Category: Presence and being present

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Awareness and insight Insight Meditation Integral Awareness Life-fullness meditation and creativity Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness Presence and being present

Effortless Effort – The Cycle of Mindful Growth

Dear Integral Meditators,

The path of mindfulness when engaged in properly can offer us a relatively effortless, gradual, ergonomic and aesthetically beautiful path of personal growth. In the article below I break the process down into four essential stages that can be applied to any area of your life that you may wish to work with using mindfulness. Its simple. Not always easy, but simple!

The Integral Mindfulness On line Course starting on Feb 4th is now passed its early bird offer, but up until until 29th Jan you can still get 10 bucks off the price. And there are still 10 days before the January 20% offer on 1:1 coaching expires, so do have a look if you are interested!

In the spirit of effortless effort,

Toby

Effortless Effort – The Cycle of Mindful Growth

Mindfulness invites us upon an experiential journey of learning and self-knowledge. How does it do this? I’m going to break the process down into four stages:

Intention – To begin with we start with the intention to investigate something that we wish to understand more deeply – our emotions, our beliefs, our relationships, anything that we want to work with.
Attention – Secondly we then practice placing our attention or focus on that area of our life or experience. This is not just for a few seconds, but over an extended period of time.
Enquiry – With our attention we then dwell upon our object of observation, not trying to ‘solve it’, ‘fix it’ or ‘judge it’, but simply seeking to see it clearly and understand it.
Insight – The point of our focused enquiry is to produce insight; an essential, experiential new understanding of what is happening. This experiential insight then enables us to make positive changes in our life.

Unlike other personal growth methods, mindfulness focuses upon change and growth through experiential insight and understanding rather than through sheer willpower. Because of this the change that we facilitate through mindfulness (when done well) is gentle, natural and relatively effortless. When we see what is going on clearly, we change naturally. When we do not see what is going on clearly our efforts to change generally miss the point – It’s difficult to have an effective strategy to change something you don’t understand.

A simple example:
Let’s say I am feeling confused. Firstly I develop the intention to investigate and understand the nature of my confusion.
Secondly I sit, turn my attention inward and focus it upon how the confusion shows up in my body, emotions and mind.
Through my attentive enquiry I notice that the feeling of confusion is centered physically in my brain – It feels like a fog sitting in the frontal part of the brain and forehead.
Through my enquiry I discover the insight that simply by placing my awareness gently upon this front part of my brain I can clear the fuzzy feeling and my head feels clearer, and so I find a solution to this aspect of my confusion.
As a result of my had feeling clearer I can then start to see clearly the emotions in my heart and chest that are causing the confusion on a deeper level, and so the cycle of mindfulness continues to go from attention to enquiry to insight in a circular process helping me to deal with my experience of confusion on progressively deeper and deeper levels in different ways.

What area of your life would you like to practice the cycle of mindfulness with today, or this week?

© Toby Ouvry 2016, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:

JANUARY 2016

Ongoing on Wednesday’s (Jan 13th, 20th) 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Saturday January 16th, 9.30am-12.30pm – Transforming Your Stress into Happiness – Meditation & mindfulness for cultivating a state of optimal flow in your mind, body, heart and life – A three hour workshop

Saturday, January 30th, 2.30-5.30pm  – Meditations for Transforming Negativity and Stress into Energy, Positivity and Enlightenment – A Three Hour Workshop

Starts 4th February – Transforming Stress into Happiness – An Introduction to Integral Mindfulness Meditation – A Five Week On line Course

Click the link to find out about the special 1:1 meditation and mindfulness coaching offer in January!

Integral Meditation Asia

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

 

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Awareness and insight Enlightened Flow Insight Meditation Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditation techniques Presence and being present

Experiencing the Mind as the Mind

Dear Toby ,

Often meditation and mindfulness work well when you use a short, significant phrase as your object of enquiry. In the article below I share one that I have been enjoying over the holiday season.

Wishing you, your families and loved ones all the very best for the Christmas season!

Toby & Integral Meditation Asia

Experiencing the Mind as the Mind

Often meditation and mindfulness work well when you use a short, significant phrase as your object of enquiry, which can then lead you relatively naturally into progressively deeper states of awareness. Over the Christmas holiday and winter solstice period the phrase I have been focusing upon is ‘Experience the mind as the mind’ (or my mind as my mind). This phrase invites me to connect to the experience of consciousness itself as directly and non-conceptually as possible.
Normally we experience our mind conceptually, dividing into different categories, for example:

  • Positive and negative thinking
  • Conscious and unconscious
  • Practical and daydreaming
  • Mundane and spiritual
  • Busy and peaceful
  • Upset or happy

With the practice of experiencing the mind as the mind I am deliberately setting aside all of these (useful in their own context) conceptual ways of experiencing my mind, and simply trying to experience the mind as a whole, directly in the present moment. At different times during the day different things will be appearing to my mind, which is fine, but I am focused simply to being conscious, and paying attention to what that experience feels like. As a result of this I have found that:

  • Many of the things that my habitual and conceptual mind normally does not see start to become visible
  • I naturally start to move back into the peaceful centre of my world and experience in the present moment
  • I am freed to then think or approach my daily life and challenges with my experiential, problem-solving intelligence operating at a higher level

If you like over the next few days you can take experiencing ‘the mind as the mind’ (or your consciousness as your consciousness) as an object of mindfulness in your own meditation practice, either formally or informally, and allow it to invite you into the space of immediacy and presence that it invites!

© Toby Ouvry 2015, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia 

JANUARY 2016

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, (Jan 13th, 20th, 27th) 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby
Saturday January 16th, 9.30am-12.30pm – Mindful Flow – Meditation & mindfulness for cultivating a state of optimal flow in your mind, body, heart and life – A three hour workshop
Saturday, January 30th, 2.30-5.30pm  – Meditations for Transforming Negativity and Stress into Energy, Positivity and Enlightenment – A Three Hour Workshop

Integral Meditation Asia

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

 

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Integral Awareness Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership Presence and being present Shadow meditation Stress Transformation

The Dance of Mindful Supression and Repression

Dear Integral Meditators,

Meditation and mindfulness encourage states of mental and emotional flow, but achieving these states consistently is tough if we are habitually supressing and repressing the content of our consciousness in an unhealthy way. The article below looks at how we can mindfully grow a positive relationship to suppression and repression, so that it is helping us in our inner journey, rather than getting in the way!

In the whats on section below you can see that the workshop events are all on the Saturday 21st this month, with mindful inspiration and flow of the present moment being the themes. Click on the links for details.

In the spirit of conscious and benevolvent supression,

Toby

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia 

Every Wednesday, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Saturday November 21st, 2.30-5.30pm – Connecting to Your Sources of  Mindful Inspiration – A 90minute Seminar

Saturday November 21st, 2.30-5.30pm – Living Life From Your Inner Center – Meditations for Going With the Flow of the Present Moment

The Dance of Mindful Supression and Repression

Psychological suppression is when you consciously block a thought, emotion or part of self from arising or developing within your mind. Let’s say I’m getting angry with someone, I am aware I am getting angry, but I block it, I don’t allow it to manifest as speech or behaviour.

Suppression is different from repression, which is when I unconsciously block a thought, emotion or aspect of self. Taking the same example, let’s say I’m getting angry with someone, but I’m not consciously aware that I’m getting angry, I reflexively repress the anger, pushing it down into my unconscious mind  without even realizing that I have done it. I now have the energy of repressed anger contained within my body-mind, but I am not aware of it.

Positive suppression is when I exert self control over myself for a positive purpose:

  • I find myself getting annoyed with a client, but I purposefully suppress that anger and remain pleasant, which enables me to complete a business transaction I want
  • I know I am feeling afraid or insecure, but I put on a brave face and smile  for the child I am with so that s/he will feel reassured and safe in my company

If I suppress something in this way, I am doing so for a definite purpose, and I know that later on I will have to come back to the thing in my mind I have supressed in order to look after it and de-suppress it appropriately.

Negative suppression is – When I deliberately turn away from an emotion, thought or aspect of self that I really need to pay attention to:

  • I know I feel guilty about something I have said to my partner, but I’m still resentful of her, so I block the guilt and just let it fester unattended
  • I know my business needs to change its marketing strategy, but I am afraid a new, untried strategy might make things worse, so I just suppress what I know, and keep on doing the same marketing as before, thus guaranteeing my business remains in a rut

Integrating suppression and repression into your mindfulness practice
Sit quietly and let your mind travel back, event by event over the last 24 hours of your life. As you do so take note of the places where you notice there is still an emotional charge within you around what happened. When you come to each of these places, take a note of the thoughts, feelings nd parts of self you may have:

  • Deliberately set aside (positive suppression)
  • Suppressed due to fear or laziness (negative suppression)
  • Unconsciously repressed, for example simply because you were not aware of the feeling arising at the time due to the busyness of what was going on around you

Take the time to become aware of, acknowledge and release these  aspects of self, so that you do not end up with an ever increasing back log of suppressed and repressed parts of your mind, heart and body that get in the way of your mental clarity, your emotional balance and physical health!

© Toby Ouvry 2015, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Integral Meditation Asia

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Insight Meditation Integral Meditation Presence and being present Uncategorized

Dualistic Appearance – The Dance of Reality & Illusion

Dear Integral Meditators,

When you look at something, what is it that you really see? This weeks article looks at the way in which our mind projects itself onto our reality, moulding it in its own image. I then offer practical method for starting to gain awareness and benevolent control of this process.

In the spirit of the journey,

Toby

Dualistic Appearance – The Dance of Reality & Illusion

Dualistic Appearance is a meditation term originally coined by the Buddha. It means the appearance of an object together with our minds projected or imagined image of what we think is appearing. For example let’s say my partner and I had an argument last night. She comes into the kitchen in the morning and two things will appear to me:

  • The literal body and person appearing to me right there, in the present moment
  • Almost instantly after I see her my mind with project an imagined image of what it thinks it sees upon her, based upon our history, last night’s argument and so on.

So, in fact there are two thing s appearing when I see my partner, one ‘real’; and one a mental projection.
One of the main functions of meditation and mindfulness is to help us to separate our actual experience of each moment from our mental projections, and by doing so improve our ability to feel deeply at home and in touch with each moment of our reality.

The problem of dualistic appearance is that if we have no sense that our mind is projecting this second ‘imagined’ image upon our reality, then it is very difficult to avoid literally living in an illusion. It is like being in a hall of mirrors; we cannot tell what part of our experience is real and which parts merely mental projections. We live out of touch with our reality in a ‘world of our own’ which is often filled with a lot of mental and emotional pain.

The potential beauty of dualistic appearance is that it enables us to project and imagine ideas onto our reality that can change it in radical and positive ways. We can imagine a picture on a blank canvas and then do it. We can find ourself in a difficult work environment and imagine ways in which we can change it for the better. We can bring new realities into existence through the power that our mind has to project images and ideas.

So then, as you start to reflect upon this, you might like to consider how your own experience of dualistic appearance has been working today. Has your minds ability to project itself onto what it experiences been working for you or against you?

Meditation on dualistic appearance – Three basic movements

1. Observing the play of reality and projection – the first stage in meditating on non duality is to observe the process of dualistic appearance and how it happens in your own experience. Let’s say I take the view from my window as I write this. I can see the view itself as it is, and then I can start to see how my mind projects itself upon that view. If I am having a bad day my mind might project ‘bleak meaningless urban landscape’ upon it, and feel depressed. On another day where I am feeling great I can look out the window and project ‘city filled with wonder and beauty!’ Same view, different projection.
2. Dropping the projection & connecting to reality as it is – Once we have observed this play of dualistic appearance, we can then work to ‘drop’ the mental projection and just see what we observe ‘as it is’ without projecting. To go back to the example of me looking out of the window at the view, I simply try and see the cityscape without projecting good or bad, pleasure or pain, beautiful or ugly, or any other form of mental image. I simply sit and see what I see without projecting, resting in that space of alert awareness.
3. Consciously working with dualistic appearance – Once we have developed a basic capacity to sit and observe our experience of each moment without projecting, we can then start to make conscious choices about our projections, and by doing so learn to further take benevolent control of our experience of reality. For example if I notice I am looking out of my window and unconsciously projecting ‘bleak urban landscape’ because I am feeling down, I can recognize that and refrain from re-enforcing or strengthening that projection. Instead I can consciously choose to project a more useful and positive idea of what I am seeing.

This week if you like, take these three stages of working with dualistic appearance and start to work with them in chosen areas of your life, observing how your perception of what is really going on changes when you do so

© Toby Ouvry 2015, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Upcoming events at Integral Meditation Asia in October

Every Wednesday, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Saturday 3rd October, 2.30-5.30pm – Going From Over-whelmed to Over-well: Meditation for Quietening the Mind – a three hour workshop

Wednesday  14th October 2015, 7.30-9pm – Evening Event: Integral Mindfulness –Co-creating Your Professional Success and Personal Wellbeing

Saturday 17th October, 2.30-5.30pm – Meditation & Mindfulness for Creating a Mind of Ease, Relaxed Concentration and Positive Intention 3 Hour workshop

Sunday October  30th, 9.30am-12.30pm – Engaged Mindfulness: Take Control of Your Life Direction and Wellbeing Through Awareness, Curiosity, Courage and Care – A Three Hour Workshop

Integral Meditation Asia

 

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creative imagery Insight Meditation Integral Meditation Life-fullness Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Presence and being present

Five Methods for Quietening the Mind

Dear Integral Meditators,

Some people give up or don’t even try meditation as they think their mind is just too busy, and they can’t still it. Below are five simple methods that you can use to quieten the mind when you feel the need, as well as an outline of some of the benefits.

In the spirit of the quiet but strong,

Toby

 

 

Five Methods for Quietening the Mind 

Why should we be interested in quietening the mind?
In a nutshell, to de-stress, improve task related performance, & develop your capacity to reflect and observe. Quietening or stilling the mind is also a pre-requisite for access to  deeper states of meditation.

1. Ducking beneath your mind – Breathing through the hara
This first method involves bringing your awareness down into the belly (or ‘hara’ to use the Zen term) and breathing with your attention focused there. Most of the mental busyness that we experience happens within the head and the heart centres, so bringing your awareness down into your belly enables you to access a state of focused, non-conceptual quietude more easily.

Taking care of your heart-space – Feeling emotions properly
Much of the inner conflict that we experience actually originates in our heart as unresolved feelings and emotions. Attuning yourself to the feelings in your heart centre and learning to acknowledge them, feel them and resolve or release them makes it hugely easier to quieten and still the mind. As the saying goes; If You Feel Properly You Will Think Clearly.

Finding the still point in the center of the brain
There is a ‘still point’ in the center of the brain that you can learn to place your attention upon. When you do this you find that it is possible to still the mind without too much effort. It is called the ‘cavity of original spirit’ by the Taoists. It is in the area where the thymus and hypothalamus are located in the brain, but you really don’t need to know too much about the brains’ actual anatomy, if you just go into the middle of your brain and explore, you’ll find that there is a specific place where, if you place your attention there it has a naturally quietening effect upon the mind.

Listening to the sound of silence
If you’ve ever been in a place where there is absolute outer quiet, you might have noticed there is a kind of high frequency ‘sound’ or ringing in your ears. This is what I mean by the sound of silence. With practice you can learn to recognize and focus your attention on this sound even when there are other noises around you. The sound of silence has a kind of pleasant hypnotic, focusing effect that is very good for quietening the mind.

Recognizing the power of your environment
This final method is really about learning to be aware of environments where there is a lot of negative psychological energy around, and ensuring that you don’t allow yourself to be victimized by it; the crowded bus on the commute home, the hostile office, the anger from a family member. One thing that I do quite often if I am in such an environment is to imagine my energy field or aura covered externally by a bubble of insulating black light that blocks negative energy from my surroundings. The bubble is open at the top and the bottom; letting in light from the sky and stars above and the earth below, but it is closed off from my immediate surroundings. This last ‘psychic self-defence’ technique is as close as you’ll get to an occult exercise in this article!
So there you go, five methods for you to try out in your own time. If you like you can practice one each day during the weekdays for five minutes each. Do that for a month to gain a little experience of each!

Related articles: The Mind in the Heart
The Sound of Silence
If You Feel Properly You Will Think Clearly

© Toby Ouvry 2015, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Integral Meditation Asia

Online Courses * 1:1 Coaching * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *
Life-Coaching *  Meditation Technology
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Insight Meditation Integral Awareness Life-fullness Meditation and Psychology Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness Presence and being present

The Tension Between What Is and what you Want

Dear Integral Meditators,

How do you deal with the gap between what you want in your life and the reality of what you actually find? The article below considers how to work with this ongoing tension in a positive way…

In the spirit of the journey,

Toby

 

The Tension Between What Is and what you Want

‘I wanted the meet with my date to go this way, but it didn’t’
‘I thought I’d get this work project done quickly and easily, but I’m still stuck working the details out.’
‘I want to know that I’ll have enough money to afford the things I need by the end of the month, but I have no way of knowing for sure’

In our life there is almost always a tension between the way we want our life to be, and the way it actually IS. How you experience this tension on any given day or in any given moment is a big part of whether you feel happy or sad, negatively or positively stressed, calm or frazzled.

The extreme of passivity
It’s all very well for me as a meditation and mindfulness coach to say to you ‘you have to accept what is, and be more in the moment’, but sometimes accepting what is can make us too passive; sometimes we need to try and assert ourselves in the situation and act to move things toward where we want to be. Being overly accepting can lead to the extreme of passivity.

The extreme of control
On the other hand we are all familiar with the ‘control freak’ in us; the one who wants it all to be worked out, certain, guaranteed, no risk. The problem is we are never 100% in control, life never turn out exactly the way we think it will or should. Sometimes is all seems to be fine and then disaster strikes, sometimes it seems like a disaster and then turns out unexpectedly well. Trying to make everything certain, and bend the world to our will is the extreme of control.

The middle way of acceptance and responsibility
So the middle way between passivity and control is to:

  • Accept fully what is, and where we find ourself AND
  • Take responsibility for trying to move things in the direction that we want, recognizing that this will never give us 100% control, but nevertheless we have to call ourselves to action based upon what we understand.

It is about holding the tension, not solving it or getting rid of it
I think about the tension between what is and what I want not as being something that I am trying to solve, or get rid of, but rather I am trying to learn how to hold well, to hold  mindfully and intelligently; I am not in total control of my life (or the world), but I am responsible for it. I have to accept the reality of where I am without fighting the facts, but I need to avoid over-passivity, fatalism or despondency.

Working mindfully with this tension in our daily life
Where is the tension between what is and what you want in your body, mind and heart right now? Are you holding it well? How can you hold it better?

© Toby Ouvry 2015, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Integral Meditation Asia

 

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Concentration Integral Meditation Meditation techniques Mindful Self-Leadership Motivation and scope Presence and being present

Keeping your Meditation Short & Effective

Dear Integral Meditators,

How long do you have to meditate every day for it to make a real difference? As I explain below, not very long! If you have five minutes, then that is all you need to get an effective pratice started…

As you can also see below, there is a 48 hour offer on the my online course that focuses on short meditations, as well as a new product from i-Awake designed to support short meditation practices.

In the spirit of short, sweet & powerful,

Toby

Keeping your Meditation Short & Effective

If you do five minutes of push ups five days a week for a month, by the end you will have a strong set of pectoral and upper arm muscles. You can equally choose to develop any set of muscles in your physical body in the same way; a minimal time commitment practiced regularly.
Similarly with meditation and training your mind you can make a lot of progress doing short meditations regularly, focused on developing particular positive mind-states. Five minutes a day focusing on particular inner skills can have a tremendous impact on your quality of life. Here are three shot meditations that I am working with at the moment in my own daily life:

1) Belly breathing – For a few minutes I drop my awareness down into my belly and focus on the breathing in that part of my body. The function of this meditation is to reduce conceptual thought as well as build relaxation and focus. When you place your awareness in the belly this helps you to ‘duck under’ all of the conceptual/emotional activity and busyness that you find in your head and heart!
2) My emotions as waves – I take the images of waves rising and falling as my object; my comfortable or ‘happy’ emotions are like the peaks of the waves, the uncomfortable or difficult ones are like the ‘troughs’ or low points of the waves. I just go with the mindful emotional flow, not getting stuck with the highs or lows, observing the changes. The function of this meditation is to facilitate healthy emotional flow states.
3) My goals – I recall what my main work goals are for the week, as well as my monthly service and income goals are. Having done so I then generate a strong intention and desire to realize these goals. I then relax and breathe with these intentions. This helps me develop clarity of intention and focus on what I really want / need to get accomplished.

So, I think you can see with the above examples, if you do them or short bursts on a regular daily basis then you are going to achieve quite a lot. Of course doing longer meditations when you can is recommended, but if you just did short daily meditation as a discipline it can make a real difference.

Besides the three exercises above, here are three further suggestions:
1) Here is a five minute free meditation recording on transforming your stress.
2) I have a short online meditation course called ‘Get Your Meditation Practice Started Now’ which includes three five minute meditations that are great for getting a strong basic foundation. It is on special offer at the moment, at just Sing$25.
3) I-Awake technologies have just released a set of tracks called ‘iAwake mini-meditations’which focus on integrating peace-promoting sound technology into short meditation tracks. You can see the full details below, and read about my take on using technology in your meditation practice here.

So, here’s to making our meditation practice short and sweet!

Related articles: Mindful Work Effectiveness Secrets (From an Ex-Monk)
Related workshops: How to Quieten the Mind,  Meditation For Self-Healing

© Toby Ouvry 2015, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

 

NEW: iAwake Mini Meditations Vol. I

Choose from this collection of short brainwave entrainment tracks when you need to:

·        wind down quickly
·        recharge
·        step out of your mind
·        relax
·        refocus
·        rebalance
·        prep for what’s next

Special Introductory Offer $29 (20%off) Digital Download : Thru August 10th Only! Click HERE to listen to the free sample track!

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:

Saturday 15th August, 9.30am-12.30pm – Going From Over-whelmed to Over-well: Meditation for Quietening the Mind – a three hour workshop

Saturday 15th August, 2.30-5.30pm – Mindful Self Confidence – Developing your self-confidence, self-belief & self-trust through mindfulness & meditation

August 19th, 7.30-9pm – Integral Meditation Class – Meditating on with the Five Levels of Positive Intention

August 26th, 7.30-9pm – Integral Meditation Class – Working with the Three Levels of Non-Judgement

Saturday 29th August, 9.30am-12.30pm – Meditation and Mindfulness for Self-Healing and Creating High Levels of Energy

Saturday 29th August, 2.30-5.30pm – Mindful Dreaming – Meditation Practices for Integrating Conscious Dreaming into Your Daily Life

Integral Meditation Asia

Online Courses * 1:1 Coaching * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *
Life-Coaching *  Meditation Technology
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creative imagery Greenworld Meditation Inner vision Integral Meditation Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Meditation and Art meditation and creativity Meditation techniques Presence and being present Primal Spirituality Uncategorized

Why Meditate on & with Animals?

I was asked the other day why I continue to guide workshops and classes on meditating with animals, given that to some of my client group it may seem a bit ‘strange’. Here are a few reasons to consider why meditating with animals is of great value, with a short practice at the end to try it out…

We’ve been doing it a long time
Prior to the transcendent spiritual traditions of Buddhism and Hinduism in the ‘east’ and Chrisitianity/Islam in the ‘west’, human beings practiced an earth based spirituality where communion, learning and interaction with animals in the inner world as well as the outer one was a main part of our path to awakening and enlightenment. Our ability to do this type of meditation is long forgotten, but it is in our ‘dna’ so to speak, so most people find they can do it and have significant experiences without too much difficulty.

It re-connects us to parts of ourselves we have lost touch with
Meditating with animals connects us with our animal and instinctive nature in a benevolent way. It encourages us to use our imagination and capacity for inner visioning, and it encourages us to learn in a right brain creative, intuitive and visual way, very different from the way most of us use our minds and brains during the day.

It connects us to environmental awareness
Living in urbanized environment as many of us do it is very easy for us to lose touch with environmental awareness and a love for nature. Meditating with animals helps us recover our relationship to the natural world in an experiential way without literally having to travel outwardly to do so.

It can lead us into deep meditative states
When I lead meditation workshops and classes on meditating with animals, one thing that is always remarkable is the deep states of meditation that people go into during the sessions. People often remark that their sense of time seems to take on a completely different quality. Meditating with animals, landscape and nature can take us into these deep states very quickly and powerfully.

It fun!
Imagining playing and adventuring with animals is the sort of thing children do all the time. Meditating as an adult with animals can have an appropriately rejuvenating effect on our playful and spontaneous side! Meditating with animals helps us to get out of our mind and into a renewed contact with being alive.

How to meditate with animals
A very short but in some ways quite complete methodology for the basics of meditating with animals:
1. Sit down, calm your mind for a short time and set your intention to connect in the spirit of love to animals in the inner world with whom you have a meaningful connection
2. With this intention, imagine yourself in a landscape within nature that you know and love, build it strongly in your inner vision.
3. After a while an animal will come to meet you in this environment. Connect to this animal in whatever way feels appropriate; s/he may want to take you on a journey in the landscape, engage in a communication of some sort, or simply hang out and enjoy the peace and calm with you.
4. When you are ready return back to your body and your outer awareness, seeing the inner environment where you have been fading away.

Related article: Wolf Therapy

© Toby Ouvry 2015, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia in August

Saturday 15th August, 9.30am-12.30pm – Going From Over-whelmed to Over-well: Meditation for Quietening the Mind – a three hour workshop

Saturday 15th August, 2.30-5.30pm – Mindful Self Confidence – Developing your self-confidence, self-belief & self-trust through mindfulness & meditation

August 19th, 7.30-9pm – Integral Meditation Class – Working with our imagination, & the doorway between our inner and outer worlds

August 26th, 7.30-9pm – Integral Meditation Class – Working with subtlety, gracefulness and the inner feminine
Saturday 29th August, 9.30am-12.30pm – Meditation and Mindfulness for Self-Healing and Creating High Levels of Energy

Saturday 29th August, 2.30-5.30pm – Mindful Dreaming – Meditation Practices for Integrating Conscious Dreaming into Your Daily Life

Integral Meditation Asia

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Awareness and insight creative imagery Energy Meditation Inner vision Integral Awareness Life-fullness Meditation and Art Meditation and Psychology Mindful Self-Leadership Presence and being present Primal Spirituality

Your Emotions as Horses

Dear Integral Meditators,

Because emotions are non-linear in their behaviour, quite often images can work better than direct instructions as to how we can go about working with them in a healthy way. The article below considers our emotions as horses.

Final call for those in Singapore for the Positive Mindset integral meditation class tomorrow, Wednesday at 7.3opm, and the two workshops on Saturday 1st August; Zen Meditation from 9.30-12.30, and Language of the Shadow from 2.30-5.30pm.

In the spirit of the ride,

Toby

Your Emotions as Horses

Your emotions are like horses; powerful, fleet, full of energy and vitality. They are also willful and sometimes volatile. The flip side of this is they also contain their own instinctive and natural wisdom. You are the rider of the horses of your emotions.

If you try and control them by whipping and abusing them then they, like real horses will either become resentful, rebellious and devious or they will become broken, sad and scared.

If you simply indulge the horses of your emotions without directing them then they will simply run wherever they want without control, with the according results in your life.

Your emotions are tremendously strong. If you are scared of the strength of your emotions then they will sense that, and like horses with a nervous rider they will react to it.

If you learn how to ride your emotions with love and care, but at the same time with discipline and direction, then you have a tremendous energy source that you can put to positive use in your life, taking you faster in the direction that you want to go – So there is a lot ‘riding’ on the way you as the rider relate to the horses of your emotions!

Imagine you are on the back of a powerful horse now. It is the horse of your emotions. Feel the raw power, energy and life-force of the horse between your legs. When the horse wants to run, let him do so, feel the elation and the freedom as you gather speed, the wind in your hair, the trees and landscape flying by. Where do you want to go? You are the rider and director of this horse, and s/he wants your benevolent guidance.

Working mindfully with the image of yourself as rider and your emotions as horses can help us experiential find out a lot about our current relationship to our emotions, and how we can learn to ride them better, with both more freedom and more control.

One of the keys to understand about emotions is that ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ emotions are like black and white horses (or brown etc…); it doesn’t matter what colour they are, what mainly matters is how you ride them. The emotions you currently think of as being the most useless in your life might just be the ones that you need to learn to ride better.

Related article: The Sea Snakes of the Mind
The Wild dogs of the Mind

© Toby Ouvry 2015, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:

JULY & AUGUST 

Wednesday July 29th 7.30-9pm – Integral Meditation Session @ Basic Essence – Meditation for connecting to a positive attitude

Saturday 1st August, 9.30am-12.30pm – Finding Simplicity in the Complexity: An Introduction to Meditation From the Perspective of Zen

Saturday 1st August, 2.30-5.30pm – Meditations for Developing the Language of Your Shadow Self – A Three Hour Workshop

Friday 14th August, 7.30-9pm –  Integral Meditation Session @ the Reiki Centre

Saturday 15th August, 9.30am-12.30pm – Going From Over-whelmed to Over-well: Meditation for Quietening the Mind – a three hour workshop

Saturday 15th August, 2.30-5.30pm – Mindful Self Confidence – Developing your self-confidence, self-belief & self-trust through mindfulness & meditation

Integral Meditation Asia

Online Courses * 1:1 Coaching * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *
Life-Coaching *  Meditation Technology
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creative imagery Enlightened Flow Integral Meditation Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Life-fullness Motivation and scope Presence and being present Primal Spirituality spiritual intelligence

Deeper Meaning, Meaningless, Deeply Meaningless

Dear Integral Meditors,

What do we mean by ‘spiritual?’ the article below explores the relationship between spirituality as a quest for meaning and spirituality as a discipline that requires going beyond the quest for meaning. You’ll see what i mean when you read it!

In the spirit of the journey,

Toby

Deeper Meaning, Meaningless, Deeply Meaningless

The spiritual path – the quest for meaning
What does ‘spiritual’ and to ‘be spiritual’ actually mean? One definition is that to be spiritual means to reflect deeply and consciously about the meaning of your life, and to to bring that meaningful purpose into reality through your actions. So for example:

  • If you feel strongly connected to parenting, you might feel motivated to create a service or resource through which people can become better parents
  • If you are a businessperson, you might feel motivated to redirect your efforts so that the meaning of your activities becomes to benefit others through your business as well as make money
  • If you are an artist you may feel spiritually motivated to keep working despite the financial obstacles because making art gives spiritual meaning and direction to your life
  • If you are a meditator, your motivation for meditating may mature from simply relaxing to pursing the path of enlightenment

There are of course endless examples…

So here spiritual means living one’s life on purpose and with purpose  as opposed to living it unconsciously and without direction in a meaningless way.
The spiritual path then involves a progression from superficial levels of motivation and direction to gradually deeper and more mature expressions of meaning, which works just fine until we get to the second meaning of spiritual, which is the enlightenment experience.

Deeply meaningless – the enlightenment experience
In this context enlightenment means connecting to the formless, timeless, eternal, ever present dimension of consciousness through meditation and learning to rest ones awareness in this ‘already perfect’ state of awareness. Even if you haven’t done a lot of meditation before, if you simply relax your body, mind and heart deeply you will start to feel this open spacious feeling – that is the thing to which I am referring here, just realized on a much deeper level!
From the point of view of the enlightenment experience, everything is perfect already, so there is really no point in holding onto any ‘deeper meaning’ in life;  ultimately the meaning of life is present, right in front of you! When you connect to the enlightenment experience your life becomes ‘deeply meaningless’; there is nothing to realize and nowhere to go, you are already home and you always have been. To look anywhere other than the ‘Now’ for purpose is meaningless!

Integrating meaningful with deeply meaningless
So then to be integrated in a spiritual way means to bring together your experience of deeper meaning with the ‘deep meaninglessness’;

  • On one level you gradually, reflectively and consistently bring deeper purpose to your life through meaningful and creative action
  • On another level you realize you are, ultimately already where you want to be and there is no higher purpose or meaning other than resting in the formless timeless now!

An analogy – The mud city
In the city of Djenne there is the famous ‘mud mosque’; an elaborate and beautiful building build of mud (see picture above). Building spiritual meaning in your life is like building the mosque – you invest time and effort to build something beautiful. The enlightenment experience is like the mud – It does not matter what stage of the building you are at, the mud is always mud.
In a similar way you can work each day to build spiritual meaning in your life whilst recognizing  and resting in the ‘mud’ of the formless timeless present moment; We can meaningfully go somewhere without going anywhere!

Related article: What Does “Spiritual” Really Mean? (And What it Does Not Mean!)
Related service: Life-fullness coaching with Toby

© Toby Ouvry 2015, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:

JULY & AUGUST 
Saturday 18th July, 9.30am-12.30pm – Growing Your Mindful Freedom – The Essential Meditation of the Buddha: A Three Hour Meditation Workshop

Saturday 18th July, 2.30-5.30 pm – Mindful Resilience – Sustaining effectiveness, happiness and clarity under pressure through meditation and mindfulness – A Three Hour Workshop

Wenesday July 22nd 7.30-9pm – Integral Meditation Session @ Basic Essence – Meditating with your inner strength of heart & mind

Wednesday July 29th 7.30-9pm – Integral Meditation Session @ Basic Essence – Meditation for connecting to a positive attitude

Saturday 1st August, 9.30am-12.30pm – Finding Simplicity in the Complexity: An Introduction to Meditation From the Perspective of Zen

Saturday 1st August, 2.30-5.30pm – Meditations for Developing the Language of Your Shadow Self – A Three Hour Workshop

Friday 14th August, 7.30-9pm –  Integral Meditation Session @ the Reiki Centre

Integral Meditation Asia

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