Category: Presence and being present

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Insight Meditation Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditation techniques Mindfulness Presence and being present spiritual intelligence

What is Mindfulness? – Remembrance, Penetration, Assimilation +1

Dear Integral Meditators,

This mid-week article attempts to give a really practical working definition of mindfulness that will enable you to see how it might be applied to multiple circumstances in your own life.

 

Yours mindfully,

Toby

What is Mindfulness? – Remembrance, Penetration, Assimilation +1 

What is mindfulness?

To be more present is the most common generic answer that you might receive when you ask such a question. What I want to do in this article is to give a clear working definition of mindfulness and its process, and talk a little about its applications. This working definition has four parts.

Part 1: Remembrance
First of all to be mindful of something means to keep it in mind. Therefore if you want to practice mindfulness you need to be able to develop the skill of being able to remember, or keep in mind that which you wish to be mindful of over an extended period of time, without forgetting it. To take the simple example of the breathing, if you wish to practice mindfulness of the breath you need to be able to focus on the breathing without forgetting it!

Part 2: Penetration
So, why bother being mindful of the breathing (to stay with this example). The purpose of being mindful of the breathing is to gain an intimate knowledge of it, to understand it truly, or to put it another way, to penetrate it. If you are mindful of the breathing for a while you start to discover its nuances; how it reflects and describes your emotional state, how it relates to how you feel about your body, how it reacts to the different thoughts as they pass through your mind. Previously the breathing seemed like an uninteresting object. Now as a result of being mindful of it, it begins to reveal its secrets and wisdom to us. The penetration of our object is the second part and goal of mindfulness practice.

Part 3: Assimilation
Stage three of mindfulness practice is to assimilate the knowledge and wisdom that your remembrance and penetration have given to you, and to make them a part of your life. When we discover the wealth of information and knowledge that our breathing is giving us about our emotions, thoughts and body, we can then start to use that knowledge to do things like:

  • Treat our emotions with more compassion and positive control
  • Help us to deal with stress and anxiety more wisely and detect it earlier
  • Help us carry our body in a more relaxed and confident way
  • To open our mind out to our reality even when we may feel like closing it.

This third stage of assimilation is the process of learning to apply your mindful insights in a way that has real, tangible effects on your daily life.

Stage 4: Expression 
The fourth stage of mindfulness practice is to then demonstrate and communicate the essential energy and wisdom that you have gained into your daily life. To demonstrate to others what it means to be mindful of your breathing and the benefits that come. You can do this just by example, or there may be some form of formal way in which you teach it.

So, there you go, Mindfulness = the process of remembrance, penetration, assimilation and expression. The nice thing about this definition is that you can use it to develop mindful penetration of any number of different objects. For example there are 33 different objects that I outline in the “One minute mindfulness” section of my meditation blog. Once you know what mindfulness consists of you can even create your own mindfulness practices to help you accomplish the goals that you have in your own life.

© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

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Awareness and insight creative imagery Essential Spirituality Inner vision Meditating on the Self Meditation techniques Presence and being present Primal Spirituality spiritual intelligence

Finding Your Spiritual, Physical Home

Dear Integral Meditators,

Where is your spiritual home? The midweek article below explores one answer to this.

Yours in the centre,

Toby

Finding Your Spiritual, Physical Home

What do you think of when you think of the words ‘my spiritual home’?

One way of relating to this question is as the place on earth, the geographical location where you feel most deeply connected and nurtured, perhaps the place where you were raised, or a place where you “found yourself”.

A classical meditators way of relating to this question is to identify the formless timeless dimension of existence, beyond all places and locations as our spiritual home, the place where we find God or Enlightenment.

Within the path of the Greenworld there is a different answer; home is simply in the centre of the six directions. Wherever you go, wherever you are, there is a direction in front, a direction behind, a direction to the left, a direction to the right, a direction above and a direction below. Your spiritual home is in the centre of these, “wherever you go, there you are!”

This may all sound quite obvious, but it is also very profound. The centre of the six directions is a place that you can recognize and rest in at any time, regardless of whatever else is going on in your life.

Sitting or standing simply recognize the direction in front, and behind, to the left and to the right, above and below. Feel your body mind and soul in the centre of that space. Looking for home? There you are.

© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

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Awareness and insight Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Motivation and scope Presence and being present

The First Task (and Achievement) of Meditation

Dear Integral Meditators,

At its best meditation is a practice that leads over time to a personal, direct and stable experience of enlightened awareness that is not defined by any religion, theory or philosophy. This weeks article explores the first step…

Toby

The First Task (and Achievement) of Meditation

The first task and result of a decent meditation practice is to create a unified body-mind. This means to become aware that our mind and body are in continuous relationship with each other. When we have a thought in our mind, this translates into a physical energy and posture in our body. For example when our body feels tired or refreshed this easily and often affects the dialog that we are having in our mind.

For most people this relationship, whilst intellectually understood is not seen and experienced in reality; when we are caught up in our mind we become unaware of the posture and energy of our body. When we are focused on our bodily feelings our mind often gets left out.
So then the first task of meditation is to use awareness and mindfulness to see how our mind and body affect each other and to help them to communicate and work together as a single unit or partnership, rather than working against each other and causing each other friction.
When through awareness and meditation we are able to create a unified body-mind then two positive results come:

  1. Our unified body-mind starts to perform at a level that is far greater than our body and mind could ever do as individual units. As a result our capacity for creative growth in all areas of our life increases. Whether in our work, our relationships, sports or spiritual development the capacity to develop and maintain a unified state of body-mind dramatically increases our potential and performance.
  2. The harmony created between our body-mind creates a space of concentrated stillness.  This stillness and harmony gives us a deeper inner peace and stability within which we can start to access higher, deeper and more subtle levels of consciousness that lie beyond our everyday body-mind. Thus it acts as a doorway to the next level of meditative or consciousness development.

An image of the unified body-mind
In integral literature the unified body-mind is sometimes called the Centauric level of development. A centaur is a mythical creature with a human head and torso with the lower body of a horse, half animal, half human. Thus the centaur symbolizes the unity of our animal body and rational mind, our instincts with logic, our conscious mind with our unconscious mind.

How to work on unifying your body-mind each day.
Take a topic in your life. It could be to do with work, relationships, any area you want to investigate.
Bringing to mind the subject and allow in your mind to explore it with thought and emotion. Observe the principal patterns of thought/emotion that arise.
Now turn your attention to your body. Be aware of the energy that arises in your body whilst you have been generating the thoughts and emotions in your mind together with the posture that your body has adopted. Observe how thought and emotions create a language of feelings and postures within the body.

Finally, observe with awareness the co-arising of thoughts/emotions in the mind together with feelings/posture within the body. See how they are a single, unified, symbiotic experience. Take this awareness of your unified body-mind as your object of awareness for the remainder of the time you have set aside.

Working with this exercise even for a short time each day over a period of time will help you to instinctively start to view the body-mind as a unified entity and to experience the benefits that result.

© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

 

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creative imagery Inner vision Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Motivation and scope Presence and being present Uncategorized

The Conscious Self in the Landscape of the Mind

Dear Integral Meditators,

I hope the first few days of the new year have been good for you, and that as you gaze into the landscape of 2014  you can feel the potential for new levels of growth and connectivity within your inner and outer life. This weeks article is a contemplation on the power that each of us has to mold and define  our daily experience using the power of our conscious mind.

Yours in the spirit of the courage of consciousness,

Toby

The Conscious Self in the Landscape of the Mind
Imagine yourself in a landscape. It could be within wild nature, it could be in a cityscape,  it could be a mixture of both. Feel the largeness of the sky above you and the landscape around you. Sense the relative fragility and smallness of your physical self in relation to the landscape around.

Now imagine that the landscape around you is the landscape of your mind and consciousness. The sky above is the infinite vastness and (relative) abstraction of your spiritual being. The monolithic structures around you such as mountains, oceans and skyscrapers are well established structures in your subconscious mind. The weather and the coming and going of people and creatures are like the thoughts and emotions that come and go in each moment and in each day. Within the landscape of your mind your conscious self is like the tiny, seemingly fragile physical body.

To be a meditator means to build the power of your conscious mind in the face of forces that seem much larger than it so that it becomes the difference, the defining factor in all your experiences.

Building the power of your conscious self means that in the face of past trauma, physical or mental sickness, difficulties in building a future, temptation, peer pressure, overwhelming emotion or any other challenge it is YOU, small and sometimes insignificant as you may feel remain the chooser and the master of your inner landscape.

The path of meditation and the path of courage are not too different.

© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

 

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

Boomerang – The Mystical Aspect of Kindness


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

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

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

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

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

© Toby Ouvry 2013, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:

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

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

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

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

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Awareness and insight creative imagery Enlightened love and loving Inner vision Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindfulness Presence and being present Stress Transformation

The Tightrope of Kindness and Compassion

The Tightrope of Kindness and Compassion

I think of practicing kindness and compassion as like being on a tightrope, because there are many ways to ‘fall off’! To really practice them consistently and master them takes a lot of discipline and dedication.

How can you fall off?
It’s easy to practice kindness to others (and yourself) when you feel like it, but what about when you don’t feel like it?
Examples of this might be when you have had a tough day, when you are tired, when someone has wounded you with words, when you feel sad or in some way inadequate, when you feel insecure, when the people around us are not demonstrating kindness. These are all situations when it is all too easy to snap at people, to be unkind, to say inconsiderate things, to switch off our capacity to be kind and express kindness and compassion. We all know these types of situation and how easy it is to lapse.

From this we can see that really dedicating oneself to the discipline of kindness is not for the weak of heart or weak of mind. The flip side of this is that one way to build a truly and deeply strong heart and mind is to dedicate ourself to treading the tightrope of kindness each day

Getting on the tightrope each day
Each day you can begin by visualizing the tightrope of kindness and compassion in front of you. The platform at the other end of the tightrope is the end of the day. The game and the challenge is to stay on the tightrope of kindness all day, expressing kindness and compassion in all that you do, without falling off.
The good thing about a visualization meditation of course is that if you do fall off, then in order to get back on you just need to realize that you have fallen off, and mentally ‘get back on’!

© Toby Ouvry 2013, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:

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

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

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

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

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Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Presence and being present Shadow meditation Stress Transformation

The Four Essential Stages to Transforming Negative Stress into Positive Energy

Dear Integral Meditators,

What are the essential skills that you need in order to transform negative stress into positive energy? The article below is a summary of the fundamental skills needed to effect transformation.

Yours transformatively,

Toby

The Four Essential Stages to Transforming Negative Stress into Positive Energy

When you think of the word stress, what sort of images, ideas and associations come to mind? It might be a nice idea just to pause for a few moments before you read on and explore this question for a few moments in order to connect to your own personal experience of stress.
This article starts with the assertion that stress in and of itself is a neutral energy that can be experienced in a positive or negative way, and that, to a large degree our experience of stress is defined by our approach to the stressful situation, rather than the situation itself.
So what is positive and negative stress? Here are some working definitions:

  • Negative Stress is: Any form of stress that inhibits our ability to respond of adequately, appropriately and successfully to the challenges of life, and to learn from such challenges
  • Positive stress is: Any form of stress that improves our ability to respond adequately, appropriately and successfully to the challenges of our life, and to learn from such challenges.

So, what then are the four stages of transforming your stress?

  1. You have to believe and understand that your negative stress is simply energy that is moving in an inappropriate pattern – For example, if you are feeling anxious, aggrieved and stressed because you are feeling mis-treated by a colleague at work, you have to take the perspective that the situation is highlighting your own inability to deal with aggressive people. Thus it is offering you a positive opportunity to learn how you can deal with such people and learn to thrive on the pressure of their presence.
  2. You have to cease resisting and fully acknowledge your negative stress – When you feel negative stress, the instinct will generally be to avoid, deny and repress the feelings associated with the stress because they make you feel uncomfortable. Whilst your negative stress remains denied and repressed it cannot be transformed. Thus in order to begin transforming it you first need to acknowledge that you have it, and bring it fully into the conscious mind. Continuing the example of the aggressive colleague, you need to fully acknowledge the feelings of anxiety, fear, anger and intimidation that you may feel around them, and explore fully the discomfort that you feel; you need to become comfortable with the discomfort that negative stress causes you.
  3. You have to have an idea of what your current negative stress can be turned into – With step 2 firmly in place, you can then try and identify ways in which you can re-contextualize the situation so that it becomes positive stress and not negative stress. Using our example, we identify our office colleague as a person who is helping us to become positively and politely assertive, and to learn how to hold our own when in their presence. It becomes positive stress not because all of a sudden we become totally comfortable with it, but because we understand that the experience is taking us somewhere and teaching us something valuable.
  4. You have to practise the transformation repeatedly – With your aggressive colleague, the practice them becomes learning how to become comfortable in their presence, even when they are trying to intimidate, to respond firmly, politely and clearly to their negative comments, and to use them to become stronger, more capable, more evolved human beings. The situation becomes an environment where you learn to become a master of life rather than a victim of it.

For your own practice then, simply select a life experience that is currently negatively stressful for you, and apply these four stages to it, see where they take you….

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Awareness and insight creative imagery Inner vision Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditation techniques One Minute Mindfulness Presence and being present Uncategorized

When You Are Trapped in a Thorn Bush…

Dear Integral Meditators,

If you’ve been under stress or upset recently, you’ll know how strong the feeling is to say or do something to get yourself out of that painful situation as quick as possible. However, often our impulse reactions make things worse rather than better. This weeks article explains by analogy how we can most effectively and quickly get ourself out of our mental and emotional pain by first becoming still.

Quick reminder for those of you in Singapore, Saturday 7th December, 9.30am-12.30pm: Meditations for Transforming Negativity and Stress into Energy, Positivity and Enlightenment – A Three Hour Workshop, it’ll be more than worth your while!

In the spirit of thoughtful action,

Toby

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia

Saturday December 7th – Meditations for Transforming Negativity and Stress into Energy, Positivity and Enlightenment – A Three Hour Workshop

When You Are Trapped in a Thorn Bush….

…the best thing that you can do first of all is to stop struggling. This stops the thorns digging into your skin, thus preventing the short term pain, and enables you to see carefully what you need to do in order to free yourself one by one from the individual branches, eventually becoming free from the thorn bush and the pain altogether.

When we are in a thorny mental and emotional space, the instinct can be for us to keep struggling and struggling, trying to find a way to free ourselves from the pain. Actually, the best thing you can do in such a situation is to first still your mind, create some inner space and perspective from which you can start to move yourself out of the situation, step by step.

From lose loose to win-win
Feeling pain and conflict in your mind often results in you feeling compelled to act, often unwisely and non-reflectively. These unwise actions in turn create more friction and pain, which in turn compels you to act once more in an unwise manner. A vicious cycle is established between your busy, uncomfortable mind and inappropriate, unhelpful actions.
A habit of stilling your mind and body when you are in pain and simply watching/observing for a while creates a space for your natural intelligence and wisdom to start functioning. This in turn enables you to see what needs to be done clearly so that you can act in ways that are actually going to solve your issues. This creates a virtuous cycle where the stillness of your mind enables you to act wisely, solve your challenges and thus create more peace of mind.

So, the next time your mind feels painful, busy, uncomfortable think of yourself as being in a thorn bush; relax, pause and then when you are ready slowly and mindfully remove each of the branches from around you, one by one.

© Toby Ouvry 2013, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

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creative imagery Inner vision Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditation techniques Presence and being present Primal Spirituality spiritual intelligence

The Way of the Rat

Dear Integral Meditators,

If you look at my website, articles and workshops, you’ll see there is quite a lot of material on transforming difficulties, re-directing negativity into positive energy and so on. Who taught me all this? Well I had a meeting with a rat 14 years ago that set me on the right track…

Yours in the spirit of fur and claws,

Toby

The Way of the Rat

When I first came to Asia as a Buddhist Monk in 1999, I stayed for 6 months or so in Johor Bahru at a small Buddhist Centre, whilst making regular trips into Singapore to explore the possibilities of setting up a meditation center there.
Over the 2-3 days of new year period 2000-2001 I was at this small centre, pretty much all alone, and at the time having doubts about my capacity to do the work that I had been asked to do. The meditation center was an apartment on the top story of a shophouse, with the stair well being the only way in and out.
During this period of aloneness and self-doubt, a large rat ran up the stairs from the street and disappeared under a cupboard before I could scare it back out. Realizing I was stuck with it for the night, I shut my bedroom door firmly before bed!
The next morning I was sitting meditating on the floor in the main shrine room, deeply relaxed, when suddenly I felt this pressure on my knee. I opened my eyes and this big rat had crept up on me and now had its front paws on my knee and was staring up at me inquisitively. He only had half of his fur, and was clearly a bit worse for wear! I had actually been in quite deep meditation, and so having a big rat suddenly leaning on my leg and staring up at me really shocked the cr**p out of me! I jumped up very quickly with a yell and he then ran off and hid in my bedroom.
I never saw him again. After checking he had moved out from my bedroom, I left front door open that night, with the metal gate shut, and I think he must have just gone down of his own accord when he found there was nothing much to eat!

Qualities of the rat
My encounter with the rat was the beginning of a series of experiences where I became aware that chance meetings with animals were actually playing and active part in my spiritual path and journey. This was a time in my life where I had really been thrown back on my own resourcefulness and capacity to survive, persist and problem solve as intelligently as I could. What better a companion, example and object of meditation could there be for me than the rat, an animal that survives and thrives in the most difficult, dirty and persecuted of circumstances?

Looking out for animals in your life
If a dragonfly flies through your window and spends a couple of hours with you while you are cooking dinner, or you go for a run and see a snake in the path, it’s worth just exploring what the qualities of the animal are and how its virtues and strengths could be applied to the challenges that you are going through right now. You may find it surprising how quickly your mind can free-associate a tangible and useful meaning between the qualities of the animal and what you need to do.

Re-awakening to our intimacy with the animal kingdom
For our ancestors living close to nature it would have been natural to feel close to animals (to both love and fear them), and to see spiritual meaning in their interactions with them. I think contemporary society has numbed our sense of intimacy with the natural world, but looking out for the coming and going of animals in your life in the way described above can be a first step toward re-awakening our own intimacy with, care for and support from wild creatures, even the dirty ones that live in our drains!

© Toby Ouvry 2013, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

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Awareness and insight creative imagery Inner vision Integral Meditation Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Presence and being present spiritual intelligence

Transforming Specific Aspects of Your Past Through Shadow Meditation

Dear Integral Meditators,

I hope that you have had a good week that you feel has served your inner growth well! This weeks article explains an meditation practice that I really have something of a soft spot for, and that is of real practical value. Our past experience is constantly impacting our experience of the present, and the meditation is specifically designed to effect a healthy ongoing relationship between our past and present, so that we can face the future with confidence.

In the “upcoming courses” section you’ll see that I have mapped out the  workshop program from now until the end of the year (I’ll have to see about online courses, I’m not sure yet). The main thing that is ‘new’ is that I will be backing up the Shadow and Zen meditation workshops with level 2 workshops, so for those of you that have done the introductions, there will now be an opportunity to go onto the next step!

For any of you that missed the mid-week email with the free meditation audio on transforming stress, you can have a listen just by clicking HERE.

Toby

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:
Sunday October 27th, 3-6pm – Finding Freedom From What Holds You Back in Life: Practical Meditations And Techniques For Working With your Shadow-Self – A Three Hour Workshop

Tuesday 19th  November, 7.30-9.30pm – An Introduction to Meditation from the Perspective of Zen Level 1

24th November – An Introduction to Meditation From the Perspective of Zen Levels 2&3 (full details shortly)

Dec 1st – Shadow Meditation Level 2 (full details shortly)


Transforming Specific Aspects of Your Past Through Shadow Meditation

This article explains a practical way of working with aspects of your own individual past history in order to transform the way in which we experience the effects of that past in our lives right now.

Often we are not fully aware of the effects that our past history is having upon our present moment experience; the purpose of this meditation is improve our awareness of the way our past is impacting our present, and to effect a healthy communication and reconciliation between the person we are now and the person who went through those past experiences.

Those of you that have done some shadow coaching with me, or attended a shadow workshop will recognize some of the techniques in this meditation. The meditation technique is simple but powerful, and there is plenty of room for you to follow your own intuition and imagination.

The Practice:

Stage 1: Select a past experience to focus on 
Choose an area of your past that you wish to investigate, perhaps one that you consciously or intuitively feel that there are some unresolved issues for you. Examples might be:

  • A particular period of your childhood upbringing or schooling
  • A particular relationship with a parent, sibling or teacher
  • A difficult time such as post-divorce, being layed-off at work, or times when you had to experience your parents going through this

Stage 2: Connect to and travel down your life tree:
Having set the past experience you wish to investigate, set your intention to investigate it. Then sit down in meditation and see yourself in front of a huge tree, with its roots going deep into the earth, and its branches reaching high up into the sky. Think of this tree as your own personal Tree of Life, or Life Tree.
In the bottom of the trunk of the tree there is a door. When you are ready open the door. See extending down into the earth below there is a spiral staircase. Follow it down as far as it goes until you find a second door, which takes you out into a landscape connected to the period of your life that you wish to investigate.

Stage 3: Encounter and communication
In that landscape you encounter a figure connected to that past period of your life. For example if you are investigating a period of your schooling, then you might meet yourself as a young boy, or one of your teachers (whatever appears at this stage is right for you, trust what you see). Investigate the feelings that arise from your encounter with this figure (or figures). When you are ready, ask the figure three questions:
What is it you wish to communicate to me?
How can I help resolve the issues that you are unhealed?
How can I be of service to you?
Pay attention to and note the answers that come back.

Stage 4: Conclusion
When you are ready, say goodbye and return back up the spiral staircase to the surface world. Try and implement whatever insights you have gained from your encounter into your present life.
© Toby Ouvry 2013, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com