“You are whole, a lot of the things you seek, you have already. Proceed from there”
Dear Integral Meditators,
This week’s article looks at approaching meditation, & life from a perspective of wholeness, & noticing how much easier it can make things!
Head’s up for the Mindful Resilience workshop – Practices for sustaining effectiveness, happiness & clarity under pressure that I’ll be doing on the 28th June, I also talk about an approach to improving resilience in the article…
In the spirit of the effortless,
Toby
You already have what you seek – Meditating from wholeness
Meditating to express your awakened nature
One of my favourite expressions from Zen meditation is ‘You don’t meditate to attain awakening, you meditate to express it.’ What this means is that, you already have an awakened, whole and complete essential nature, so you don’t need to achieve it, you need to recognize it! Initially it can be difficult for us to relate to ourselves as whole right from the start of our practice, but this is what Zen and other forms of meditation invite us to do. It means inverting the usual ‘doing something to achieve something’ mentality, and relate to your wholeness, in the sense of having awakened nature right now.
There are also ways in which we can meditate in a wise way, where instead of trying to achieve something, we simply recognize that it is already there. Here are three examples that I have bee working with over this weekend with coachees and students.
The presence of stillness and silence
‘I wish my mind could be more still, but it’s so hard!’ Really? Reflect upon the environment you are in right now; the sounds and activity are all contained by the stillness and space that enables your environment. There is loads of physical space and stillness. Inwardly, yes you may have many thoughts, but they are arising in the open space of your awareness, which Is pervaded by stillness and silence. With a bit of skilful attention, we start to see that we are swimming in stillness and silence, like a fish in water!
The feeling of being alive, now
Why are you trying to achieve things? So that at upon achieving that thing, you can then really have the feeling of being fully alive. But wait, you are also alive right now, perhaps if you can open more fully to the simple feeling of being alive in the moment, you can experience the fulfilment and joy of it today, now, without waiting until you achieve your goals.
How much happiness can you accept?
We all have our problems, and those problems can make us unhappy at times, no doubt. But there are also many things in your life great and small that can be causes of happiness. If you can relate to those things now, and accept the happiness that is on offer. This way you can have genuine happiness now, right away. This happiness will then help you deal with your challenges and problems more effectively.
Getting resilience from your resilience
- Relating to yourself and life from a position of wholeness
- Realizing that you already have what you are looking for in many ways
These are the two essential principles here. I use them in many ways, both in my own life, and in my teachings. For example, in the mindful resilience workshop that I teach, the first practice is to:
“Understanding the different levels of mindful resilience and tapping into the inner resilience that you already have (but may not be leveraging effectively upon)”
So right off the bat, I encourage participants to relate to their resilience as something that they already have, rather than something they lack and need to ‘achieve’. All of this is to say that it is an approach that is ergonomic and flowing, sailing with life rather than struggling against it.
You are whole, a lot of the things you seek, you have already. Proceed from there.
© Toby Ouvry 2026, 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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