“Drop into your Nirvana to regenerate, & re-establish your inner freedom when you want to”
Dear Integral Meditators,
Nirvana may sound or feel like an abstraction, unrelated to your life & workplace experience, in the article below I try and make the idea of Nirvana accessible, & offer some ways to start making it experientially real for you…
Two sessions this week:
Tues & Weds 17th & 18th September, 7.30-8.30pm – Autumn equinox balancing & renewing meditation
Sat September 21st, 5-6pm Singapore time – Engaged mindfulness & meditation online class : The dance of relaxation & alertness
You are invited!
In the spirit of Nirvana,
Toby
Nirvana – Finding your Ground
Where is Nirvana?
If you sit quietly in meditation for a while, you will start to notice the presence of spaces and silences between all the sensory, mental and emotional movement. When you notice these spaces, you start to discover what is called “Causal” consciousness, or the formless, timeless consciousness that acts as the ‘ground’ or basis of our being and experience. Dropping deeper into this Causal consciousness, we start to notice that, when we relax into these spaces we touch a sense of freedom, a liberation from all of the discomfort and ‘spikiness’ of our everyday life.
Developing and growing our contact with this causal level of consciousness, the “Ground” of our being gives us the basis for what in original Buddhism is called Nirvana. Nirvana is a Sanskrit word that is part of a numbner of “Nir” words. “Nir” basically means “without,” “not,” “none”.
- Nirvana means “A state without grasping or desire”
- Nirvakalpa means “Without thought forms”
- Nirguna means “Without qualities”
- Nirodh means “Pure extinction, total cessation”
They all point to variations of a completely Empty, Formless, Unqualifiable reality that lies underneath our experience of inner and outer forms. So, to build our own Nirvana, we look to cultivate this state in meditation (and later integrate it into daily life), a state in which we are:
- relaxed, free from grasping or desire
- free from thinking (without thought forms)
- free from moods, emotions, personality traits (without qualities)
- resting in a state of radical, free emptiness (extinction, total cessation)
To cultivate this state is to cultivate your Nirvana, your inner freedom, your liberation, resting in the formless, timeless emptiness that is the ground of being.
Don’t worry, if you do this you won’t become a ‘nobody’ in the everyday world! But you will experience yourself differently, and you will be able to drop into your Nirvana to regenerate and re-establish your inner freedom when you want to, now that you have access to it.
Nirvana and the Witness
Within your Nirvana, your formless timeless freedom, you will notice there is a Witness, an observer self. It has no qualities than the capacity to watch, notice, to be conscious of. You can use your Witness to build your Nirvana, and you can use your Nirvana to build your Witness. Building your competency in both, you build two major dimensions of a qualified meditation practice. Here are a few ways to start this. You can begin these exercises in sitting meditation, but with time you will be increasingly able to do them informally in daily life:
- Use your Witness self to observe your desires and passions. After a while then gently drop your passions and Witness Nirvana, the state of freedom from grasping or desire
- Use your Witness self to observe your thoughts and thinking. After a while then gently drop your thinking and Witness Nirvakalpa, the state of freedom from thoughtforms
- Use your Witness self to observe your personality traits, moods, and other qualities. After a while then gently drop your thinking and Witness Nirguna, the state of freedom from qualities, a “person-less person”
- The above three exercises give you a sound basis for developing your “Nirodh” your state of “Pure extinction, total cessation”, your state of radical, free emptiness, which you can then use to notice and rest in your Witness, the formless, timeless observer self.
Resting in this Witness then radically improves your capacity to deepen your states of Nirvana, Nirguna, Nirvakalpa and Nirodh. Which is another way of saying you re becoming a Free man or Free woman, resting in your own Nirvana!
Related articles: Eternal life (& where to find it)
The path of no-escape
Article & content © Toby Ouvry 2024, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com
Saturday 28th September, 9.30am-12.30pm –Developing Your Self-Confidence Through Mindfulness Workshop
In a sentence: Learn how you can develop greater self confidence in express it in your life using specific mindfulness practices.
Overview: How many things in your life would you be doing differently if you were thinking and acting from a place of deep self confidence?
This is a 3hour workshop where you will be taught practices that are designed to make a tangible difference to your levels of everyday confidence and inner wellbeing…read full details
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