Tag: insight

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Inner vision One Minute Mindfulness

Mindful of the Thinning of the Veil

Traditionally within the Wheel of the Western Year (by that I mean the progression of the year through the seasons) there are two times when the “veil” between the worlds of our inner and outer perception are thinned, making visionary and dream experiences somewhat more pronounced and vivid. These two times are before and after May the 1st of May or “Mayday”, and the few weeks before and after Samhuinn, or Halloween as it is most commonly known nowadays from October 31st to November 2nd.

Certainly I find that right now in the run up to this years’ Samhuinn my dream life is becoming very vivid, meeting many different characters and  taking strange journeys in my sleep. This time of year is also a time of “reversals” where bad appears as good, good appears as bad. It can be a time of confrontation with our own shadow self , and with the shadow self of the group unconscious. It can also be a time where the spirit of our ancestors attempts to contact us.

Because of all the above things, if you are at all psychically sensitive this can feel like a really chaotic, somewhat dark and “mixed-up” time of year. For me over time I have come to enjoy it as a time where the seeming order of my life becomes much more fluid, and so there is an opportunity to facilitate positive change, and let go of any “skeletons in the closet” that may have built up in my life over the year(!), and look for clues as to the inner work to be done over the coming months.

A Suggested Practice:

Simply pay a little closer attention to your dreams and inner visions (both in and out of meditation over the next 2-3 weeks. Don’t be intimidated if they seem a little chaotic, look upon them as a chance to gain insight into areas of your life that you may normally be unaware of as they lie hidden in your subconscious!

© Toby Ouvry 2011, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

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Categories
Meditation techniques One Minute Mindfulness

The Little Reminders Work!

I recently listened to a talk by Roger Walsh on the Science of Meditation (well worth having a listen to, click the link to do so). In the talk he mentions that he spent about three years researching for his book “Essential Spirituality”, reading books and interviewing different spiritual teachers of the worlds great wisdom traditions.

One of the activities that he said virtually all of these teachers found effective themselves for daily mindfulness and consciousness development was the simply practice of placing small reminders in your living space. This means the post-it note on the bathroom mirror, the car bumper sticker, the messages that you write to yourself and place on the fridge. Simply being frequently reminded that you are training your mind, and what that training is is a very effective practice.

One of my own reminders is a picture of Buddha Vajrapani (embodying the spiritual and obstacle dispelling power of all the Buddha’s that sits on my desk. Whenever I feel discouraged I just let my eyes rest on this picture for a while and allow my determination and positive energy to build back up again.

What’s your “little reminder ” practice right now? It doesn’t need to be any more complicated than a message on a post-it on your bathroom mirror!

© Toby Ouvry 2011, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

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Motivation and scope One Minute Mindfulness

Being Mindful of your Primary Motivation

Before you start something it is always worth spending a moment thinking “Why am I doing this? What is my primary motivation?” If you have a definite reason for doing something, then you can keep it as your focus, thus ensuring greater peace of mind and a higher likelihood of getting what you want from the activity.

– For example, if my main reason for going to play a game of tennis is fun and relaxation, being clear about that ensures that I can enjoy the competitive side of the match I play without letting it become too much of a focus point and thus spoiling my relaxation and enjoyment.

– Similarly if I go out with my wife for a dinner with the clear intention that it is relaxation time, keeping this in mind will mean that I avoid taking up difficult or conflicting topics of conversation that may get in the way of that quality down time.

Conversely:

– If my intention for playing tennis is to push my limits and play as well as possible, I  can make a conscious decision to set aside my merely recreational attitude for a temporarily more serious approach.

– I may deliberately go out for dinner with my wife in order to talk over a difficult or thorny topic, but the fact that I know what my/our intention is ensures that I can keep focused on the goal, and be prepared for the challenge that may come.

My basic point here is that if you are mindful enough to have a clear idea why you are doing something (whatever the size or significance of the activity), then there is a greater chance you will achieve your goal and a greater chance that you will do so with enjoyment and true presence of mind.

© Toby Ouvry 2011, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

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Categories
A Mind of Ease Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques

Why is it so Easy to Think Negatively?

Contemporary neuroscientists now believe that our brain has a built in negativity bias. This is because biologically speaking in the thousands of years we spent as primitive tribesmen and women it was actually more useful survival-wise to be able to spot threats and dangers quickly than it was to be loving and relaxed. When you have a genuine threat from predators and aggressive humans from the next tribe, it really paid to be paranoid and think about the worst case scenario!
However, fast forward to 2011, and we have undergone 2-300 years of very fast cultural, social and industrial evolution, and now find ourself in a situation where we are actually physically SAFE most of the time. Unfortunately our biological brain has not evolved as fast as our environment, and so we still find our brain primed to seek out threats, spot the negatives in life, and remain generally neurotic.
Because our brain has not adjusted fully, but retains its built in survival negativity bias, we find that in our everyday life it is much easier to think negatively than  positively. As neuroscientist Rick Hansen (author of “Buddhas Brain”) puts it “Our mind is Velcro for negativity and teflon for positivity”, negativity sticks with no effort, whilst positivity has to be drummed in with effort!!

So, what to do?
The first take away from this understanding is that in order to enjoy a positive mind and perspective we should expect to have to exert effort everyday to think positive and let go of the negative.
The second take away is that we should realize that our mind will naturally exaggerate threats and negativity, so we need to be prepared for this, and make sure we do not give our power away to these over-reactions!

A Daily Practice
Here is one of the things I do each day to keep my mind oriented positively, and I do it religiously each day if I feel negative in any way. It is really very simple, but in the context of the above neuro-psychology you can see how important it is. All I do is write a list of reasons to feel good, positive, fortunate and so on. I write at least three things that I feel good about, but if I have time I write more. To show you exactly what I mean here is my list of three or more things that I feel good about right now:

– I feel good about the soul portrait artwork that I am doing for a client right now, and feel fortunate to be able to do art as a part of my living.
– I’m very excited about a new neighborhood that we may be moving to in the future, it has many of the characteristics that I am looking for!
– I’m enjoying the book I am reading right now “The Marriage of Sense and Soul” by Ken Wilber (recommended by the way!)
– Its good to have the wife around after her absence on a trip for a couple of weeks!

As you can see there is nothing unusual about the above list, but every time I do it what I am training and re-wiring my brain to pick up on the positive and use it as the basis for the way I feel about my life.

© Toby Ouvry 2011, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

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Categories
One Minute Mindfulness

What Does Liberation From Suffering Mean?

Does liberation in the spiritual sense from suffering mean that we no longer feel any pain? I tend to think that we will still feel pain of one form or another after we have been liberated, but that pain will not be added to by additional mental suffering and negativeness.

To be liberated from suffering means for example that when you are in physical pain you no longer add to that pain by trying yourself up in knots about the situation you are in. You simply accept the pain as it is, if you can alleviate it you do so through your actions, but if it is just a matter of enduring it with patience,  you can do so without your mind making things any worse than they need to be.

If you can accept pain without it giving rise to mental suffering, then in a very real sense you are liberated from suffering.

I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot over the last 36 hours or so as my mind and body seem to be a in a certain amount of pain, and chaos. There is plenty of opportunity to buy into it and create suffering from the pain, but as long as I realize I have the choice not to and am mindful to exercise that choice there is no real problem. Pain does not need to become suffering.

 

© Toby Ouvry 2011, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

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Categories
One Minute Mindfulness

Self Flagellation the Same Thing as Sheer Egoism?

This is an interesting quote from Herman Hess’s “Steppenwolf”:

“…his whole life was an example that love of one’s neighbour is not possible without love of oneself, and that self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism, and in the long run breeds the same isolation and despair.”

I find it very interesting to think of self criticism and self hate as really just being the flip side of egotism. We are very quick to out down ourself and other people for being egotistical, but seem much more tolerant of people (including our own selves) who are overly critical of themselves and have low self esteem.

If we really realize that these two activities are  EQUALLY egotistical, then how would that affect our current view and tolerance of self criticism?

© Toby Ouvry 2011, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

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Categories
One Minute Mindfulness

The Six Stages to an Integrated Enlightened Self

Here are six stages or realizations in the journey toward the experience of enlightenment as explained by the great wisdom traditions of the world that emphasize meditation as a daily practice. Of course each of them would explain it with different words and emphasizing slightly different aspects of the path, but broadly speaking these six points would be common.

1. I am not my ego (the mental idea of who I think I am), I am a unified harmonious body-mind, living in the present moment.

2. I have a physical body but I am not my body.

3. I have a mind (a continuum of feelings thoughts and images) but I am not my mind.

4. I have an individual soul/divine spark/Buddha nature, but I am not that individual soul.

5. I am the Universal Witness-Self, the timeless, formless witnessing awareness that lies at the heart of all living beings and all of creation.

6. I am the integrated sum total of all the above “selves” allowing the divine to express itself creatively through me in my daily life from moment to moment.

© Toby Ouvry 2011, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

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Categories
Inner vision Meditation techniques

Meditating on the Power of Your Creative Imagination

The Benefits of This Meditation
This article explains a three stage meditation on our creative imagination. The aims and benefits of doing this meditation are various:

  • It strengthens general mindfulness and overall awareness of the contents of our mind, and gives us a greater appreciation of our own imaginative power
  • It develops our concentration and skill in learning how to visualize and hold images in our mind
  • It helps us to let go of the thoughts and images in our mind and relax into the deep formless space that lies ‘behind’ the normal daily chatter of our mind.

This meditation can be done in as short a period of time as three minutes, but optimally somewhere between ten and twenty minutes is a good time. Whatever period of time you set aside, your time should be spent equally between the three stages below. So for example in a nine minute meditation three minutes would be spent on each stage.

Stage 1: Watching the Mind and Writing Down its Contents
During this stage I recommend that you actually get a pen and paper/notebook and actually write down all the thoughts, images and feelings that pop up in your stream of consciousness. The point of this exercise is to see and realize clearly how your mind is continually and imaginatively generating thoughts, images and feelings. Whether we like it or not we and our mind are tremendously and powerfully creative. When we start to see this we can start to appreciate and take responsibility for our imaginative creativity.

Stage 2: Focusing and Concentrating on a Single Positive Image
During this second stage simply select one of the more positive and meaningful images that has been flowing through your mind and focus on it exclusively, trying to build it as a clear image in your mind eye. Please note that when I say “image” this includes sounds such as a musical refrain.
For example if I remembered a woodland from my childhood I see and picture myself in that place as clearly as possible, paying attention to the textures, colours, forms, smells, tastes and sounds of that environment. Generating and holding pictures in the mind clearly takes practice at first, but you will find that over time it can be resurrected as a natural skill that we all have.
Initially it can feel a little difficult visualizing because we are so used to having images provided for us by TV and cinema, thus our imaginary powers have become a little lazy.

Stage 3: Relaxing Into the Formless Source of Your Creativity
The final stage of the meditation is to relax your mind as much as possible and allow all images and thoughts to fade from your awareness; so that all is left is the clarity and inner space of your own consciousness. This inner space is actually the hidden source from which all the creative images of your mind arise, very much like the way in which the space and unconsciousness of deep sleep give rise to the inner worlds of dreams. Practice watching and staying with this inner space and clarity for the remainder of the meditation.

© Toby Ouvry 2011, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

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Categories
Awareness and insight Inner vision Meditation and Art Meditation and Psychology

Leveraging More on Your Inner Creativity – Meditating on the Four Stages of Creative Energy Cycles in Your Life

All of us are fundamentally creative, and contain within us the spark of spiritual “Eros” which impels us toward acts of creativity in our life. WHAT we create depends upon the cycles and patterns of creativity that we set up or built as habits. What I want to do in this article is outline the four basic stages of a creative cycle, and then reflect upon how we can go about using this understanding to become more positively creative in our life.

The four stages of a creative cycle

Stage 1 – The activation of latent Eros within ourselves– The first stage of a creative cycle is when the natural creative spiritual energy (Eros) within us becomes activated in some way. At this stage our creative energy has no form, it is pure potentiality that can become any number of things depending upon which way we direct it.

Stage 2 – The formation of images, thoughts and feelings within our creative imagination – The second stage of a creative cycle is when our imagination starts to build structures and images which our creative energy can then energize and animate. Whatever intentions, pictures, thoughts, beliefs perspectives and other mental structures that we habitually hold in our mind become energized by our natural inner creative energy.

Stage 3 – The formation of speech – Based upon the activity of our creative imagination, we then develop a sense of inhabiting a particular type of “reality”. In reality this “reality” is largely an imaginative construct that we project upon our outer world, but it appears to us to be quite real. Based upon this perception of a particular type of reality we then speak in such a way that affirms and confirms that reality. The statements “I can never find happiness” and “I am being challenged by my circumstances to create my own happiness” are both words that affirm a certain imagined reality, and re-enforce that “reality” to the person saying them. Here speech can refer to actual spoken words, or to the content of our daily “inner dialogue” that we have with ourselves in our mind each day.

Stage 4 – The creation of acts in the world– Based upon our imagination and  speech we then engage in actions. These actions are physical articulations of our creative imagination and the content of our speech. We act in accordance with what we imagine, think and say to ourselves and other people.

Positive and Negative Creative Cycles

So, based on our understanding of the above we can see that what we choose to imagine and what we choose to say really determines the direction that our natural creative energy or Eros takes in our life. Negative and paranoid imagination and speech will create a negative and paranoid world. Life-affirming and positively directed imagination and speech will create a positively experienced and life affirming experience.

Some Practical Points to Begin Integrating

From the above insights we can see that our habitual imagination and speech play a crucial role in the reality that we sculpt and create from the “raw” creative energy that we have been given by the universe. With this in mind spending a few minutes a day over the next week asking yourself the following questions may be helpful:

1.       What is my imagination building right now with the natural creative energy that it is being fed with from spirit?Is what it is building in my mind helping me or hindering me in my path to happiness and inner wellbeing?
2.      What has my speech (outer or inner) over the last hour or two been showing me about the way I am expressing and manifesting the creative energy in my life?Is what I am saying helping me to bring more energy into my life, or is it limiting me unnecessarily?
3.      How deeply am I aware of the power of my on creativity?In what ways can I begin to value and appreciate my innate creative power more?

© Toby Ouvry 2011, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Categories
Awareness and insight Meditation Recordings Meditation techniques

Recording of “What is Meditation?” Talk

Hi Everyone,

Please find below a recording of a free talk that I did last week entitles “What is Meditation, and the Role That it Can Play in Transforming Our Life”, Enjoy!

I have placed a resume of the talk content beneath the recording.

Yours in the spirit of the journey,

Toby

[audio:https://tobyouvry.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/What-is-Meditation-Free-Talk.mp3|titles=What is Meditation Free Talk]

FREE TALK:

“WHAT IS MEDITATION AND THE ROLE THAT IT CAN PLAY IN TRANSFORMING OUR LIFE”

With meditation teacher Toby Ouvry

As modern life continues to make more and more demands upon us more and more people are turning to the ancient art of meditation as a way of coping with stress, reducing anxiety and re-orienting their mind around positive mental and emotional habits that give  rise to peace of mind. But what exactly is meditation? This talk, given by Toby who has 15 years of experience of teaching meditation, including five years as a Buddhist monk aims to provide answers to the following questions:

  • What is meditation?
  • What are the different purposes that it can be used for?
  • How can I begin practicing meditation today in a simple and effective way that will enhance my quality of life?

Click HERE for a list of Toby’s current and upcoming meditation classes.