Category: Inner vision

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The Absence of Resolution

Dear Integral Meditators,

What happens if instead of trying to solve your problems all the time you simply try and experience them mindfully?  The article below explores this idea and practice.

Final reminder that the special offer on the online course ‘The six stages of love – romantic love as a path to healing and enlightenment‘ lasts until the evening of Thursday 19th Feb. Click on the link to find out more and listen to the free meditation….

In the spirit of the journey,

Toby

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia :

Courses for March coming Shortly!

The Absence of Resolution

To practice the absence of resolution is to temporarily stop seeking to resolve the issues that we face in our life, and instead sit with the emotions and thoughts that we are experiencing in the moment around these issues. We focus upon experiencing and witnessing them rather than trying to solve them.The aim of practising the absence of resolution is (amongst other things):

  • To make us inwardly stronger and at the same time more tender and sensitive to our life experience.
  • To learn how to sit with our experiences and feelings long enough to see them clearly and deeply without flinching or running away from what we see.
  • To feel more deeply and intimately in touch with life as it arises from moment to moment, thus improving the quality of our life.

Why we need to practice the absence of resolution
There is never a time when all our problems are solved;

  • If we are lonely we solve the challenges of being lonely by getting in a relationship, which in turn leads to the challenges of being in a relationship
  • If we are without a job we have the challenge of a lack of income, but if we get a job to solve this, then we suddenly find ourselves with the problem of a relative lack of freedom and of time scarcity
  • Getting away from temptation and excitement can lead to the  challenge of boringness and predictability

If we spend every moment of our life trying to solve our problems, no time is spent relaxing into and enjoying life as it is, imperfections and all.

How to practice the absence of resolution
Sit mindfully with a situation in your life where you can feel your anxiety calling you to come up with a solution NOW. Let go temporarily of trying to find a solution, focus instead on seeing and experiencing the feelings, thoughts and emotions that you have in and around your circumstances. Don’t try and solve anything, simply sit and be present with what you find.

How the absence of resolution helps you resolve your problems
Often in the rush to ‘solve’ our problems we fail to see clearly what it is that we are actually facing and experiencing. By temporarily stopping our ‘solving’ mind, and sitting with what we are actually experiencing, we start to see it more clearly. Because we see it more clearly, we can then start to see what really needs to be done in order to resolve it successfully in a balanced manner.
In this way practising the absence of resolution in the short term actually increases our capacity to find long term solutions to our problems.

Related article: The Absence of Reference Points

© 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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Happiness is Getting What You Want?

Dear Integral Meditators,

The article below explores the idea of mindfulness in relations to our wants and desires and how being mindful of what we want can make a huge difference in relation to our personal happiness.

Yours in the spirit of getting what you really want,

Toby

Happiness is Getting What You Want?

What is it that makes you happy? You can read a lot of books on this topic, but from a mindfulness perspective the best way to investigate this is to observe from your own experience the things that make you happy and the things that make you unhappy, and then proceed to do more of the former and less of the latter.
But it goes a bit deeper than that; as Zig Zagglar said “The chief cause of unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want right now”. From this we can start to understand (and see from our own experience) that getting what we want in the short term can be a huge obstacle to getting what we really deeply want in the long term.

  • We can put off the difficult conversation with our partner/spouse because we want peace in the short-term, but the long term consequences of doing this repeatedly will leave us with (and possibly stuck in) a relationship that we don’t want to be in
  • We can take the job that brings us cash in the short term, but it takes all the time and energy that we need to start the business that we really want to do in the long term
  • We want and desire to change our body weight/shape/fitness, but we continually become distracted from our long term desire by our short term appetites for unhealthy food
  • We deeply want to find a relationship, but we keep giving into our short term desire for safety and non-embarrassment, so we never ask someone out

And so it goes on….

Focusing on what you want and desire as a mindfulness practice
So a really good daily object of mindfulness is the question “What do I truly, deeply want and desire in my life?” Sit with this question for a minute or two. Maybe write down the answer.
Then ask yourself the question “What step, big or small can I take today to move toward that goal?” Follow up your answer to this second question. If you like do this exercise for a month, see what changes.

Each day in unconscious and imperceptible ways we sacrifice our deepest long term desires and wants for short term convenience and small time wish-fulfilment. If you practice being mindful of what you really want, and honour the wisdom that starts to come forth from your heart when you do, you will find that your life will become happier. Not easier, happier.

Related article: Mindful of our conflicting desires

© 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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The Mind in the Heart

Dear Integral Meditators,

The article below explores the idea and experience of the heart as a mind, and how to listen to it mindfully. I have found it a really important practice for getting and staying in contact with my inner self.
Yours in the spirit of the heart-mind,
Toby
The Mind in the Heart

 

Where is the mind?
Where is your mind? Before you read on, just spend a few moments checking where you yourself experience your mind right now; in the head? Throughout the whole body?
The contemporary person tends to think of the mind as being located and associated with the brain (it is the physiological organ of thought right?) but this has not always been the case. For example I have been practising Qi-gong for many years, and within Qi gong and Taoist philosophy the mind energy is said to be located in the heart, with our spirit energy located in the head and our vital energy down in the solar plexus.

 

The thoughts in your heart
If you think about your mind as being in your heart right now, and ask yourself the question “What are the thoughts arising from my heart-mind” I think you will see that there is definitely a mental language that our heart is speaking to us at all times, a language that is different, perhaps deeper and more direct than our ‘head-speak’.

 

Awareness of the heart and chest
The other thing about the thoughts in our heart is that they speak very directly of and from the way we really feel. With our ‘head language’ we can deny, repress and rationalize away the way we are feeling, but with the language of our heart the feelings are always right there and if we listen we cannot turn away from them.

 

Courage as the root of all mental virtues?
When we are not in touch with the way we feel, then it is possible for these ‘hidden’ feelings to twist and falsify our thoughts. It takes courage to listen to the thoughts within our heart, because it often speaks from a space of emotions that we are uncomfortable, wary or scared of. But if we are to think truly and clearly (with both our heart and head) then we need to be deeply congruent with the way we are feeling at all times. Because this takes courage, or ‘Lion-heartedness’  it is possible to think of courage as the root of all virtues. As Winston Churchill famously said “Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities… because it is the quality which guarantees all others.”

 

Listening to the voice of your heart-mind
If you would like a mindfulness exercise to explore this over the next few days (weeks/months/years, it is a deep practice!) then simply sit down and tune into the voice and energy of your heart-mind, listen to what it is saying to you, to the feelings that it is speaking from. Listen to the unified voice of your mind and feelings together. It is not always and unconditionally ‘right’ but it is almost always speaking from a place of truth.

Related article: If you feel properly, you will think clearly

© 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 Like Water

Dear Integral Meditators,

One of the challenging things about meditation and a mind of meditation is that you have to have experience of it in order to ‘get it’. Thus for those who have not experienced it, it can seem very abstract. This is where using images comes in handy, as the image itself can act as a doorway to the experience. This weeks article uses the image of water as a way of approaching the mind of meditation.

Last chance to catch the special offer for 1:1 coaching for January at Integral Meditation Asia over the next couple of days, the offer end on 1st Feb!

Yours in the spirit of a mind like water,

Toby

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia :

Sunday 1st February – Mindful Self-Leadership: Take Control of Your Life Direction and Wellbeing Through Awareness, Curiosity, Courage and Care

Tuesday 10th February, 7.30-9.30pm – An Evening of Mindful Resilience – Sustaining effectiveness, happiness and clarity under pressure through meditation and mindfulness

Saturday 14th February, 2.30-5.30pm – Mindfulness and Meditation For Creating a Mind of Ease, Relaxed Concentration and Positive Intention 

A Mind Like Water

If you hit water
Let’s say you have a lake, pond or swimming pool. If you hit, slap or punch the surface it will temporarily disturb the water, but as soon as you stop hitting the water, it quickly relaxes back into its original still form. A public swimming pool can be fully of people and disturbed all day, but as soon as the last person gets out, it goes right back to its calm, still form.
This is one of the qualities that we try to bring to our mind as meditators; we enter the world of action each day, get slapped around by the world, but the quality of our mind is such that as soon the action ceases, our mind relaxes back into a still open state. You might think that this is not easy, but if you think about the image of water, it will help you get a feel for it; it is a fluid, relaxed flowing quality that we bring into our awareness and the way in which we consciously respond to the push and shove of life. Note that water never resists, it simply absorbs and then immediately dissipates the force.

Our solid, chunky minds
At the moment whenever our mind takes an emotional or mental ‘hit’ we hold onto the force of that hit; we resist it, deny it, rage with it. It is like our mind is solid and calcified, perhaps like a piece of wet clay. If you punch a piece of wet clay, it will hold the shape of your fist, it will stay there. For many of us this is our response to taking a psychological hit in our life, we hold it in our mind like an imprint in wet clay; its impression continues to affect us long after the event that actually caused it.

Recovering from mental and emotional ‘hits’ 
So, if you want to develop the capacity to recover from the mental and emotional hits, then one perspective you can try out is to practice receiving these hits like water; no resistance, simply absorbing, dissipating the force and then returning naturally a state of inner calm

This does not mean that you don’t hold your shape sometimes
Making our mind like water does not contradict our capacity to build a strong mind, express our will, be mindful of goals and other qualities that require our mind to hold its ‘shape’. Rather it is a complementary capacity that enables us to keep our mind and energy young and flexible, calm and relaxed. It is a quality that is a bit like a soft form of martial art you absorb the energy of your opponent and then redirect it toward him. It might also be described as a form of effortless effort.

The next time you take a mental or emotional hit remember; make your mind like water!

Related article: Non-striving

© 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 Butterfly in the Wind

Dear Integral Meditators,

What does inner strength mean to you, and how do you go about trying to obtain it? In this weeks article I offer a personal reflection on this, and how sometimes we can create unnecessary limits on our inner strength by believing that it can only come in a certain way.

Yours in the spirit of delicate strength,

Toby

 

A Butterfly in the Wind

What does inner strength mean to you, and how do you go about trying to obtain it?

Today I facilitated a Greeenworld workshop. One of the meditations involves travelling within the space of one’s creative imagination to an inner landscape where one meets an animal guide who provides some form of learning, support and friendship that can be integrated into one’s life in an appropriate way.
As my life is in a state of relative instability at the moment I was kind of hoping for a monolithic and strong animal, maybe like a bear or something. Instead when I went to my inner landscape I found myself in a meadow with a delicate butterfly. There was quite a strong wind in the meadow, and the butterfly basically spent its time with me showing me how it was able to bend and flow with the wind in order to keep its foothold on the branch or on my shoulder, despite the fact that its body were so fragile and its wings caught so easily in the breeze. It was a demonstration of resilience and adaptability evolving out of skill and flexibility rather than brute strength or sheer power.
Sometimes we long for strength, but sometimes the very way in which we conceive that strength gets in the way of our finding it. How might it be if we tried to express the strength of butterflies sometimes in our life rather than the strength of a bear or a buffalo?

© 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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Life-fullness

Dear Integral Meditators,

This mid-week article explores the idea of Life-fullness, if you enjoy it, I’ve recently re-named and re-calibrated my life coaching practice “Life-fullness – The Integral Coaching Program“. If you are interested in finding out more, just click on the link!

In the spirit of life-fullness,

Toby

Life-fullness

One of the words that I have been thinking about over the last six months or so is life-fullness.  It has become so significant to me that I’ve even decided to name my life coaching program after it. What does it mean? Here are a few things that it means to me:

  1. To feel full of life – To feel life full means to allow myself to feel life fully, both the good and ‘bad’, to feel my strength and vulnerability, my virtues and your flaws. It means to care enough about the value of my experiences that I don’t reject or turn away from any of them.
  2. To mediate life flow – It means to allow life-force to flow through me, obstructing it as little as possible, and directing it as skilfully as possible toward the best possible inner and outer goals
  3. To be committed and interested in my life and the lives of others – This means to never as far as possible to ‘switch off’ or to become indifferent. If point one (to feel full of life) above is a commitment to caring, this third point is a commitment to being curious
  4. To participate – To practice life-fullness means to get stuck into life, not to be a mere spectator. It means to contribute, to commit, to take wise chances with (sometimes) unknown outcomes. It means to think about the life-values I hold on a deeper level and practice embodying them as best I can

To feel life, to mediate life, to be curious about life, to commit to participating meaningfully in my life; That is what life-fullness means to me. And these are the four aspects that I try and be mindful of in my own life-fullness practice.

When you think about the word life-fullness what sort of meanings and feelings emerge for you? If you could do one thing over the next few days to make your life more genuinely life-full what would it be?

Related Article: Curiosity, Courage and Care – Cornerstones of the Mindful Encounter

© 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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Detached Mindfulness, Engaged Mindfulness; Your Inner Scientist and Inner Friend

Dear Integral Meditators,

Engagement and detachment are two different skills. we need to develop both in order to become truly effective mindfulness practitioners. This weeks article explores how, enjoy!

Yours in the spirit of engaged detachment,

Toby

 

Detached Mindfulness, Engaged Mindfulness; Your Inner Scientist and Inner Friend

Detached mindfulness is like developing an inner scientist; it gives you the capacity to look at what is going on within you and in your life with objectivity and calm.
Engaged mindfulness is like developing an inner friend and companion; it gives you the capacity to experience what you are going through with empathy, care and understanding of yourself.

Recently I have been having a lot of strong emotions based around certain life changes that I am having. How can I use mindfulness in an integrated way to deal with these emotions and even make use of them? Let’s take anxiety around the future as an example to work with in this article.

Detached mindfulness (developing my inner scientist) involves me stepping back from the anxiety and observing it in an objective, dis-engaged manner; ‘the anxiety is in my mind but it is not me’, ‘my anxiety is like the clouds, my mind is like the sky, I am the sky, not the clouds’. This type of mindfulness enables me to temporarily reduce my anxiety and calm my body-mind, and the space that it creates in my mind may also enable me to come up with creative solutions and approaches to the challenges that are causing the anxiety.
However, what detached mindfulness does not do is process the actual emotion and anxiety itself, and if I use detached mindfulness only in my approach to my anxiety this may prolong and even make my anxiety worse by causing me to avoid and dis-associate from it in an unhealthy way. To work with my anxiety directly I need to practice engaged mindfulness.

Engaged mindfulness (developing my inner friend) involves me consciously recognizing, owning and experiencing my anxiety; feeling it fully, accepting the reality of it and allowing my body-mind to discharge the emotional force of my anxiety by experiencing it. ‘I now recognize I am anxious around the future’, ‘I can feel my body trembling with anxiety, and I allow this to happen’, ‘I accept I am anxious and take responsibility for it’, ‘I am anxious, but this is not a problem’.
If I practice only engaged mindfulness with my anxiety, I may find myself getting a little over-involved in the emotion, so combining it with detached mindfulness provides me with a ‘safety net’, a place of detachment and observation I can go to when I wish to take a break.

An integrated mindfulness approach involves me using both detached and engaged mindfulness together in order to deal with my anxiety optimally and effectively; I can accept, honour and engage my emotion whilst also having a place of inner calm and detachment I can go to anytime I wish to find temporary relief and perspective from the challenge.

Over the next few days, if you like, keep in mind the image of the inner scientist and the inner friend and practice using both engaged and detached mindfulness alternately as an integrated approach to the challenges you face.

Related article: Engaged Equanimity
© 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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The Stability of Uncertainty

Dear Integral Meditators,

I wrote the article below at the beginning of December, as the new year comes in I would like to wish you all the gift of the stability of uncertainty. If you have it, then whatever sort of year you have in store ahead of you, you will be fine.

Thanks for reading in 2014, I look forward to connecting with you all in 2015!

Toby


The Stability of Uncertainty

I seem to be going through a whole lot of difficult changes right now in both my personal and professional life. One thing that I’m observing as I do so is my ability to adapt to change and get over setbacks seems to be pretty good, I can feel nervous and lost one morning, but be through it by the afternoon. I can feel panicked by all the things that are not done and not fixed, and process that without falling apart. More than this, whilst I am not enjoying myself in the sense of laughing and cracking jokes, I do seem to be genuinely enjoying myself in the sense of welcoming the challenges and quietly and cautiously enjoying the process of putting solutions together, or at least accepting that there are no solutions when there are none.

I was reflecting last night on what it is that has made this recent process of change easier for me, despite it being in relative terms really quite difficult. The answer that came back to me was that my philosophy of life really seems to have become embedded in the perspective of uncertainty, in a good way. To know uncertainty is a part of your reality means that:

  • You are never expecting things to stay the same
  • You know you can never afford to ‘switch off’ (though you may choose of course to consciously relax and/or rest for periods!)
  • You accept striving to adapt and change with each day as normal and healthy
  • Failing, feeling bewildered, experiencing nervousness and fear are not shocking to you, they are just part of the process, not problems in themselves
  • You are aware that the solutions that you created today will be obsolete tomorrow, and you are expecting to have to be creative in life
  • When you really relax into uncertainty you also become aware that as many good things come from it as bad things, if you can open to then and see them!

When you have an attitude that resists change that wants things to always be the same, this attitude rubs against the natural processes of reality, creates a lot of friction and upset simply because we want and desire things to be one way (certain and fixed) when in reality they are fluid and changeable.
So, ironically I am led to the conclusion that my relative resilience, and speed in bouncing back from the obstacles and challenges in my life is due to my ability to rest in the solidity of uncertainty; the capacity to rest in a view of the world that is compatible with the reality of the world itself, and therefore creates an inner experience of confidence in my ability to cope and thrive in the face of what is going on.
To rest confidently in the solidity of uncertainty I also realize that my most valuable asset is my mind, my ability to think my way clearly things through to the best of my ability. What is the best way to optimize my mind? To be mindful, that is to bring a high degree of conscious awareness to each moment of the uncertainty of my 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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Keeping the Magic

Dear Integral Meditators,

From myself and Integral Meditation Asia here’s wishing you all the very best for the Winter Solstice and Christmas seasons!

Toby

Keeping the Magic

I’m sitting in my parents’ house writing this article the day before Christmas eve, I’ve spent the afternoon with my daughter and her cousins around me getting excited about the presents under the Christmas tree, the old debate as to whether Santa Claus is real has been aired, the attempt to co-erce the parents into disclosing the contents of the presents has been attempted and resisted.
For the kids the world is still magical, wondrous, exciting, enchanted, but what about the adults? For myself my mind is full of the challenging contents of the past year and how it will continue into the next, there is always the temptation to feel jaded, ordinary, worn out. How can we keep the magic in our life, the sense of excitement, the wonder and the youngness of our mind as our bodies gradually get older? Here are a few things that have kept me in touch with the magic and wonder over the last week or so.

  • Firstly I have understood from the Big history project that the entire content of our universe (which is still expanding at the rate of light years per second) originated from a space smaller than the size of an atom. If that isn’t magical and mind blowing I don’t know what is.
  • When I look into the eyes of my friends, my family, people I have known for a long time and people that I meet only momentarily, I realize I am staring into a warm, living space of immeasurable depth and mystery. Sure I experience it most deeply with people I love,  but it never ceases to surprise me how it happens with people I connect and exchange a smile with just once, a momentary exchange of goodwill and humanity
  • When I reflect on the last year in with friends I am drawn back again and again how the difficulties that I have faced have been the platform for my greatest learning’s and growth. There is something retrospectively magical and hilarious about how all the things that I resist and wish away as they are arising change magically into things that I am glad happened/are still happening and feel grateful for
  • There are always opportunities to experience deep, personal love, to give it and receive it, it is always magical and it makes all the difference

What are the experiences, reasons and things that help you keep connected to the magic and the wonder in your life?

Related article and meditation: Renewal

Check out the Upcoming workshops and events at Integral Meditation Asia
© 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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Awareness and insight creative imagery Essential Spirituality Inner vision Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindfulness Presence and being present spiritual intelligence Uncategorized

The Man or woman of No Rank

A lot of the suffering, pain and confusion that we experience in our lives comes from the attachment that we have to the roles that we habitually play in our life. The man or woman of no rank is a meditation technique that allows us to:

  • Become more aware of this attachment and over-identification we have with roles
  • Enables us to let go of them and see that we are not these labels
  • Helps us use these labels and identities effectively and appropriately in our life

You can do this contemplation in a formal meditation, or you can do it just sitting casually on your sofa or any quiet space…

Think about the roles and identities you play in your work, observe your identification with them for a while, then set them aside, temporarily let them go, realize you are not this role or label.

Extend the same process to:

  • Yourself as a partner, husband, wife
  • Yourself as a son or daughter
  • As a father or mother
  • As a person from this country, or area
  • From this social class
  • From this level of education
  • From yourself as a man, or as a woman
  • Explore any other areas where you have a strong identity to a role; ‘big strong guy’, ‘the shy type’, ‘the peacemaker’, the ‘fortunate one’ or ‘unfortunate’ one, and so on; any place where you see that you are attached or very identified with a role or label.

Step by step strip away your roles and labels. Rest in the space where you are simply a man or woman of no rank, just a person, not better or worse than anyone else, equal with the highest and the lowest of them all. Sit in a space where you are just a human being, maybe even just a ‘being’. Live this space deeply for a while.
When you return to the world, of course playing roles is inevitable, but if you practice being the man or woman of no rank you can liberate yourself from these labels, and the discover that you can use them consciously to explore and fulfill your own potential, be of service to the people around you and the world.

© 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