Category: Mindful Resilience

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creative imagery Energy Meditation Integral Awareness Life-fullness Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Confidence Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness Motivation and scope Presence and being present

Honesty, enemies, friends, mindfulness – Three ‘warrior meditations’

“The invitation is to look at ourself and our life and embrace it fully, to accept it in an un-reserved and pro-active manner. When we ‘love our fate’ in this way we look honestly at the difficulties of our life, and open to them”

 

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks article focuses on three short ‘warrior meditations’. They will be the subject of this weeks Tuesday & Wednesday class, you are welcome to join us, either live or online!

In the spirit of opening,

Toby

Honesty, enemies, friends, mindfulness – Three ‘warrior meditations’

Here are three mini “warrior-meditations” that I have put together. Each of them can be done as a meditation in itself, or combined into a three-stage practice. Each of them contains a core idea, which functions as the real ‘engine room’ or ‘energy creation room’ of the practice. Their inspiration was this passage from the ‘Warriors Creed’:
“I have no authority; I make honesty my authority
I have no enemies; I make carelessness and indifference my
enemies
I have no friends; I make the earth and sky my friends”

Working with honesty – Amor Fati
‘Amor Fati’ is a (Roman) Stoic saying that essentially means to ‘love one’s fate’ or to ‘embrace one’s fate’. The invitation here is to look at ourself and our life and embrace it fully, to accept it in an un-reserved but also pro-active manner. When we ‘love our fate’ in this way we are looking honestly at the challenges, mis-fortunes, limitations and difficulties of our life (as well as the good things), and opening to them. “This is my path and I embrace it fully and honestly, without looking away, or trying to run away, or moan. It is my path to own and build my inner strength, resilience and wisdom from.” Approaching our life in this way, we can be honest and at the same time joyful and accepting of all that we experience.

The Enemies of carelessness and indifference
To quote Franz Kafka: “You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something that you are free to do, and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.”
In the face of our own suffering and pain, and the over-whelming suffering of the world, it is easy and understandable when we try and numb ourselves, turn away, pretend we don’t care, and become indifferent. We pay a high price for this, for by cutting ourself off from caring we cut ourself off from joy and love and a multitude of other experiences that really put us in touch with why life is worth living. So here the meditation is to keep on remaining sensitive to the world, to care about ourself and others, and to commit to not numbing ourself. We can face our life and the world one day, one activity and one moment at a time, without getting overwhelmed, and make like Arthur Ashe; “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”

Friendship with the earth and sky
Humans are lonely creatures. We often seek company in order to relieve our loneliness but, as the saying goes, and I’ve heard many people say it about their experience “I’ve never felt so alone as when I’m in company”. One way to work on feeling less lonely that I’ve found tremendously useful is to simply be aware of the landscape that I live and move in, and feel myself to be in a supportive, friendly communion within. A simple meditation for this is to place your awareness on the horizon around you, sensing the sky and stars above and around you, and the living earth beneath you. As you breathe in, feel the energy of the earth and sky moving into you, and into your physical centre. As you breathe out, feel your energy expanding out from you centre out into the landscape. Feel yourself to be at home in the centre of the landscape you inhabit, feel it to be your friend. As you walk around in daily life, rather than just focusing on the pavement two metres in front of you, keep your head up a little, and be present to what’s around you, and of the horizon. Make friends with the earth sky and the things that you find therein…

Related article: Working Samadhi – The way of the mindful warrior

Article & content © Toby Ouvry 2022, 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

Ongoing – The Way of the Mindful Warrior – Meditating with the Warriors creed

In a sentence: Establish the inner strength, skill and courage needed to make you resilient in the face of life’s challenges, and thrive in both times of adversity and times of peace.

Overview: The Warriors Creed is a poem by an unknown Samurai in the 14th century. It outlines a code of conduct and a state of presence based around a series of inner qualities that can be cultivated through mindful contemplation, then applied to our daily life…read full details

Saturday 23rd April, 9.30am-12noon – Zen meditation deep dive mini-retreat

These 2.5hour Zen ‘mini-retreats’ are a chance to go into much deeper meditation states than you would be able to in your own personal daily practice, or even if you came to a one-hour class. Using sitting meditation methods in combination with breathing techniques and gentle stretching/mobility exercises Toby will guide you into deep meditative flow states that create the experience of a calm, unified, harmonized, resilient body, mind & heart…read full details

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

Are you looking a coach who can help you to:

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

All upcoming classes and workshops at IMA:

Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule

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

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

Saturday 9th April, 9.30-11.30am – Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat

Ongoing – The Way of the Mindful Warrior – Meditating with the Warriors creed

Saturday 23rd April, 9.30am-12noon – Zen meditation deep dive mini-retreat

Tues 17th/Weds 18th May: Wesak meditation

Integral Meditation Asia

Online Courses * 1:1 Coaching * Books * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *Life-Coaching *  Meditation Technology

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A Mind of Ease creative imagery Inner vision Life-fullness Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Resilience Mindfulness Presence and being present Zen Meditation

Inner interior design – Structural calm & the state of stillness

“Create ‘inner furniture’ that is conducive to calm. This then helps you create more easily and deeply your inner ‘room’ of stillness”

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks article explores how you can combine structures and states of consciousness together in your everyday practice.  It is a subject we will explore in this  Tuesday and Wednesday evenings meditation session, you’d be welcome, live-in-person, or online.

Also please note change in time for the Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat, it is now Saturday March 19th, not 26th as was previously.

In the spirit of inner furniture,

Toby

Inner interior design – Structural calm & the state of stillness

Two types of consciousness work
It’s a useful distinction to understand that there are two basic and complementary ways that we can work with our consciousness; states & structures.
States are primarily what we work with in meditation. We cultivate a state of calm, a state of focus, a state of acceptance, a state of love and so forth. A state is like a mood, and atmosphere, an energetic experience. The idea is to give ourself a range of states through meditation that we can drop into and hold competently in a way that we can use them regularly and at will in our daily life, so that they can enhance our enjoyment, competence and balance.
Structures of consciousness are the moving, habitual components and patterns of our consciousness. A state is a ‘being’ phenomenon, a structure is a ‘doing’ phenomenon. Structures are:

  • The way we tend to think
  • How we deal with emotions
  • Our philosophy and belief structures (conscious and unconscious)
  • The way we manage the parts of our personality (inner child etc…)
  • The way we approach social interactions and conversation
  • The way we fight or flow with our body energy

Room and furniture
You can think about states as the rooms in your ‘inner house’. They are the basic spaces that you spend a lot of your time in. The structures then are like the objects and furniture that you place in the rooms. They are the actual things that you use to sit, work, relax, cut, sleep and so on. This image and analogy is useful for getting a sense of how the two interact, and how both are necessary for wellbeing and functional effectiveness. Working with them is like becoming a good ‘internal interior designer’!
Below I outline a simple one-two practice for creating structural calm and then a state of stillness. It’s an example of how you can put together a state and structure one-two punch that mutually enhance each other.

Working with structures for calm & peace
Sitting comfortably, direct your attention for a period to thoughts, images and memories that help you connect to calm. Here just be creative, for example:

  • “You’ve got time with this work project, its ok to relax for now”
  • The memory of a favourite landscape/s that, when you are there help you connect to calm
  • Anchoring your attention habitually to the breathing
  • You can include physical objects on your environment that when you look at or listen to help you feel calmer
  • The memory of a time when you felt safe, secure, relaxed

Once you start to get going, you’ll discover many ways of using your mind, memory and sensory attention in a structured way to move you toward calm

Working with states for stillness
You will have probably found that by cultivating structures that connect you to calm, that you will be feeling calmer already. From here we can then move into cultivating a state of stillness. We can do this very simply by breaking it down into three components:

  • Focusing on being physically still, and inviting the movement in our mind to start to slow
  • Dropping time, letting go of past and future, becoming fully present
  • Releasing our awareness of the space and directions around us. Coming back to our body, and allowing our awareness of our environment to fade

When we let go of time, movement and space, we move into a state of stillness. Just stay with the breathing and relax into the state of stillness.

Putting them together in daily life
Having a set of mental structures and focus points in your life gives you a way of creating ‘inner furniture’ that is conducive to calm. This then helps you create more easily and deeply your ‘room’ of stillness. The state feeds off of the structure, and the structure can feed off of the state.

Related articles: Dropping out of time and into stillness

Article & content © Toby Ouvry 2022, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com


Tues & Weds March 22nd & 23rd – Spring Equinox balancing & renewing meditation

The Spring Equinox in the northern hemisphere marks the mid-point between the cooler, darker seasons of the year and the lighter, warmer ones. The forces of day and night, light and dark are of equal strength. As such it represents time to emphasize balance and harmony, both in our life and meditation practice.

It is also good time to attune the life-force in the earth and creative energies within ourselves. We will be taking the time to get in touch with the new ideas, energies and creativity within ourselves as they emerge like new plants and flowers in spring.


Saturday March 19th, 9.30-11.30am – Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat

In a sentence: Experience unique Qi gong and Taoist breathing techniques to improve your immune system, energy level, psychological wellness and enhance your meditation…read full details

 

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

Are you looking a coach who can help you to:

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

All upcoming classes and workshops at IMA:

Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule

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

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

Ongoing January-March – Zen: The ordinary path to enlightenment – Meditating with the Ten Ox Herding pictures

Tues & Weds March 22nd & 23rd – Spring Equinox balancing & renewing meditation

Saturday March 19th, 9.30-11.30am – Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat

Integral Meditation Asia

Online Courses * 1:1 Coaching * Books * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *Life-Coaching *  Meditation Technology

Categories
Concentration Energy Meditation Life-fullness Meditation techniques mind body connection Mindful Breathing Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness Presence and being present Zen Meditation

Centering to optimize your wisdom

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks article explores how you can keep letting go effectively, and stay wiser by centering properly.  It is a subject we will explore in this  Tuesday and Wednesday evenings meditation session, you’d be welcome! This week unfortunately the class is online only, as I have Covid, which is to say its time to let go a little!

In the spirit of centered releasing,

Toby

 

 

Centering to optimize your wisdom

“Knowledge is learning something every day, wisdom is letting go of something every day” – Zen Proverb

“We all know that feeling of being overwhelmed by the amount of information coming our way in modern day life. Whilst we definitely need to keep increasing our knowledge, in order to make sure that our wisdom also increases in proportion to our knowledge, we also need to spend time dropping our knowledge and resting in a state of simplicity and conscious ‘forgetting’. This means not just once every few months, but once a day!”

The above is a quote from one of my previous articles on Zen meditation. It’s a nice idea, right? To let go of things in order to feel peaceful and access our wisdom! However, if we want to do this in real time under real pressure, then we need to be properly centred in our body mind. If not then we will often find ourselves overwhelmed by the amount of distraction and information coming our way, particularly if it is charged with personal and/or imbalanced emotion. Below are three simple methods for mindful centering that are designed to increase our capacity to remain calmer under pressure, not get pushed off balance by the complexity of our life, and keep letting go consistently! You can practice these three techniques individually, or as a sequence.

Practice 1: Sitting ergonomically – This first practice involves sitting cross legged or in a chair, or even standing or walking. Hold your body upright, and then over a period of breaths as you inhale, notice any tension in your body. As you breathe out, progressively release all tension that is not structurally necessary to keep your body upright. After a while you are sitting upright and alert, but relaxed. Notice what that feels like, and stay with it for a short while.

Practice 2: Balancing around your vertical core – In this second practice, again sitting or standing, imagine a line of light/energy coming down from the crown of your head to the perineum, the point between the middle of your legs. This line is your body’s vertical core, focus on it gently to get a sense of it. Then rock your body side to side, very small movements, 1-2cm only. As you do so, feel your body’s left and right halves, as well as the left and right halves of your brain coming into balance and harmony. Then rock your body forward and back, feeling the front and back helves of the body coming into balance and alignment.

Practice 3: Breathing in and out of your center – This can be done in conjunction with practice 2, or by itself. Imagine a ball of light about the size of a golf ball in the center point of your torso, midway between the back and the front, left right and top and bottom of your body. This will be somewhere around the center of your chest or stomach. Don’t worry about being too exact, approximate is fine. Then, as you breathe in, gather your energy and awareness into the center of your body. As you breathe out, feel your body relaxing from that center point, so you can feel the energy flowing out from your center to the surface of your skin. Stay with this pattern of breathing for as long as you like; it can either be a short centering exercise, or a longer meditation in itself.

So then from a position of being mindfully centered, we can  navigate our day in a more centered way. In particular we can practice regular periods of letting go, and making wiser choices as a result. This doesn’t mean that you of straight from being confused to enlightened (!), it just means that you are able to access the wisdom that you have, and deploy it in the service of your equilibrium, and of your life!

Further reading: Broader applications of sitting ergonomically: Mindful ergonomics
Meditating on the core of your body

Article & content © Toby Ouvry 2022, 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

Saturday Feb 26th, 9.30-11.30am – Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat

In a sentence: Experience unique Qi gong and Taoist breathing techniques to improve your immune system, energy level, psychological wellness and enhance your meditation…read full details

 

 

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

Are you looking a coach who can help you to:

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

All upcoming classes and workshops at IMA:

Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule

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

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

Ongoing January-March – Zen: The ordinary path to enlightenment – Meditating with the Ten Ox Herding pictures

Saturday Feb 26th, 9.30-11.30am – Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat

Integral Meditation Asia

Online Courses * 1:1 Coaching * Books * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *Life-Coaching *  Meditation Technology

Categories
A Mind of Ease Awareness and insight creative imagery Life-fullness meditation and creativity Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Resilience Mindfulness

Hopefully hopeless

“When we build competency at ‘conscious hopelessness’, we can then move consciously back to how we approach hope and fear in our life, and seek to do them a better.”

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks article is on a meditation technique I’ve enjoyed over the years, and that invites both resilience, peace and insight. If you enjoy it, it will be the subject of this Tuesday and Wednesday evenings meditation session, you’d be welcome, live or online.

In the spirit of hopeful hopelessness,

Toby

 

 

Hopefully hopeless

If you look at the movement of your mind, one pattern you may start to see is that part of you is hoping for good things:

  • For people to like you
  • For things to turn out how you would like
  • For the worlds problems to be solved
  • For the environment to be saved from pollution
  • For someone to fix your loneliness
  • To get the pay raise

And so it goes on…. A related movement then also happens in your mind, the wish to avoid the things that we fear

  • Fear of being disliked or disapproved of
  • Fear of things not going your way
  • Fear for the future of the planet
  • Fear of loneliness
  • Of not having enough money
  • Fear of death

Much of the activity and conversation in our mind then comes from this oscillation between hope and fear. So then, a kind of Zen method that I use in meditation is to practice “Hopelessness”. This doesn’t mean becoming depressed, what it means is to temporarily drop as fully as you can both your hoping and your fearing. If you can do this, then the conversation in your mind subsides very quickly, and you land with a ‘bump’ in the present moment! With no hoping and no fearing, your mind temporarily stops trying to solve the things you are afraid of or hoping for, and comes back home.
When you are meditating in this way, you can begin by noticing your hopes and fears, and the way they drive your inner conversation. Then you can choose to gently put them down, and relax into the open state of presence that arises naturally from that ‘putting down’. So ‘hopelessness’ then leads to a state of centered peace that we can drop into regularly amidst the uncertainty of our life.

Picking up hope and courageously facing fear
When we build competency at hopelessness, we can then move consciously back to how we approach hope and fear in our life, and seek to do them a bit better. This is one quote that I enjoy from Nick Cave around hope:
“Hope rises out of known suffering and is the defiant and dissenting spark that refuses to be extinguished”. We can open to hope courageously, despite our fears. We can find reasons to be hopeful and hold onto the brightness that they bring into our lives. We can grow them mindfully.
We can also then begin to face our fears courageously. We can learn to look after the parts of us that are afraid, to re-assure them and to work appropriately to resolve the causes of our fear. We can also bear in mind that potentially, the causes of fear are endless, and thus know when to pick it up and put it down appropriately.

Imagine you are in a landscape. To one side the sun is rising with its bright rays, this is hope. To the other side is a dark, tangled forest, that is your fear. Where you are sitting perhaps there is a pleasant tree, a little stream and some small what flowers amidst the grass. This space, exactly where you are is fine as it is. Relax into it and become ‘hopeless’ for a while, recover there. Then when you are you can go back to you hopes and fears in a more conscious and empowered manner.

To end, here is a quote from Thomas Merton, that I enjoy as a further meditation on the value of hopelessness: “Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.”

Related articles: Dropping your hope and fear
Signless-ness – Meeting your reality as it is

Article & content © Toby Ouvry 2022, 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

Saturday Feb 26th, 9.30-11.30am – Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat

In a sentence: Experience unique Qi gong and Taoist breathing techniques to improve your immune system, energy level, psychological wellness and enhance your meditation…read full details

 

 

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

Are you looking a coach who can help you to:

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

All upcoming classes and workshops at IMA:

Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule

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

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

Ongoing January-March – Zen: The ordinary path to enlightenment – Meditating with the Ten Ox Herding pictures

Saturday Feb 26th, 9.30-11.30am – Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat

Integral Meditation Asia

Online Courses * 1:1 Coaching * Books * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *Life-Coaching *  Meditation Technology

Categories
Energy Meditation Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Life-fullness Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Resilience Mindfulness Motivation and scope Presence and being present

Four levels of mindful trust

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks article explores trust as an object of mindfulness. Trust is a wonderful quality to experience in your life, facilitating both enjoyment and effectiveness. What if you were to begin integrating it consciously today? What differences might you start to notice?”

Wishing all of you all the very best for the upcoming lunar new year of the Tiger. Its a nice point in the year to take a pause and meditate. I’ll be facilitating a session entitled Lunar New Year Meditation 2022: Developing your inner power in the year of the Tiger on Tues & Weds Feb 1st & 2nd. All welcome!

In the spirit of trusting,

Toby

Four levels of mindful trust

There are essentially four levels of trust and trusting that I want to focus on and highlight:

  1. Trusting yourself
  2. Trusting others
  3. Trusting in something bigger than yourself
  4. Trusting your path

To trust yourself is to trust your capability for thought action to be consistent with your intentions; to trust yourself to say what you do, and do what you say you will do.
To trust others is to notice and appreciate people around you who are trustworthy, who are consistent in their stated intentions relative to what they do. It means to make conscious choices about who you invest your trust in and who you do not. Its not a matter of who you want to be trustworthy, its more a matter of who you notice and observe to be trustworthy.
To trust something higher and bigger than yourself is to allow you and your life to be held by a benevolent larger force, in whatever way you conceive it. It could be thru a conventional lens of God/Goddess/Buddha Nature, or something more along the lines of a Universal intelligence or the Tao, any frame-work that works for you.
To trust your path is to trust the unfolding process of your life to lead you to things that are worthwhile and of value. The path itself is the thing to be trusted, even if it seems to be a winding one sometimes.

Meditating on the four levels
To meditate on these four levels, either in sequence or individually is to dwell and relax into the state of trust around each of them:

  • What it feels like when you experience yourself as reliable and trustworthy
  • When you sense you can really trust another, appreciating them and allowing yourself to enjoy the feeling of trust between you
  • To familiarise yourself with the state of being held by a higher or deeper force
  • To notice and flow with your path, trusting its process and wisdom

With all of these we hold them mindfully to become familiar enough to use them in daily life and to hold them under pressure, even when we are stressed or triggered.

Strengthening trust in your daily life
If you start to work mindfully with trust, its important that your daily actions align with it, for example:

  • If you say your going to do something and then don’t, its not going to increase your self-trust! You have to be consistent with yourself
  • You need to keep discerning who to invest your trust in and who not to, and appreciating/enjoying those who are trustworthy, reciprocating their trust
  • When you are going through a challenge, notice the instinct to feel alone and without help sometimes. Practice trying to open to a higher or deeper force instead of closing off, practice trusting your path and relaxing into it rather than panicking the moment something unpredictable happens.

Trust is a wonderful quality to experience in your life, facilitating both enjoyment and effectiveness. What if you were to begin integrating it consciously today? What differences might you start to notice?

Related articles: Representing your values – Mindful self-trust 
Trusting Yourself (Your first Guardian Angel)

Article & content © Toby Ouvry 2022, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Tues & Weds Feb 1st & 2nd – Lunar New Year Meditation 2022: Developing your inner power in the year of the Tiger

About the class: This is a meditation to welcome in the lunar new year energies, and attune to the astrological animal of the year, the Water Tiger! In particular, we will be mindfully aligning with and developing our inner and outer power as well as other primal characteristics of the Tiger.
Toby will be leading the meditation as a simple and profound way, with plenty of room for our own personal contemplation, inner healing and positivity building! Full details here

 

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

Are you looking a coach who can help you to:

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

All upcoming classes and workshops at IMA:

Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule

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

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

Ongoing January-March – Zen: The ordinary path to enlightenment – Meditating with the Ten Ox Herding pictures

Tues & Weds Feb 1st & 2nd – Lunar New Year Meditation 2022: Developing your inner power in the year of the Tiger

Saturday Feb 26th, 9.30-11.30am – Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat

Integral Meditation Asia

Online Courses * 1:1 Coaching * Books * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *Life-Coaching *  Meditation Technology

Categories
creative imagery Essential Spirituality Inner vision Insight Meditation Life-fullness Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Confidence Mindful Resilience Presence and being present

Sitting in equality

“When we sit in meditation, we can put all of our roles and the baggage that comes with them down and relax. Phew, what a relief!”

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks article explores the relief and the sense of inner power that comes from sitting in a state of equality. If you enjoy the article, then we will be exploring its theme in this weeks Tuesday and Wednesday meditation class, feel free to join us!

Also, heads up for the new Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat on Sat 29th Jan. Movement, mobility, breathing and meditation are all intimately related!

In the spirit of equality,

Toby

Sitting in equality

Functional hierarchy, existential equality
All of us exist in hierarchies, without which the groups we are a part of could not function, for example:

  • We have grandparents, parents and children in families, existing in a hierarchy recognised by all.
  • We generally work for some form of ‘boss’, and have others under us who execute work for us. Your boss maybe also has a boss, or clients she works for, and perhaps those under you have people who work for them
  • There is also a less formal though no less powerful hierarchy the happens in social and cultural gatherings

Noticing the labels and the power dynamics
All of these hierarchies require labels and roles. You will notice that you have become quite attached and identified with some of the roles that you play. Perhaps its because you have been playing them for a long time. Perhaps it is because they reward your sense of worth in some way. Sometimes we are attached to the roles simply because we fear that, without the role we are a nobody, and not worth anything! Can you identify 2-3 roles that you are identified with in this way?
You’ll notice also that the roles give rise to power exchanges and a sense of being important/not important, better than/worse than, leader/follower.

Putting down the labels, sitting in equality
Part of the pleasure of being in a meditation circle or group is that, when we sit down and enter meditation, we have the opportunity to drop all of the usual labels and roles that we ‘put on’ in life, and simply sit with equals. One member might be a CEO, another might be a house husband, another a recovering addict. Some might be old and mature, others young and less so. When we sit in meditation, we can put all of these roles down and relax. Phew, what a relief!
We discover that there is a person inside us who is free of our everyday labels, of our position in the ‘hierarchy’ of things, and all of the power play that goes with that. We discover a stable sense of value and worth as a person that is no less (or more) than any of the people around us. This is something that we can learn to experience and ground ourself not just intellectually, but viscerally in our body. We can notice the feeling in the body that comes from sitting in a state of equality & the power that comes from it.

Taking it into daily life
In your daily life, notice that when you meet other people, according to the labels you give them, and give yourself in relation to them, that you have a differing sense of your own value and worth. With our sense of equality in meditation, we can notice this and, at the same time experience all those we meet as equals, free from the labels we might instinctively project upon them and they upon us.

Squash winner, squash loser
Two weeks ago, I played squash on Sunday and won every single game I played. This week I lost every single game! So, in terms of labels, I was a big winner one time, and a big loser the other. Amidst both those experiences there was a sense of myself simply as a person, not better or worse than those I was playing against, regardless of the result. This gave me the ability to walk away with a sense that I had enjoyed both experiences, and the company I was in. It’s a simple example, but it gives a bit of insight into the potential of the state of equality to provide a stable psychological base for us in daily life, from which the possibility of happiness and fulfilment each day looms larger.

Related article: Becoming a man or woman of no rank

Article & content © Toby Ouvry 2022, 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

In case you missed it, from last week: Your spiritual ancestors

Two types of ancestors
We live within the energetic field of our ancestors and family, past and present. Becoming aware of this and working with it is an important dimension of our spiritual practice that can really enhance the richness of our life. It can also provide important keys to resolving blockages and conflicts, both within ourself and in our relationships…read full article

Saturday Jan 29th, 9.30-11.30am – Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat

In a sentence: Experience unique Qi gong and Taoist breathing techniques to improve your immune system, energy level, psychological wellness and enhance your meditation…read full details

Tues & Weds Feb 1st & 2nd – Lunar New Year Meditation 2022: Developing your inner power in the year of the Tiger

About the class: This is a meditation to welcome in the lunar new year energies, and attune to the astrological animal of the year, the Water Tiger! In particular, we will be mindfully aligning with and developing our inner and outer power as well as other primal characteristics of the Tiger.
Toby will be leading the meditation as a simple and profound way, with plenty of room for our own personal contemplation, inner healing and positivity building! Full details here

 

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

Are you looking a coach who can help you to:

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

All upcoming classes and workshops at IMA:

Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule

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

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

Ongoing January-March – Zen: The ordinary path to enlightenment – Meditating with the Ten Ox Herding pictures

Saturday Jan 29th, 9.30-11.30am – Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat

Tues & Weds Feb 1st & 2nd – Lunar New Year Meditation 2022: Developing your inner power in the year of the Tiger

Integral Meditation Asia

Online Courses * 1:1 Coaching * Books * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *Life-Coaching *  Meditation Technology

Categories
creative imagery Energy Meditation Inner vision Life-fullness Meditating on the Self meditation and creativity Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques mind body connection Mindful Resilience Mindfulness Presence and being present Primal Spirituality

Meditating with your ancestors

“Our ‘spiritual’ ancestors, those that we feel related to in terms of shared values, experience and interest. Sometimes we can feel as close of not closer to our spiritual ancestors than our blood ancestors.”

Dear Integral Meditators,

Becoming aware of this and working with our ancestors is an important dimension of our spiritual practice that can really enhance the richness of our life. It can also provide important keys to resolving blockages and conflicts, both within ourself and in our relationships. The article below is a reflection on one of my experiences of working with ‘spiritual ancestors’.

If you enjoy the article, this Saturday 15th Jan, I’ll be doing my Meditations for activating the gifts & healing the wounds of our ancestors, which is a consolidated introduction to this field of practice. You are welcome to join live or online!

If you read the article you’ll also see it is related to the upcoming Lunar New Year Meditation 2022: Developing your inner power in the year of the Tiger, which is another fun meditation you might enjoy.

In the spirit of the ancestors,

Toby

Your spiritual ancestors

Two types of ancestors
We live within the energetic field of our ancestors and family, past and present. Becoming aware of this and working with it is an important dimension of our spiritual practice that can really enhance the richness of our life. It can also provide important keys to resolving blockages and conflicts, both within ourself and in our relationships.
There are basically two types of ancestor and ancestral field. One is our blood ancestors, the family, past and present that we are related to biologically. The other group of ancestors you might call our ‘spiritual’ ancestors, those that we feel related to in terms of shared values, experience and interest. Sometimes we can feel as close of not closer to our spiritual ancestors than our blood ancestors. Spiritual ancestors can be people we know in the outer world, past figures from history. Or they can be beings/characters that we meet in dreams or meditation who then subsequently play an important part in our inner life and work. The story below is an example of this later group.

Meeting the Fu Lu Shou & the Earth Store Buddha
One evening around 2008-9 whilst living in Singapore, I was taking a bus home after teaching a meditation class. A short way into the bus ride a clearly drunken older Chinese man walked onto the bus. Looking down the bus he saw me and started walking toward me. I was praying that he wouldn’t sit near me, but sure enough, he plonked down right next to me! It tuned out that he had been the building manger for the first campus of the UWC (an international school in Singapore), so he liked talking to Ang Moh’s (white people). We shared a very pleasant 15 minutes of him storytelling to me about the old days before he got off at his stop and I travelled back home. After this seemingly chance event, for the next month or so in my meditations and before sleep I found myself in the presence of three fierce looking old Chinese men looking at me very intently, as if examining me. I asked who they were and they said they were the Fu Lu Shoh, the Chinese ‘folk gods’ of fortune, prosperity and longevity. I understood that, through my meeting on the bus I had connected with these guardians of the local group soul (Singapore is 70% Chinese, and I was married to a Chinese woman at the time), and that they were welcoming me into a ‘contract’ with them, whereby I could work in some ways on a ‘soul level’ with the local Chinese population, whom they (the Fu Lu Shoh) where the guardians of.
Later in that month I did a Chinese New Year meditation, where I was taken underground (in the meditation) to a cave, where there was a big, fat Buddha, in a coat of many colours, surrounded by gold and other treasure. I understood from our interaction that he was the ‘Earth Store Buddha’, and that, whilst I was in Singapore and Asia, he would provide me with the wealth and resources that I needed to do my work in this part of the world within the local culture and society. After this, I would go down to visit him once a year in mediation over Chinese New Year, just to touch base, affirm ties and commune around what possible projects and inner work lay ahead.
This little sequence of events and happenings is a simple example from my experience of working with spiritual ancestors. In this case it was/is kind of like these inner world beings adopted me, and made me part of their family, even though I was a foreigner, and not related by blood ancestry to them. It was an is a very touching personal interaction that I cherish.

Related article: The gifts and wounds of our ancestors

Article & content © Toby Ouvry 2022, 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   

Image by Ma Deva Padma. Buddha of Compassion

Zen: The ordinary path to enlightenment – Meditating with the Ten Ox Herding pictures

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

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

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

In particular the workshop will offer practical meditations to:

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

Read full details

Saturday Jan 29th, 9.30-11.30am – Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat

In a sentence: Experience unique Qi gong and Taoist breathing techniques to improve your immune system, energy level, psychological wellness and enhance your meditation…read full details

Tues & Weds Feb 1st & 2nd – Lunar New Year Meditation 2022: Developing your inner power in the year of the Tiger

About the class: This is a meditation to welcome in the lunar new year energies, and attune to the astrological animal of the year, the Water Tiger! In particular, we will be mindfully aligning with and developing our inner and outer power as well as other primal characteristics of the Tiger.
Toby will be leading the meditation as a simple and profound way, with plenty of room for our own personal contemplation, inner healing and positivity building! Full details here

 

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

Are you looking a coach who can help you to:

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

All upcoming classes and workshops at IMA:

Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule

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

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

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

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

Saturday Jan 29th, 9.30-11.30am – Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat

Tues & Weds Feb 1st & 2nd – Lunar New Year Meditation 2022: Developing your inner power in the year of the Tiger

Integral Meditation Asia

Online Courses * 1:1 Coaching * Books * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *Life-Coaching *  Meditation Technology

Categories
creative imagery Inner vision Integral Awareness meditation and creativity Meditation and Psychology Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership Presence and being present

Your deep time project

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

 

Dear Integral Meditators,

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

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

In the spirit of deeper time,

Toby

Your deep time project

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related article: Meditating on time

Article & content © Toby Ouvry 2021, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com   

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In particular the workshop will offer practical meditations to:

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

Read full details

 

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

Are you looking a coach who can help you to:

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

All upcoming classes and workshops at IMA:

Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule

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

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

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

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

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

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

Integral Meditation Asia

Online Courses * 1:1 Coaching * Books * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *Life-Coaching *  Meditation Technology

Categories
creative imagery Energy Meditation Enlightened Flow Inner vision Life-fullness Meditating on the Self meditation and creativity Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques mind body connection Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership One Minute Mindfulness Presence and being present Uncategorized Zen Meditation

Gateway to a new beginning

“When we practice our beginners mind, we are recognizing the value of maintaining lightness and playfulness in life” 

Dear Integral Meditators,

What would be different in your life if you were able to approach each day with fresh eyes, and open to all that may be possible? This weeks article focuses on how to develop your beginners mind, and open this potential within you!

If you enjoy the article, then do consider attending the new course starting this week  Zen: The ordinary path to enlightenment – Meditating with the Ten Ox Herding pictures, a big aspect of this course is really going deeper into our beginners mind.

Also, this Saturday 15th Jan, I’ll be doing my Meditations for activating the gifts & healing the wounds of our ancestors, click on the link to check it out!

In the spirit of every day a new day,,

Toby

The gateway to a new beginning

A beginner’s body-mind is a way of entering the present moment and whatever greets us there as if for the first time, a bit like a young child. It is curious, open, flexible.

The principle of lightness and playfulness
Our beginner’s mind is light and playful. As the years go by and we build up a body of life experience, that experience can become like a weight that we carry around. It can take away our capacity to feel playful and spontaneous. When we practice our beginners mind, we are recognizing the value of maintaining lightness and playfulness in life. We are choosing to value them enough to practice them, to take care of them and, if necessary to rehabilitate them in the face of traumas, disappointments and pain that we may have had to go through. Without them our life becomes heavy, takes on a cynical air, an air or defeatism perhaps. In the light of this danger then, we practice the discipline of our beginner’s mind.
A beginner’s mind is also a great base for a meditation practice. The process of simplification and letting go in meditation helps us to return to a state of beginning. The principal of the beginner’s mind in turn helps us access a state of meditation more easily.

Accepting and releasing the weight of past joy and suffering
Imagine that you are sitting in front of a gateway. Beyond the gateway is a landscape and world that is bright with possibility. The gateway has two pillars on either side:

  • The one on the left is dark and scarred, somewhat twisted. This left pillar represents all of your past sufferings, pain, trauma, disappointments and so on. Looking at it you can feel the weight of this past experience, and its hold on you
  • The one on the right is beautiful and colourful. It represents your past and joys, happiness’s and success. When you contemplate this pillar, you feel good, but you can also sense the attachment and or clinging to these past joys that may be preventing you from opening to the new joys and opportunities of your present and future.

Observing these two pillars gently move toward a state of acceptance of both the pleasures and the pain of your past. They are what they are and cannot be changed. See yourself sitting between these two pillars, in the centre of the gateway, moving toward acceptance.
When you are ready, over a series of breaths feel yourself putting down the weight of these past experiences, good and bad, letting them go. Feel yourself opening to the possibilities of the present and the future, like a flower opening to the rays of the sun at sunrise. The landscape in front of you is new, bright, filled with potential. You yourself feel light and playful in the face of this new day and new beginning.
Once you have the feeling of your beginner’s mind, simple stay with it in meditation, allow yourself to soak it up. Don’t be discouraged if you get distracted every now and again, just keep the atmosphere light and playful. If your mind moves away, just bring it back to the beginning!

Anytime you want to return to your beginner’s mind during the day, simply see yourself sitting in the gateway, and spend a few moments returning to this state, allowing to feed your wellbeing, your resilience in the face of your challenges, and your sense of what is possible in your life, today.

Related article: Combining your beginners mind with your wise mind

Article & content © Toby Ouvry 2022, 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   

Watch Toby’s video on meditation as a path to greater creativity, lightness and joy:

 

 

Zen: The ordinary path to enlightenment – Meditating with the Ten Ox Herding pictures

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

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

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

In particular the workshop will offer practical meditations to:

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

Read full details

Saturday Jan 29th, 9.30-11.30am – Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat

In a sentence: Experience unique Qi gong and Taoist breathing techniques to improve your immune system, energy level, psychological wellness and enhance your meditation…read full details

Tues & Weds Feb 1st & 2nd – Lunar New Year Meditation 2022: Developing your inner power in the year of the Tiger

About the class: This is a meditation to welcome in the lunar new year energies, and attune to the astrological animal of the year, the Water Tiger! In particular, we will be mindfully aligning with and developing our inner and outer power as well as other primal characteristics of the Tiger.
Toby will be leading the meditation as a simple and profound way, with plenty of room for our own personal contemplation, inner healing and positivity building! Full details here

 

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

Are you looking a coach who can help you to:

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

All upcoming classes and workshops at IMA:

Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule

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

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

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

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

Saturday Jan 29th, 9.30-11.30am – Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat

Tues & Weds Feb 1st & 2nd – Lunar New Year Meditation 2022: Developing your inner power in the year of the Tiger

Integral Meditation Asia

Online Courses * 1:1 Coaching * Books * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *Life-Coaching *  Meditation Technology

Categories
Biographical Enlightened service Inner vision Integral Awareness Life-fullness Meditating on the Self meditation and creativity Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership

Monk socks/Going undercover

Dear Integral Meditators,

I hope you are enjoying the holiday season! Winter solstice coming up next Tuesday, if you are  interested in marking this with a meditation, then you’d be welcome to come along to my online  Winter solstice balancing & renewing meditation (Online only) , on Tuesday 21st December,  7.30-8.30pm, SG time…

I’m at my parent’s place at the moment. yesterday my brother went up to the loft and brought down a bag with several pairs of burgundy socks, mine from my days as a monk back in the 90’s (see picture). This got me thinking about those times, and the article below is one thing that came out!

In the spirit of integration,

Toby

Deep undercover (An ex-monk returning to the market-place)

Some of you may remember the 2002 Hong Kong movie ‘Infernal affairs’ with Tony Leung about a policeman who goes deep undercover in a Triad gang, and then becomes the favourite of the ‘Godfather’ of the gang. The movie then follows his identity crisis as he moves deeper into his criminal role.

“Can I stay in your jail?”
When I was a young Buddhist monk staying in Singapore, I stayed for a number of months in the spare room of a student of mine, who lived in a local HDB apartment. He was a plainclothes policeman who had been undercover for a number of years in the local nightclub and drug scene. Like Tony Leung (but in a different way) he had gone deep into his role, and lost himself in the cars, the booze and the lifestyle of his role. Eventually after losing his marriage and having a bit of a breakdown, he had given up his undercover role, returned to mainstream policing, and become very devoted to Buddhism and meditation practice, which he had used a way of returning to relative normalcy and stability.
My undercover policeman had started coming to my class a couple of months earlier, and I had been staying at a number of different places in Singapore, just improvising really. When I learned that he was a policeman, I figured I could ask him if he had any spare jail cells that I could use to stay in. When I asked him, he looked very serious and thoughtful for a while, then said “No, but I have a meditation room in my apartment, and you can stay there!” And this is how I ended up staying with him.

Coming out of or going back undercover? – Returning to the marketplace as an ex-monk
When I returned to lay life as a monk in 2001, it felt a bit like I was simultaneously coming out of and going undercover:

  • In one way I felt I was coming out of an undercover role, or an alternate reality that I had been living as a monk, and the universe that surrounded that
  • On another level I felt I was going undercover in the sense that I was clearly now coming from quite a different perspective and experience from most of those around me in everyday society. So I was kind of having to ‘look normal’ whilst being quite different in reality!

Transforming but staying the same
Since that time, twenty years ago, I have remained in this situation, in many ways operating according to the same principles that I learned, practiced and created as a monk. Essentially what this means is that my main motivation for being in the world is to help with the evolution of the consciousness of groups and individuals my coaching and teaching meditation and mindfulness. On another level I have changed fundamentally. I am a business owner, I have a couple of kids, I’m married, I have a relatively complex secular life.

The integration is the path, not the problem
To hold these two polarities in places sometimes seems like a tricky process, like holding together two realities that seem to contradict each other. Over the years I have realized increasingly that the task of bringing together these two realities in an integrated way is not in the way of my path, it is my path. The path for me is very much the process of spiritualizing the secular, and secularizing the spiritual, so that together a greater wholeness is created in the world.
In what ways are you ‘working undercover’? And what is the transformation that might be affected within yourself and within society if you were successful in your role?

Related article: Am I happier now than when I was a Buddhist Monk? (Repetition and inner growth)

Article & content © Toby Ouvry 2021, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com   

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

This will be a chance to reflect on the spiritual meaning of Christmas and power of the winter season. We will look at the different ways our own inner light can ‘die and be re-born once more’.

It is a good time to attune to the creative energies within ourselves. We can think about the new year & spring periods that lie ahead of us, what our goals & expectations are, & sow the seeds on an inner level of that which we wish to manifest over the next few months…read full details

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Are you looking a coach who can help you to:

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

All upcoming classes and workshops at IMA:

Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule

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

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

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

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

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

Integral Meditation Asia

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