Love, happiness, equanimity and compassion are all aspects of our essential nature – who we truly are in every moment. iRest helps us unveil and live from these loving and nurturing qualities, both in meditation and our daily lives. Over time, we learn to surf the tumultuous waves of emotions while staying connected to our inner resource, the part of us that is always at peace, no matter what’s happening on the surface. Long term meditators naturally embody these qualities as they’ve come to identify less with the surface content of thoughts and emotions and more with their inner nature. Meditation paired with steadfast self-work, scrubs away aspects of our personality that drain our vital energy and no longer serve us. As we meditate we become more self-aware. As we become more self-aware we see parts of ourselves that we don’t like. If we’re able to accept those parts, listen to them, and even come to love them, they no longer unconsciously dictate our reactions and behavior. 

It’s important to remember that meditation on its own, without integrating emerging unconscious material, may lead to spiritual bypass. Experiencing heightened states feels amazing and who doesn’t want to live in equanimity and rapture while leaving their problems firmly rooted on the earthly plain? The problem with this, however, is that, well, most of us still live on this earthly plain with relationships, jobs and responsibilities that pull us back down to reality pretty quickly. And unless we’ve done some inner work, meditation alone won’t help us navigate our blindspots, shadows or past traumas. Pairing meditation with self-work or self-understanding is essential when it comes to healing. iRest is one of the few forms of meditation that has self-examination built into the protocol.

Often meditation involves sitting still, quieting the mind, and focusing on the breath or on an object. iRest incorporates these components and additionally asks that we investigate our bodily sensations, feelings, thoughts, beliefs and emotions. During iRest we may work with challenging as well as positive emotions. We may examine long held beliefs or world-views. We may feel into where joy exists in our body or we may rest in unchanging spacious awareness, simply witnessing the comings and goings of our existence. We invite opposite emotions and beliefs into awareness at the same time. We learn to hold them simultaneously. We come to see that we are not the content of our consciousness but rather the witness. The Beingness. With practice we come to abide in our essential nature. Emotions come and go yet we don’t get hung up on them. We unhook from our thoughts – they’re mostly just conditioned anyway. We learn to embrace sorrow as well as joy. We don’t take ourselves so seriously but we know and maintain our boundaries. We have opinions but we are not identified with them nor do we argue with those who hold opposing beliefs. We become an embodiment of compassion and love, not just for those who clearly suffer but for those whom the ego-self would deem least worthy of our compassion. We live presently and walk gently. We look others in the eye and listen without judgment. We discern but don’t judge. We play the game, but winning doesn’t matter. We feel the pain of loss but don’t cling to it. Nor do we cling to our possessions or desires. We understand that nothing is separate from us.

Additionally, meditation helps reveal all the places where we don’t love ourselves and negative self beliefs become apparent. We see where we pick ourselves apart and how that harms us. During meditation you may become aware of your negative self-talk. When you’ve treated yourself a certain way all your life, those thoughts are like the water and you are the fish swimming in them, unaware that they even exist due to their ubiquity.  Your auto-pilot probably consists of some ways you talk down to yourself. Or maybe you’re hyper critical of others to avoid shining the light of awareness inward. The lurking shadows may be too much to take. We’re complex beings and there’s a lot that goes on below the level of our awareness. Meditation helps bring some of that content to light. If we remember to be gentle with ourselves, that we are the way we are because we had to survive, what awareness reveals will be manageable. A lot of our personality traits are adaptations of  five year olds, maybe younger. We morphed ourselves as best we could to fit into our environments and receive love. Our circumstances may not have been ideal so our behavioural modifications may not be ideal. It becomes a choice to examine our traits and decide which ones we wish to keep and which are no longer helpful and can be thanked for their services and left behind. iRest is a practice that allows us to welcome and accept all of our parts as we abide in the healing of our Essential Nature. It is through this acceptance that we come to transcend the conditioned self, thus living with greater ease, well-being and presence.