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Your deep time project

“With a ‘deep time’ goal the work we do today will not even nearly be finished when we die. Essentially, we entrust it to the next generation, we focus on our process, without knowledge of how it will finally end up…”

 

Dear Integral Meditators,

I hope you’ve all been enjoying the Christmas break! I’ve been staying near some historical sights over the break, and this has gotten me reflecting on the way in which our sense of time influences both our sense of what’s possible in our lives. The article below is an exploration of this and its applications to mindfulness practice.

And if your looking for a meditation course to get stuck into in 2022, we will be kicking off with  Zen: The ordinary path to enlightenment – Meditating with the Ten Ox Herding pictures a ten part series on Jan 11/12th.

In the spirit of deeper time,

Toby


Your deep time project

I’ve been spending the Christmas period in the west country of the Britain, near Glastonbury, Somerset. I’ve seen around Glastonbury Abbey and Tor, as well as Wells Cathedral, which are both medieval buildings, over 800 years old. I’m also hoping to go around Stonehenge tomorrow which is of course a stone-age construction, between 4-5 thousand years old. For all of these buildings, the women and men that began the construction would have not have seen the final building. In fact, they would have been at least 3-4 generations before the completion of the structure. It’s interesting to think then of the mind-set of those working. Essentially, they were working as an offering to future generations, and as a sense of offering something up to the divine, or something bigger than their temporal selves.

The speed of time today
Reflecting upon this, and spending a bit of time walking in these places, sensing into the presence of the deeper-time energy, it got me thinking about how much of our time these days is pretty much the opposite of deep time. We need our phone and internet connection fixed now. At work, often we are thinking of the goals for the next 24 hours, few days, a week. There never seems to be enough time in the day, and everything needs to be done all and at once, now. All of this is in stark contrast to a ‘deep time’ goal, where essentially the work we do today will not even nearly be finished when we die. Essentially, we entrust it to the next generation, we focus on our process, without knowledge of how it will finally end up…

Your own sense of deep time
With the current ‘ecological crisis’ (I put it in quotation marks because in reality it has been building for a long time, not just now), I was thinking how useful this ‘deeper time’ medieval/stone age mindset would be, where the aim was extended across multiple generations, and well beyond our own life-span. If we all re-learned to think across generations, and into the deeper future, our sense of what and how we are creating in our lives would change radically.

Your own deep time projects?
So, then the question might be, “What are my own deep(er) time projects?” The ones that I will be offering up to the next generation to take and interpret in their own way, and build upon. These projects are the opposite of the ‘immediately done, now, today’ stuff that occupies so much of our head-space and energy. It’s the opposite of Instagram likes, short-term attention span, quick-fix. Are there any areas of your life at the moment that involve deep-time projects, and a deep time mindset? If not, what would such a project look like for you, what could you instigate or get involved in?

Deep time and your peace of mind
The interesting thing about spending regular periods of your day in ‘deep time’ is that the cadence and atmosphere of these periods is slower, less stressed, even-minded, peaceful, regenerative. It gives the option to ‘drop out’ temporarily of our short-term goal mindset into a different space that invites a different range of thoughts and emotional states.

Deep time and your medium-term resilience
If your everyday ‘time-range’ extends from the short-term to the long-term, then finding the inner resilience, even-mindedness and stability to get thru medium term challenges and goals becomes relatively easy. For example, we are all at the end of our second year of uncertainty coming from the Covid crisis. Getting through the ups and downs of this is much easier if you are dropping into a deep-time mindset regularly, as two years isn’t such a long time, relatively. I’m now in the 21st year of my post-monk meditation coaching business. There have been a lot of ups and downs during that time, but with a deeper time mindset, and the even-minded resilience that comes from that, it feels like the beginning rather than the end!

Related articleMeditating on time

Article & content © Toby Ouvry 2021, 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   


Tues & Weds 4th & 5th January – 2022 New year & New Moon releasing and inviting meditation

This meditation session is focused upon setting up the 2022 new year energies in a way that invites the best possible experience moving forward. We will be:

  • Releasing and letting go of energies, events and experiences from the past year that may hold us back from moving into our full potential
  • Developing a flexible, soft, ‘beginners mind’, renewed and ready to be ‘born again’ with energy and enthusiasm in 2022
  • Focusing both consciously and intuitively upon the inviting of new energies, aspirations and goals that we wish to bring in and manifest over the course of the new year…read full details

Begins Tues 11/Weds 12th January – Zen: The ordinary path to enlightenment – Meditating with the Ten Ox Herding pictures

This series of 10 classes is an introduction to simple, practical Zen and Taoist meditations that can temporarily help us to reduce our stress and thrive joyfully in daily life. They can also, practiced regularly offer us experiential insight into our true nature and help us to answer some of our deepest life-questions and attain a truly stable sense of inner transformation. The sessions can be attended as a complete course in itself, or each class can be taken as a practice in and of itself…read full details


Saturday January 15th, 9.30am-12.30pm – Meditations for activating the gifts & healing the wounds of our ancestors

This workshop explores relevant and living ways in which we can connect to our own ancestral inheritance in a manner that is appropriate for and empowering to our contemporary lives.

In particular the workshop will offer practical meditations to:

  • Engage in a living communion with both our close (recent in time) and ancient (distant in time) ancestors
  • Awaken fully to the gifts and potentials (spiritual, psychological and material) that our ancestral karma has to offer us
  • Heal damaged or imbalanced ancestral karma that we may have inherited

Read full details


 

Life-fullness – The Integral Life-Coaching Program with Toby
 

Are you looking a coach who can help you to:

  • Meet the challenges, stress and changes that you face in a more effective and mindful way
  • Become happier within yourself, in your relationships and at work
  • Be actively accountable for finding a sense of balance/well-being in your life and fulfilling your personal potential?
  • Guide you to find and operate from a deeper sense of meaning, motivation and connectivity in your life?
Read full details

All upcoming classes and workshops at IMA:

Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby (Bukit Timah)

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby  (East Coast)

Tuesday 21st December,  7.30-8.30pm, SG time – Winter solstice balancing & renewing meditation (Online only)

Tues & Weds 4th & 5th January – 2022 New year & New Moon releasing and inviting meditation

Begins Tues 11/Weds 12th January – Zen: The ordinary path to enlightenment – Meditating with the Ten Ox Herding pictures

Saturday January 15th, 9.30am-12.30pm – Meditations for activating the gifts & healing the wounds of our ancestors


Integral Meditation Asia

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