Categories
Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques spiritual intelligence

Meditation on Connecting to your Magical Self or Inner Magician

I have recently been working on re-titling and writing notes for some artworks that I completed back in 2005. The first of these, “The Magician” you can see in the image on this page. The image itself is meant as a way of visually connecting to our “Inner Magician”. The inner magician is that part of our inner self that is both creative and magical within us, and that if we harness it effectively has the power to change our daily life and experience for the better.

So, who or what is our inner magician? Here is a working definition:

“The higher expression of our inner magician is that part of self that is able to work with the higher, deeper and spiritualized expression of magic.”

Magic in this context means the following:

  1. Being able to affect or change one level of our reality by working on it from the level or plane of reality above it.
  2. Engaging our creative imagination vividly and consciously to “sculpt” our experience of any given situation for the better.
  3. Not being content to let good ideas remain in our head, but actively finding ways of expressing those ideas concretely in our daily life.

Let’s take a closer look at these three aspects of magic:

1) Being able to affect or change one level of our reality by working on it from the level or plane of reality above it.
In its simplest terms this means that you use your  mind and thoughts to change your physical and emotional reality for the better, and you use your spiritual or intuitive mind (which operates on a level beyond thought) to change your thinking patterns for the better.

A simple example might be this:
– If I experience physical pain because of an injury or illness I use my thinking mind to remain positive, telling myself that the pain won’t last forever, and encouraging myself to practice patience. This is using my thoughts to positively affect my physical reality.
– If I find myself having repetitive negative thoughts about my pain and illness, then I can temporarily suspend my thinking (this is really where meditation comes into the picture) and move into a state of mind beyond thought. Doing this enables me to release the momentum of all the negative thoughts that I was having, so that my mind becomes a “clean slate” so to speak which I can then replace the negative thoughts with more appropriate and affirmative ones.
So this is a very simple example, thinking mind works magic on physical world and emotions, spiritual mind works to affect and control the thinking mind.

2) Engaging our creative imagination vividly and consciously to “sculpt” our experience of any given situation for the better.
We think that there is a concrete reality “out there” waiting to be discovered that has some kind of fixed or inherent qualities. Actually this is not quite the case. What happens is that the “bare facts” our outer reality meets our mind, which then imagines or projects its own ideas onto that outer reality.
From this we can see that what we experience in life has something to do with the “facts” of our life, but equally as much it also has to do with our imaginative response to those facts. To work with magic is to realize the power of your imagination to co-create any given situation in your life, and leverage on that imaginative power effectively. For more on this you can read my past article “Taking your creative imagination as your object of meditation”.
Our imagination is deeply and powerfully magical, it can create great art and great bliss, or it can create our own private hell.

3) Not being content to let good ideas remain in our head, but actively finding ways of expressing those ideas concretely in our daily life.
Our magical self realizes that any good idea that we understand, create or hear about is an INJUNCTION. An injunction is somewhere between an invitation and an obligation. So this means that when we have or hear a great idea we recognize that our understanding of this idea is INVITING us to use the idea as a practical tool with which we can change our life for the better. By virtue of our understanding of the idea we could also say that we have an obligation to try and integrate that idea into our life. If we just let that idea remain in our intellect that would be a great waste right? Many of us are guilty of this; having great insights and ideas about our life, but not implementing them, thus wasting them.
So, our magical self or inner magician is delighted when good idea comes our way and immediately seeks ways to start expressing these ideas in a practical way to change our life for the better.

Practical Work
If you want to follow up on this article on a practical level, here are two suggestions:
1) Use the image above as an object of meditation in order to help you to intuitively connect to your own “Inner Magician”.
2) As soon as you have or understand a good idea intellectually, immediately ask yourself “How can I make this idea a concrete, practical reality in my life?” Do whatever you can to act upon your answer to this question.

© Toby Ouvry 2011, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com


Categories
Concentration Meditation techniques

Meditation Technique For Brain Relaxation, Non-Conceptuality and Falling Asleep at Night.

Dear Integral Meditators,

How has your week been? I’ve been experiencing a few changes in routine which have been creating quite a lot of mental busyness for me, so this week’s article returns to the perennial meditation theme of “how to calm the mind”. I think you will find the technique that I describe very accessible and easy to use!

Yours in the spirit of calmness and clear seeing,

Toby

 

 


Meditation Technique For Brain Relaxation, Non-Conceptuality and Falling Asleep at Night.

This technique is designed to help people address one of the main problems that we face in meditation; Finding that we are thinking too much even whilst trying to concentrate our mind. It is also a technique that I particularly use when trying to go to sleep at night and want to clear and relax my mind. Actually it can be done anywhere whenever you have a spare moment which is one of the things that makes it so useful.

It can also be a useful meditation tool for calming down after emotional trauma, for stopping cyclical negative thoughts and also finding temporary relief from psychological difficulties such as depression.

The basic premise for the meditation is that your brain is your “organ of thought” so to speak. By bringing your physical brain into a state of deep relaxation it can actually be relatively easy and natural to calm the mind.

Meditation for Relaxing the Brain 

Sitting or lying down, bring your attention to your head, and in particular the area around the temples, forehead, eyes and eye sockets. Spend a short while consciously relaxing these areas of the face and head.

Now become aware of your brain and spend a few moments sensing it as a whole.

Once you have a sense or feeling for the brain as a whole, start scanning through it with your awareness. As you go through each part of the brain consciously relax each area. I normally start with the two frontal lobes of the brain immediately behind the forehead, as the front part of the brain is associated with the generation and functioning of conceptual thoughts. Spend awhile really relaxing all the tension from the front section of the brain. Once you have done this move to the mid-section of the brain and focus on relaxing it in the same way. Then move onto the back of the brain. Finally move down to the brainstem that connects to the brain to the spinal cord and release tension from it.

Perform this scanning meditation through the brain two or three times, then move back to a general awareness of the brain as a whole. You will find that with the brain relaxed in this way your mind will quite naturally quieten down and you will experience a sense of inner spaciousness and calm. Stay with this feeling of mental relaxation and calm for as long as you wish.

As I said, this is an easy and simple technique to use, you don’t have to be any kind of meditation expert to start practicing it by yourself and experiencing the benefits!

Here are a few other techniques from articles that I have written that are specifically designed to help reduce conceptual thought quickly:

Finding Inner Space in Your Mind by Focusing on Outer Spaces

Calming the Brain Fast! Mouth Breathing

Meditating “Cold Turkey”

Still Point Breathing Meditation

Categories
Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Uncategorized

Four Tips for Meditating at Home and Beware of Second Hand Statues!

This week’s article focuses on tips for meditating at home. There is a great article that I read this week by Maria Kapaln (Author of “The Guru Question”) called “10 Spiritually Transmitted Diseases” I really do encourage you to have a look through it. There really is a lot of nonsense masquerading as spirituality these days, and this article gives some really clear pointers for developing your own discernment and ability to clearly see the difference between genuine spirituality and either ego-manifesting-as-spirituality, or just plain confusion.

Enjoy the article below!

Yours in the spirit of the ongoing journey,

Toby

Four Tips for Meditating at Home and Beware of Second Hand Statues!

Of course we all enjoy the support and interactive atmosphere of a meditation class and the occasional retreat, but the fact remains that if our meditation practice is ever going to truly transform our consciousness, then establishing a daily practice is really what we need to focus on. With this in mind here are four ideas regarding how to support your home meditation practice.

1) Just get your bum on the seat!

As we go about our daily activities we get used to the neutral momentum of “doing stuff”. This means that when it comes to the time we have designated for meditation our mind tells us there is “just one more thing” that we need to do before we meditate. Before we know it is late, and we have to go to work, or we are too tired to focus effectively and the day’s meditation opportunity goes begging. The only solution to this is to discipline yourself to STOP, SIT down and BEGIN! You’ll start to feel better as soon as you do!

2) Get your family to support you.

Your family, flatmate, friends are all going to benefit from a happier, more focused and aware you right? So let them know that you have/are trying to develop a meditation practice, and have set aside a particular time each day to do so. Explain that it is going to be of benefit to them as well as you, and ask them to support you and remind you when the time comes for you to say “excuse me for 20 minutes!” We are social animals and getting others to help and support you really helps.

3) Don’t try and do too much in the meditation session itself

Many of us are already struggling with information overload in our life, and so trying to do a meditation form that is overly complex and/or where we have too many expectations can be counterproductive. Make your meditation time spacious; don’t give yourself too many different things to do. On my website I have plenty of meditation techniques that I explain, but it really can be as simple as focusing on two things: Sitting still and practicing “non-doing” for ten minutes!

4) Set up places in your home where you can sit down and meditate comfortably.

I have set up in the living room, two of the bedrooms and the roof balcony small arrangements of candles, crystals and other objects that, when I sit in front of them immediately helps put me in the mood and mindset for meditation. If one room is occupied by other members of my family, I simply go to the space that is unoccupied. Having physical places that you associate with meditation and relaxation in your home really helps you to settle into a regular dally habit!

Watch out for second hand statues!

A final point I want to end with is that, if you are considering putting antiques or otherwise second hand statues or crystals in your meditation space take care. Particularly with second hand religious statues they can come to you “ready energized” in the wrong way by its previous owners. I was reminded strongly of this when I recently acquired a very finely crafted ceramic Quan Yin statue. It looked great, but I placed it in the meditation “shrine” in my bedroom and promptly got woken up that first night feeling extremely energetically uncomfortable, and after tossing and turning for a while was gifted some nasty dreams before waking up in the morning. The entire disturbance was coming from the dissonant energy that the statue had been energized with in its past.

So, what to do? Don’t worry; there is no need to throw such statues away! I have placed mine amongst the pot plants in my garden (see picture above) , where it will remain for six weeks or so and where all the negative elemental energy (for elemental energy think “physicallized mental energy”) can dissipate and be released from the statue to be absorbed and transformed by the natural elemental energy of nature. Once our Quan Yin has been “neutralized” then we will be able to place her wherever we want with no disturbing side effects!

Categories
Enlightened service Inner vision Integral Awareness Meditation and Psychology

Meditating on The Difference Between Your Evolving Self and Your Biological Self

Hi Everyone,

Evolutionary Spirtuality, or the idea of Conscious Evolution is one of the most exciting and cutting edge areas that is being explored in spirituality today. Luminaries include people such as Barbara Marx Hubbard, Andrew Cohen and Craig Hamilton.

This week’s article is a short contemplation on learning to identify your own Evolutionary Self and distinguish it from your biological self. Enjoy!

Yours in the spirit of the evolving universe,

Toby

Meditating on The Difference Between Your Evolving Self and Your Biological Self

In this article I want to draw a distinction between two aspects of self that are often placed together, but are in fact very different. What I will do is define them both first, then explain how to begin working with the Evolutionary Self effectively in daily life.

The Biological Self is the sense of self that we have that is based around our biological programming. This programming is very ancient, and primarily works of past patterns that have evolved over thousands of years. Its needs are primarily based around survival/fight or flight, and it almost exclusively looks to the past for its inspiration. It sees patterns that have worked to fulfill our survival needs in the past, and it seeks to mimic them in our current behaviors. It works out of areas of the brain that are very ancient, and exerts a tremendous influence on our lives. It can be a very good and able servant to us, but if we allow it to be our master then it will lead us along a very limited life path, based around patterns of consciousness that are essentially survival based and aimed at staying in our comfort zone.

Our Evolutionary or Evolving Self is that part of cosmic evolutionary consciousness that is embodied within us. You could say that it is that part of evolution (as in the 13.5 billion year process that began with the Big Bang) that is becoming conscious of itself through us as an individualized human. Our evolutionary self is focused on the future, on becoming, on creating the new, on innovating. The Evolving Self is uninhibited by past patterns of biology and of ego and feels exited and motivated to make our life and life on earth fulfill as much of its potential as possible. The Evolving Self is naturally a good leader, and placing it in the forefront of our awareness enables us to lead other parts of our self and ego int the future without being inhibited by our “past baggage”. The Evolving Self is always looking to reach its highest potential, and to make the biggest and most meaningful contribution to the evolution of the Planet and of humanity that it can.

Our Evolving Self embodies the energy of evolution itself and seeks to catalyze conscious evolution in all situations.

Starting to connect and work with your Evolving Self

Imagine the Big Bang 13.5 million years ago: From out of nothingness an immense explosion of matter, energy and consciousness that gradually transforms over time into our present Universe.

See it continuing to evolve now in our present Universe, in our Planet, and in you, in the core of your own consciousness and being.

Feel within you now the momentum of that cosmic drive toward evolving the new, a dynamic spark of light within you that is focused the future, on becoming, on creating a better and greater life and world. 

Once you have felt your Evolving Self within you, as yourself the question “What is my Evolving Self asking of me right now, today, in this moment?”

After you have finished your contemplation, write down the ideas that came to you try and isolate one action that you can do today, or this week that will be a direct expression of your Evolutionary Self.

In general, whenever you are faced with a challenge in your life, ask yourself the question “What is my Evolving Self encouraging me to do here?”