Category: Integral Awareness

Mindfully talking, & not talking to yourself

Post author By Toby
Post date December 15, 2025

“The most important conversations you are having are the inner ones that you are having with yourself. Has what you have been saying today inwardly helped or hindered you?”

Dear Toby,

This week’s article looks at the inner conversation that we all have with ourselves, and how to start working with it mindfully…

A couple of free seasonal meditations coming up, the Winter solstice & new year online sessions, you are all invited!

In the spirit of self-talk,

Toby

Article: Mindfully talking, & not talking to yourself

Most of the time you are talking to yourself

For almost all people, there is an internal conversation we are having with ourself all the time. It is probably the most important conversation you are having because:

As mentioned, it is going on almost all the time, whether someone else is around or not
If it is working for you, it can be an almost constant source of support, encouragement, and resilience
If it is working against you, it is an almost constant source of discouragement, conflict, and weakness
You can’t escape it by running away. Unlike other people, the voice follows you wherever you go!

Noticing the conversation & making adjustments

Step one then could be to recognize the inner conversation and acknowledge its importance. This can then be a motivator to start working with it. To start working with it, we need to start to watch it and notice what’s going on as we talk to ourselves!
As in all mindfulness practice just becoming aware of it, and starting to study it as an object of consciousness can be profoundly transformative. Based on your observation, you can then practice making small, skilful interventions in the conversation that make it more balanced and useful for you. For example, there is a tremendous difference between
“You’ve just wasted half an hour procrastinating, you idiot, why do you always do that”
And:
“Its normal for me to take half an hour or so to settle into my work, lets see if I can make it just twenty minutes today!”
It’s not rocket science, but it can make a big impact, particularly if we do it regularly, and start to get the compound effect going!

Learning to suspend the conversation

Part of the joy of meditation of course, is to learn that you can actually switch the conversation off, what a relief! Ways to begin the conversation suspension include:

Watching the spaces between the words in your inner conversation, dropping into them and gradually extending them
Placing short pauses between your inbreath and out breath, practising suspending the conversation just for those pauses

Exercises such as there help to build familiarity with the state of silence, even when our mind is still quite active

Being pro-active about the conversation

A final method that I can’t recommend highly enough is to activate your ‘inner life-coach’. This means you are taking charge of your inner conversation and saying things to yourself that are encouraging, supportive, balanced, and wise as you go through your day. Being pro-active about this conversation when I play sport is the single best and most consistent tool I have found to bring my best performance out. But, and more importantly, if life is the sport, and today, right now is ‘game day,’ then the time to activate this capacity within yourself is now!
Sometimes it may feel like being pro-active like this takes a lot of work. But then its a lot more work living with a miserable, oppressive inner voice. So you may as well engage in the inner work that is taking you somewhere, rather than just being miserable and running round in circles!

Practicum

Set aside time to watch your inner conversation with a degree of curious objectivity
Practice making small skilful interventions
Practice ceasing the conversation for short periods
Cultivate your ‘inner life-coach’!

© Toby Ouvry 2025, 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

Tags inner growth, integral meditation, integral meditation asia, integral mindfulness, meditation, meditation in singapore, mindful self-talk, mindfulness, mindfulness in Singapore, mindfulness meditation, power of mind

Awareness and insight creative imagery Inner vision Integral Awareness Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Life-fullness Meditating on the Self Meditation techniques Shadow meditation

Re-working the story you tell yourself (about yourself)

Post author By Toby
Post date November 10, 2025

“What of you could re-model the story of your life into one you look forward to engaging with, that energises both your experience of the moment, & your visions for the future?”

Dear Integral Meditators,

This week’s article is something of a sequel to last week’s on creativity with our self-concept. What they both offer are creative ways of using mindful observation & imagination to live a fuller, more dynamic & vibrant life.
If you enjoy the articles, then do have a look at the Bright shadow weekday & Saturday series, which explore this type of creative mindfulness extensively. They can be participated in in-person, online or via the recordings.

In the spirit of mindful storytelling,

Toby

Re-working the story you tell yourself (about yourself)

Your story

The story you tell yourself about you is one that emerges substantially from your self-concept, or your idea of who you are. Here is a quote from a past article of mine on ‘the story’:

“The heavy bag of our story: For many of us our ‘story’, our past, our history is something that we are carrying around with us all the time. Unless we are careful it can end up like a heavy bag that we never put down, sapping our energy. It can define what we believe we are capable of; filling out mind with what could have been, what we did wrong, what we wish we could change and so on…”

How your story turns up in your daily life

Often our story doesn’t turn up as a literal voice in our head narrating away. Most often it turns up more subtly in our body and daily actions. It turns up as instinctive feelings and emotions arising in response to the events of the day. If you listen to yourself talking to people, you will hear it in the things that you say, perhaps more importantly in the tone of voice that you use, and the body language that you adopt when saying it. So, what I am saying here is that, although our story is active within us all the time, mostly it turns up implicitly and unconsciously, without our being fully aware of it.

Listening to and observing your story

If you can start picking up cues about your story from your feelings, behavioral reactions and so forth, you can then start to find out the ‘narratives’ behind them. For example, if I notice that often avoid or shy away from confrontations, I can be curious about why that is. I can then enquire within myself about why that is. Listening to the responses I might get answers such as:

“I don’t like being disapproved of, it reminds me of being powerless in the face of stern adults when I was a child”
“I already often find life overwhelming, to confront would only make things worse”
“I hate feeling disliked and judged by others, to confront would risk experiencing this”
I’m afraid that I will be violent if I really express how I feel in a confrontational situation

Simply becoming aware of, accepting, and observing this inner narrative, making it into an object, rather than a subject of awareness can be a powerful step in itself toward becoming free from it.

Putting it down

Having recognised it and observed this aspect of our story, we can than practice dropping it for periods of time. We do this simply by entering into the present moment without the burden of our story, experiencing the freedom of becoming a person without a story, a man or woman of no rank.

Re-telling it

Putting your story down also gives you a space where you can introduce a new story, a new narrative that liberates you from the prison or limitations of the old one. It opens doors rather than closes them. For example, in the case of confrontation, you can look for people who are good with confrontation and model them in your approach. You can rework the wording of your narrative

“Disapproval from others isn’t such a big deal, in fact sometimes it can be a good sign…”
“Confrontations in the present are not linked to my past childhood experiences. I can choose a new way of asserting myself as an adult”
“I can use this experience to build confidence around non-violent ways to deal with confronters and bullies”

And so on…

Being it

The final stage then is to practice doing it and embodying your new story in daily life. By doing so you can gradually go about re-modelling the story of your life into one that you look forward to engaging with each day, and that energises both your experience of the moment, and your visions for the future.

Related reading: Change your idea, change yourself – (Five stages to) Working creatively with your self-concept
Mindfully dropping (and picking up) your story
Making Objects of Your Subjects

© Toby Ouvry 2025, 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 classes & workshops

Ongoing on Tuesday’s & Wednesday’s (live & online), 7.30-8.30pm – Weekly integral meditation classes

Saturday 25th October, 9am-12.30pm – Finding Freedom From What Holds You Back in Life: Practical meditations & techniques for working with your shadow-self

Starts Tuesday 11^th & 12^th November, 7.30-8.30pm – Going beyond your limitations, tapping into your hidden strengths – Meditating with your bright shadow, a 6-week course

Starts Saturday 5.30-6.15pm SG time – Bright shadow meditation Deep-dive – A 5 session practice series

21 Nov & 28th Nov, 8am-12pm – The wisdom of Zen meditation practice retreat & course, levels 1&2

Saturday 22nd November, 9am-12.30pm – Meditations for Developing the Language of Your Shadow Self Workshop

Saturday 29th November, 7-9pm – Living Life From Your Inner Center – Meditations for Going With the Flow of the Present Moment

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

Integral Meditation Asia

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

Tags inner growth, integral meditation, integral meditation asia, integral mindfulness, meditation, meditation in singapore, mindfulness, mindfulness in Singapore, mindfulness meditation, power of mind, shadow, shadow mindfulness, your story

Energy Meditation Inner vision Integral Awareness Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Life-fullness Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques mind body connection Presence and being present Shadow meditation Stress Transformation

Change your idea, change yourself – Working creatively with your self-concept

Post author By Toby
Post date November 5, 2025

“We can learn to relate creatively to our self-concept in a way that opens doors, rather than closes them. The older we get, the more important this creative capacity becomes”

Dear Integral Meditators,

This week’s article explores a creative & psycho-dynamic meditation form. The stages of it form the basis of my upcoming weekday & Saturday series on ‘how to work with your bright shadow’. If you enjoy the article, then do consider attending one program, or even both of them!

In the spirit of opening to possibilities,

Toby

Change your idea, change yourself – (Five stages to) Working creatively with your self-concept

By the time you get to adulthood, your dominant sense of self, at least for most people, is an idea. This idea is called your ‘self-concept.’ It is a dynamic collection of conditioned beliefs, assimilated past experiences, habitual emotional states, absorbed philosophies, learned behaviour and so on that you identify as ‘me’.

“I am an extrovert”/introvert
“I am an Asian/European/African and therefore I can/can’t….”
“I’m an optimist/pessimist”
“I am good at/not good at…”

You get the idea. Your self-concept is just an idea of who you are, but it is an idea that you are completely or at least very closely identified with. It defines most of how you turn up, how you behave and what you feel yourself to be capable of.
Furthermore, your self-concept has two parts, conscious and unconscious. The conscious part of yourself concept is your self-image. The unconscious part is the part that is not acceptable to your self-image, and that you repress and reject. Any part of your self-concept that you don’t like or feel threatened by, you can push into your unconscious, where it becomes a part of your shadow, or dis-owned self.

What I outline below is a way of working creatively with your self-concept, to open possibilities, rather than close them. By doing so it becomes possible to relate to our idea of ourself in a way that opens doors, rather than closes them particularly, but not only as we find ourselves getting older.

For this work, it is a good idea to take a specific area of your life and self-concept, bearing it in mind as you work your way though the five stages below…

Step one, observing – noticing the narrative, conceptual and non-conceptual

Firstly, take the position of the observer in your field of awareness, and practice, observing, listening to and accepting this part of your self-concept, and your close identification with it. For example, if you are taking your idea of self-as-parent:

Notice the commentary within you about what a parent should or shouldn’t be, and how you are measuring up
Observe the emotional range coming up within you, and your judgements about those emotions
Accept whatever arises as fully as you can

At this stage I find working on accepting and observing with the qualities of curiosity, courage and care to be particularly useful.

Step two, dis-identifying – dropping the labels, badges, and roles

Secondly, practice putting down, or dis-identifying with all the labels, roles and badges that are involved in this part or aspect of your self-concept. Practice becoming a man or woman. A person of no-rank, no position in life. Practice just being a being, and enjoying the freedom of that space.

Step three, imagining – exploring new ideas of self-in-role

From your position as a person of no-rank, explore new ideas, and possibilities of yourself in the role you are working on (parenting, romantic partner, professional, etc…). Connect to new ideas and possibilities that you might integrate into this area of yourself in this role.

Step four encountering – meeting and communicating with your new self

Visualize the self that you have imagined in step three as a person in front of you. S/he looks very much like you, but embodies the qualities that you have been imagining. As you see this person in front of you, invite a communication. Ask them a question such as:

What are you asking of me right now?
How can I integrate you more fully into my daily life?
What is your perspective on this situation/problem that I am facing right now??

Have a chat and see what transpires!

Step five role-playing – developing yourself in your new role

Imagine the ‘self’ in front of you steps toward you. Imagine you step toward them. Another step and you step into each other, and merge. Experience yourself AS this newly imagined self, BE them.

Once you have finished the meditation, work on role-playing this new self into your daily life. Meet your challenges AS them, particularly with regard to the specific roles you identified in step 2 above.

Related articles: Why we may repress our strengths – six reasons
The bright shadow, the one who can do what you cannot do

© Toby Ouvry 2025, 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 classes & workshops

Ongoing on Tuesday’s & Wednesday’s (live & online), 7.30-8.30pm – Weekly integral meditation classes

Ongoing Tuesday & Weds September, 7.30-8.30pm, – Integral Meditation from the Perspective of Zen – A 10 week series

Ongoing Saturdays 5.30-6.15pm – Zen meditation Deep-dive – A 10 session practice series

Saturday 25th October, 9am-12.30pm – Finding Freedom From What Holds You Back in Life: Practical meditations & techniques for working with your shadow-self

Starts Tuesday 11^th & 12^th November, 7.30-8.30pm – Going beyond your limitations, tapping into your hidden strengths – Meditating with your bright shadow, a 6-week course

Starts Saturday 5.30-6.15pm SG time – Bright shadow meditation Deep-dive – A 5 session practice series

21 Nov & 28th Nov, 8am-12pm – The wisdom of Zen meditation practice retreat & course, levels 1&2

Saturday 22nd November, 9am-12.30pm – Meditations for Developing the Language of Your Shadow Self Workshop

Saturday 29th November, 7-9pm – Living Life From Your Inner Center – Meditations for Going With the Flow of the Present Moment

Tags inner growth, integral meditation, integral meditation asia, integral mindfulness, meditation, meditation in singapore, mindfulness, mindfulness in Singapore, mindfulness meditation, power of mind, self-concept, shadow meditation

A Mind of Ease Awareness and insight Integral Awareness Life-fullness Meditation techniques Mindful Resilience Mindfulness Presence and being present Zen Meditation

Finding inner space within your mind by focusing on outer spaces

Post author By Toby
Post date October 13, 2025

“Normally, when we walk into a room, it is the objects in the room that we notice, when by far the biggest element in the room is the space, and the light or darkness in it”

Dear Integral Meditators,

This week’s newsletter features an article I wrote originally all the way back in 2010 which I have updated. If you enjoy it, it will be a part of the focus for this week’s Tues/Weds or Saturday Zen meditations.

In the spirit of inner space,

Toby

PS: Final shout out of this Friday morning’s The wisdom of Zen meditation practice retreat & course

Finding inner space within your mind by focusing on outer spaces

An ongoing motivation for both beginners’ starting meditation and those who are more experienced practitioners is the need to create and preserve a sense of space within our mind which we can relax into and use to keep the rest of our busy lives in perspective.
One technique I use regularly that I find creates a sense of inner space very quickly is to focus on an awareness of the outer spaces that exist in our physical environment. The mind basically becomes like what it focuses upon, so when you focus on an outer physical space, this in turn quite naturally starts to give rise to a sense of an inner space within our mind. Here is one example of a way in which you can do this:

Making your mind BIG

We have been using this technique recently in the class I facilitate. Once you have sat down in a comfortable posture, become aware of the sky and stars up above you and the earth beneath you, allow your awareness to become big and open like the sky above you, and vast solid and stable like the Earth beneath you.
After you have done this, extend your mind horizontally around you, out to the horizon of the land, to the north, east, south and west. Extend your awareness as far out as you can to feel the curve of the Earth’s surface all about you. Now you have a sense of your mind as being BIG, and spacious, taking in the vast physical spaces all around you.
Stay with this feeling for as long as you like, let yourself relax as much as possible into your sense of the big space all around you; above, below, and extending out into the for directions of the horizontal/horizonal plane.
If you do this for a while, you will find quite quickly that a sense of inner space and calm arises within your mind. By focusing on the big space outside, you start to feel the big space inside!

Smaller space focus

You can also do the above exercise in a similar way but with a much smaller space, such as the room that you might be sitting in. Normally, when we walk into a room, it is the objects in the room that we notice, when by far the biggest element in the room is the space in the room, and the light or darkness in it. We can make our mind much more spacious in a short period of time by relaxing into an awareness of the outer space of the room, and let it create a corresponding sense of inner space within us.

A final point here is that I have found that this meditation helps ANY problem that I may be facing and that I am concerned about. When your mind feels big, then problems seem much more manageable. In a small mind consumed by itself and its own challenges, even small issues can take on a distorted life of their own!

© Toby Ouvry 2025, 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 Meditating with the bright shadow:

Upcoming workshops & series’ on the shadow & the golden shadow

Starts Tuesday 11^th & 12^th November, 7.30-8.30pm – Going beyond your limitations, tapping into your hidden strengths – Meditating with your bright shadow, a 6-week course

Saturday 25th October, 9am-12.30pm – Finding Freedom From What Holds You Back in Life: Practical meditations & techniques for working with your shadow-self

Saturday 22nd November, 9am-12.30pm – Meditations for Developing the Language of Your Shadow Self Workshop

All upcoming classes & workshops

Ongoing on Tuesday’s & Wednesday’s (live & online), 7.30-8.30pm – Weekly integral meditation classes

Ongoing Tuesday & Weds September, 7.30-8.30pm, – Integral Meditation from the Perspective of Zen – A 10 week series

Ongoing Saturdays 5.30-6.15pm – Zen meditation Deep-dive – A 10 session practice series

17 Oct 2025, 8am-12pm & 21 Nov 2025, 8am-12pm – The wisdom of Zen meditation practice retreat & course, levels 1&2

Saturday 29th November, 7-9pm – Living Life From Your Inner Center – Meditations for Going With the Flow of the Present Moment

Tags inner growth, integral meditation, integral meditation asia, integral mindfulness, meditation, meditation in singapore, mindfulness, mindfulness in Singapore, mindfulness meditation, power of mind

Awareness and insight creative imagery Essential Spirituality Insight Meditation Integral Awareness Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Meditating on the Self Meditation techniques Mindfulness Presence and being present Primal Spirituality Zen Meditation

Host & guest – Zen Witnessing

Post author By Toby
Post date September 23, 2025

Dear Integral Meditators,

The Host and guest is a traditional Zen analogy for the for the stages of the path from an un-awakened to awakened state. Its a simple blueprint that can inform you at any level of your inner growth, particularly if you are an active meditator.

If you enjoy it, you’d be welcome to join this week’s Tues/Weds or Saturday Zen meditations, where we will be exploring Host & guest in the sessions.

In the spirit of ,

Toby

Host & guest – Zen Witnessing

The Host and guest is a traditional Zen analogy for the for the stages of the path from an un-awakened to awakened state. The image is taken from the Surangama sutra, where ‘Host’ means emptiness, our essence, the nature of mind, while ‘guest’ means phenomena, or the content of consciousness.

The Host, consciousness itself, the Witness

If you look at your awareness from moment to moment, there are things that are changing within it, and there is something that is not changing. The thing that is not changing is the experience of awareness itself – that which is aware of and watches the content of consciousness coming and going. This is why it is often called the ‘the Witness self’. In the analogy it is the ‘Host’ because it is the permanent, or fixed resident in our consciousness. The contents of consciousness are like the guests in an Inn or hotel, coming and going in a transient manner. Contrastingly, consciousness itself, or the Witness Self is like the proprietor of the Inn, the ‘permanent resident’ so to speak.

The guest – the content of our consciousness

The content of our consciousness is essentially:

Our body and sensory experience, the outer word
Our mind, thought perceptions and inner world
The feelings and emotions that attend/arise from our physical and mental worlds

Unlike our observer consciousness, our outer experiences, thoughts and emotions come and go, like the guests of the Inn.

Part of the emphasis on being present in the moment, both in Zen and in meditation more generally, is so that we can start watching our awareness, and distinguish between the Host and guest in our own being and consciousness. By doing this we can start to effect a transformation of our identity that has four stages:

Stage 1: The guest within the guest
This stage of development refers to the un-awakened person, whose identity completely revolves around the guest, and who has no awareness whatever of the Host.

Stage 2: The guest within the Host
This stage refers to the initial stages of our meditation. At this stage our identity often still gets lost in the guest; in our thoughts, feelings, and body. However, we are aware of a ‘higher or deeper level’ of being, the Host, and our life begins to be informed by it.

Stage 3: The Host within the Guest.
At this stage out sense of self has substantially transitioned to the Host, which becomes is the main driving force in our life and actions. The guest still occasionally becomes unhappy and tries to take charge, but by this time the Host is usually in the driving seat.

Stage 4: The Host within the Host.
At this stage we have achieved a stable experience of enlightenment; our identity is firmly centered in the Host, and it is the Host that always guides the activities of the guest. We are no longer caught up in the illusory games of the guest, but are able to use our transient ego as an expression of our formless enlightened nature.

Some of the Pertinent questions to ourselves in our meditation and daily life to start centering ourselves around the Host:

Where is my identity focused right now, within the Host or guest?
Which aspects of the guest (thoughts/mind, senses) does my sense of self most often get mixed up in?
Where is the Host within me right now?

The journey of Zen is one that takes us from our current obsessional identity with the form level of our being to a core identity based around Consciousness itself, the Host. It is an unfolding PROCESS that progressively reveals the Enlightened nature that is already within us, here and now.

Related article: Witnessing the witness

© Toby Ouvry 2025, 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

Tags host & guest, inner growth, integral meditation, integral meditation asia, integral mindfulness, meditation, meditation in singapore, mindfulness, mindfulness in Singapore, mindfulness meditation, power of mind, Zen, Zen meditation

A Mind of Ease creative imagery Energy Meditation Inner vision Integral Awareness Life-fullness Meditation techniques Mindful Resilience Mindfulness Presence and being present Primal Spirituality Zen Meditation

Sitting unself-consciously – The primal pre-present

Post author By Toby
Post date September 15, 2025

“Sit unself-consciously, like a tree – Birds come to eat and nest. Animals rest in its shade. Yet the tree does not know itself. It follows its own nature. It is as it is.”

Dear Integral Meditators,

Cultivating unself-consciousness & living a conscious life may sound like a bit of a contradiction, but bringing them together is a great way to make your meditation & life more effortless & natural!

If you enjoy it, you’d be welcome to join this week’s Tues/Weds or Saturday Zen meditations, where we will be exploring the pre-present moment as a gateway to meditation.

In the spirit of natural-ness,

Toby

PS: This Saturday: The Six Healing sounds: Qi gong for Self-Healing & Inner Balance Workshop

Sitting unself-consciously – The primal pre-present

In my previous article on the four types of present moment awareness I define the primal pre-present as:

“Essentially the “present moment” before we had any idea of time. We could also think about it as being the “pre-conceptual present.” Babies are always in the pre-present moment, because their minds have not developed the power of conceptuality, they have no idea of what the past or future is, and so their mind remains placed firmly in the here and now, before time existed! Likewise, animals live in the pre-present because they have non-conceptual minds. Similarly trees and rocks can be thought of as abiding in the pre-present, the time before concepts and before the past and future came into existence”

Meditating on the pre-present enables us to:

relax, returning to a state of innocent awareness
tap into a state of deep regeneration and re-energization

We ourselves can meditate on the pre-present simply by:

deeply observing a (peaceful) baby, or an animal
sitting quietly in a landscape and just dropping our sense of time temporarily, becoming like a tree or a rock or a baby, with a mind that has forgotten all sense of time and abides in the peaceful space of the pre-present, the pre-time

The pre-present, the eternal present & non-duality

Dropping into the pre-present enables us to access the non-dual, or Eternal Present, which is the recognition that everything that is happening is always happening NOW. To quote again from my previous article:

“The eternal present in many ways resembles the primal pre-present, but to be able to really appreciate and value the eternal present we must have gone into conceptual time, understood and lived within it, and then see through its illusion. You could say that the eternal present is the post-transient present.
Meditating on the eternal present gives us maturity of vision, depth of perception, a sense of everything possessing its own natural perfection, and opens us up to our first classical “enlightenment experiences”.
We can meditate on the eternal present by simply recognizing that every aspect of our experience right here right now is contained within the embrace of the eternal present, and learn to relax our awareness into that ever present, eternal space”

Two quotes for meditating unself-consciously

A nice way to approach the above two types of present is to simply meditate unself-consciously, placing yourself in a state that is natural, close to nature and non-conceptual.

A mountain poem

Imagine yourself sitting on the side of a mountain. Imagine your body and the mountain merge, be the mountain. From the Chinese poet Li Bai:

“The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.”

The second quote is a favourite of mine from the Forest Monk teacher Ajahn Chah:

“People have asked me about my practice. How do I prepare my mind for meditation? There is nothing special, I just keep it where it always is. They ask “Are you an Arhant?” (Liberated being) Do I know? I am like a tree in the forest, full of leaves, blossoms and fruit. Birds come to eat and nest. Animals rest in its shade. Yet the tree does not know itself. It follows its own nature. It is as it is.”

Sit naturally, forget yourself, follow your own nature, as you are.

Related article: Scratching out your name card, & other gateways to Zen meditation

© Toby Ouvry 2025, 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

All upcoming classes & workshops

Ongoing on Tuesday’s & Wednesday’s (live & online), 7.30-8.30pm – Weekly integral meditation classes

Tuesday 2nd & 3rd September, 7.30-8.30pm, & then weekly – Integral Meditation from the Perspective of Zen – A 10 week series

Saturday 6th September, 5.30-6.15pm, & then weekly – Zen meditation Deep-dive – A 10 session practice series

Saturday 20th September, 5.30-6.30pm – Autumn equinox balancing & renewing meditation

Saturday 20th September, 9am 12.30pm – The Six Healing sounds: Qi gong for Self-Healing & Inner Balance Workshop

17 Oct 2025, 8am-12pm & 21 Nov 2025, 8am-12pm – The wisdom of Zen meditation practice retreat & course, levels 1&2

Saturday 29th November, 7-9pm – Living Life From Your Inner Center – Meditations for Going With the Flow of the Present Moment

Tags inner growth, integral meditation, integral meditation asia, integral mindfulness, meditation, meditation in singapore, mindfulness, mindfulness in Singapore, mindfulness meditation, power of mind, present moment, primal present, Zen meditation

A Mind of Ease creative imagery Energy Meditation Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Life-fullness Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques mind body connection Mindful Confidence Presence and being present Zen Meditation

Moving from center – a diagram of how meditation works

Post author By Toby
Post date September 8, 2025

“A meditator sits in the hub of the wheel without being lost in the spinning”

Moving from center – a diagram of how meditation works

In this short piece I want to show you and explain a diagram that I draw frequently in my workshops, organizational trainings. It’s a way of explaining how meditation makes things better for those that practice it. it is called ‘Moving from centre’.

Moving from center

In the diagram you can see there are two circles, both represent someone’s consciousness in daily life and then patterns that it flows in. Here we might define meditation as ‘a way of moving back to your center’;

back to the present moment
back to awareness of your body and breath
back to the central reason you are doing something
back to what you were intending to focus upon
back to what is most important

All of these are examples of ‘coming back to center’ as a meditative act.

The top circle represents someone who does not meditate, or who has no mechanism for moving regularly back to their inner-center. You can see that basically their pattern of consciousness is basically a big squiggle; all their activities, and the thoughts, emotions and impulses that accompany them are all getting mixed up. One activity bleeds into another, one thought leads sideways to another unrelated thought. Emotional states from work come back home at night, worries from home come into your work activities.

Mr Messy

When I was a child there was a character in a story called Mr Messy. He was a guy who was completely chaotic, and whose body was basically just a big squiggle. Many peoples mind and energies are like this, which is tiring and inefficient, but also not a lot of fun…

In the second circle, you can see that the pattern of consciousness has changed, there is now a center-point with lines leaving and returning from it. At the end of these lines are little squiggles, representing daily activities, physical, mental emotional. This is the pattern of consciousness of a meditator. S/he may not be doing anything different from the person in the first diagram, but the way in which their consciousness relates to the activity is different, Going something like this:

Wake-up, center, make breakfast, organize,get kids to school, center
Off to work, staying centered during commute, arrive relaxed and ready
Center around the first task of the day, relax into it
Have a challenging meeting, heated conversation, difficult emotions, center afterward
Lunch, use food to center, aware of but not lost in emotions from meeting
Afternoon, center around first activity, relax into it
Going home, center, don’t carry work into interactions with family
Center around the dinner, reflect on the day

….and so it goes on, the same day, but experienced differently. A meditator sits in the hub of the wheel without being lost in the spinning. They center in the eye of the storm as it blows around them. When you go through life moving to and from center, the sense of harmony and balance that comes from this results in a profound change. The externals don’t change, the internal strong emotions and mental busyness comes and goes like it did before, but we experience it differently.

Welcome to the world of the meditator.

Last week’s article: Scratching out your name card, & other gateways to Zen meditation

© Toby Ouvry 2025, 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

All upcoming classes & workshops

Ongoing on Tuesday’s & Wednesday’s (live & online), 7.30-8.30pm – Weekly integral meditation classes

Saturday 20th September, 9am 12.30pm – The Six Healing sounds: Qi gong for Self-Healing & Inner Balance Workshop

17 Oct 2025, 8am-12pm & 21 Nov 2025, 8am-12pm – The wisdom of Zen meditation practice retreat & course, levels 1&2

Saturday 29th November, 7-9pm – Living Life From Your Inner Center – Meditations for Going With the Flow of the Present Moment

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Scratching out your name card, & other gateways to Zen

Post author By Toby
Post date September 1, 2025

“What might happen if you temporarily put down your identification with the job title that you carry on your name card, you just scratched it out for a while?”

Dear Integral Meditators,

On the 23^rd of August I led a Zen meditation on the ‘Man or woman of no rank’ at the One Heart open day. This theme is one of what I like to call ‘the gateways of Zen’, you can listen to the meditation we did by clicking on the link.

In the article below I talk a little about the idea of the person of no rank, and share a short story related to it. If you enjoy the meditation & the article, then do consider participating in the Zen sessions that start this week, weekdays, or Saturdays, or both. You can participate in person, online or via the recordings!

In the spirit of label-less-ness,

Toby

PS: Full details of all events in September below article!

Scratching out your name card, & other gateways to Zen meditation

What might happen if you temporarily put down your identification with the job title that you carry on your name card, You just scratched it out for a while?
What would happen if you did something similar with other roles that you identify with;

Your family roles as a parent, child, or sibling?
Your identification with gender roles, nationality of culture?
Your age, your personality ‘type’?
The story that you carry around with you almost all the time?
What if you even forgot your name?

To put down your labels in this way is to become a ‘man or woman of no rank, and is one of the gateways to Zen. The traditional story below illustrates this quite vividly.

Zen Story: The Governor’s Card

In the city of Kyoto, there lived a great Zen master called Keichu. He was the head of Tofoku, a huge cathedral in the city. Keichu held sway over his jurisdiction and was well-respected for his astute perceptiveness.
When Kitagaki took over as the Governor of the city of Kyoto, he heard much about Keichu’s wisdom. Deciding to pay his respects, Kitagaki called upon Keichu one evening. Upon reaching the cathedral, Kitagaki presented his business card to Keichu’s attendant and asked for an audience with the Zen Master. The attendant asked Kitagaki to wait and went inside to give the card to Keichu.
“Master, there is someone here to see you,” the attendant announced.
“Who is it?” Keichu asked.
The attendant gave Keichu the Governor’s calling card which read: Kitagaki, Governor of Kyoto.
“I have nothing to do with this fellow!” bellowed Keichu, throwing the card in disgust. “Tell him to leave right away!” he said, turning to the attendant. The attendant picked up the calling card and dashed to the hall where Kitagaki was waiting. “My apologies, dear Sir,” he said. “The Master does not wish to see you,” he told the Governor, remorsefully returning his card.
Kitagaki was startled. He took his card and was about to leave when he read the words on his card. Realizing his folly at once, the Governor took a pencil and scratched out something from his card. “That was my mistake,” he told the attendant, giving him the calling card again. “Would you please be kind enough to ask your Master one more time?”
The attendant returned to Keichu’s chamber and handed him the Governor’s card again. The card now simply read: Kitagaki. The Governor had scratched out the words, ‘Governor of Kyoto.’
Keichu read the card and his eyes lit up.
“Oh, it is Kitagaki? Yes, I would like to see him now; send him in please!” he told his attendant.
And that’s how the Governor of Kyoto got an audience with the Zen Master Keichu.

Related reading: Becoming a man or woman of no rank
Meditation spaghetti western style

© Toby Ouvry 2025, 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

All upcoming classes & workshops

Ongoing on Tuesday’s & Wednesday’s (live & online), 7.30-8.30pm – Weekly integral meditation classes

Saturday 20th September, 9am 12.30pm – The Six Healing sounds: Qi gong for Self-Healing & Inner Balance Workshop

17 Oct 2025, 8am-12pm & 21 Nov 2025, 8am-12pm – The wisdom of Zen meditation practice retreat & course, levels 1&2

Saturday 29th November, 7-9pm – Living Life From Your Inner Center – Meditations for Going With the Flow of the Present Moment

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Being self-determining vs receiving help

Post author By Toby
Post date July 28, 2025

“I am not the center of the universe; but I am the center of my universe”

Dear <<First Name>>,

This week’s article explores the relationship between mindful self-responsibility & receiving help from others. Another way of thinking about this is the interface between your intra-personal dynamic (relation to self), & your inter-personal dynamic (relation to others & the world). I hope you enjoy it!

In the spirit of self-determination,

Toby

Being self-determining vs receiving help

You are not the center of the Universe, but you are the center of your life

I’ve written quite a lot in the past about becoming a self-determining entity. Self-determination means recognizing that you are the most powerful force in your life (not in the universe, just your life!), and to take ownership of that power. This then enables you to direct your life creatively toward the good. It means recognizing two positions that help to balance each other:

I am not the center of the universe, so I can relax and stop being so neurotic about all my relatively insignificant problems and challenges
I am the centre of my universe, so what I chose and do is of vital and central importance to my life. It’s not anyone else’s job to ‘save’ me, I need to be the master of my own ship!

Becoming self-directed

‘No one is coming to save me’ is one of my ‘quotes to live by’. I find that in difficult situations, stopping looking outside of myself for help and just focusing on what I can control, and what I can do for myself is both calming and empowering. It is not a shutting off from outside help, it is just a clear recognition that it’s really my job to look after my life and its direction. It’s not:

Not my Mum’s job
Not my partners
Not my business-partners
Not my children
Not my friends
Not my boss’s
Not my employees

It’s my job and responsibility to work through and work out the challenges in my life to the best of my ability, and I do in fact have some ability!

Although no one is coming to save me, many people may like to help!

Becoming self-directed means that we are not looking for someone outside of ourself to save us, and we are doing what we can to move forward in our life challenges. The paradox of this is that, when other people see us being like this, it is an attractive quality. People tend to like and even feel inspired by others that they see being pro-active, intentional, and taking responsibility for themselves. Consequently, even though we may not be asking for help, quite often we find friends, family and colleagues offering help and assistance freely and happily. So, there is a virtuous cycle that gets established between being self-determining and receiving help.

Abandoning your power, cutting yourself off from assistance?

There are two ‘extreme’ positions that we are trying to avoid here:

Being a victim, not trying to help ourselves effectively, and over-asking, or expecting others to solve our challenges
Becoming so narrow in our sense of self-determination that we cut ourself off from the assistance of others, even if it is freely offered, and would be of help to us

Being self-determining doesn’t exclude ever asking for help, or accepting it when offered. It just means that we are taking solid responsibility for ourself, and being personally pro-active. Becoming self-determining even includes getting good at asking for help when appropriate.

In conclusion then, being a self-determining person, and receiving / asking for help can be seen as complementary capacities that when put together make our life both easier and fuller of creative potential!

Related article: Becoming a Self-determining entity – Five stages to mindful self-leadership
© Toby Ouvry 2025, 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

All upcoming classes & workshops

Ongoing on Tuesday’s & Wednesday’s (live & online), 7.30-8.30pm – Weekly integral meditation classes

Ongoing Tuesday & Wednesday’s weekly, 7.30-8.30pm – Embodied Transformation – An integrative introduction to Tantric meditation

Ongoing on Saturdays weekly, 5.30-6.15pm – Embodied Transformation – Saturday Tantric deep-dive meditation sessions

Saturday 16th July, 9am-12.30pm – Breathwork Workshop – Improve physical health, wellbeing & inner peace though deep breathing

Saturday 23rd August, 3-4.30pm – One Heart Open Day: Sound of Zen meditation with singing bowls

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Inter-connected or over-connected?

Post author By Toby
Post date July 21, 2025

“Reduce your device time & increase time spent enquiring into interdependence to go from feeling ‘over-connected & lonely’ to ‘Inter-connected & supported’”

Dear Integral Meditators,

I’ve recently facilitated some corporate workshops on ‘Digital Detox for Corporate Professionals: Reclaiming Focus and Productivity’. Creating this workshop & seeing people’s response to it has really opened my eye’s to how chronic the problems around overuse of devices are for us these days. In the article below I explore a simple flip to go from ‘over-connected, overwhelmed & lonely’ to ‘inter-connected & supported’. I hope you enjoy it!

I’m almost completed with the new meditation programs starting in August/September, you can see the full line up in the Whats On section beneath the article.

In the spirit of connected,

Toby

Inter-connected or over-connected?

What is my relationship to the world? Is a question is one worth asking yourself and seeing what sort of answers and perceptions come back to you. Your sense of your relationship to the world is fundamental, it forms the basis of most of your other perceptions, choices and experiences in life. For many people, the temptation is to experience ourself as someone coming into life from the outside, an outsider who dies not belong, and has to ‘fight’ to earn their place. Life is a battle to belong, rather than an enjoyment of your sense of already belonging.
A ’flip’ that I continue to enjoy is that of being born from life, rather than into it. To quote from a previous article on the subject:

“Our relationship to it is like that of an apple or a leaf to an apple tree. The apple emerges from the Life of the tree itself, not as something separate from the tree. The life of the tree gives rise to the apple. The apple arises from the tree itself, in the same way that the tree came from the life in the apple that it grew from.
You are like the apple being born from the apple tree. The life in you is a part of Life, you are an expression of Life, and Life is you.”

Being ‘born from life’ gives us a sense of effortless belonging, which is a great and un-lonely place to begin feeling into our connection of self-to-world.

Observing interdependence – Inter-connected & supported

We can strengthen our sense of feeling connected to the world by seeing, through contemplation, the way in which we are all interconnected. There are innumerable ways in which we can do this, to give three short examples:

I am writing this article on my parents dining table. To be able to use this table I rely on the carpenters that made it, the wood supplier, the trees it came from (and by implication the forest, not to mention my parents’ hospitality!
I can do the same thing with the computer that I am writing on; so many people involved in the supply chains that put the machine together, created the software and so forth, for me to then buy and use relatively effortlessly
I’ve just finished a coffee whilst writing. Again, to get the coffee to me relies upon the water from the tap, the coffee supply chain, the supermarket, the coffee plant, the land that the coffee plant grew on…

In any aspect of my life, if I start to look at the interdependence that doing what I am doing relies upon, my wisdom-eyes open, and I start to see how intimately and fully I am connected to everything else in the world. From this comes gratitude of course, but also a fundamental reduction in my loneliness. I am always inter-connected, and in this way never alone in a lonely way!

Over-connected & lonely

The above two states of being and feeling interconnected contrast sharply with the experience of many people who are what you might call ‘over-connected’ through their phones and being online all the time. Our devices enable us to be ‘connected’ and ‘in-touch’ all the time, however this experience paradoxically leads many to feel lonely, left-out (and afraid of being left out), isolated and yet compulsively over-connected.

A few practice points:

Reduce, and manage wisely the amount of time you stay connected to the world through your devices
Use the amount of time you save from reduced device time to develop the wisdom of interconnectedness and belonging outlined in sections one and two of this article. This wisdom does not need to be hard work, it’s really just about grounding yourself in the recognition of it. Your inter-connection is fed easily and gently by the recognition!

© Toby Ouvry 2025, 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 23rd August, 3-4.30pm – One Heart Open Day: Sound of Zen meditation with singing bowls

Tuesday 2nd & 3rd September, 7.30-8.30pm, & then weekly – Integral Meditation from the Perspective of Zen – A 10 week series

Saturday 20th September, 5.30-6.30pm – Autumn equinox balancing & renewing meditation

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