letting go is no coincidence. The breath and the nervous system are intimately intertwined. We know that deep diaphragmatic breathing stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system (a system that allows for rest and overall healing). In contrast, the fight or flight response of the sympathetic system becomes engaged in a highly charged situation. And in today's world, it seems we're asked to be "switched on" more than we get to switch off. This means that the sympathetic nervous system remains at a heightened level of alertness for longer and longer periods of time. Stress hormones like cortisol continually flood the body. And we see mental health issues like anxiety and depression on the rise.

An anxious mind = anxious body. A cyclical pattern of stress becomes the new norm: anxious thoughts trigger a spike in the nervous system, shallow breath, release of more stress hormones, decreased heart rate variability* (see below), less sleep, and an overall sense of less resilience until everything seems to get on your nerves, right?

All this begs the question - when do we get to reset? And how do we reset? 

Here's your breath. Have you met it yet?

Try this 5 minute meditation to befriend your breath (in any position that's comfortable for you).

• Turn attention into the breath - joining into it. 
• Feel the inhale and the exhale. Follow the breath for several cycles as it rises and falls in the body.
• More than simply noticing, feel the breath as sensation - like a tidal impulse (the inhalation a  rising, the exhalation a receding away).
• Feel into all the sensations that arise with breathing - at first perhaps gross sensation like the ribs expanding/contracting, the friction created by breath in the nostrils and in the throat. Feel the lungs themselves stretching out/shrinking back.  
• Then turn toward more subtle sensations of this rhythmic rise and fall throughout the entire body - in the fingers and palms of the hands, in the pelvis (as the diaphragm expands and contracts), tracing these feeling sensations all the way into the legs and into the feet. Let go of thinking and sense your way - perhaps asking, isn't the breath something the whole body is doing? Something the whole body participates in? In a way, the entire body and every cell within it are continually being massaged by the breath. Feel into all this as best you can.
• Every exhale, remind yourself to release, release, release. Let go of holding. Let breath dissolve into the space around you. Stay here, attending to this, as long as you'd like.
• When you're ready, slowly come back to the lungs. Feel the body and the sense of it contacting the surface it's resting upon - re-orienting yourself.
  
•  Take time to check in with the state of the nervous system now - notice how the thinking mind slows when attention is turned toward sensorial experience as we cannot think and feel at the same time. 

This simple exercise, done once a day, or even several times a day (whenever you catch yourself feeling tense, stressed out, or out of physical and emotional alignment in some way), is  a very powerful way of resetting the nervous system. Your breath is like a doorway into the energetic system of the body - it's prana, so attending to breath is a direct way of working with the energy of the body. All that's required is that you take an interest in it - spend time with your breath as you would a friend over a five minute coffee break.

What we pay attention to grows, so start attending to your breath by meeting all the sensations it creates within. This allows you to step out of the cycle of switched on, anxious thinking/anxious body  into your natural baseline of ease and well-being.

​Let me know how it goes!

I keep seeing an article from Scientific American pop up in my Facebook feed. The title says it all - "Negative Emotions are Key to Well-Being".  And here we are (in the southern hemisphere), moving into autumn when thoughts have a tendency, perhaps, to become a bit darker, emotions a bit heavier - not coincidentally morphing in this way as summer fades away.

Speaking from experience, fall and winter can be particularly challenging times of year for those who tend toward depression and for those who live with them. Over decades with chronic depression, I have often heard comments like these from people in my life: "Cheer up. You have so much to be thankful and happy for." Another favourite is something along the lines of, " Just think positively. It will get better soon." This advice, although well-intentioned, has a way of sending a different message to the listener - "You're feeling this way in life because you're not positive or grateful enough."  And so it becomes just another way that you feel you've failed and that you aren't good enough. Here's another "F" on your life's report card.

There can be tremendous pressure from friends, family and society as a whole to be positive. There seems to be a consensus that only positive thoughts are OK and only happiness is acceptable. Think about it, don't we want to help those who feel depressed by showing them how to be positive again or by showing them they have so much to live for? In other words, by changing how they are in some way?  We've somehow bought into the idea in our Western world that the negative is not to be tolerated, that it needs to be dealt with and buried once and for all. Perfection is synonymous with happiness. And it shows up in the small things, like having to put on a smile in public because only a smile will do. Or in the way that: "How are you?" must be followed by "I'm great. Thanks."

We all buy into it. We all want to be happy. This is normal human nature and there's nothing wrong with it. There's also nothing wrong with wanting the best for those we love. But, as this article is suggesting, we need to feel all of it - the dark and the light, the smooth and the rough, in order to really be here fully. We don't have to make these so called negative thoughts and emotions go away.  What I have found to be far more potent is the ability to sit with and welcome all emotion, all thought, regardless of  the ego's tendency to prefer one over another.  When I can be with ALL of this, feel all of this, experience all of life's ups and downs as the Presence it which it arises - then I am truly empowered. I am not overcome. Life is simply living itself through me, and I find that there is room here for the totality of it, just as it is. 
​

I'll never forget my first encounter with iRest® founder - Richard Miller. I was in the Gold Coast at the first wave of teacher trainings to come to this part of the world, feeling very much out of my depth and wondering if I should even be there - I mean, who was I to think I could teach people to meditate? But there I was, and so was Richard Miller. I wasn't at all sure what to make of him, but I walked over and, with all my nervousness, the first thing I said was, "Hi, I recognise you!" And he said, "Ah, but do you recognise yourself?"  And I knew I was in for something, and in the presence of someone, well, different.

Years later, after completing the two levels of iRest teacher trainings, and an immersive retreat on a ranch in Montana, I found myself talking to Richard again. This time we were about to embark on seven days of silent meditation in Sydney. I told him about our first encounter and he laughed. So did I, because now, after steeping in these non-dual practices day in, day out since that first training, I got the joke (could see the humour in all of it), and could finally give him an answer: "Yes, yes I do recognise my SELF."

​I feel so passionate about offering iRest teachings to my students now because I know, first-hand, the potential this yoga nidra practice has to transform. For me, there was life before, and life after, iRest - and, in the immortal words of Sesame Street, one of these things is definitely not like the other. So, how, exactly, has it made a difference? 

Before iRest , I was at war with myself. Today, I look back and can see how I was always drawn to yoga, to meditation, because of such deep misalignment (and not of the anatomical kind). I was so off-centre, regularly engaged in self-judgement and self-hatred to the extent that I was emotionally and spiritually dried up and completely fed up. I was severely depressed.

I can see that I needed an -'adjustment'- I needed a compassionate teacher to come over and, instead of saying, "You might try moving your hip over here to free up the pose",  they would offer, "Here's how you can lay your ego to rest. Here's how to reconnect with your True Nature of whole, already complete, loving Presence. Here's how to breathe and live again - to free yourself up. And the key is simply in Being, just as you are."

For me, the practice of iRest is one of wholehearted, unadulterated, welcoming - of yourself and of life. At first you may feel like you are doing or practising welcoming as you ask, can I welcome it all in - welcome the body, the breath, the mind and all these thoughts? Not just accept, as acceptance can veil a subtle rejection if you feel into it long enough, but unconditionally welcome. Can I be with my beliefs and doubts, my fears and sense of not enough? Can I meet my anger and ugliness and not push them away or cling on to them until my knuckles are white and stiff from the clinging? And if, today, I feel like all there is is rejection, all there is is pushing, can I welcome this in, too? 

With iRest and in welcoming, we're meeting ourselves and the realm of the koshas  - the many layers or sheaths of identification that we learn to dress ourselves in over the years. You may have heard about the koshas in yoga nidra practice. I think of them as layers we put on and wear like badges, or a pair of trousers (sometimes even a cloak of invisibility!): "I'm a mother, a lover. I'm 34 and a yoga teacher. I'm happy, focused, or I'm angry and anxious, I'm worthy. I'm not worthy" etc.... 

You might try this on and see if it fits: we take on identity as an -'I/me/ego'-  and invest in it to completion. We believe in ourselves as a body, an intellect, and we not only feel our emotions, beliefs and thoughts, we become them. We fight for these beliefs, go to war for them, fight battles with our loved ones just to get that point across. We see life as something -'out there'- to seize and make work for us or to control, and the body/ourselves as something to manipulate, to fix and make better. I need to achieve a better pose, because that means, somehow, I am better. Ego says, "Look at me! Look at how amazing I am now!"

Self-help becomes subtle self-hatred.

iRest gives us tools to safely meet and greet and be with all of this - the good the bad and the ugly - as the witnessing presence of all of this. We learn to step away from our involvement in self, while simultaneously compassionately embracing this involvement with self. Nothing rejected, nothing left behind.

What I've found (and the paradox of what I'm about to say isn't lost on me), is the more this -'I'- sits down to practise, the more transparent this -'I'- becomes. Because eventually, if you practise long enough, you come face-to-face with your sense of -'I-ness'-, or the doer. The question often then becomes: "What is it that is witnessing this -"I"- thought anyway?" When -"I"- practises long enough, the emotions and the thoughts melt away, even -'I'- melts away, and all there is left is the stillness of welcoming, witnessing, loving presence. No one doing the welcoming, no one doing the witnessing. And we come into ourselves as, not the doer of welcoming, but Welcoming Presence itself.

iRest is my yoga practice now and it's changed my life. What began as a journey to re-align in all ways imaginable with hatha yoga, led to a deep understanding (a deep down in my bones kind of understanding) that there is nothing that needs fixing and there is nothing to judge. It's taught me that, actually,  life isn't something that needs fixing, and I'm not someone who needs improving. No -'self-help'- is required.

Maybe this makes you bristle and your skin prick. You might be thinking: "What do you mean? Isn't change good? There's nothing wrong with improving yourself!" And I hear you. The challenge I offer is to be open to the possibility that you already are everything you ever wanted. That you already are whole and complete, and that this is something you've forgotten.

And make no mistake, with iRest change definitely does happen. But instead of being motivated by -'not-enough'-, it can arise from a deep connection with innermost centre and happen organically, in response to an almost magnetic re-aligning with True Nature.

For me the war is over and in it's wake is compassion and a profound gratitude for the fight. After all, without it there would not have been this re-discovery of wholeness that Richard prompted me to make with the very first words he spoke to me - that arrow straight to the heart of the matter.  And so I'll pass it on to you, whisper in your ear: "Do you recognise your Self?"

I'm a big fan of Maria Popova's blog/website Brain Pickings, a "weekly interestingness digest". She recently wrote an article about this book by botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer entitled, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. More than just a book about moss, it's a look into the art of seeing at all scales of life. Robin writes:

"Electron microscopes let us wander the remote universe of our own cells. But at the middle scale, that of the unaided eye, our senses seem to be strangely dulled. With sophisticated technology, we strive to see what is beyond us, but are often blind to the myriad sparkling facets that lie so close at hand. We think we’re seeing when we’ve only scratched the surface. Our acuity at this middle scale seems diminished, not by any failing of the eyes, but by the willingness of the mind. Has the power of our devices led us to distrust our unaided eyes? Or have we become dismissive of what takes no technology but only time and patience to perceive? Attentiveness alone can rival the most powerful magnifying lens."
[...]
"A Cheyenne elder of my acquaintance once told me that the best way to find something is not to go looking for it. This is a hard concept for a scientist. But he said to watch out of the corner of your eye, open to possibility, and what you seek will be revealed. The revelation of suddenly seeing what I was blind to only moments before is a sublime experience for me. I can revisit those moments and still feel the surge of expansion. The boundaries between my world and the world of another being get pushed back with sudden clarity an experience both humbling and joyful.
[…]
Mosses and other small beings issue an invitation to dwell for a time right at the limits of ordinary perception. All it requires of us is attentiveness. Look in a certain way and a whole new world can be revealed."


As a meditator, Robin's words really resonated with me. You see, meditation is a way of learning to attend to all the layers of a moment - not just what the mind tells us in thought or what the eyes display to us via the brain, not just the emotions and feelings we experience, but the Awareness in which these things arise. We're so used to being the "I" who sees, who thinks and feels and believes that we miss what else is here right under our noses. After all, this is where the drama is. The story of our life is endlessly narrated by our "I-ness". This I- function of the brain even likes to dictate the story "aloud" within our own mind. And we get caught up in this self-narrated tale, often dwelling here at the expense of all else.  But when we wholeheartedly attend to a moment and ask "what else is here beyond this "I" , or beyond the thinking mind?", a whole new world opens up to us.

Robin's experience of seeing moss on this scale echoes the meditation experience when we learn to attend to a moment, not directly looking at it as you would through the magnifying lens of your I-ness, but with an inclusiveness and spacious openness that welcomes in everything. This type of indirect seeing out of the corner of your eye comes to us when we shift our attention from the thinking mind, our I-ness, and what this I-self habitually gets involved with to the fundamental, essential spaciousness that is part of every moment, just usually missed.


For more on Brain Pickings  and the article on Gathering Moss:
http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/05/13/gathering-moss-robin-wall-kimmerer/


 

I was talking to my sisters about how meditation is like golf. "Say what?", you say. Yes, golf. If you've played for any length of time you'll know how absolutely frustrating the game is. You plan it all out, line up your stance, angles, club - eye it all up thinking, "This is gonna be sweet". And there it goes..... in the rough. Then you're furious with yourself, wondering how you managed to mess up that shot so badly. Which, of course, messes up the next shot, etc...  There's lots of time between holes to think about how you stuffed up, to get involved in some rather unpleasant self-talk that leads to a whole host of emotions that make you swear you're going to give up the game entirely because, clearly, "you aren't good enough for it!" At the time, you're just angry. Later, when the game's over and there's a bit of distance from it, you can see how it all went down and how you talked yourself into how it all went down. But every once in a while you somehow manage to hit the most beautiful shot and that one moment keeps you going back for more... until the next shot which lands in the sand pit and the cycle starts all over again. 

I've had some beautiful, blissful meditation practices.....and a whole lot of thought-bouncing, distracted ones that essentially were in the rough. We get attached to the practices that hit the 'sweet spot' of inner peace and calm. And I think it's ok to get attached to them, to want them and use them to heal you up - to use meditation to bring peace to a not so peaceful life. But we must remind ourselves that we are not "bad meditators" because we've had a distracted practice, that we are not "bad people" because that ball went into the pond. 

Continuity of practice is key - continual witnessing of all the self-talk, self-judgement, the planning and hoping, the anger, the disappointment, all the thoughts flying here and there until we can see how it's all going down - how the mind works. Meditation gives us a new perspective.   In witnessing we see that not only are we not our thoughts, we are not the thinker of those thoughts either. Meditation helps us step away from the thinker, the analyser, the player (as well as step away from the thoughts and emotions felt by that thinker and emoter) so we can step into our true essence as simple, pure welcoming witnessing presence. Knowing yourself as That, the game is just the game, the practice is just the practice and there's no attachment to how it all turns out.