Excerpt from: The iRest for Healing PTSD, Richard Miller. New Harbinger Publications. 2015

The practices of iRest are designed to help you experience within yourself what’s already whole and harmonious. Wholeness is your essential nature. But when you don’t recognize your basic wholeness, you feel that something’s amiss in your life. When you realize your wholeness,
you recognize an indestructible resource that allows you to weather every challenge you’ll face in life.

You discover wholeness through experiencing the simple feeling of being, which is a universal felt- sense, or non-verbal inner knowing, that we all experience. Being is a quiet background presence that’s always with you but that can go unnoticed until it’s directly pointed out.
Notice where and how you experience being in your body. Mindfully experience your felt-sense of being as you read the following words that others have used to describe their felt-sense of being.

Five Special Messengers

When you forget your felt-sense of being, you can easily lose touch with your non-separate wholeness. Fortunately, when you lose touch with being, five special messengers surface to help you recover your wholeness. These are natural processes within your body and mind that include your gut feelings, emotions, thoughts, and mental images.
Each messenger can arise in either a negative or positive form to guide you back to experiencing your essential wholeness.


Messenger #1 Niyati
“I feel contracted and limited” versus “I feel spacious and whole.”

When you forget being, you believe you need more space in order to feel whole again. The solution is to ask yourself: “Where am I when I’m simply being?” Then, experience your basic feeling of being that reveals your spacious wholeness.
When you’re simply being, how would you describe your felt-sense of location? Where are you when you’re simply being? When I posed these questions during a class, one woman responded, “As being, I feel myself as an indescribable presence that’s everywhere and nowhere in particular.”
You can’t deny the feeling of being. But being doesn’t have a distinct location with a defined center or boundary. It’s a boundless field of presence. It’s everywhere and nowhere specific. So, one description of being is that: You’re an unde niable presence that’s spacious, unlimited, and whole.

Messenger #2 Kãla
“I feel limited by time” versus “I feel timeless and whole.”

When you forget being, you believe you need more time in order to feel whole again. The solution is to ask yourself: “When am I when I’m simply being?” Then experience your basic feeling of being that reveals your timeless wholeness.
When you’re simply being what’s your relationship to time? When are you when you’re simply being? A man in the same class answered these questions with, “Time? Who cares?”


Isn’t it interesting how, when you’re experiencing being, thinking settles down, self-consciousness disappears, and with it your sense of time ceases? Time is irrelevant when you’re just being. When you’re being, you’re outside of past, present, and future, which are concepts that are dependent on thinking. As you settle into being, thinking and time slow down and may even stop. So, another description of yourself as being is that: You’re an undeniable presence that’s timeless and whole.


Messenger #3 Raga
“I feel that I’m lacking and flawed” versus “I feel perfect and whole.”

When you forget being, you believe you’re lacking and need to acquire something in order to feel whole again. The solution is to ask yourself: “How am I when I’m simply being?” Then experience your basic feeling of being that reveals your perfect wholeness.
When you’re just being, is there anything that you need, that will make you any better or more perfect than you already are, as being? How are you when you’re simply being? People everywhere respond similarly to this question. They report that when they’re absorbed in being, they don’t feel that they (as being) are lacking or flawed. They feel perfect just as they are as being. When you’re simply being can you feel the perfection of being, just as it is, just as you are?
Can you feel how trying to acquire something can take you away from the feeling of being? So, another description of yourself as being is that: You’re beyond need and beyond feeling either flawed or lacking. You’re perfect wholeness just as you are.


Messenger #4 Avidya
“I feel confused and disconnected” versus “I feel connected and whole.”

When you forget being, you feel confused and disconnected. You believe there’s something you must understand in order to feel whole again. The solution is to ask yourself: “What am I when I’m simply being?” Then experience your basic feeling of being that reveals your connected wholeness.

When you’re just being, is there anything you need to know that would make you any more connected than you already are as being? What are you when you’re simply being? One person replied, “I don’t need to know anything to know being. I’ve known this feeling all my life. I’d just forgotten it in the midst of my pain.”
Whenever I open up a great book, whether it’s the Bible, Koran, Bhagavad Gita, or Jonathan Livingston Seagull, the message is the same: “Just be, and know who and what you truly are.” You don’t need extra knowledge to recognize being. In fact, seeking knowledge takes you away from being. So another description of yourself as being is that: You’re an undeniable presence and complete wholeness, just as you are.


Messenger #5 Kalã
“I feel incomplete” versus “I feel whole.”

When you forget being, you believe there’s something you need to do in order to feel complete and whole again. The solution is to ask yourself: “Who am I when I’m simply being?” Then experience your basic feeling of being that reveals your complete wholeness.
When you’re just being, is there anything you need to do that by doing it would make you any more complete than you already are as being? Who are you when you’re simply being? After hearing these questions, most people understand that they don’t need to do anything special to be. They know that they can be at any time, anywhere. And they feel how being is a powerful source of well-being. Can you feel how being doesn’t need any particular doing to be what and how it is? It’s complete and whole just as it is.
With all sincerity, a woman in a shelter said,
“This practice with the five messengers has showed me my real home. Now I can deal with my homelessness.” So another description of yourself as being is that it’s your true home. As being: You’re an undeniable presence that’s complete and whole just as you are. You need to do nothing in order to be your complete wholeness.