Category: Integral Awareness

Categories
creative imagery Energy Meditation Inner vision Integral Awareness Life-fullness meditation and creativity Meditation techniques Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness Stress Transformation

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

Integral Meditation Asia

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

Categories
A Mind of Ease Inner vision Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Life-fullness Meditating on the Self meditation and creativity Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Self-Leadership Presence and being present

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

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

Integral Meditation Asia

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

Categories
Awareness and insight creative imagery Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Life-fullness Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Self-Leadership Presence and being present

Integrating reality & symbolic reality

“Much of what we take for our reality are just mental symbols about reality. Reality itself is something different, something that must be experienced directly”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

There are two ways in which you can use the article below. The first is by reading it and using the example as a way of exploring it in meditation. The second is, having understood the basic idea simply ask yourself the question:

“What do I notice about the inter-relationship between my symbolic reality & reality itself?”

Then just watch your experience mindfully for a period of time & see what you start to notice.
 
Between this message and the article is the events list for June, starting with this weekend’s stress transformation workshop.
 
In the spirit of integration,

Toby

 

Meditation sessions & workshops with Toby in June: 


Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule
 

Saturday 8th June, 9.30am-12.30pm – Meditations for Transforming Negativity and Stress into Energy, Positivity and Enlightenment Workshop

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

Mindfulness for emotional intelligence masterclass – Saturday 22nd June, 10am-12noon

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

Article: Integrating reality & symbolic reality



 
Thinking – the manipulation of symbols
What is thinking really? There are several ways of answering this, I’d like to focus here on thinking as essentially a way of creating and manipulating symbols about our reality. Thinking is not reality itself, but arrangements of symbols representing reality. That’s worth reflecting upon, because when we do, we immediately start to realize that a lot of what we take for our reality is actually just thoughts, or symbols about reality. Reality itself is something different, something that must be experienced directly. This is a main point of meditation, to move beyond our mental symbols, encountering our reality directly, as it is. As the Zen saying goes, “Reality is not what you think!”
 
Integrating symbols & reality

Using symbols to think about reality can either be helpful for us to expand our sense reality, or it can narrow it. One way in which I like to work with mental models or symbols is to take 2-4 mental models of reality, and then cross-reference them. Each model reveals something different and complementary from the other models. When we put them together, you get a richer, more whole and integrated sense of what is be there.
 
A practice involving three models of reality

What I am going to do now is take three models of reality itself from a western religious, Hindu spiritual and Taoist philosophical perspective. Then I will describe how to put them together in a process of mindful enquiry into our experience of reality itself.
 
Model 1: Reality as hierarchical, God at the top, wo/man at the bottom – from a western Christian, (or Hebrew or Islamic) perspective, reality is a hierarchy with God/ Spirit at the top, and humans/earth at the bottom. Our relation to God is that of a servant to a King, and western/middle-eastern religion organizes and expresses itself accordingly. If you think about the Sistine chapel, God is on the roof, man is below (With only hell beneath!). This model can see archaic, but if you look at the way reality organizes itself, it is substantially hierarchical.
 
Model 2: Reality as a drama – in the Hindu & Buddhist model, the world is more like a drama. At the core of every living being is the One Self, or our Buddha Nature. Our outer appearances are like masks in a drama, each personality and aspect playing a role in a drama. Reality is seen as a play of the illusion created by spirit, for the entertainment of spirit.
 
Model 3: Reality as an organism – The Taoist model (the Tao is often described as “the way of nature’) is reality as more organismic in nature; no particular hierarchies, no one thing in charge of creating the rest. Reality is conceived as a network of interrelated parts, moving into and out of balance according to the principle of the Tao (the way) and of yin & yang.
 
So, if you consider each of these three models in turn, you’ll get a sense of the aspects of reality it is trying to describe. Crucially, none of these models are reality itself. Nor are any other approaches, scientific, artistic, sociological, economic etc…Reality is always itself, always a direct experience that we encounter each day.
If you sit quietly with each of these three symbolic representations of reality, cross referencing them with each other, and then with your actual experience of reality, you start to get a rich sense of the wholeness and integration between them, and the relationship between those symbols and reality itself.  If you take a ‘both/and’ rather than an ‘either/or’ approach, the reward is access to an overall sense of wholeness and integration in your life, one that helps us counter the often-pronounced sense of fragmentation and disconnect that characterizes our experience.
 
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

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

Integral Meditation Asia

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

Categories
Inner vision Integral Awareness Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Life-fullness Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness

Individualism, Self-esteem, Universal love – Aspects of rational mindfulness

“Practice looking at your experiences as an observer, like you were a fly on the wall. It gives you space between you and your life, & access to the creative ideas & solutions that suggest themselves when you observe consistently in this way”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

I think of the “rational mindfulness” described below as the lynch-pin between lower & higher stages of consciousness. If you are good at it, it holds together all of the other parts of your consciousness in a benevolent, stable manner. I hope you enjoy it! If you do it will be the subject of this week’s Tuesday & Wednesday class practice.

Heads up for the Wesak Class  next week, 21st & 22nd May, & the Awakening to benevolence & compassion mini-retreat on Saturday the 25th.

Also, I’ve just posted the Stress transformation & Emotional intelligence  workshops for June.

In the spirit of the fly on the wall,

Toby

Individualism, Self-esteem, Universal love – Aspects of rational mindfulness
 
As we grow into our teenage years, if we grow psychologically in a balanced way, we should find the emergence of a third person, or rational-objective perspective starts to emerge. Whereas previously it was all ‘me’, ’mine’, ‘yours’ and ‘ours’, we can now practice standing outside a personal, subjective view. We can consider events and experiences objectively, making assessments based upon that. Several transformations and capabilities come from this. If we can apply them to our sense of self and who we are in the world, then we become a ‘rational’ person in the holistic sense of the world, which is a beautiful thing. What I have done below is list a few of the capabilities of the rational self, with some suggestions regarding how they can be practiced.
 
Being a fly on the wall – Practice looking at yourself and your experiences as an observer, like you were a fly on the wall. This takes you out of your subjective view and into a third person, objective view. Holding this non-judgmental ‘observer position is really the essential mindfulness practice. Doing it gives you space between you and your life, and access to the creative ideas and solutions that suggest themselves when you observe consistently in this way.
 
Goal setting – Thinking about your goals, picturing them in your mind and then working consistently to realize them is a core rational-objective mindful capability. It enables you to move beyond ‘how you feel’ at any given time, and keep on moving forward, gently, and consistently. This can be practised on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis.
 
Compartmentalizing – This practice enables you to separate out the different activities in your life and their attending emotions from each other, so that you can work on each one descreetly at different times. This means that you avoid one activity or emotion from let’s say your personal life interfering with your work life, and vice-versa. This is difficult to do without being able to step back and consider your life objectively.
 
World-centric love and compassion – When you step back and consider yourself and others objectively, you can see that there are many commonalities that we share with all humans and living creatures, and that all of us have basic value and worth. Based upon this objective position, we can develop an even-minded consideration and benevolence for all the people we meet, regardless of whether we know them personally or not. Practiced in this way, rational mindfulness can lead to an explosion of our sense of love and compassion for the world.
 
Individualism and self-esteem – When we stand back from ourselves, we can assess ourself as having a value as an individual, and start to articulate our own goals regarding happiness and fulfilment. We can then take pride in developing our capacity to move toward those goals effectively, and build a good life. This in turn gives us a further sense of self-esteem. Not only this, but we can then take joy in encouraging others to see their own inherent value, and encouraging them to grow and express themselves as individuals.
 
So, whenever you engage in any of these activities, you are helping to develop your holistic rational, third person capacity. Practice them all together and you can grow it in an integrated and balanced manner!

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

Categories
A Mind of Ease Enlightened Flow Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Life-fullness Meditation techniques Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness Presence and being present

Mindful transitioning – Your life as meditation

“Effective mindfulness & meditation is not just about learning to hold particular states in a focused manner, equally importantly it is about the skill of making the transition from one state of mind to another smoothly and ergonomically”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This week’s article looks at making transitions in our consciousness as a practice in itself. There is a huge benefit in getting good at this if you take the time to!

In the Tuesday & Wednesday Meditation class this week we will be meditating on our ‘other & we space’; the capacity to see things from another persons point of view, and also become sensitive to the space that lies between people in couples & groups! 

If you know anyone looking to get their meditation practice started, or if you want to get your own practice rebooted, then I recommend this Saturdays session:Get Your Meditation Practice Started Now – The Shortest and Most Time Effective Meditation Workshop Ever
And also this Saturday those of you interested in Mantra meditation & spiritual healing will enjoy the Medicine Buddha Healing meditation, 11am-12.15pm.
 
In the spirit of mindful transitioning,

Toby

Mindful transitioning
 
Effective mindfulness and meditation are not just about learning to hold particular states in a focused manner. It is also, and equally importantly about the skill of making the transition from one state of mind to another smoothly and ergonomically.
 
What is the best state of mind to be in?
During the day we do many different activities, each of these requires a different state of mindful attention. For example:

  • The optimal state of attention when at dinner with our partner or date is very different from the state of being focused on work at our workstation. One is more functional and quantitative, the other more open and qualitative
  • Being with children requires a different state of mind from being with adults
  • Singular focus on one task is very different from being in a meeting and ‘reading the room’ with our awareness

So, during the day, in order to be mindfully effective, we need to be able to transition from one state or awareness to another appropriately. If we get stuck rigidly in different states, then we are going to struggle to bring our best to the different things we do, perform to our potential and enjoy each activity. It’s a little bit like martial arts or sports; the movement between shots or punches or single-moment activities is as important as the shots themselves!
 
The basic transition & practice
The basic transition that I like to teach in formal meditation is the one from field awareness to single-pointedness. It looks a bit like this:

  • Field-awareness: For five minutes or so take the position of the observer in your field of awareness, and practice watching the totality of what you notice there. This is like moving a camera to the ‘wide-angle’ position of the lens, so that it takes in the whole of the landscape. Practice mindfulness around the ‘big picture’ in this way
  • Then transition to single-pointedness, focus on one thing within your field of awareness in as singular a manner as possible. Obvious examples would be the breathing, or the weight of the body, or the sounds you hear. This is like closing the aperture of your camera lens so that it zooms on just one thing in the landscape of your mind. Practice building that singularity of focus, editing everything else out for five minutes, before transitioning back to field-awareness

If you meditate for twenty minutes, then you would practice transitioning three times, as well as enjoying the benefits of the actual states themselves. If you brought the time down to changing every two minutes then you would really get better quickly at the transitions.
 
Bringing this into daily life
During the day, I transition from field awareness to single-pointedness many times, and the feeling of doing so combines both personal enjoyment as well as a sense of the day running smoothly and effectively.

  • This morning, I took my daughter to school on the bus. On the ride there I was practicing field awareness, keeping an eye on her and her friends, getting of at the right time etc..
  • On the bus back by myself I zoomed into single-pointedness and did a few energy-mantras in a short five minute meditation, transitioning to a ‘just one thing’ state of mind, which was refreshing.
  • At the beginning of the work day, I go into field awareness, looking at the totality of the day and all that needs to be done. Having assessed the order of the day, I then go into single-pointedness on the next task, in this case my weekly article, which I am twenty minutes into and now nearly finished!

To make my life a ‘working samadhi’ or life as meditation, I need to make the transitions described above smoothly, skilfully and appropriately. If I do that, then my life is literally mostly a meditation! When I arrive at my formal daily meditation and sit down, I’m already very close to meditation, so it’s easy and natural to drop into meditation from daily life. Trying the practice described above (field to single-pointedness) for a few minutes each day can really make a radical difference to your transitioning skill, I really recommend it.
 
Related reading: Integrating field-awareness & single pointedness
Working samadhi

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

Categories
Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Integral meditation training pages Meditation and Psychology Uncategorized

Integral Meditation training page: Using distractions, sculpting thoughts & soft body

Dear Integral Meditators,

Welcome to the Using distractions, sculpting thoughts & softening the body training page. In it you will learn how to do this integral meditation combination effectively, & you can then use the meditation recordings & readings below to practice. Scroll down below to

  • Watch the video
  • Listen to the studio quality guided meditations. There is a 20minute & an 8 minute version
  • Read the related article

Each of these practices are fundamental to good meditation technique. Once familiar with them, they will continue to help you in your other meditation practices almost continuously!

In the spirit of meditative presence,

Toby

Intro to the practices:

Guided meditations:

Listen to the Twenty minute using distractions, sculpting thoughts & soft body meditation

Listen to the eight minute using distractions, sculpting thoughts & soft body meditation

Related article: Using distractions, sculpting thoughts, softening the body

The Integral Meditation Training pages are a free resource, but if you feel you have benefitted, & would like to donate to the Integral Meditation training pages & project, you can do so via PayPal or if in Singapore you can do so directly by PayNow on +6596750279. Thanks!

​All content © Toby Ouvry 2024, you are welcome to use or share this page content, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

VIEW OTHER INTEGRAL MEDITATION TRAINING PAGES

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

Integral Meditation Asia

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

Categories
Inner vision Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Life-fullness Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques mind body connection Mindful Resilience Mindfulness Stress Transformation

Your primal self as your object of mindfulness

“As we develop from one stage of growth to another as a person, we leave behind the old self in favour of a more evolved one. This new self-sense them becomes ‘I’ or me, with the previous self-identity becoming part of us that we manage or parent”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This weeks article explores looks at oour early-stage development as an object of mindfulness, & what the benefits of doing so might be. If you like it, do consider joining us on the new adventure starting on 9/10th April: Exploring your hidden maps of consciousness –mindfulness meditation for growing up, either live or online!

This week there will be only one meditation class on Wednesday, & it will be on the subject of single-headness (how to manage your stress more effectively thru mindfulness) & ‘head-lessness‘ which is a kind of non-dual meditation.

In the spirit of primal integration,

Toby


Your primal self as your object of mindfulness
 
As we develop from one stage of growth to another (psychologically) as a person, we leave behind, or objectify the old sense of self, in favour of a more evolved one. This new sense of self them becomes ‘I’ or me, with the previous self-identity becoming a part of us that we manage.
 
Our first sense of self – Basic appetites, fusion confusion
 
The first 18 months of our life is characterized by the absence of a separate self-sense. Initially we are ‘fused’ our environment. Later we start to separate our self-sense physically, but remain for a while longer in a state of emotional fusion with our environment and particularly our mother.  This is a  symbiotic or fusion stage, a bit of a fusion-confusion!
This self-sense is accordingly completely dominated by our physiological needs, food, thirst, warmth, coolness, comfort, discomfort, rest.
 
Addictions & allergies – Yes, we left it behind but…
 
We start to grow out of this fusion-confusion stage from 18 months. As a 51 year old I say “I am hungry” rather than “I am hunger!”. I can distinguish myself physically and emotionally from my environment. However, if I have left parts of me behind at that level, either as a secret identity or as a dissociation, then that can result in an ‘addiction’ or an ‘allergy’. For example, regarding hunger:

  • Addiction: If I still have a part of me still fully identified as being (not having) hunger, then this may result in me having trouble regulating my diet and weight, resulting in extreme cases as obesity
  • Allergy: If I have dissociated myself from hunger, then I may be out of touch with my basic hunger needs, not eating properly and being underweight or undernourished. In extreme cases this might manifest in anorexia or bulimia

Sometimes also you may notice a fusion-confusion type experience with your environment or in your relationships. Public spaces become confusing as your senses ‘merge’ with them, or the emotional space between yourself and others becomes very blurred and difficult to regulate. Some of this may be due to a part of self that has been left behind at the primal stage.
 
Clearing up to grow up more fully using mindfulness
 
From a mindfulness-as-therapy point of view, the essential method is quite simple; you bring to mind basic needs like hunger, thirst, as well as experiences of ‘fusion-confusion’ mentioned above (separately, not all at once!), and practice mindfully observing them, and your relationship to them. The making subjects into objects nature of mindfulness will naturally help start to clear up any allergies or addictions that may remain at this stage…
 
My personal experience of being mindful with this stage
 
Regarding basic appetites I discovered that I tend toward the “allergy” relationship to food, I usually have trouble keeping up my weight, and eating is a discipline rather than a joy. So, it helped me re-balance that which was useful.
Secondly the revisiting the fusion-confusion stage resulted in me feeling a surprising increase in clarity regarding my environmental and relational awareness.
 
Integrating, transcending & including
 
A healthy integration of your primal-self* enables you to create healthy self-regulation of your basic needs & appetites. It also helps create a clear distinction of self from others & environment. We have a healthier ‘separate’ self-sense, but can engage (and withdraw from) conscious ‘fusion’ when appropriate.
 
I’d encourage you to spend some time with this as a practice, it seems initially that we should all have grown fully out or this stage. But if you look at problems humans have around basic appetites and self-regulation like food, we can see that there are huge imbalances there. You may be surprised at how powerful and transformative it is for you. It certainly was for me!
 
*In integral psychology this is level 1 of human psychological development, and termed ‘Infrared archaic’
 
Related content: Subjects to objects – How meditation helps you grow to greater degrees of freedom

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
 


All upcoming classes and workshops at IMA:

Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby (Bukit Timah)

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby  (East Coast)

Starts Tuesday/Wednesday evening 9/10th April – Exploring your hidden maps of consciousness –mindfulness meditation for growing up

Saturday & Sunday April 20th & 21st – Integral Meditation 1.5 Day Retreat

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

Integral Meditation Asia

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

Categories
A Mind of Ease Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditation techniques Mindful Resilience One Minute Mindfulness Presence and being present

Using distractions, sculpting thoughts, softening the body

“Use distractions to remind yourself that you are in the present,

Use your thoughts to sculpt your perception of reality,

Soften your body to still your mind”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This weeks article explores combining three practices into a short meditation form. I find that putting different practices together makes for more interesting and more complete meditation, and this is one such example, enjoy!

In the spirit of integration,

Toby


Starts Tuesday/Wednesday evening 9/10th April – Exploring your hidden maps of consciousness –mindfulness meditation for growing up

In a sentence: Combine all the benefits of a conventional mindfulness practice with the progressive inner growth & transformation of developmental psychology.

Suitable for: Beginners and more advanced practitioners alike. May be of particular interest to those interested in psychology, coaching, philosophy, & how to combine these disciplines with a living, dynamic meditation practice…read full details

Article of the week: Using distractions, sculpting thoughts, softening the body

What I have done in this piece is to put together three practices, ‘Being mindful of the non-present moment’, ‘Sculpting your thoughts’, and ‘Finding strength through softness’ into an integral practice, where they are done together in a single session. You can do them in the order described, or in a different one as you prefer. Using the order presented, you could say do:

  • Five minutes mindfulness of the non-present moment
  • Five minutes mindfulness of sculpting your thoughts
  • Five minutes mindfulness of inner strength through softness

Or you could emphasize one main practice for 10 minutes, and then doing 2/3 of minutes each of the second two.

‘Being mindful of the non-present moment’

“By studying the non-present moment more closely, often our mind quietens down substantially and becomes more present, without effort on our part”

Watch the distractions coming into your awareness from your environment and senses, and from your mind. Notice that all the sounds around you are in the present moment, and that when you focus on your awareness of them, this can bring you back into the present moment, not away from it. Notice that even though your thoughts may be of the past or future, the thoughts themselves are happening now, in the present! By recognizing this and being present to your distractions, they help you to come into the present moment, rather than taking you away from it!

‘Sculpting your thoughts’

“Look at the thoughts you are experiencing right now, and ask yourself the question; Are they sculpting me, or am I sculpting them?”
The first position here is simply to watch your thoughts. By doing some become aware of your minds mental content, and start to see how each of your thoughts is influencing your perception of yourself and your world. By thoughts I mean not just sentences, but images, memories, mental impulses, anything that is being generated on the mental plane. Then ask yourself the question: “What is the optimal way for me to mentally frame what my mind is dwelling upon, so that I derive maximum value and minimum unnecessary pain from it?”
Practice making small, creative interventions in your thinking process, guiding your thoughts according to the principle of the above question.

‘Finding inner strength & mental stillness through softness’

“How can I still the mind with as little effort as possible, using the softness of the body?”

Whenever you think a thought, the tension or energy of that thought will turn up as an energy in the body. The practice here is to make the body as ‘soft’ and relaxed as possible, so that your body energy is unable to ‘support’ the energy of your thoughts. Whenever a thought tries to appear, relax the areas of your body where you feel the energy of the thought, and let the thought dissolve away. In this way let your mind gradually relax into a still, thoughtless space where you can regenerate your inner strength.

Related reading: Being mindful of the non-present moment
Sculpting your thoughts
Finding strength through softness

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


All upcoming classes and workshops at IMA:

Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby (Bukit Timah)

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby  (East Coast)

Ongoing – Effortless effort – The art of doing by non-doing, a ten-week meditation course

Tues & Weds 19,20th March, 7.30-8.30pm – Spring Equinox balancing and renewing meditation

Saturday March 23rd, 9-11.30am – Integral meditation deep dive mini-retreat

Starts Tuesday/Wednesday evening 9/10th April – Exploring your hidden maps of consciousness –mindfulness meditation for growing up

Saturday & Sunday April 20th & 21st – Integral Meditation 1.5 Day Retreat

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

Integral Meditation Asia

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

Categories
A Mind of Ease Integral Awareness Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Life-fullness Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership Motivation and scope

Invisible, or effortless self-leadership

“At the highest level of self-leadership, all the different aspects of our inner self feel loved, cared for and empowered by the conscious self”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This week’s article looks at three levels of mindful self-leadership. It gives some pointers as to what they are, how to spot them in your own self-leadership style, & make progress toward becoming the ‘invisible, or effortless inner leader’.

This week’s Tues & Weds evening class will be on this subject, you are welcome to join us, live or online.

Finally, for those interested in developing inner resilience, on Saturday 9th March I’ll be doing my Mindful Resilience – Practices for sustaining effectiveness, happiness & clarity under pressure workshop.
 
In the spirit of self-leadership,
 
Toby


Invisible, or effortless self-leadership
 
For several years now I’ve been using chapter 17 from the Tao Te Ching as part of my ‘Mindful leadership & self-leadership programs. What I want to do in this article is to look at it from the point of view of self-leadership, breaking it down into three stages. I may look at the leading others aspect of the chapter in a later article.
Here is the original text:
 
Tao Te Ching – Chapter 17 (Steven Mitchell translation)
 
When the Master governs, the people
are hardly aware that he exists.
Next best is a leader who is loved.
Next, one who is feared.
The worst is one who is despised.
 
If you don’t trust the people,
you make them untrustworthy.
The Master doesn’t talk, he acts.
When his work is done,
the people say, “Amazing:
we did it, all by ourselves!”
 
Level 1 – The invisible leader:
 
‘When the Master governs, the people
are hardly aware that he exists’.
At the highest level of self-leadership, all the different aspects of our inner self feel loved, cared for and empowered by the conscious self. Each of them knows their place in the scheme of the different levels of self (personality, soul, spirit) and time has been developed helping them to feel confident regarding their capability in their role. As a result, the conscious self does not have to do too much to lead. A person who has reached this level of inner growth experiences the ups, downs, and challenges of life more as an even minded flow, that he or she is able to adapt and work with without too much effortfulness. Of course, there is some degree of willpower involved in what they do, but it is deployed discreetly and gently, rather than being the main ‘motor’ with which we power ourself through life.  
 
Level 2 – The monarch:
 
‘Next best is a leader who is loved.’
I sometimes think of this level of leadership as being like a monarch, king or queen. If we are at this level, we spend a lot of time and effort actively motivating ourself in a benevolent manner, learning to inspire the parts of ourself that lack confidence, heal the parts of us that are wounded, and go beyond the limits of our current self-concept. This style of self-leadership is pro-active. The conscious-self must demonstrate to the different parts of our inner self (or our sub-personalities) that it is trustworthy, so that they can get behind it and push forward as a team. At this stage our inner selves need active guidance, they need to feel nurtured and safe, they need a degree of ‘positive self-talk’. At this second level of leadership, life is quite effortful, but because the dominant energy of inner leadership is appropriate self-love and care, the journey is felt and experienced as one that is going to good places and positive directions.
 
Level 3 – The dictator
 
‘Next, one who is feared.
The worst is one who is despised.’
I’m putting the last two levels of self-leadership as one, which is essentially leading ourself as a despot or dictator! Here the primary energy within self is self-loathing or hatred. There is a general sense of inadequacy, not being enough, a lack of self-respect. The only way we can motivate ourself to get things done and move forward in our life is through fear and/or agression:

  • ‘If you don’t get this degree people will think you are stupid’
  • ‘Work out because if your fat you won’t be accepted by others’
  • ‘Do what I say or I’ll be criticising you inwardly for the next week!’

The experience of leading oneself like a dictator is that life is very effortful, anxious and progress is a rather tortuous and exhausting process.
 
Most people’s self-leadership process is kind of a mixture of stages two and three. Identifying stage three as a possibility, and practicing it can accelerate the rate at which we grow and integrate it into our lives. This offers the possibility for an easier journey, with progress that seems to happen naturally, by itself even. Our personal path evolves like the final verse of the chapter, with a few of my words in brackets:
 
“If you don’t trust the people (the different inner parts of yourself),
you make them untrustworthy.
The Master doesn’t talk, he acts (the conscious-self leads by example).
When his work is done,
the people (the different parts of our inner self) say, “Amazing:
we did it, all by ourselves!”
 
 
Related article: Becoming a Self-determining entity – Five stages to mindful self-leadership
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

Categories
A Mind of Ease Essential Spirituality Inner vision Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Life-fullness Meditating on the Self Meditation techniques Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness Zen Meditation

Effortless adaptation – Solving all your problems & none (II)

‘Witnessing is a practice that solves your problems without changing them. They are still problems, but they are not problems in the way they were. It solves all your problems and none at the same time.’

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This week’s article looks at meditative effortlessness from the perspective of witnessing practice. It’s a playful variation on a past article on ‘That which solves all your problems & none‘ from back in 2014. If you enjoy it, then it will form a central part of this week’s Tuesday & Weds meditation class. So do feel free to pop in, either live or online!

It’s a slightly longer article, so you might find it worthwhile reading it in two or three parts, coming back to it at different times… 
 
In the spirit of the effortless,
 
Toby

Effortless adaptation – Solving all your problems & none (II)

You can’t master what you are over identified with

This article is about how to adapt and flow with challenges in our life in as ‘effortless’ or ergonomic manner as possible. We can divide our challenges into ‘problems’ and ‘situations’.  In a previous article entitled ‘Wanting what you like, or liking what happens?’ I made the distinction between the two as follows:
“A lot of the things that we have labelled ‘problems’ in our life are more like ‘situations’. A problem is something that by definition has a solution. A situation is more a set of circumstances that we find ourself in. There may be no apparent solution to the situation, or the solution would cost more than it would be worth to ‘solve’ the problem. In this case we have to simply accept and work with what is. If we can harmonize our relationship to what ‘is’ today, meaning our situations, then chances are we will find ways to enjoy it and derive some value from it.”
If we want to solve and adapt effortlessly, a primary principle is you can’t master what you are over identified with. Here we are going to explore how to become more objective in our challenges, therefore struggling less as we adapt and solve.
 
The ultimate subject of consciousness

Initially in meditation (and then in daily awareness), if we look within, we can divide our consciousness into two:

  1. The objects within consciousness, or the content that we can observe
  2. The subject of consciousness, or that which is observing, AKA ‘the witness self’

During the day, quite often (almost always in fact), we confuse the subjects of consciousness with the objects of consciousness. We identify with our physical body and sensations, emotions, and moods. We identify with our story, our idea of who we are, as well as our beliefs and worldviews. All of these can be observed, watched, made into objects. The ‘self’ is, to use a Zen expression, ‘the ultimate subject of consciousness’. It is that within us that observes, which we can experience and be, but that we cannot watch as an object. You can rest in the witness self, but you can’t ‘see’ it. This is because it is simply consciousness itself, with no characteristics of form or time. It just ‘IS’!
 
Witnessing to adapt & solve

One of the beauties of sitting as the witness self is that it helps us to gradually dis-identify with the things in our consciousness that we are currently identified with. By doing this we make our challenges as well as the thoughts, feelings and beliefs associated with them objects rather than subjects. This means that its much easier to work with them and master them, because they are not ‘me’ or ‘mine’. I can be more objective, calm, strategic and (holistically) compassionate because I am not over identifying with what is going on. If you apply witnessing to any challenge, you are going thru, it will help substantially. Here are two examples from the last week:
 

  1. In a conversation with a friend, I was told a story of someone who had been aggressive and racist to him. Later in the day I felt strong anger and protectiveness about this. I noticed I was strongly identified with this ‘protector/guardian/’ aspect of myself. I modulated it simply by witnessing it; making it an object of awareness rather than ‘me. This helped me to integrate the good parts of this part of my personality, without wasting energy getting caught up and attached to the energy it generated in me.
  2. I had a discussion which verged on an argument. I noticed that there was a part of me that I identified with that was very concerned about being ‘right’. Noticing and witnessing this part of self helped me to transform it from subject to object, and accept the situation without wasting mental, emotional or verbal energy. Relatively effortlessly it helped me to keep focused on what I considered important in the day, without getting ‘trapped’ by my identification with rightness.

Through witnessing around your challenges, you can change your experience of them without much of a struggle, using the technology of witnessing. I can’t recommend highly enough building your competency around this domain of mindfulness. Life gets a lot easier, free-er and more creative, even in the face of intractable and long-term circumstances.
A final somewhat Zen sentence for you: ‘Witnessing is a practice that solves your problems without changing them. They are still problems, but they are not problems in the way they were. It solves all your problems and none at the same time.’

Article content © Toby Ouvry & Integral Meditation Asia 2024. you are welcome to share, but please cite the source, thanks! Contact info@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