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The dance of conscious & unconscious intention

“Our intentions are like tuning forks, they tend to attract particular types of things and experiences into our life, and also determine the way in which we experience them”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This week’s article follows on from last week’s article on on intention, further drawing out the power of intention, and some practices to start being mindful around it!
If you enjoy the article, do check out the upcoming course on  Meditating with the power of intention – An eleven module course. It can be participated in live or online, and is starting at the beginning of September. 

In the spirit of intention, 

Toby
 


The dance of conscious & unconscious intention
 
You always have an intention
Intention occupies the ‘why’ space within our consciousness; the reason we are motivated to do things. There is a ‘why’ reason for all our actions or non-actions. The art noticing or being mindful around intention is three-fold:

  1. Noticing intentions that you have that are harmful or destructive, working against your wellbeing and those of others. Once detected we can work on understanding where they come from and what we can do to reduce and re-direct them
  2. Noticing the positive intentions that we have that are helpful, empowering and creative, then continuing to nurture and strengthen them
  3. Opening to new benevolent or creative intentions that we may not have often at the moment, but that we can see the value in developing them and making them a regular part of our life

Intentions are like tuning forks, they tend to attract particular types of things and experiences into our life, and also determine the way in which we experience them. Dancing with our intentions deliberately can radically shift our life-experience quite quickly, sometimes immediately.
 
You don’t always know that you have an intention
Although we almost always have an intention, we aren’t always aware of the intentions that we have.

  • You might have naturally caring intentions regularly toward your family members, but you might not notice it because it’s just a (positive) habit. If you notice this positive intention that arises regularly within you, you can generate it more often consciously, and you can widen the group or type of people that you generate it towards. Making this intention conscious can improve your relationships significantly
  • You might not be aware of the judgements that you have about yourself, and the harmful intentions that come from them. By making these intentions toward yourself conscious, you can see them more clearly, gently starting to ‘de-couple’ yourself from them, reducing, even eliminating the harmful effects that they are having upon you
  • You may not have noticed that your short, medium and long term goals and intentions are contradicting each other in significant ways. By consciously aligning your short, medium and long term intentions and making them a team, you can significantly increase the power of each

 
Practice points – Creating intentions around intention
 
The intention to live intentionally – the first practice point here is to build the power of your intention to live intentionally, on purpose and consciously. This is a mindfulness power-practice 101, building the power of your intentionality.
 
The dance of conscious & unconscious intention – Practice point two is to notice which of the intentions that you generate are deliberate or conscious, and which are instinctual, unconscious and spontaneous. The idea here is to ‘dance’ with both, creating a harmony between them in your life through your intention to align your conscious & unconscious intentions.
 
Related reading: Intention determines trajectory – Aspects of integrated mindful intention
Intention, dedication, meditation
Fourteen levels of mindful intention

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

Watch Toby’s video on mindful intention:

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Intention determines trajectory – Aspects of mindful intention

“Your intention determines your trajectory – choose to be more conscious and intentional during the day. Life your life ‘on purpose’!”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This week’s article & video explores the concept that ‘intention determines trajectory’ & looks at practical ways you can start to explore it mindfully in your daily life.

If you enjoy the article, then do check out the upcoming course that will be starting in September on  Meditating with the power of intention.

In the spirit of the intentional, 

Toby

 

Watch Toby’s video on Mindful intention:


Article: Intention determines trajectory – Aspects of integrated mindful intention
 
Intention is one of what I call the ‘three pillars’ or ‘holy trinity’ of integral mindfulness: awareness, attention and intention. These three are what I call pre-skills, meaning skills that, if you develop them, they will help you to develop any other skill or capacity that you want to in life. The better you become at them, the more confident you will feel in the face of life’s challenges.
 
Intention determines trajectory
The statement ‘Intention is destiny’ might not be true in the absolute sense of the word, but it holds true on many levels in the sense that our intentions determine our motivations and actions in life. The intentions that we hold in our mind consistently are continually influencing what we do, where we go, what we say, what we choose. Its not difficult to see for example that someone who’s conscious intention is to contribute to society and make it a better place is going to have a very different life path from someone whose intention is simply to fit in with the prevailing norm, and not look too dumb. Given this understanding, the intention to make your intentions in life conscious is a good place to start!
 
You always have an intention
Something else about intention is that you always have one. It can be a conscious intention such as the intention to act to achieve a goal, or it can be an unconscious or instinctual intention, such as the impulse to eat an attractive food, or say something in a moment or reactivity. So, a second practice around intention is to start to notice and be mindful around the intentions that you are having thru-out the day. Notice them coming and going. Notice the ones that are deliberate. Notice intentions that you tend to hide from yourself, or suppress awareness around. “What is my intention for doing this?” is a question that helps you both to become aware of existing intentions, and for clarifying your intention, aligning yourself with the best intentions that you can muster.
 
Three levels or octaves of intention
Three ball park intentions that I practice on are simple and as follows:

  • The intention to be of benefit toward myself today
  • The intention to turn up well for my close circle, friends, family, colleagues
  • The intention (Partly by doing intentions 1&2 well) to be of benefit to humanity and the Planet

I call these ball park intentions, because they hold space well for the other more specific intentions that I may focus on in the day. They create a benevolent intentional space for my activities, and clarify the way in which I direct my energy. I often start a meditation with these three intentions, but they are equally important for:

  • Family interaction
  • Business transactions
  • Social activity

And so on…One thing to notice about these three levels is that we are aiming to create a harmonic between them, get them working together as a team. By benefiting myself I can become stronger, which helps me to turn up better for my close circle, and the enhanced interaction with my close circle ripples out into the world. You get the idea!

Practice points around mindful intention:

  • Be curious about the intentions, conscious and unconscious that you have during the day, witnessing them and noticing patterns
  • Choose to be more conscious and intentional during the day. Life your life ‘on purpose’!
  • Notice how your intentions determine your trajectory in life, both in the short, medium, and long terms
  • Generate and center around the three levels or octaves of intention regularly. Practice motivating yourself from these powerful, core intentions

Related reading: Intention, dedication, meditation
Fourteen levels of mindful intention

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

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

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Three levels of mindful intuition

“Teaming up our intuition & rationality helps us trust our natural inner guidance and signals”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This week’s article offers some ways of making distinctions around different type of intuition, & beginning to work with them in daily life. If you enjoy it, feel free to join us for the Tuesday or Wednesday meditation class, where it will be a focus point of the meditation. 

In the spirit of intuition,

Toby
 


Three levels of mindful intuition
 
What is intuition?
 
For this piece, I’m going to define intuition as a way of experiencing and processing our life in a way that is almost instantaneous, often pre, or trans-rational, meaning preceding logical or systematic thought. Here are a couple of mainstream definitions from the internet that are complementary to mine:

  • Oxford languages: Intuition – using or based on what one feels to be true even without conscious reasoning; instinctive; “his intuitive understanding of the readers’ real needs”
  • Cambridge dictionary: Intuition – able to know or understand something because of feelings rather than facts or proof

 
Why is it useful to develop?
 
Reliable intuition is a wonderful capacity to develop, as it enables us to navigate life confidently, experientially, and more successfully. It is a capacity that is complementary to our reasoning, and analytical capacity, rather than in competition with it. If we can make our intuition and reasoning a team, then they can help us to verify choices, navigate confusion and so forth. Teaming up our rationality and intuition helps us trust our natural inner guidance and signals.
 
Three levels of intuition
 
Most often I think about intuition as having three levels; instinctual, mental and spiritual:

Instinctual intuition comes from our biological intelligence. It is the capacity that we share with animals. It is pre-rational, often sensual and sensory. If you quieten the mind and attune to your body-intelligence, then you’ll start to notice this level of your intuition providing you signals and feedback thru-out the day. When you are out in nature, you may notice this level of intuition really coming to the foreground of your awareness, as your animal nature attunes to its environment.

Mental or intellectual intuition is the capacity of our mind to compute answers based on the sum total of our knowledge and experience, before our conscious mind can do it in a linear way. For example, if we are an experienced chess or tennis player, our intuitive sense of the next move or shot will often come intuitively and instantaneously. This ‘feeling’ comes from the capacity of our intellect to make trans-rational calculations based on the totality of our knowledge and experience in this domain.

Spiritual intuition is that dimension of our intelligence that lies beyond both our instinct and our intellect. The intuition that comes from this level is distinct, sometimes characterised as a ‘still small voice within’. In a previous article I describe this intuitive voice as follows:
“What you are looking for is a quieter voice within you coming from a deeper level of your consciousness. Its nature is to be kind, and quiet, strong and wise. It’s easily drowned out by the louder voices of the everyday mind, which is why you need to listen for it closely, in a relaxed frame of mind”
Sometimes referred to as the Higher Self, Soul Self or Spiritual Self, spiritual intuition often feels as if it’s perspective comes literally from an ariel point of view, a ‘big picture’ perspective.
 
If you sit quietly, and recall a particular situation in your life, you can try gently to identify these three voices, attuning to the different information and perspectives they are giving you. Sometimes they will be in broad agreement, sometimes they will be saying different, even contradictory things to each other. It is your job as the conscious self to:

  • Identify these three voices of your intuitive guidance
  • Collate and assess them together, making a decision that you feel is best for you and the situation at hand, all things considered

Identifying and listening to these three levels of your intuition is a part of what I call learning to trust your inner guidance, or ‘inner guru’. Everyone has all three of these, it’s just a matter of putting in a little patient practice to start building your competency!
 
Related articles: Trusting your inner guru
Four ways of working with your inner voice

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
 


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Effortless wholeness – The ocean & it’s wave; not one, not two

“Experience yourself as a wave on the ocean, emerging from and subsiding back into the sea, separate from but at the same time one with the ocean, not one, not two”

Dear Toby, 

This week’s article focuses on a technique to deepen the simple feeling of awareness, making it into a communion between yourself as an individual, and yourself as the One or Universal Self. If you like it, you might like to come along too this week’s Wednesday class, where it will be the subject of the  session!

And head’s up for this Saturday 27th July, 5-6pm – Mantra yoga meditation class: Healing meditation with the Medicine Buddha. If you are interested in meditation & healing, you will enjoy this class.

In the spirit of not one, not two,

Toby

 


Effortless wholeness – The ocean & it’s wave; not one, not two
 
In my previous article, Mindfulness – Liberation through pre-psychology I outlined five ways in which simply sitting in a state of mindful presence starts to activate a feeling of wholeness or completeness. Sitting presently in this way we start to feel:
 

  1. Full, not empty
  2. Empty, not full 
  3. Enough, not not -enough 
  4. Strong, not weak 
  5. Free, not limited

 
To our ‘doing’ mind this can seem a little bit too good to be true, there must be something that we have to do or achieve in order to a state of deep meditation and get all these benefits? Here is a short story from Anthony De Mello’s One minute wisdom entitled ‘Identity’ that is designed to further undermine our addiction to striving:
 
IDENTITY
“How does one seek union with God?”
“The harder you seek, the more distance you create between Him and you.”
“So, what does one do about the distance?”
“Understand that it isn’t there.”
“Does that mean that God and I are one?”
“Not one. Not two.”
“How is that possible?”
“The sun and its light, the ocean and the wave, the singer and his song—not one. Not
two.”
 
The useful thing about this story is it helps us to see that we can be at the same time one with the universe, and at the same time different, individual and separate. It is not one, not two, not neither, not both & something beyond neither and both.
 
The story gives the image of the sun and its light, the ocean and the wave, and the singer and his/her song. To explore this, first cultivate basic mindful presence; not lost in thought, not falling asleep, present to the moment, and aware of yourself being present. Then take one of the following as your object of meditation:

  • Imagine yourself as an individual lightray, separate from but at the same time one with the sun. Not one, not two
  • Or as a wave on the ocean, emerging from and subsiding back into the sea, separate from but at the same time one with the ocean. Not one, not two
  • Or as a singer singing a song (perhaps when you actually sang a song), separate from, but at the same time merged with the sound and the song itself. Not one, not two

 
Using one of these images, explore relaxing as effortlessly as you can into the feeling of being not one with the universe, or separate from it, but paradoxically both at the same time. Intellectually it sounds a bit bamboozling, but experientially and using the image, you will find that the experience comes naturally, and without needing to try too hard. It is a nice way to enhance and deepen the simple feeling of awareness and mindful presence, making it into a communion between yourself as an individual, and yourself as the One or Universal Self!
 
Related reading: Mindfulness – Liberation through pre-psychology
Your thoughts as light rays, your mind as the sun
 

​© 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


In case you missed it in last week’s newsletter: The remembrance, positivity & mindful questioning training page

This first training page for the Engaged mindfulness book & project focuses on three practices, or mindful positions:

  1. Practical learning from life – Asking & learning from mindful questions
  2. Meditation – orienting around the positive
  3. Mindfulness – improving your conscious remembrance of what you are doing

Reference in the Engaged mindfulness book: Page 4-6, An Introduction to the Art of Mindfulness (Download free PDF, or order hardcopy here)


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Mindfulness – Liberation through pre-psychology

“Mindful awareness builds a robust pre-psychological base, meaning the feeling or sensibility you have about yourself before you think or conceive who you are. If we get this base right, many good things follow”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This week’s article is on the effectiveness of minddful awareness as a pre-psychological base for navigating and thriving in our lives. If you enjoy it, feel free to join us for the Tuesday or Wednesday meditation class, where it will be a focus point of the meditation. 

In the spirit of awareness,

Toby


Mindfulness – Liberation through pre-psychology
 
In my previous article on the ‘holy trinity of mindfulness’ I outline the role of awareness, intention and attention in mindfulness practice. I describe them as pre-skills that, if you cultivate them will help you develop any other skill relatively quickly and easily.
In this article I want to focus on awareness and what I call its pre-psychological benefits. Again, in the previous article I define mindful awareness as:
“The choice to be consciously aware as we go through life, rather than unconscious, and to direct our conscious awareness skilfully.”
When you make the choice simply to be aware of consciousness in the present moment, there are several fundamental benefits. I want to outline some of these below, in the hope that you will feel inspired to start practicing. Specifically, I want to point out how mindful awareness builds a robust pre-psychological base for ourselves. By pre-psychological I mean the feeling or sensibility you have about yourself before you start to think or conceive who you are. If we get this base right, many good things follow!
 
Full, not empty – When we sit in awareness of the present moment, we start to feel a sense of fullness in that moment. We can then turn up to life with this feeling of fullness, which helps counterbalance the feeling of emptiness that many people feel when they think about themselves and their life.

Empty, not full – Sitting with awareness in the present moment enables us to empty of all the complex thinking and inner noise that our mind is overburdened or overfilled with. We access a sense of ‘empty’ pleasurable inner spaciousness.

Enough, not not -enough – The ‘I am not enough’ script is one of the most common ones that individuals suffer from psychologically. Training to be aware in the present gives us access to a feeling of enough-ness, a sensibility of sufficiency not insufficiency. We can learn to identify with this primary feeling, and meet life from this feeling of ‘enough’, which then becomes a sense of ‘I am enough’.

Strong, not weak – becoming more consciously aware and present leads to a sense of being more gathered and undistracted. Awareness itself is always in the present moment, so focusing upon it leads to less of our energy being dissipated by distraction and thoughts about the past or future. The result of this is a feeling or sensation of being strong in the moment, not weak, and of being centered, not off balance.

Free, not limited – In our mental and physical environment we experience all sorts of limitations,  some external, some internal. In the experience of awareness itself, there is absolute freedom. The choice to be aware is the one thing that no one can take away from us.
 
So, then the practice here is simply to practice being aware of awareness, in the present moment, noticing that when we do so a very basic primal set of pre-cognitive, non-verbal experiences become available to us. We have a sense of being:

  • Full, not empty
  • Empty, not full
  • Enough, not not -enough (sufficiency, not insufficiency)
  • Strong, not weak
  • Free, not limited

If we cultivate these, then we now have a range of pre-psychological, pre-thought building blocks that we can use as a secure base for our sense of self as we think and navigate the world from day to day. This sense of strength, fullness and freedom can accompany us more and more, as our capacity to be aware of awareness grows though our meditation and mindfulness practice.
 
Related reading: Awareness, attention, intention – The holy trinity of integral mindfulness
The freedom of awareness

​© 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

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

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Developmental acceptance – Allowing it to be messy & imperfect

“Skillful acceptance means noticing that you can center yourself in the middle of feelings of chaos, messiness, or dis-orientation, be present to them without panicking”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This week’s article looks at how to use mindfulness to work with your reality in a creative way, even and particularly when it seems messy!

If you enjoy the article, it will be the subject of our meditation at this weeks Tuesday & Wednesday Meditation class: 
 The Wisdom of Awakening Series:  Meditations for cultivating your inner guidance & guru.
All welcome to attend. This series is the course for this week and July.

In the spirit of acceptance,

Toby


Developmental acceptance – Allowing things to be messy & imperfect
 
Harmony from chaos – The way of the artist and creative
At a certain stage in my path, I spent time working with the idea of my art (at the time painting & sculpture) as a path of ‘harmony through conflict’. This basically meant that, to create beauty or harmony, you need to reach into chaos, disorder and sometimes ugliness. Then, by working skilfully with it you can draw out the beauty and order. So, the first part of any creative process then, is to learn to ‘be’ with the disorder/chaos, and start working with it from a centred point of view.
 
Chaos, inner and outer is messy
The tricky part about sitting with chaos is that the feeling of it is very ‘messy’ and confusing. It doesn’t feel comfortable to sit with. One reason why many people are not more creative is because they would prefer to sit with a reality that feels ‘tidy’, ordered and ‘safe’, even if that version of reality is someone else’s, even if it is dysfunctional, and even if the ‘order’ isn’t that appealing to us.
 
Accepting & working with chaos
So, to work with the messiness of reality, and start building our capacity to work with it creatively, we first must practice ‘sitting with the messiness’, which is to say sitting and getting comfortable with it, which actually means ‘getting comfortable with the uncomfortable’(!)
To get comfortable with messiness means accepting that it makes us anxious and dis-oriented. Skillful acceptance means noticing that you can center yourself in the middle of those feelings of chaos and messiness, be present to them without panicking. From the centred comfort that acceptance gives you, you can then look for ways to:

  • Notice what’s useful and good about the current messy-ness
  • Make small initial steps towards ordering the situation
  • Let your intuitive, rational and instinctual intelligence work together to see patterns in the chaos that help you start to see what the situation is offering you, and what it can become

 
Practicing developmental acceptance
On a practical level, I find this type of developmental acceptance enables me to work with what is happening in my day much more creatively. For example, today:

  • Sitting down at my desk to write this article, I found that the initial idea I had did not ‘fit’ like I imagined it would
  • This immediately put me in a place of dis-orientation, discomfort. Centering in that dis-orientation and getting comfortable with it, I became curious about how I could start to mold a new order from the messiness. Staying centered also needed a bit of the qualities of care and courage to stay with it; some gentle positive inner self-talk and re-assurance
  • Acceptance itself started to emerge as a theme, relaxing into it, and without trying too hard I let my intuition, rationality, and instinct start to put some structure to the basic theme, to sculpt and form a harmony from the mess
  • Forty minutes or so later I had written the article that you are now reading

 
You will notice from the above description that the first ‘move’ was noticing and accepting the initial ‘messiness’ of my reality. Accepting and centering like this then enabled me to harmonize my reality much more quickly and effectively than if I had been fighting with it.
You will notice also that I use the three C’s, curiosity, courage and care as a central part of the ‘developmental acceptance’ methodology.
 
Related reading: Cultivating your positive imperfectionist
Applying the Three C’s of Engaged Mindfulness

​© Toby Ouvry 2022, 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

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

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Making your visualization practice integral

“If you observe your mind, you will see that your unconscious imagination is very active, creating scenario’s regarding our past, present and future. What if you made this process conscious, deliberate & directed?”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This week’s article focuses on visualization meditation. If you enjoy the article, then do come along for the summer solstice balancing & renewing meditation this Tues or Weds, live or online. In it we do quite a lot of visualization work, particularly around goals for the next quarter of the year.  

You are invited to the Free Wisdom of Awakening meditation webinar this Thursday.
 
In the spirit of conscious visualization,

Toby

 

Article: Making your visualization practice integral
 
In my individual coaching practice, and in my group classes this week we have done quite a lot on visualization with meditation. The essential idea is that you can accelerate your growth in a particular area, develop a skill and/or to a degree ‘attract’ things that you might want into your life using conscious visualization. Below are a few practice points to bear in mind that will improve any visualization you might want to do. It will also make it more ‘whole’ and complete. I will not claim that the list below includes everything about visualization, but it covers some big fundamentals.
 
Practice 1 – you are visualizing all the time: If you observe your mind, you will start to notice that a lot of it is essentially ‘fantasizing’ or imagining scenarios regarding our past, present and future. You will see that your process of visualization is often very active already. This first practice is to

  • Notice your daily, often unconscious, visualization practice. Make it into an object of mindful observation, rather than something that you get mindlessly lost in
  • Choose which fantasies you follow and encourage, and release/let go of fantasies that aren’t serving your higher purpose

 
Practice 2 – contextualization of the past: Whenever you think of the past, you imagine it anew in your inner vision. So be careful to think and imagine the past in a way that invites positivity, appreciation, and good energy, rather than getting stuck in rumination-loops.
 
Practice 3 – Visualizing yourself present: If you are visualizing around a particular situation, imagine the qualities with which you turn up. For example, imagine turning up to your public speaking event, your squash match or your children’s party focused but relaxed, caring toward yourself and others, energised and enthusiastic, giving yourself positive self-talk as you go.
 
Practice 4 – the specifics of the short-term picture: Short term picture might be the next 2-6 weeks say. If you want to grow your business, or improve in your sport, what are the particular focus points you want to improve? Identify then see them in your minds eye, create pathways in your brain and body to doing these specifics better the next time you sit at your desk, meet a client, play your squash game.  
 
Practice 5 – medium and long-term outcomes: A medium-term outcome might be 3-6months. A long-term outcome might be more than a year, 3 to 5 years, or the final endgame you want from any training or activity, such as achieving a certain type of lifestyle, or becoming a master at a sport or art. Here you can really get involved in creating ‘ideal scenes’ of what it looks and feels like. Some of this will be specific images where particular experiences have been manifested. Other parts of the visualization would be more around the ‘mood and the feeling’ that you have now that you have achieved your end goal.
 
It takes a while to gat back your visualization skills. Because we use screens and computers to create images that we then just look at, initially when we start to visualize we may have to accept that our inner image-making skills are quite poor. However, if we practice consistently, you will find that your image-ination starts to regenerate quite naturally and powerfully, so don’t be discouraged. In any domain in your life you want to improve, practicing visualization that includes all five areas outlined above will help it to be a complete and powerful practice.  
 
Related Reading: Envisioning & presence – Climbing the mindful mountain
On mindful visualization
Mindful imagination – from superstition to manifestation
 
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

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

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Your headless supermind

“Going headless is designed to radically cut out the internal chatter of your ego, enabling you to sit in relative silence, encountering whatever comes into you awareness without the usual inner commentary”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This week’s article focuses on an integral form that I have been using a lot myself recently. If you enjoy the article, then you are invited to this week’s Tuesday & Wednesday class where we will be exploring it in practice. 
 
In the spirit of integration,

Toby
 


Article: Your headless supermind
 
This article offers two meditation techniques, putting them together simply into one where they become mutually enhancing. It is also currently one of my own main practices, so I also thought to share it as an insight into what my own practice looks like right now. Although it is very profound, you can practice it on the level you are at and still get some big benefit pretty quickly! Here is a brief outline of the two practices:
 
Headless-ness – is a practice of imagining that you have no head. As you sit or stand, simply imagine that where your head used to be is a luminous empty space. Your head (and the strong sense of you as an ego that goes with it) is simply not there. One of the things that this is designed to do is to radically cut out the internal chatter of your ego, and enable you to sit in relative silence, encountering whatever comes into that space simply ‘as it is’, without the usual inner commentary.
The technique was originally made well known by Douglas Harding in his book On Having no Head.
 
Supermind – in this context, supermind means simply the ability to witness our life in a multi-perspectival way, and therefore to see much more than we ordinarily would by just looking at things from one or two perspectives. In my previous article on supermind I outline five main perspectives. In this article we will simplify to four, what something looks like from:

  1. Your first person ‘I/me’ space
  2. Your second person ‘we/us’ space
  3. Your third person ‘it’ space
  4. Your ‘integral perspectives’ space

 
Getting started:
 
Firstly, go headless – settle into a comfortable sitting position, relax for a few breaths, and then imagine your head dissolves away. You can see the lower half of your body, and your arms and hands, but they extend from an empty space where your head and shoulders used to be. If initially you find this a bit abstract, simply focus on relaxing your physical brain as much as you can, so that your rate of thinking drops.
 
Then practice supermind – you can either do this with whatever is coming up for you in the moment, or around a particular aspect or challenge in your life. For example, if I take a family dilemma:

  1. My first person ‘I/me’ space – how I am thinking, feeling, and experiencing the situation?
  2. Your second person ‘we/us’ space – how/what the other family members may be experiencing
  3. Your third person ‘it’ space – Viewing the situation as an outsider, an observer or a ‘fly on the wall’ or scientific-objective perspective
  4. Your ‘integral perspectives’ space – put the three above perspectives into a whole, or a totality, where the information from each are interacting and complementing each other

You can also add another perspective or two to the mix if you like. I always like to ask “what is good about this situation?” As a way of bringing a positive spin to my experience. With these 4/5 perspectives, you feel as if you are experiencing the situation and/or yourself in a way that is multi-perspectival, integrated, more complete. This is what we mean by supermind.

Back to headlessness – From your supermind position, then go back to experiencing the situation, but now as a headless person. This means just placing the different elements of the situation into a space where there is no ‘experiencer’, you just let things appear as they are, as if they were doing themselves.
 
This dual approach is designed to:

  • Let you drop out of personal perceptions and experience things as they are through headlessness
  • When considering things as a self-in-the-world, creating a rich , multi-perspectival approach, rather than just being stuck in a monosyllabic I-space all the time

A finishing question for you: What is the difference between the ‘things as they are’ perspective of headlessness, and the above mentioned ‘fly on the wall’ perspective of a third person ‘it’ space?

 
Related article: Mindfully enhancing your psychological development
 
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

Upcoming meditation sessions & workshops with Toby 


Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule

Ongoing – Exploring your hidden maps of consciousness –mindfulness meditation for growing up

Tues 18th/Weds 19th June – Summer solstice balancing & renewing meditation

Mindfulness for emotional intelligence masterclass – Saturday 22nd June, 2-4pm

Wednesday 26th June, 7.30-8.15pm – Free event: Wisdom of Awakening meditation webinar

Starts Tues /Weds 25th & 26th June, 7.30-8.30pm – The Wisdom of Awakening Series:  Meditations for cultivating your inner guidance & guru

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How did I get through tough times as a Monk?

“Resilient endurance in the face of the ongoing difficulties is more a matter of imaginative compassion than simply ‘getting tougher’”

Dear Toby, 

This week’s article explores how I used a particular meditation technique to work with difficulties when I was a monk. If you enjoy it, we will be focusing upon it as a part of this weeks Tuesday & Wednesday meditation class. 


In the spirit of compassionate imagination,

Toby


How did I get through tough times as a Monk?
 
During my time as a Buddhist monk, there were plenty of times when I felt I had my back against the wall.

  • Lack of financial & material resources was always a threat
  • Being an unknown element in a mainstream society mean that not all attention was good attention by any means
  • The organization that I worked for was often understaffed in terms of manpower, and so there was often a sense of having to do several different (unpaid) jobs at the same time
  • The path of meditation itself threw up many things to be processed as I moved from one level to the next.

There was a particular set of meditation instructions called ‘Lojong’, or ‘instructions for training the mind’ which was particularly useful at such times. I would even go as far as to say it was my main practice, in the sense of the one that I derived the most value from. I’ll describe below a simple process that I would follow in meditation that really captures the essence of it. For the sake of an example, let’s imagine that the suffering I am contemplating is the heat and discomfort of being a monk in Singapore, where it is very hot and humid, and I was often living in placed without air-conditioning.
 
A visual tool
These meditations were often done with a jewel of enlightenment visualized at my heart. The jewel would be made of light and have the essence of my enlightened nature.
 
“May all my future sufferings ripen upon me now”
This first position involved contemplating the suffering or confusion that I was going through, and then, in the spirit of compassion say something like:
 
“May all my future suffering of this kind ripen upon me right now”
 
I would then imagine all the future suffering, to use the example all the discomfort and dizziness of living with too much heat, gathering around me as dark light and smoke. It them ‘ripened upon me now’ by dissolving into the ‘jewel of enlightenment’ at my heart, eventually disappearing. I would then strongly think that all my future suffering regarding heat had already been endured, and that I was free from it, relaxing into the joy of that recognition.
So, of course I was still sitting in the heat of Singapore, and would continue to do so. But the effect of the meditation, at least for a while is that my mental and emotional pain around the heat would reduce dramatically, and I could continue on in a state of relative peace and calm.
 
“May the sufferings of others ripen upon me now”
A further development of this was reflecting upon the fact that my suffering was only one persons’, and that there were many other living beings experiencing the same and worse regarding discomfort and pain around heat/temperature. So then reflecting upon this compassionately I would contemplate “May the sufferings of heat of all living beings ripen upon me now!”
I would then imagine this pain & suffering gathering around me like a cloud of dark, hot(!) smoke, and see it then dissolving into the jewel of enlightenment at my heart, eventually disappearing.  I would then meditate strongly on the thought that all those suffering from heat in different ways had been liberated, and were now free and happy. I took this joyful recognition as an object of meditation for a few minutes.
 
The purpose of doing this meditation was not to be masochistic, rather it was, and is to:

  • Develop resilient endurance in the face of the ongoing difficulties
  • Strengthen compassion and reduce unhealthy self-obsession
  • Find joy in the process of releasing ourself and others from pain and sufferings

Reading the sequence through initially may leave you thinking “Eeeuw, no way!” but doing the practice a few times, we start to see how effective it is at reducing our pain and suffering in the moment, and finding ways to get through challenging times relatively unscathed. It certainly was and is a method I’ve found most useful in my own path.
 
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


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Trusting your inner guru

“In any path of mastery, the purpose of the outer guru is to reveal the inner guru.”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This week’s article is a reflection on developing confidence in your own inner guidance. If you enjoy it, the theme will be quite a big part of this Tuesday & Wednesday’s Wesak Class  meditation.

Heads up for this weekend’s Awakening to benevolence & compassion mini-retreat on Saturday the 25th.

Finally, I have created a new series starting Tues /Weds 25th & 26th June – The Wisdom of Awakening Series:  Meditations for cultivating your inner guidance & guru, which obviously relates closely to the article, exploring this theme in depth…

In the spirit of your inner guru,

Toby

Trusting your inner guru
 
I spent the first ten years of my meditation practice training in the Tibetan Buddhist path. After four years I had become a monk. After four years as a monk I could feel that I was approaching the end of my tenure with that group and with my guru or teacher at that time. That summer I went back to the UK from Singapore to listen to teachings and meditate with the spiritual community, as had been my habit for several years. By far and away the most significant words I heard from my guru over those two week’s was “The purpose of the outer guru is to reveal the inner guru.” These words were like a mantra for me for the next nine months, by the end of which time I had decided to leave my life as a monk and go back into lay life, whilst continuing my path as a meditation teacher. The difference was that now I was just a meditation teacher, not from any group or tradition, just teaching and offering guidance as myself.
 
The purpose of quietening the mind

A side effect of meditation is to calm the mind, and therefore to experience less negative stress and more peace. If we are interested in meditation as a creative path of awakening, we can also see that quietening the superficial noise in the mind is also to put us in touch with the deeper voices, intuitions and impulses that are showing us the way along our path in life.
 
What outer gurus & guides have that we do not

An outer guru, in order to be one who has any qualification, has to be in touch with his or her inner signals. S/he must have established a stable link to the higher and deeper levels of her consciousness, where the guidance comes from. The function of the Guru, if they are worth their salt is to empower/enable their students to get in touch with their inner guidance so that, eventually, the student becomes independent of the master. If a master teaches students to become independent in this way, s/he may find that there is quite a high turnover rate in their classes. Or alternatively, students go and return to the master as their own (ie: The student’s) inner guidance inclines them.  By teaching independence, the master avoids the co-dependency that happens in many groups.
 
Courage as the first virtue & your inner sense of timing (when I left my life as a monk)

I can remember the exact moment that I new I would leave my life as a monk. It was in Los Angeles, at another spiritual gathering with my old Tibetan group. I came in slightly late for the final chanting session, and found myself sitting a few seats back from the main group in the room. As I sat there, I realized I simply was no longer with this group (a purely intuitive and energetic sensibility), and I knew I would be leaving. In the subsequent months, telling my guru I was leaving and setting out on my own was a time full of anxiety and courage in equal amounts. I knew that if I didn’t have the courage to move forward at this time, I would be going fundamentally against the grain of my inner guidance and guru. My inner guru was now the primary guide in my life, but really feeling fully confident in that would be a work in progress for a number of years subsequently!
 
A short story

I hope you’ve enjoyed my thoughts above; I’ll end with a short story from Anthony De Mello that speaks to this is a fun way:
 
AVOIDANCE
A tourist, looking at the portraits of former Masters in the temple said. “Are there any
Masters left on earth?”
“There is one.” said the guide. The tourist solicited an audience with the Master and
started with the question, “Where are the great Masters to be found today?”
“Traveller.” cried the Master.
“Sir!” the tourist answered reverently.
“Where are YOU?”

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

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

Integral Meditation Asia

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