Category: Enlightened service

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Biographical creative imagery Enlightened service Greenworld Meditation Inner vision Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditation techniques

Mixed Mindfulness Arts, Animals and Starlight

Dear Integral Meditators,

If you look at the martial arts scene these days you will see that a lot of the top guys are mixed martial artists, that is to say that they have trained in and mastered more than one form of martial arts, and this has made them better overall. Similarly training in complementary meditation and mindfulness styles can have a great effect upon your personal growth, more than training in just one.

With this in mind I have edited and updated an older article below on how to meditate with animals and landscape. It is a very old form of meditation that people have been doing for thousands of years, and has a lot to offer us in today’s very urbanized society!

Similarly I would like to sincerely recommend that if you are in Singapore next Sunday 31st September in the morning, then do consider coming along to my meditation workshop “The Call of the Wild–Meditations for Deepening Your Inner Connection to the Animal Kingdom and the Green-world” where I will be teaching this meditation method in a very practical and relatively easy to apply way.

Finally, another practice that I have gotten a HUGE amount out of over the last year, and that continues to be a great support and strengthener for my mindfulness practice and personal growth in general is the brain-entrainment and bio-field technology tracks fromI-Awake. They have got a new product, Neuroflow out just a few days ago, which I am posting some information on immediately below. As it has only just come out, I have only had it a few days myself, but I have already had a great experience with it!

Yours in the spirit of mixing and flowing,

Toby

Meditating with Animals and Starlight – Shamanic Journeying

Meditating with animals and animal spirits is one of the main practices found in ancient shamanic traditions worldwide. The ancient shamans were really the pioneers of the first meditation techniques and these techniques (which are mainly the technique of “inner world journeying”) are deeply embedded within the psyche of human beings, including you and me. The result of this is that most people who actually try shamanic meditation techniques actually find that they are able to gain some success quite quickly. Michael Harner, one of the pioneers of modern proto-shamanism reports that fully 85% of people participating in his shamanic journeying workshops are able to gain tangible results and experiences from their first attempts at journeying meditation (The only caveat to that would be that these people chose to attend the workshop, so in a sense they may have ‘self-selected based upon their innate aptitude and interest).

As mentioned above, the main meditation “technique” found in shamanism is the “inner world journey” where contact with animal and ancestral spirits is sought for the purposes of gaining guidance, wisdom and healing. When meditating with animals and animal guides the sequence of the meditations would tend to go something like this:

  1. The shaman (or you and I if we are choosing to meditate in this way) goes on a journey, either within his imagination, or actually physically into a landscape to meet his or her animal guide.
  2. Once the specific animal has been contacted, the shaman requests to be taught or shown the wisdom or healing method that the animal has to impart to him.  There then follows a communion between human and animal, trust is hopefully gained and the relationship proceeds. It should be noted that the animal chooses the shaman, not vice-versa. If you are met by an ant or a rat when you wanted a lion you cannot do a trade in! Experience will show you that in reality the animal that comes is invariably the best one for you and for the job at hand!
  3. A series of meditations can then be embarked upon where the mediator then goes on journeys and receives teachings, techniques and insights from the animal. Initially the meditator travels WITH the animal, but over time s/he may feel as if he is merging with the animal’s body and actually BECOMING the animal for periods of time.
  4. Over time a stable working relationship is established with the animal spirit which is mutually enriching for both parties, and the wisdom and abilities of the animal are imparted to the meditator.

What “abilities” and wisdom do you get from an animal guide?
The way in which animal guides impart wisdom is non-intellectual, experiential and mainly done through images. To take an example, if your guide is a spider, and in meditation you experience what it is like to have eight sensitive legs picking up information from all directions around you then this will give you a heightened awareness of your inner sense of touch which you can apply to appropriate life situations and challenges.

Starlight meditation with a pigeon
One animal that I developed a relationship with around the the beginning of 2010 for a period of months is the pink necked green pigeon a number of which used to hang out in the park near my office. My animal journeying-type meditations are mostly spontaneous these days, done whilst napping or just sitting having a quiet moment. Animal journeying really just becomes an integral part of life once you have been doing it a while. So anyway, here a journey that I experienced with the above mentioned green pigeon that I recorded at the time :
I am having a ten minute meditation break in my office. My mind becomes quiet and tranquil. Quite suddenly I feel myself to be sitting in the next door park, staring up at a tree, where the green pigeon is sitting looking at me. After an initial contact we fly up into the sky going high above the cloudline.
With the clouds below us and the blue sky above, I become aware of rays of starlight flowing down from the heavens, bathing our bodies in white light. The rest of the meditation is then spent simply enjoying the starlight, absorbing it and being it. We then fly back down to the park, the vision breaks apart and I am sitting in my office meditating. I say thankyou to the green pigeon and get on with my day!

For many people the idea of meditating in this way may seem a bit far-fetched.

However there is HUGE value for urbanized humans to do this type of meditation, as it re-connects us to a truly living relationship with nature and animals. The other thing that we discover is that it is actually quite not difficult, it is just a matter of re-awakening our visualization and imaginative skills, and pointing them in the right direction.

© 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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Biographical Enlightened Flow Enlightened service Inner vision Integral Meditation Meditating on the Self Mindful Self-Leadership

Enlightenment and the Call to Awakened Creativity

Dear Toby,

Those of you in Asia I hope you had a nice holiday yesterday as Wesak, or Buddhas birthday was celebrated. The article below is the result of my own reflections on the creative process of enlightenment, thinking about the Buddha in particular.

Final call for those who may be interested in the 3 hour Mindful Self Leadership Workshop in Singapore this Sunday 18th May, 9.30am-12.30. Click on the link for details!

Yours mindfully and creatively,

Toby

PS: Click on the picture to find out about Buddha shaped pears!

Enlightenment and the Call to Awakened Creativity

I’m writing this article on Wesak day, or Buddha’s birthday, and the occasion has led me to have a go at expressing something that has been on my mind for a little while which is basically this; The great enlightened leaders of different eras for example Buddha, the Christ, Krishna responded to their experience of spiritual enlightenment with courageous creative acts of worldly innovation.

For example one of the things that the Buddha did was to create whole new class of citizen. Back in India 600BC as a man you had three options; either you were of the class of nobleman, or the warrior class or the servant/slave class. If you were in the tiny minority of noblemen, then life would have been good, but if you were a warrior or a slave you really were not operating with much freedom. If you were a woman the choices were correspondingly limited.
So what the Buddha did was to create a new class of citizen – the ordained Sangha – or community of monks and nuns who were essentially able to side step the three class options and live peacefully, supported by laypeople and focus on getting enlightened themselves and being of service to the community at large. It is difficult for us to appreciate fully today what an amazing act of social innovation this was on the part of the Buddha, as today we live in a very different society where, relatively speaking we have very different freedoms and limitations. At the time of the Buddha many, many men and women were socially liberated in the way through the creative this creative act of Buddha.

So then, the interesting thing to me is that while the truly great enlightened people and leaders innovate and act with dynamic creativity, the people that follow them mainly seem just to seek to follow the rules that got set down after their death – they do not seem to feel the imperative to act creatively, to take chances, to innovate, to respond to the genuine organic needs of their life and times.

To become spiritually enlightened means basically this; to be interested in developing your consciousness and to be focused on the process of seeing and integrating your inner and outer reality as clearly and courageously as you can. Spiritual enlightenment is a process with many levels of unfolding. I’m at a certain level of spiritual development; you are at a certain level of development. At each level I believe we have a responsibility not just to gain insight into our reality, but also to respond to that insight with action and creativity. This means to be taking active responsibility for expressing your own enlightenment (on whatever level you are at) in your life. Very often that will mean taking a chance, engaging in something a little experimental.

The main thing is that you get in the habit of expressing your enlightened creativity now, today, at least a little.

Happy Wesak day!

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creative imagery Enlightened Flow Enlightened love and loving Enlightened service Inner vision Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditation techniques Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness

That Which Solves All Your Problems and None

Dear Integral Meditators,

All of us crave a final solution to all our problems, a place where we can go and find true peace. The good news is that such a solution it always available to us in each moment.  The challenge is that after we have solved all our problems in this way, we still have to solve all our problems. You’ll see what I mean below.

I’ll be doing a free talk on Mindful Self-Leadership on the 4th May, full information can be found HERE.

Yours in the spirit of problem solving,

Toby

That Which Solves All Your Problems and None

One of the fundamental insights from the enlightenment experience induced by meditation is that, behind every tangible experience that we have there is an experience of formless, timeless awareness which embraces, enables and transcends that experience.

The interesting thing is that, whereas the experience itself may give rise to pleasure and pain, dilemmas, anxiety, elation, depression etc, this formless timeless dimension that lies behind the experience is simply and continuously present to what is arising, witnessing what is going on with both benevolent intimacy and (to our perception), terrifying indifference.

Whereas I, Toby as a body-mind am a distinct person on a personal (hopefully developmental) journey through life, the part of me that is simply formless timeless awareness is already at the destination to that journey, and at the same time has never begun that journey in the first place.

Whilst the Toby in this world works to develop a business, become a better, kinder person, work off the weight that the Easter eggs have put on his waist line, sets goals, suffers, and has successes, the formless timeless Toby has no ambition to develop or to achieve because from its perspective everything has been achieved already, and ultimately there was no-thing to achieve in the first place.

While the Toby in time and space craves resolution to his problems, anxieties and dilemmas, as well as the fulfillment of his deepest wishes, the transcendent Toby has no problems, and even if he did (which he doesn’t) they would be solved instantly in the experience of the timeless present.

So, as I think you can start to see spiritual enlightenment, that is a living connection to the formless, timeless, ever present dimension of reality solves all of our problems ultimately, but in the mean time it solves none of them at all! We are still challenged to face off with our challenges in time and space each day with curiosity, courage and care, and do the best we can.

There is no doubt that many people come to meditation and spirituality as a means of escaping from a seemingly intractable, chaotic and painful world, and it is an easy trap to fall into. I however like to think of the peaceful, problemless space of the timeless present as an invitation to get our hands dirty in the world of time and space, to participate fully, to play the game.

As an exercise for this week if you choose, simply sit quietly and think to yourself “Ultimately all of my problems are solved”. Enter, sit with and breathe in this space where everything is well, and all problems never existed. Recognize this space, let yourself go into it.
As you reach the end of the exercise, let your mind full up again with the intractable messiness, imperfection and vulnerability of your life.

Now, go and solve your problems.

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Awareness and insight creative imagery Enlightened love and loving Enlightened service Gods and Goddesses Inner vision Integral Awareness Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Meditating on the Self

The Mothers of God

“We are all meant to be mothers of God…for God is always needing to be born.” ― Meister Eckhart

Normally in meditative literature we are used to seeing ourselves being compared to children, and the Divine being compared to a mother or father figure. But what if we, as Meister Eckhart does in the quote above, reverse that and instead think of God or the Divine seeking continually to be born into the world and express itself through us?

What if we think of ourselves as the Mothers of God? How does this change our perception of who we are and what we might be capable of?

The question to then enquire in our meditations and contemplation’s for the beginning of 2014 and beyond is

  • “What is it that I feel within me that is seeking to be born and express itself through me at this time?”
  • Or alternatively “What will be my labour of love this year?”

Sit down for a few moments, see yourself as a mother of the divine. Go deep within yourself and see what the Universe has placed there there waiting to be born, wanting to be birthed.

Wishing you all the very best for 2014!

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Awareness and insight creative imagery Enlightened love and loving Enlightened service Inner vision Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Motivation and scope Presence and being present Uncategorized

Boomerang – The Mystical Aspect of Kindness


What happens when you throw a boomerang away from you? Of course we all know the answer, it comes back to you. The mystical aspect of practicing deliberate kindness, compassion or any other related positive act is that it tends to come back to you in unexpected but consistent ways. The upshot of this is that if you want to have kindness and compassion expressed toward you, the best way to achieve this is go out there and start practicing it yourself to others.
You might think of it as a form of enlightened self interest where we are creating a win-win situation;

  • Fulfilling the happiness of others by practicing kindness and consideration for them and,
  •  At the same time helping ourselves create the cause to receive similar treatment now and in the future

Perhaps the most important time to pick up this practice is precisely the time when we feel least like doing it; when we are feeling hard done by, upset or alone or uncared for. If at this time we can remember the boomerang of practicing kindness we can make the effort to go out and express caring for others and ourselves, send something positive out into the world so that we are inviting similar energy to come back to us.
Often an act of kindness has an immediate positive effect upon us; the act of caring itself makes us feel better, or invites a caring response from someone else. It also seems to work in more general ways. For example as a bouncer on the Student Union for three years during my University days I was generally calm and caring. As a result I found myself rarely in fights or trouble, and the punches and head-butts that did get thrown at me always seemed to ‘miss’ (and this was not because I was any good at fighting!)
Another example is I have a tendency to leave my wallet, phone and watch in public places (yes, I know, I’m a mindfulness teacher, I shouldn’t’t be leaving things around all the time!); the toilet in Starbucks, dropping money behind me on the pavement, in the changing room at the sports center and so on…yet they always seem to come back to me in the hand of some kind person.
Of course there is no guarantee that tomorrow I won’t have my wallet stolen and get beaten up in the process, but I do have a strong sense of how my own positive intention actively protects me from the worst that life can throw.

Practicing the boomerang of kindness
So, if you want to take this practice up for the week, just imagine that you have the boomerang of kindness in your hand as you are going about your day. Whenever you have the opportunity, throw it at people. Do it as much as you can, safe in the knowledge that every time you throw it out kindness, consideration and compassion will come back to you some way, somehow.

For more reflections on the practice of kindness see last weeks article on “The Tightrope of Kindness”.

© Toby Ouvry 2013, 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:

The courses and workshops for January 2014 will be up shortly.

Special Coaching offer at Integral Meditation Asia for December 2013-January 2014!

Sign up for three 1:1 coaching sessions with Toby (either Meditation, Stress Transformation or Shadow coaching) for only Sing$435! (Usual price Sing$600).

This is a great opportunity to get some very personally focused coaching for a great price. The only condition is that the three sessions must be completed in the month that they start, so start in December the sessions must be completed in December, likewise start in January the three sessions must be completed in January.

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Enlightened service Essential Spirituality Inner vision Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Motivation and scope spiritual intelligence

Is Meditation about Stress Management or About Enlightenment?

Dear *|FNAME|,

What is the reason that we meditate and practice mindfulness? This is the subject of this weeks article, it is one of those questions that it is very useful to be clear on!

The main development at Integral Meditation Asia this week is that  I have created a newshadow coaching service. As many of you know I have been offering shadow meditation workshops for some time now. This coaching service is designed to provide a personalized service for people to really get to grips with their own shadow self, and start enjoying it rather than running away from it!

With all best wishes for your inner wellbeing,

Toby

 

Is Meditation about Stress Management or About Enlightenment? 

Why do we meditate of practise mindfulness? Traditionally and historically it was practised by those who wished to attain a spiritual liberation or enlightenment, but more recently meditation and mindfulness have been touted as methods that can help us deal more effectively with our secular stress, help us relax and improve our work performance. So, is it about enlightenment, or is it about stress relief?
Thinking about this I came up with three basic levels of meditation practice that gives a spectrum of possible uses for meditation practice.

Meditation from the perspective of the ego: Here we are motivated to practice meditation in order to reduce stress and negotiate our life challenges in a more fulfilling and enjoyable manner. In this context meditation is a secular skill which value adds in a measurable way to our quality of life.

Meditation from the perspective of the soul: Here we practise meditation in order to provide the inner stability and strength to live a life of principle and depth, for example to live life according to the principles of goodness, beauty and truth. Meditation in this context contains within it the “ambition” to go beyond our biological and lower human nature, and to start consciously embodying positive principles in the world through our actions.

Meditation from the perspective of spirit: On this third level we practise meditation in order to pursue enlightenment – the realization of the ultimate, formless, timeless dimension of reality and of ourselves. Here we commit not just to doing this in sitting meditation, but also to embody that reality in our daily action; to mediate (not a typo; mediate, conduct, channel) the energy of enlightened awakening into the outer world of illusion. The goal if meditation on this level is to accomplish the same fundamental realizations of your Buddha’s, Christ’s, Krishna’s, Lady Tsogyal’s, St John of the Crosses etc… and to act as forces of enlightenment within the world as they did.

So, there are your three basic levels, it’s up to you where you pitch your own practice. Even if you only think yourself capable of the first, then this is still a wonderful step to take and commit to.
I think the reality is that every time we sit down and meditate we do a little of all three levels; we reduce our stress (ego level), go a little deeper into our inner self (soul level), and awaken even if it is only in the smallest of ways to our true nature (spiritual level).
© Toby Ouvry 2013, 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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Enlightened love and loving Enlightened service Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Motivation and scope spiritual intelligence The Essential Meditation of the Buddha

Engaged Equanimity

Dear Integral Meditators,

The new year beckons, and this is the new year edition of the Integral Meditations newsletter!

The new year beckons, and this is the new year edition of the Integral Meditations newsletter!

2012 has certainly been a deeply transformative year for me, and looking forward to 2013 the promise does seem to be that this will continue. When thinking about the qualities that I would most like to have, and I would most wish for you the readers, I came up with engaged equanimity. Whatever the specifics of 2013, the likelihood remains that life will continue to throw its mixture of blessings and curve balls at us, and the ability to keep caring deeply, whilst remaining strong and stable are qualities that remain always valuable and useful.

Wishing you happiness, growth, insight and love for 2013!

Toby

Engaged Equanimity

To practice engaged equanimity is to attempt to combine the qualities of even-mindedness and inner stability with the qualities of deep caring and a commitment to engage in life fully and passionately without holding back.

A dualistic approach to life often sees equanimity and caring as mutually exclusive, or even opposed to each other. If we are practising equanimity and even-mindedness it seems to imply that we have to be detached and un-involved. If we are practising deep caring it seems to imply that we are committed to a roller coaster emotional ride where our peace of mind and equanimity are largely sacrificed.

A commitment to regular, balanced meditation practice should gradually and naturally give rise to the ability to practice engaged equanimity. As we progress in our practice we discover that it is possible to be fully committed to our life and experiencing intense emotion, whilst at the same time experiencing a part of our mind and awareness that remains relaxed, an observer and witness to what is occurring, abiding in a state of even mindedness and equanimity.

What I want to outline in the remainder of this article is four simple practices that can be put together in order to consistently develop the practice off engaged equanimity. The first three focus on the development of equanimity, the final one focuses on engaging care.

The instructions are deliberately minimal, allowing enough detail for you to experiment and explore them in your own personal experience.

1. Allowing pain and anxiety, happiness and joy to flow through you.
Observe the feelings, emotions and experiences that you normally cling to, whether it be pleasant or unpleasant. Consciously relax your heart space/central chest area and allow your moment to moment experiences of pleasure and pain to flow through you, like a broad river flowing in and flowing out of your awareness. As you breathe in feel these feelings flowing into you, as you breathe out feel them flowing through you, let them go without holding onto them.

2. Make friends with impermanence
Be aware that everything that you are experiencing right now will change and is changing. As with practice 1, be aware of this with both the good and bad in your life. Whatever you wish to remain in your life, and that which you wish was already gone is changing, even in this moment. As you practice awareness of change and impermanence, smile at it, make it a friend and not an enemy in your life.

3. Drop your self
Spend periods of time where you deliberately forget who you are, what you do, what your life history is. Practice experiencing that which is in your outer and inner awareness without your “self” as the centre of the experience. Cultivate the recognition that life works in many ways perfectly well, and sometimes even better when an intense and central experience of “I” is taken out of the equation.

4. Commit to caring
Based upon the above three practices for developing equanimity and even mindedness, the fourth practice is then simply to commit to caring in your life and making a difference in the world in whatever engaged way you feel guided and are capable. With equanimity and even-mindedness as your underlying basis, choose to participate and get your hands a little dirty, choose to be (appropriately) vulnerable and fully alive. Of course this involves risk, and maybe (probably) getting hurt and burned on occasions, but with equanimity as the underlying basis we discover, sometimes to our surprise, that we can take it, and that it is worth it.

© Toby Ouvry 2012/2013, 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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Awareness and insight Enlightened love and loving Enlightened service Inner vision Meditating on the Self Motivation and scope Uncategorized

Compassion as Wealth

 

Gaining the Inner Wealth of Compassion

Compassion is a foundational building block of our inner wealth and peace of mind. However, it can be a difficult quality to improve consistently over time. In this article I look at three reasons why it can be difficult to keep developing our compassion sustainably, and three ways that we can start to work to overcome these obstacles.
For the purposes of this article, lets stick to a simple definition of compassion, the wish to free ourself and others from suffering, based upon the ethic and emotions of caring and valuing. In order to access the inner wealth of compassion therefore we need to do two things, open ourselves to the  suffering of ourself and others with a heart that is caring and open.

Here are some of the obstacles to opening to suffering:

  • There is too much of it – It can be overwhelming to contemplate the amount of suffering and injustice in the world. To remain open to it can make us feel vulnerable, confused and seem to “spoil” our ability to enjoy our life. Sometimes even our own suffering seems so intense, how in such a state can we open up to awareness of more suffering, the suffering of others?
  • Attempts to help are not always well received – Sometimes the very people we want to help seem committed to perpetuating their own suffering, and their response to our wanting to help is to react angrily and sometimes hurtfully to our attempts to help.
  •  Disliking ourself, disconnected from others – A final point is that it is very difficult to develop genuine care and love (the basis for compassion) for others if we dislike or hate ourself. Such dislike blocks any compassion that we may have for ourself, and simultaneously locks us in a state of mind where we feel cut off and unable to connect to others. It is impossible to feel compassion for others if we are locked in a viscous cycle of self hatred/dislike within our own ego.

With the above three points in mind, here are three things you can do to to help open to and develop the inner wealth of compassion:

  • Have the courage to open to pain and suffering – Get in the habit of being open to seeing and feeling experiences of suffering that normally you would instinctively shy away from or block out of your awareness. It is not your “fault” that all the pain is there in the world, but it is (if you choose) your opportunity and responsibility to be aware of it and do what you can to alleviate it in whatever big or small way you can.
  • Develop a long term view with regard to how your attempts to help are received – Commit to helping in whatever way you can, and if the people you are trying to help don’t appreciate it, or perhaps don’t understand what you are trying to do, don’t be discouraged. Look at it as a process rather than being to worried about immediate results.
  • Resolve your relationship to yourself – If you can’t connect to others because there is so much conflicting energy caught up in your relationship to yourself, then make it a point to invest in yourself and your ability to develop harmony within yourself. The more harmony and resolution there is within your awareness, the  more space there will be for you to develop authentic care and compassion.

© Toby Ouvry 2012, 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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Awareness and insight Enlightened love and loving Enlightened service Inner vision Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Presence and being present spiritual intelligence

Tapping into the Ever Present Abundance of Happiness

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks article looks at how we can find an ever present abundance of happiness “right under our nose” so to speak. I really believe that a practice like this only gets more important and more relevant as our planet becomes ever more crowded and interconnected, and the need for us all to “think as one” becomes more and more of a necessity.

Yours in the spirit of ever present abundance,

Toby

Tapping into the Ever Present Abundance of Happiness

There is a source of abundant happiness that is available to us at all times, no matter how badly your life is going. This abundance of happiness is called the happiness of others.
All you have to do in order to be able to tap into this source of happiness is to be able to expand your sense of self and identity beyond the boundary of your skin andmake your “self” big enough to include other living beings. If you can do this, then any happiness that they have you can partake of, because their happiness is the happiness of your expanded self.

So, then the question then becomes “How can I expand my sense of self to include others?” A key to this is understanding that our self sense is much more flexible than we might think. Whenever we care for someone else our self sense moves out to them and includes them without effort on our part. One simple way to develop an expanded sense of self is simply to consider the body of the Earth or Gaia as being our body (rather than our small physical body that we habitually identify with). If we consider the Earth as our body, then all the living creatures, human, animal and so forth automatically become a part of ourself, and any happiness that they have is our happiness to enjoy, partake of and take pleasure from.

With this expanded sense of self the happiness of all living beings becomes our happiness and thus we are able to tap into an almost infinite source of happiness and joy. We feel as if we have a perpetual abidance of happiness that we can tap into anytime you need to.

Try it now:

  • First expand your sense of self by thinking of your body ans being the body of Gaia or the Earth
  • Then partake of the happiness of one or many of the living beings on the earth, seeing their happiness as your happiness. If someone you know got the job s/he has been looking for, then think of their joy as your joy. See a mother and baby exchanging smiles and affection on the street? That happiness is your happiness.  There are so many possible examples I could give here because there is such an incredible amount of happiness to partake of when you expand your self sense in this way. The only problem you now have is which happiness to enjoy and celebrate!

This way of relating to happiness and your world may seem a little artificial at first, but once it becomes a habit, then it really can feel natural, just Iike second nature.

So there you go a simple method to tap into the perpetual abundance of happiness!

© Toby Ouvry 2012, 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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Awareness and insight Enlightened service Inner vision Meditating on the Self

Five Stages in the Path of the Mystic (and Weekend Walking Meditation)

Dear Integral Meditators,

First of all wishing you the happiest of new years, and all the very best for 2012! Especially I hope it brings you all a renewed sense of creative participation in the mystery that we call life! This week’s article is on the five stages of the path of the mystic, a mystic being a seeker wishing to connect to life in the truest and deepest source of the word.

 

Article of the Week:

The Five Stages of the Path of the Mystic

In its broadest sense a mystic is someone who engages sincerely with the mystery of life. He or she is not satisfied to live in a habitual, unconscious and mainstream manner, but rather feels moved to celebrate the wonder of life by investigating it as deeply, consciously and profoundly as s/he can.
It is very easy to forget that our lives are fundamentally a mystery, and become habituated, jaded, cynical and thoughtless about the opportunity we have. I find that one of the best ways to keep in touch with an appreciation of my life is simply to remember that each moment is fundamentally a mystery, and to live each moment and engage in every action mindful of this.
To live the life of a mystic is also to court the path of the unconventional, the unpredictable. As I heard said a couple of weeks ago by a Christian minister; “Mainstream religions love mystics, but only dead ones!” A living mystic cannot be relied upon to tow the line of convention, or do what s/he is told to do by the authorities! One way or another if we are interested in and practicing meditation, we are invoking the path of the mystic into our life.
The paths of the great mystics tend to follow recognizable patterns and stages. These stages have been outlined by scholars such as Evelyn Underhill in her book “Mysticism”, and by mythologists like Joseph Campbell and his idea of the “path of the hero”. The five stages I outline below are basically my own, but they are influenced by these two.

So what are the stages that a person on a mystical path goes through? Here are the five basic stages:

1)  A catalytic event, such as a personal tragedy, illness or insight that sets the person off on his or her mystical search for meaning in life. For example the Buddha left the palace of his royal family after seeing a sick person, an old person and a dead person. The sufferings of life became apparent for him then and there and caused him to become immediately motivated to seek enlightenment to relieve the suffering of his people. Another example is Shamans in traditional tribes are often awakened to their path by a bout of physical or mental illness. A third example of such an event might be Saul on the road to Damascus who was blinded by a flash of light for three days. This lead to him turning to God and becoming the man we now know as St.Paul.

2) Initial experiences of illumination
As they embark upon their quest for enlightenment and engage in practices such as meditation, aspiring mystics start to have transcendent experiences that break apart their conventional sense of ego or self and give rise to visions and experiences of “oneness”, radiant lights, visions and so forth. For example I can remember going to two weddings of friends after having taken up meditation in my early twenties, and the entire wedding experience being a completely blissful, out of this world, visionary experience (I don’t think anyone else knew I was having the experience, I think I held it together relatively well!). During this stage we can have a wide variety of these illuminatory, ego transcending experiences. The important point to understand at this stage is that these experiences are a BEGINNING and not an end! If at this point we believe we have become an enlightened being, then in the long term or ego will appropriate these experiences and we will simply become rather deluded and dysfunctional. They are good signs and genuine experiences, but there is much work to be done yet!

3) The “dark night of the soul”
The experiences of stage two where we start to awaken to our real identity or ‘true nature’ then tends to  stimulate within us all that is deluded, dysfunctional, hurt, wounded, devious etc…to rise up and “fight back” so to speak. We can interpret this stage as being all that is dark within ourselves rising up to challenge us and our new identity, but I think there is also a sense in which the forces in the world at large that are against our awakening also rise up and try to stop us. This is a difficult and very challenging phase. We may find ourself seemingly isolated, alone, with all our inner demons rising up at the same time. In the story of Buddha’s enlightenment,  sitting under the Bodhi Tree the night before his enlightenment  he was confronted by the king of demons, the Devaputra Mara, who tried to distract him with visions of attacking monsters and seductive temptresses. Failing to distract him in this way Mara asked the Buddha “If you attain enlightenment, who is going to care anyway?” This is an example  more subtle form of discouragement that we can find ourself presented with in our own dark night, a voice in our head saying “No one cares about what you are trying to do anyway, why bother? Just go back to living the way you were!”

4) Stable enlightenment
The process of going through stages two and three repeatedly over a period of time leads finally to a stabilizing of our enlightenment. Enlightenment in this context means aligning our life, experience and intention with the whole, with the universe, with the benevolent mystery of life rather than just with our own ego and self-centered purpose. At this stage our ‘qualifications’ as a mystic are solidified, people could describe us as a mystic and, by and large they would be right!

5) A return to the marketplace
The final stage in the path of the mystic is a returning to ordinary everyday life in order to either teach what we have learned to others in order to awaken them directly, or to live as an awakened example to others of how it is possible to be “in the world but not of the world” so to speak. During this stage we learn how to integrate our ordinary, everyday personality with our enlightened self in an harmonious and thorough-going manner and express ourself in whatever way is most appropriate to benefit others. For one mystic this can take the appearance of a very conventional life, another may be called to lead a very unconventional, even rebellious or eccentric life.

Final comments
So, the above five stages give an outline of the development of the path of the mystic painted in very “broad brushstrokes”. In reality of course these stages unfold in a very organic manner, with stages crossing over each other, coming and going in cycles and so forth. But the basic point is that if you have a “map” of these five stages in your mind, then you can recognize these stages as they are arising and this can really help us see the patterns in the chaos or our own mystical and meditational path!

© 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