Category: A Mind of Ease

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Intending, Abiding, Determining – Three Aspects of Effective Meditation

Dear Integral Meditators,
If you want to be good at something, then you need to have a clear model around which you base your attempts to improve. The article below explains a very simple three stage model that you can apply to your meditation practice to improve its effectiveness.

In the spirit of deeper competence and confidence,

Toby


Intending, Abiding, Determining – Three Aspects of Effective Meditation

For your meditation to be effective and integrative it needs to have three parts:

  • You need to begin with a clear idea of the state of mind that you are seeking to cultivate and develop in your meditation
  •  You need to become competent at holding/relaxing into that state of mind in formal meditation for an extended period of time
  • You need to emerge from your meditation with a clear determination as to how you are going to continue integrating your object of meditation into your daily life.

You could call these three aspects intending, abiding and determining.

Intending: During this first stage of intending you need to begin with a clear intention or goal as to the state of mind that you are going to cultivate in meditation, and then contemplate different ways in which you can actually cause that state of mind to arise. So for example if your meditation is simply to cultivate a relaxed state of body-mind, then you need to be clear about that, and focus your efforts and contemplation toward achieving that goal. Similarly if your meditation is onappreciation or on cultivating confidence then your intention should be clear about this, and the initial contemplation stage of your meditation should be directed toward this.

Abiding: In this middle stage of the meditation, now that you have cultivated the state of mind that you want, your goal now becomes to abide and move deeper into that state of mind. So:

  • If you have cultivated a relaxed state of body and mind, your focus now becomes to enjoy that experience of relaxation and move more deeply into that state, gradually letting go of successive layers of mental, emotional and physical tension.
  • If you have generated appreciation, your goal now becomes to move deeper into that state of appreciation, enjoying it and embedding it more and more deeply into your experience
  • If your goal was an experience of self-confidence, now that you have that feeling you now ‘bathe’ in it, making it a state of mind that you are more and more familiar with using your meditative focus

One of the main benefits here is that by focusing on something in a deep way during meditation you can make it a part of your personal experience much more quickly. You can literally take any quality you want to develop and use meditation to accelerate your development of it.

Determining: This final stage of meditation comes at the end. As you bring your session to a close you should have a clear determination regarding what you are going to do in your daily life to keep cultivating that state of mind. To use our three examples:

  • As I arise from my relaxation meditation I can determine to be more mindful of my stress levels as I go about my day, and not allow it to spiral out of control in the way that it has done in the past.
  • As I arise from my meditation on appreciation I determine to use what happens to me in the day to re-enforce my appreciation for the good fortune I enjoy in my life, to mindfully notice events that re-enforce my feeling of appreciation.
  • As I arise from meditation on self-confidence I have a clear sense of the feelings of confidence that I want, and make a mental note of times/events in the day that threaten to sabotage that confidence, so that when they happen I am ready.

If we lack this third stage, then there is a big danger that a gap appears between our formal meditation and our everyday experience. Our conscious determining at the end of our meditation ensures that we keep on attempting to bridge the gap between our sitting meditation and our actual life experience.

Related Articles:
The Five Stages of Meditation Practice from Beginners to Advanced
Five Inner Skills we develop Through Meditation

© Toby Ouvry 2015, 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

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia in May:

Friday 29th May 7.30-9.30pm –  Integral Meditation Session @ the Reiki Centre – Travelling deeper into the present moment through integral meditation

Saturday 30th May, 2.30-5.30pm – Enlightened Flow: Finding the Ultimate Relaxation and Release from Stress

Integral Meditation Asia

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The Way to Deal With Feelings is to Feel

Dear Integral Meditators,

Our relationship to our feelings is one of the dominant factors that determines our quality of life. The article below offers a few mindful pointers for how we can develop a good long term relationship to the way we feel, even in the face challenging and difficult emotions.

Yours in the spirit of deep feeling,

Toby

The Way to Deal With Feelings is to Feel

One of the great keys to mindful living, to dealing with stress and to being at home with yourself in life is to know how to deal with your feelings. To deal with your feelings effectively means understanding that feelings seek resolution primarily by being felt. Whenever we deny our feelings, whenever we refuse to accept them, whenever we resist experiencing them, then they cannot find resolution.
Conversely, whenever we acknowledge, accept and consciously experience a feeling or emotion, its energetic force can be naturally discharged and thus it can find resolution and we can move on from it.

It is the same with all feelings and emotions:

  • The solution to anger you feel begins by accepting the reality that you are angry (who me?), and proceeding from there
  • The resolution to the emotion you feel when you have fallen in love with someone begins by acknowledging and allowing yourself to feel that love
  • The solution to the anxiety that you feel about the uncertainty surrounding your business begins by accepting and experiencing that anxiety without denying or repressing it

Accepting a feeling is more than intellectual acknowledgment
Sometimes we can intellectually acknowledge that we have a feeling without actually accepting it experientially. Intellectual recognition alone is not enough to process a feeling, it has to be accepted experientially and truly felt.

Entering more deeply into the moment through feeling
Think of a situation in your life right now that is causing stress, anxiety or inner discomfort.  Notice how as soon as the uncomfortable feelings start to arise, your mind will start to get busy trying to find a way of ‘solving’ the situation; trying to think its way out of the problem.  Now what I want you to do is deliberately stop trying to solve the issue mentally and instead just focus on acknowledging, accepting and experiencing the feelings and emotions that you have. Simply sit with them, be aware of them, allow yourself to feel them and breathe with them, without trying to change them.
Sometimes (not always, but sometimes) when we are able to truly accept the way we feel, we discover that the problem we thought we had was not really a problem. The genuine and deep acceptance of the feelings makes the circumstances we find ourselves in actually perfectly ok.

Related Article: The Absence of Resolution

Find out about shadow self coaching with Toby

© Toby Ouvry 2015, 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

 
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Motivating Yourself to Meditate Part 2 – Meeting Your Deeper & Higher Needs Through Meditation

Dear Integral Meditators,

This is the second in the series of ‘Motivating yourself to meditate’ articles, you can read the first HERE if you have not done so already.

In the spirit of enjoying our deeper and higher selves,

Toby

Motivating Yourself to Meditate Part 2 – Meeting Your Deeper & Higher Needs Through Meditation

In the first in this series of articles on motivating yourself to meditate I took a look at how it is that meditation can help us to meet some of our basic needs, or needs 1-3 in Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I this article I want to look at how meditation helps us to start to satisfy our “higher” needs; specifically needs 4-6 of Abraham Maslow’s human needs hierarchy:

  1.  Esteem needs – For competence, approval & recognition
  2. Aesthetic and cognitive needs – For knowledge, understanding, goodness, justice, beauty, order, symmetry
  3. Self-Actualization needs

4. Esteem Needs – Competence, approval, recognition.
One of the basic things that any form of authentic meditation technique will improve is your concentration. With better concentration your ability to be competent in any given area of expertise that you set yourself is going to improve. So, meditation helps your esteem needs in this regard by helping you increase your mind power and therefore become competent faster. This in turn will likely lead to approval and recognition from your teachers, peers and society.
With regard to the need for approval and recognition, I would say that consistent meditation will help you to make approval and recognition into a preference rather than an all consuming need. This is because meditation takes us gradually away from “doingness needs” and toward “beingness needs”

  • “Doingness needs” are the needs that we have to prove our worth by deeds, job titles and all the other bench marks that conventional society lays down as meaning “successful”.
  • “Beingness needs” are the needs that arise from already seeing, feeling and experiencing ourself as whole, complete and worthy as we are. Meditation encourages a daily connection to our own state of beingness, that is to say as whole, complete and worthy as we are right now. In a state of beingness, our own needs are perceived as being already met, and so our “needs” actually start to focus more and more on the needs of others around us. We are happy as we are, so we have more energy to focus on the wellbeing of others.

In conclusion, when our beingness needs are met (which they will be increasingly through balanced meditation), of course we can be happy when we are measured as “successful” by the conventional benchmarks of society, but if not it is no big disaster, as our sense of beingness ensures that we feel happy and complete as we are.

5. Aesthetic and cognitive needs – Knowledge, understanding, goodness, justice, beauty, order, symmetry
With our beingness needs increasingly being met by meditation (as outlined in section 4 immediately above), an increasing amount of energy is opened up within us to look into “bigger questions”:

What is the meaning of life?
Why am I here?
What is fairness?
What is justice?
What is beauty?

This is level 5 of Maslow’s Hierarchy, our aesthetic and cognitive needs. A regular meditation practice will not answer these questions per-se, as a lot of meditation practice is about reducing the content of the mind, not filling it! However, what meditation will do systematically over time is to open us up to a full functioning awareness of our intuitive, archetypal and spiritual minds. This naturally helps us to articulate a considered response to the big questions that are posed by our aesthetic and cognitive needs.
A final point; meditation prevents us from getting “stuck” on the existential questions that are posed by this level. “What is the meaning of life?” is a question that may never be fully answered, and this is right and good. Meditation enables us to recognize the point where question asking and philosophizing ceases to be useful and relevant, and to move into states of silence and pure awareness.

6. Self Actualization: 
Actually, up to the last century or so, the main focus of meditation has traditionally been enlightenment, or needs associated with levels 5 and 6. It is only in more recent times that meditation has been advocated as a potential solution to the stress, mental busyness and anxiety of modern life, which has made it useful and relevant on the level of our survival needs  (levels 1&2 of Maslow’s hierarchy) and level 3, emotional wellbeing. Through history the predominant reason that people have meditated is to commune, merge and create a state of union with their spiritual being, which in turn exists in a state of one-ness or unity with the Universe. So, in terms of the sixth and highest level of our needs; Self Actualization or enlightenment, meditation is actually the most effective, tried and tested method for accomplishing this need.

© Toby Ouvry 2014, 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 

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Motivating Yourself to Meditate Part 1 – Looking at How You Can Meet Your Needs Through Meditation

Dear Integral Meditators,

Why meditate, why continue meditating? Why is it worth persisting? The article below considers these questions….

Thanks for reading!

Toby

 

Motivating Yourself to Meditate Part 1 – Looking at How You Can Meet Your Needs Through Meditation

One reason why people find it difficult to hold down a regular meditation practice is that it is very easy for meditation to get knocked down our priorities list. It seems like there are so many things that need our attention. It is easy to think that we have so many “important” priorities that we can put off meditating until tomorrow, and so it goes on. We never really get serious or consistent about our meditation practice because it is not enough of a priority.
So, what I am going to do in this and next week’s article is have a look at Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and see how meditation can help with these basic needs.  If we have a clear idea about how meditation helps us with our human needs, then we will keep it high on our priority list and make sure that we do it!

A quick outline of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, he starts with the most basic first, and then ascends in terms of depth and complexity:

  1. Physiological needs – Food and drink
  2. Security needs – Shelter, physiological safety
  3. Belongingness and love needs – Affiliation, acceptance, affection
  4. Esteem needs – Competence, approval, recognition
  5. Aesthetic and cognitive needs – Knowledge, understanding, goodness, justice, beauty, order, symmetry
  6. Self Actualization

How meditation helps us with these basic needs:

Needs 1&2: Physiological and security needs
I am guessing that if you are reading this article, you will have your basic food, drink and shelter needs being met. You may not be in Buckingham Palace, but you aren’t homeless either right? Although many of us have our basic needs met, many of us remain stuck psychologically in “survival” mode, fighting our way through a hostile universe oblivious of the good fortune of having our basic needs met.
Meditation helps us with this by helping our mind to be calm enough to appreciate and enjoy the fact that our survival needs have been met. Meditation gives us the presence of mind to enjoy life’s simple pleasures; Food, drink, shelter and a basic quality of life. Without peace of mind studies show that those in first world countries are no happier than those in 3rd world countries. Meditation makes sure this does not happen to you!

Need 3: Belongingness and love needs
A daily meditation practice is a statement to yourself that you are important and lovable enough to deserve happiness and peace of mind. Belongingness and love needs are often projected outward onto other people, but in reality our primary love relationship is with ourself. If we get this right it will help our love relationships to others.
Meditation also puts you in touch with a source of love inside you that might be termed as “Universal” or unconditional. This love starts to rise up in our mind whenever we truly touch mental peace and calm (see article on the “Two Main Lessons of Love”). You deserve to receive love every day right? So give yourself that pleasure by sitting down and doing a bit of meditation every day! One final point here, meditation by its nature makes us more mindful, relaxed and aware. This quality of mind helps us to see that there is love being directed toward us all the time by our friends, family and colleagues. A relaxed, meditative mind can open to this love and receive it deeply into our being, instead of shutting it out.
So, in my next article mid-week next week, I’ll write a few thoughts on needs four, five and six, but I think if you contemplate the above three, there is plenty of reason to renew your determination to find time and space for at least a little meditation each day!

Read part 2 of this article: Motivating Yourself to Meditate Part 2 – Meeting Your Deeper & Higher Needs Through Meditation

© Toby Ouvry 2014, 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 
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Seriously Light/Lightly Serious

Dear Integral Meditators,

The article below is an encouragement not to forget to to be playful, no matter how serious it gets!

Yours in the spirit of the deep and the light,

Toby

Seriously Light/Lightly Serious

It is very easy to mistake taking something seriously for taking something ‘heavily’.
It is very easy to use false humour and lightness as a way of avoiding things that we should be taking seriously, or not giving the amount of focused attention that an issue deserves.

Is it possible to take something seriously and yet keep the quality of our mind light and flexible? I think it is. For example:

  • I can recognize a shortage of money or resources without getting heavy or depressed about it, whilst thinking seriously about how I can go about making up the shortfall
  • I can listen to someone talking of their pain and loss seriously and with compassion, honoring it, whilst at the same time consciously not letting my mind become heavy with the burden of what I am listening to
  • I can recognize that I have made a mistake and pay attention to correcting it without giving myself a complete mental hammering for having made that mistake
  • I can have a huge ‘to do’ list without it causing me to get tense, and negatively serious about everything I haven’t done
  • I have a choice when faced with serious changes and uncertainties in my life, the temptation due to the fear can be to get tense and over-serious, but there is always the option of being serious but light!
  • I can be physically tired, but the strain on my body does not mean I have to take the experience without humour and goodwill (but get a good night’s sleep as soon as I can!)
  • I can feel vulnerable and insecure about something, and I can mindfully take care of that insecurity within myself with compassion, whilst at the same time seeing the humour in my paranoia

If you like over the next few days, experiment mindfully with this idea of serious lightness. It’s possible to be deep without being heavy, and it is possible to be light without being superficial or foolish.

Related article: Connecting to your spiritual fool in the mirror world

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A Mind of Ease Energy Meditation Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques

Seven Ways to Mindfully Save and Create More Energy

Dear Integral Meditators,

The article below explores how one approach to mindfulness can save and create energy in our life, which is always useful as we often find ourself struggling to keep up with the demands of our daily life.

In the spirit of a mind of ease,

 

Toby

Seven Ways to Mindfully Save and Create More Energy

One of the things that I often do before I do a mindfulness course within a company or organization is to send out a short questionnaire to the participants asking a bit about the challenges that they face in their work. One of the challenges that seems to be coming back more and more in the answers I get is fatigue. With this in mind I have compiled a little list below of ways in which you can use mindfulness to help you save and create more energy in your life and work. So here they are:

1. Recognize when you are in conditions of physical and psychological safety and relax into them – don’t allow your paranoid mind to make you feel like you are in a perpetual state of emergency.

2. Breathe in a way that promotes physiological and psychological relaxation and releases excess tension from the body and mind (See my article on breathing from my Qi gong blog)

3. Practice mindful self-acceptance, or the refusal to be at war with any part of yourself.

4. Each day ask yourself ‘what is good about my life?’, and hold the answers that come from this question with appreciation.

5. Spend at least some time each day focusing on just one activity and enjoying it deeply; allow your mind to gather and dwell in one place.

6. Learn the discipline of stilling your mind; the trick is to see that stillness is something that is present already in your mind (beneath the busyness), rather than something you have to ‘create’.

7. Step back and become a witness to the events of your life; practice the discipline of letting what is going on pass over and through you without clinging to it.

You can find some suggestions for practicing these seven in my previous article “Seven Ways for Creating a Mind of Ease”.

© Toby Ouvry 2014, 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 


iAwake’s Product of the Month is: Gamma-Burst! 
60 Minutes of Gentle Ocean Waves For Motivation, Focus, Energy & Joy

Apply Discount Coupon Code: NEWSOCT25OFF (Good until October 27, 2014)

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A Mind of Ease Energy Meditation Integral Meditation Meditation techniques Mindful Breathing Stress Transformation

Taking Care of Your Nervous System Through Meditation

Dear Integral Meditators,

The article below explains a brief self-healing meditation that can be performed at any time, specifically to calm and balance your nervous system.

In the spirit of mindful self-healing,

Toby

Taking Care of Your Nervous System Through Meditation 

Due to the busyness and stress of our daily life we often find ourselves with nervous systems that are chronically over-stimulated, often trapped in fight or flight mode, and generally wired for anxiety and fear. The main nerve within the nervous system is the spine, so one of the best ways to care for and gain benevolent control of your nervous system is to focus your attention upon relaxing and energizing the spine.
The short technique I describe below is one I use often myself as a short 1-5 minute meditation during the day, and is part of the multi-faceted approach to creating a calm-lucid body-mind that I teach in my Mind of Ease Program. It focuses on the body, but it can have a quick and profound effect on our mental and emotional state as well, due to the inherent interconnectedness of the body-mind.

Relaxing the Spine
Sit, stand or lie down in a comfortable posture with a straight back, your ears and shoulders in line with each other.
Focus your attention upon the length of your spine from the base of the skull all the way down to its base/your coccyx.
Feel your way inside the vertebrae of the spine, to the spinal nerve that runs inside. If you like you can wiggle your neck and hips a little just so as to feel the nerve moving so you get a feel for it.
Now see and feel the smaller nerves radiating out from the spine, spreading out from in between the vertebrae to the rest of the body.
See (visualize) in the centre of your spinal nerve there is a line of light and energy. As you breathe in see and feel this line of energy glowing brightly. As you exhale see that light and energy expanding out into the spinal nerve, and then out along all of the nerves that spread out through the body from the spine. See your whole nervous system in the whole of your body lighting up like a light bulb as you exhale.
Repeat for a few breaths, or for a few minutes, ending with a brief period of relaxation.

It can take a little while to get used to feeling your way into the centre of your spinal nerve and then breathing the energy out from your spine along your whole nervous system, but is a skill you can acquire relatively quickly with practice.

As I mention, I normally just do this as an ad hoc exercise whenever I am feeling a little tired or frazzled, I find it remarkable how quickly I can find a space of physical relaxation,  regeneration and energy by doing it. Try it out!

© Toby Ouvry 2014, 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 

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Going Beyond the “Do This” and “Do That” Mentality

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks article is one that I wrote back in 2011, before I had any kind of mailing list. When I re-read it today it really made me stop and think, then it made me stop thinking for a while, and then I started thinking again, but thinking better. I hope it does that for you too.

The upcoming mind of ease classes will be full of this type of practical reflection.

Yours in the spirit  of  mindful creativity in the moment,

Toby

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia in October:

Sunday October 19th – Mindfulness and Meditation For Creating a Mind of Ease, Relaxed Concentration and Positive Intention

 Launches 24th October – The Meditation for Creating a Mind of Ease Online Course

Special 1:1 Coaching offer valid until October 14th  2014: Get 15% off the 3 session Stress Transformation Coaching Package.

Going Beyond the “Do This” and “Do That” Mentality 

My daughter has just turned six, and one of the things that I have noticed about our relationship recently is that it has been possible for me to start changing my relationship to her from a lot of “do this” and “do that” instructions to a much more process based “Why don’t you try this?” or “What will happen if you think about it this way?” Her gradual increase in age and maturity, combined with my own gradual maturing as a parent has allowed our relationship to evolve from being somewhat dictatorial to much more co-creative.

How we often use the “do this / do that” mentality with regard to the way we treat ourselves
One of the things that has struck me when thinking about the changes in my relationship to my daughter is how often we get caught up in a “do this” and “do that” relationship to ourself. “Instead of approaching situations and challenges in our life with an open, flexible and enquiring mind, often we will simply react in a pre-programmed way, based around our past experience. Internally we order ourselves around with no real sensitivity to what is actually happening and this kills our ability to respond authentically and creatively.
For example I may find myself mentally punishing myself for not having made more effective use of my time during the day. The conversation goes something like:
“You should not have got sidetracked by this, you should not have wasted time doing that, you don’t deserve to relax this evening because you have not achieved what you wanted…” the instructions and judgments go on and on…

What can we replace the Do this/do that mentality with?

One of the things that we are trying to create through a meditation practice is enough self-awareness  to be able to respond to our immediate circumstances as they are, without projecting judgments or old values onto them. What we are trying to do is replace the automatic “do this” and “do that” voice of our judgments and past mental programs with questions like:
“What is this situation showing me or offering to me?”
“What are the real emotions behind what is being said here?”
“What is the most creative thing I can do in this situation?”
“What is my most authentic response to what is happening here?
By bringing questions such as these to the forefront of our mind in our daily life we can start to over ride the automatic “do this” and “do that” orders coming from our impulsively critical mind and start to live a life that involves more freedom, as well as more authenticity and more happiness.

An awareness exercise:
The art of going beyond our “do this” and “do that” mentality lies in replacing these inner orders with a question that stimulates our enquiring mind and creativity. The next time you can hear and feel your old judgments barking orders at you as you try and cope with a life challenge, consciously place this question in the centre of your awareness:
 “What is this situation helping me to see and learn?” 
Try and stay with this question for a few minutes and observe the creative ideas that start to emerge from the inner space that the question allows.

Related article: You Always Have a Choice

© Toby Ouvry 2014, 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 

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A Mind of Ease Inner vision Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Mindful Resilience Shadow meditation

The Reasons We Resist Deeply Good Feelings

Dear Integral Meditators,

What would happen to your life if you truly committed to feeling the deepest, best feelings that were available to you in each moment? This weeks article explores this theme, and the reasons we often turn away.

Courses and coaching offers for October are detailed in the upcoming courses section.

Yours in the spirit of feeling deeply good,

Toby

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia in October:

Sunday October 19th – Mindfulness and Meditation For Creating a Mind of Ease, Relaxed Concentration and Positive Intention

 Launches 24th October – The Meditation for Creating a Mind of Ease Online Course

Special 1:1 Coaching offer valid for October 2014: Get 15% off the 3 session Stress Transformation Coaching Package.

The Reasons We Resist Deeply Good Feelings

The following is a list of reasons why we either choose to accept negative feelings and focus upon them when there are positive ones we could be focus upon, OR we choose to accept superficially ‘positive’ feelings and emotions when there is a choice available to touch something deeper and more profoundly alive within ourselves.

  • There are many varied and often real reasons not to feel good
  • My ever increasing list of broken dreams as I get older
  • My fear of being judged by others (don’t stand out in the wrong way!)
  • Everyone around me seems negative or guarded, why take the chance?
  • The positivity can’t last, I’m setting myself up for disappointment, the feelings will betray me
  • Real, visceral enjoyment and pleasure is not something I am worthy of
  • My partner/child/parent/friend (etc…) is not happy, so why should I be?
  • I’m waiting for someone else’s permission to feel this good
  • I might start having all sorts of creative ideas (and that might be risky)
  • I’m uncertain and worried about my future (to feel good doesn’t match that reality)
  • My business/job is not going well
  • The suffering of the world, the environmental crisis
  • I haven’t forgiven myself for ‘x’
  • I’m addicted to my own pain
  • If I feel really good it will highlight all the areas of my life where I feel pain, I don’t want to b reminded of that
  • If I’m feeling good there will be no one else to blame for my pain
  • I would feel empowered and so would have no excuses for not taking responsibility for my life
  • I will start to feel truly alive (and that would be scary)
  • I’m addicted to feeling ‘high’ rather than actually deeply happy
  • I want to feel and be what gets the approval of others rather than what really serves me

I wrote that little list in 5 minutes before I cooked dinner tonight. It seems sometimes like the choice to feel truly good, whole and well each day despite “all of it” is not the act of the mindless hedonist, but the mindful and courageous few.

© Toby Ouvry 2014, 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 

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What Constitutes the Good Life? – Looking a bit deeper

Dear Integral Meditators,

In order to experience the ‘good life’ I really believe that we need to go beyond our superficial ideas of positive and negative, pleasure and pain. In the article below I explain why.

Final reminder if you are in Singapore of the Mindful Resilience Workshop on this Sunday, 21st September in the morning. Anyone attending the live workshop will also gain access to the Mindful Resistance online course launching next week, which is a really good deal I think.

Beneath the article is details of I-awakes monthly offer, in this case on their Neurocharger 3.0 track. Its good stuff!

Yours in the spirit of the good life,

Toby

What Constitutes the Good Life? – Looking a bit deeper

What constitutes the good life? You might think that the good life might be described by the prevalence of the following types of emotions and experiences; happy, contented, blissful, enjoyable*.
The not-so-good-life would then be constituted of a corresponding list of opposite qualities like unhappy, discontented, in pain, depressed.

BUT. It is possible to be superficially happy, lazily contented, addicted to sensation and short term kicks (bliss) and enjoyment as distraction from what is truly important.

Similarly it can be unhappy in a way that leads to positive change, discontent because it is appropriate to be so, learn valuable lessons and victories from pain and reach a deeper level of self-knowledge when we confront depression and emptiness.

What would then happen if we replaced our list of qualities that constitute the good life to the following; enriching, exciting, rewarding, challenging, and meaningful?*

We can be enriched by our feelings of both happiness and unhappiness.
We can be excited by the prospect of resting in contentment and also shaking our world up with our discontent.
We can be rewarded by our resilience to pain as well as our periodic touching of deep bliss.
We can be challenged by loneliness and depression and derive new levels of enjoyment from that which we find meaningful.

If we are willing to consistently push ourselves beyond the superficial boundaries of ‘chasing positive and avoiding negative’ as well as ‘looking for short term pleasure and avoiding pain’ we may find that undreamed of capacities for the good life start to emerge from each day of our existence.

So then, what are the leading edges of your enrichment, excitement, reward, challenge, and meaning in life today? It doesn’t have to be ‘positive’.

*Two lists taken from “ The Carl Rogers Reader”, Haughton edition,  page 419, section entitled ‘The Greater Richness of Life”

© Toby Ouvry 2014, 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 


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