Category: Insight Meditation

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Awareness and insight Concentration Inner vision Insight Meditation Integral Meditation Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Resilience Motivation and scope

Think Well or Don’t Think

“You may be surprised at how quickly being mindful of your thoughts can start to have a real, tangible influence on the quality of your life”

Dear Integral Meditators,

What would happen to your quality of life if you chose to think more carefully about what you think? This weeks article explains a practical method with which you can start to explore this question.

In the spirit of thought-art,

Toby

Think Well or Don’t Think

Here’s a mindful game that you can play with yourself. Take a period of time, say between 3-15 minutes. In this time frame your principle object of mindfulness is going to be your thoughts. The rules are that whatever you are thinking about you should either think about it well or simply stop your thinking. To think about something well means:

  • To take a consciously positive perspective on what is going on or
  • To make an objective mental note/observation or
  • To make the thoughts caring, constructive and/or allowing

This morning I did this exercise on the train to work. I was feeling a little emotionally strained and confused, and it would have been quite easy for my train of thought to reflect that emotionality, creating instinctively negative perspectives on my life. Amongst the thoughts that I brought to mind during the exercise were:

  • It is ok to feel emotionally strained, we all do, but I’m not going to allow that strain to create a negative dialogue in my head
  • Objectively speaking my feelings do not reflect many of the aspects of what is happening in my life, which are fundamentally pretty good – I feel fortunate, and things are essentially on track
  • I’m going to choose to adopt a playful and light stance to my present experience, even though part of me feels a bit wounded right now.

So you get the idea, I am just being really conscious about my thoughts, I’m not letting difficult feelings produce a negative inner dialogue, I am expressing disciplined empathy and care for my experience, I am using an objective perspective appropriately. If my thinking is not in any of those categories, then I simply choose not to think, just to be present to each moment and hold it with awareness.
Give it a try, you may be surprised at how quickly being mindful of your thoughts can start to have a real, tangible influence on the quality of your life. You can also try applying the same principles to your conversation with other people to make it an inter-relational mindfulness exercise.

Sculpting your feelings
One thing that this practice also gives us the ability to do is start using our thinking to skillfully sculpt and shape the way we feel. We can start to use our mind as a precision tool that we can use to benevolently shape our raw emotional energy.

© Toby Ouvry 2016, 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 Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:

February 2016

Ongoing on Wednesday’s (Jan 13th, 20th) 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

March classes coming soon!

Integral Meditation Asia

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

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Awareness and insight Insight Meditation Integral Awareness Life-fullness meditation and creativity Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness Presence and being present

Effortless Effort – The Cycle of Mindful Growth

Dear Integral Meditators,

The path of mindfulness when engaged in properly can offer us a relatively effortless, gradual, ergonomic and aesthetically beautiful path of personal growth. In the article below I break the process down into four essential stages that can be applied to any area of your life that you may wish to work with using mindfulness. Its simple. Not always easy, but simple!

The Integral Mindfulness On line Course starting on Feb 4th is now passed its early bird offer, but up until until 29th Jan you can still get 10 bucks off the price. And there are still 10 days before the January 20% offer on 1:1 coaching expires, so do have a look if you are interested!

In the spirit of effortless effort,

Toby

Effortless Effort – The Cycle of Mindful Growth

Mindfulness invites us upon an experiential journey of learning and self-knowledge. How does it do this? I’m going to break the process down into four stages:

Intention – To begin with we start with the intention to investigate something that we wish to understand more deeply – our emotions, our beliefs, our relationships, anything that we want to work with.
Attention – Secondly we then practice placing our attention or focus on that area of our life or experience. This is not just for a few seconds, but over an extended period of time.
Enquiry – With our attention we then dwell upon our object of observation, not trying to ‘solve it’, ‘fix it’ or ‘judge it’, but simply seeking to see it clearly and understand it.
Insight – The point of our focused enquiry is to produce insight; an essential, experiential new understanding of what is happening. This experiential insight then enables us to make positive changes in our life.

Unlike other personal growth methods, mindfulness focuses upon change and growth through experiential insight and understanding rather than through sheer willpower. Because of this the change that we facilitate through mindfulness (when done well) is gentle, natural and relatively effortless. When we see what is going on clearly, we change naturally. When we do not see what is going on clearly our efforts to change generally miss the point – It’s difficult to have an effective strategy to change something you don’t understand.

A simple example:
Let’s say I am feeling confused. Firstly I develop the intention to investigate and understand the nature of my confusion.
Secondly I sit, turn my attention inward and focus it upon how the confusion shows up in my body, emotions and mind.
Through my attentive enquiry I notice that the feeling of confusion is centered physically in my brain – It feels like a fog sitting in the frontal part of the brain and forehead.
Through my enquiry I discover the insight that simply by placing my awareness gently upon this front part of my brain I can clear the fuzzy feeling and my head feels clearer, and so I find a solution to this aspect of my confusion.
As a result of my had feeling clearer I can then start to see clearly the emotions in my heart and chest that are causing the confusion on a deeper level, and so the cycle of mindfulness continues to go from attention to enquiry to insight in a circular process helping me to deal with my experience of confusion on progressively deeper and deeper levels in different ways.

What area of your life would you like to practice the cycle of mindfulness with today, or this week?

© Toby Ouvry 2016, 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 Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:

JANUARY 2016

Ongoing on Wednesday’s (Jan 13th, 20th) 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Saturday January 16th, 9.30am-12.30pm – Transforming Your Stress into Happiness – Meditation & mindfulness for cultivating a state of optimal flow in your mind, body, heart and life – A three hour workshop

Saturday, January 30th, 2.30-5.30pm  – Meditations for Transforming Negativity and Stress into Energy, Positivity and Enlightenment – A Three Hour Workshop

Starts 4th February – Transforming Stress into Happiness – An Introduction to Integral Mindfulness Meditation – A Five Week On line Course

Click the link to find out about the special 1:1 meditation and mindfulness coaching offer in January!

Integral Meditation Asia

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

 

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Insight Meditation Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditation and Psychology Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership

Don’t Let Difficult Feelings Become Negative Thoughts

Dear Integral Meditators,

When you are feeling bad, its easy to think negative. The article below explains how to use mindfulness to stop difficult feelings becoming negative thoughts in your mind.

In the spirit of the journey,

Toby

Don’t Let Difficult Feelings Become Negative Thoughts

At the moment I have jet lag, which means that I wake up feeling groggy and dis-oriented, and when I lie down to sleep I have been spending some hours wide awake. The dis-orientation from the jet lag produces a lot of difficult, turgid, feelings which, if I let them could very quickly start to produce negative thoughts, which in turn would start to generate full blown negative emotions. So, here my basic object of mindfulness is to be attentive to the fact that I am experiencing a lot of difficult feelings in my body due to the jetlag, and simply focus on noting them as feelings, and not letting them escalate into something else. This is the basic practice of not letting difficult feelings become negative emotions.

Similarly, if I am with someone who is irritated or upset, and they start to direct it at me, then I experience a difficult or unpleasant feeling as a result. If I don’t watch out, then I’m going to find my mind creating a lot of negative thinking around that feeling and the other person’s action, so I will suffer more than I need to, and may do something that I regret.

There are many other situations where we may find difficult energy around us:

  • On the commute home when there is a lot of ambient irritability in the minds and bodies of the commuters
  • When things aren’t going our way at work or in our relationships
  • When we are ill or fatigued
  • When we are upset or anxious regarding change or uncertainty
  • When we feel disapproved of by ourself or others

The list goes on, but the main thing is that if we can catch difficult feelings and energies within us early enough through mindfulness, then we can save ourself a lot of pain by making a conscious choice not to let difficult energies we face trigger negative thinking.

Awareness of feelings and energies
A lot of progress in this art and discipline involves simply greater awareness of the energies and feelings that you are experiencing in the moment. What you are aware of you can start to exert benevolent control over, what you are not aware of can easily mushroom into a cloud of negativity before you really know it. So a really basic mindfulness exercise is simply to ask yourself regularly ‘How am I feeling?’ and use this question to direct your awareness mindfully to what is there in the present moment.

Difficult feelings need only be that, they don’t need to become negative thoughts.
© Toby Ouvry 2014, 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

Integral Meditation Asia

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

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Awareness and insight Enlightened Flow Insight Meditation Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditation techniques Presence and being present

Experiencing the Mind as the Mind

Dear Toby ,

Often meditation and mindfulness work well when you use a short, significant phrase as your object of enquiry. In the article below I share one that I have been enjoying over the holiday season.

Wishing you, your families and loved ones all the very best for the Christmas season!

Toby & Integral Meditation Asia

Experiencing the Mind as the Mind

Often meditation and mindfulness work well when you use a short, significant phrase as your object of enquiry, which can then lead you relatively naturally into progressively deeper states of awareness. Over the Christmas holiday and winter solstice period the phrase I have been focusing upon is ‘Experience the mind as the mind’ (or my mind as my mind). This phrase invites me to connect to the experience of consciousness itself as directly and non-conceptually as possible.
Normally we experience our mind conceptually, dividing into different categories, for example:

  • Positive and negative thinking
  • Conscious and unconscious
  • Practical and daydreaming
  • Mundane and spiritual
  • Busy and peaceful
  • Upset or happy

With the practice of experiencing the mind as the mind I am deliberately setting aside all of these (useful in their own context) conceptual ways of experiencing my mind, and simply trying to experience the mind as a whole, directly in the present moment. At different times during the day different things will be appearing to my mind, which is fine, but I am focused simply to being conscious, and paying attention to what that experience feels like. As a result of this I have found that:

  • Many of the things that my habitual and conceptual mind normally does not see start to become visible
  • I naturally start to move back into the peaceful centre of my world and experience in the present moment
  • I am freed to then think or approach my daily life and challenges with my experiential, problem-solving intelligence operating at a higher level

If you like over the next few days you can take experiencing ‘the mind as the mind’ (or your consciousness as your consciousness) as an object of mindfulness in your own meditation practice, either formally or informally, and allow it to invite you into the space of immediacy and presence that it invites!

© Toby Ouvry 2015, 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 Courses at Integral Meditation Asia 

JANUARY 2016

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, (Jan 13th, 20th, 27th) 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby
Saturday January 16th, 9.30am-12.30pm – Mindful Flow – Meditation & mindfulness for cultivating a state of optimal flow in your mind, body, heart and life – A three hour workshop
Saturday, January 30th, 2.30-5.30pm  – Meditations for Transforming Negativity and Stress into Energy, Positivity and Enlightenment – A Three Hour Workshop

Integral Meditation Asia

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

 

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Essential Spirituality Inner vision Insight Meditation Integral Meditation Meditating on the Self Meditation techniques

Connecting to Your Big Mind

Dear Integral Meditators,

Where is your mind? In your body, in your brain, somewhere else? The article below offers a meditators perspective!

In the spirit of the Big Mind,

Toby

Connecting to Your Big Mind (Is the Mind in the Body or the Body in the Mind?)

A contemporary, conventional view of the mind is that it is inside our body, most often the assumption is that it is in the brain. Our mind sits in our brain, and if we can just figure out our brain, then we will be able to figure out our mind. Right?

The Big Mind
If you have been meditating or practicing mindfulness for a while you will notice that there are times when your mind and energy seem to become open, spacious, almost limitless, transcending the mere experience of your physical body and brain. Even if we are not meditators we will have experienced times where our present moment experience seems to transcend our physical body and brain; perhaps when in love, when in the presence of a beautiful sunset, when we have experienced a profoundly moving work of art, or during a dreaming experience.
In Zen the awakened mind or mind of enlightenment is sometimes called the ‘Big mind’; an experience of a formless, timeless beingness that is without limitation, beyond time, beyond the body and brain,  and beyond the conceptual mind.

The body in the mind
From this point of view our body, and indeed the physical world and universe all exist within the limitless space of our Big Mind. So rather than our mind being in our body, our body is actually contained within our mind! Our brain is seen as a filter that filters out all of the infinite information contained within the Big Mind, enabling us to function operationally as an individual human being in the physical world. If you think about your brain as a computer, and the Big Mind as like the internet, this gives you an idea; the computer helps you to find the information you need from the internet, filtering it out from all the other information on the net.

An Exercise: Experiencing your body and brain in your Big Mind
Sitting quietly, imagine your mind becoming as big as possible; expanding our beyond your body and brain, out into the landscape around you, up into the sky and stars above you, and down into the earth beneath you. Let it become as big as you can, enter into the Big Mind experience. Then think about your body and environment as being contained within your Big Mind; everything you sense, think of and experience is all contained within your Big Mind; it is the context in which everything else is experienced.

Why does this matter?
Spending a period of time each day relaxing into your Big Mind can really change the way in which you experience yourself, your life, your challenges and your joys. Instead of being stuck in your body, you gain access to a bigger, stabler identity that enables you to experience the ups and downs of your life with stability, lightness, creativity and humour.

A final point; your small mind and small life still matters, and looking after it is still important, it’s just that it is contained within a bigger, more spacious identity and context!

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Insight Meditation Integral Meditation Presence and being present Uncategorized

Dualistic Appearance – The Dance of Reality & Illusion

Dear Integral Meditators,

When you look at something, what is it that you really see? This weeks article looks at the way in which our mind projects itself onto our reality, moulding it in its own image. I then offer practical method for starting to gain awareness and benevolent control of this process.

In the spirit of the journey,

Toby

Dualistic Appearance – The Dance of Reality & Illusion

Dualistic Appearance is a meditation term originally coined by the Buddha. It means the appearance of an object together with our minds projected or imagined image of what we think is appearing. For example let’s say my partner and I had an argument last night. She comes into the kitchen in the morning and two things will appear to me:

  • The literal body and person appearing to me right there, in the present moment
  • Almost instantly after I see her my mind with project an imagined image of what it thinks it sees upon her, based upon our history, last night’s argument and so on.

So, in fact there are two thing s appearing when I see my partner, one ‘real’; and one a mental projection.
One of the main functions of meditation and mindfulness is to help us to separate our actual experience of each moment from our mental projections, and by doing so improve our ability to feel deeply at home and in touch with each moment of our reality.

The problem of dualistic appearance is that if we have no sense that our mind is projecting this second ‘imagined’ image upon our reality, then it is very difficult to avoid literally living in an illusion. It is like being in a hall of mirrors; we cannot tell what part of our experience is real and which parts merely mental projections. We live out of touch with our reality in a ‘world of our own’ which is often filled with a lot of mental and emotional pain.

The potential beauty of dualistic appearance is that it enables us to project and imagine ideas onto our reality that can change it in radical and positive ways. We can imagine a picture on a blank canvas and then do it. We can find ourself in a difficult work environment and imagine ways in which we can change it for the better. We can bring new realities into existence through the power that our mind has to project images and ideas.

So then, as you start to reflect upon this, you might like to consider how your own experience of dualistic appearance has been working today. Has your minds ability to project itself onto what it experiences been working for you or against you?

Meditation on dualistic appearance – Three basic movements

1. Observing the play of reality and projection – the first stage in meditating on non duality is to observe the process of dualistic appearance and how it happens in your own experience. Let’s say I take the view from my window as I write this. I can see the view itself as it is, and then I can start to see how my mind projects itself upon that view. If I am having a bad day my mind might project ‘bleak meaningless urban landscape’ upon it, and feel depressed. On another day where I am feeling great I can look out the window and project ‘city filled with wonder and beauty!’ Same view, different projection.
2. Dropping the projection & connecting to reality as it is – Once we have observed this play of dualistic appearance, we can then work to ‘drop’ the mental projection and just see what we observe ‘as it is’ without projecting. To go back to the example of me looking out of the window at the view, I simply try and see the cityscape without projecting good or bad, pleasure or pain, beautiful or ugly, or any other form of mental image. I simply sit and see what I see without projecting, resting in that space of alert awareness.
3. Consciously working with dualistic appearance – Once we have developed a basic capacity to sit and observe our experience of each moment without projecting, we can then start to make conscious choices about our projections, and by doing so learn to further take benevolent control of our experience of reality. For example if I notice I am looking out of my window and unconsciously projecting ‘bleak urban landscape’ because I am feeling down, I can recognize that and refrain from re-enforcing or strengthening that projection. Instead I can consciously choose to project a more useful and positive idea of what I am seeing.

This week if you like, take these three stages of working with dualistic appearance and start to work with them in chosen areas of your life, observing how your perception of what is really going on changes when you do so

© Toby Ouvry 2015, 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 events at Integral Meditation Asia in October

Every Wednesday, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Saturday 3rd October, 2.30-5.30pm – Going From Over-whelmed to Over-well: Meditation for Quietening the Mind – a three hour workshop

Wednesday  14th October 2015, 7.30-9pm – Evening Event: Integral Mindfulness –Co-creating Your Professional Success and Personal Wellbeing

Saturday 17th October, 2.30-5.30pm – Meditation & Mindfulness for Creating a Mind of Ease, Relaxed Concentration and Positive Intention 3 Hour workshop

Sunday October  30th, 9.30am-12.30pm – Engaged Mindfulness: Take Control of Your Life Direction and Wellbeing Through Awareness, Curiosity, Courage and Care – A Three Hour Workshop

Integral Meditation Asia

 

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Awareness and insight Insight Meditation Integral Meditation Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques

Dropping the Self

Dear Integral Meditators,

Is there one mindfulness practice that will have an immdiate effect on your sense of inner balance and wellbeing? Try the one below, it might be it!
On the theme of stilling the mind, quick reminder of the next scheduled meditation workshop on 3rd October: Going From Over-whelmed to Over-well: Meditation for Quietening the Mind .
And finally a reminder that the September special offer on Soul Portraits ends this Sunday, 27th September.

Toby

Dropping the Self

One of the most effective ways that you can temporarily solve your problems and experience a relaxed, comfortable state of mind is simply to mentally ‘drop your self’ or, put another way, make a conscious choice not to think about yourself for a while. Whenever you feel anxiety, worry, frustration, disappointment, hurt, shame and so on, there is always at the center of the experience a strong clinging at an ‘I’ or self; my problem, my fear, my disappointment, my loneliness, my busy mind. If you take away the ‘I’ at the centre of the drama, then the drama will subside, the idea and the practice of this exercise is as simple as that.

Me & mine
When I talk of dropping the self, I am also talking about dropping the things that the self considers ‘mine’ as well; quite often we spend even more time worrying or obsessing about other people close to us than ourselves; my child, my spouse, my parents, my job. So we are aiming to drop both the I and the mine!

A short exercise in dropping the self
Let’s say I’ve just finished work and I’m on my way home, or perhaps I have a half hour on my Sunday between doing one thing an another. In this space I then decide that for that period of time I’m simply not going to focus on myself, my problems, my worries. I can think about or do whatever I like, but I’m consciously diminishing the size and the significance of the ‘I’ that is thinking and I’m creating lots of room in my mind for other things; other people, awareness of the senses, and so on. I can pretty much do what I like, the only condition is that I am mindfully choosing not to think or worry about my self for that time, I’m dropping my I from the agenda, and relaxing into the inner space and comfort that arises when I do so!

Attending to the self to drop the self
As a counterweight to this practice it can also be good to consciously set aside times in your day where you are consciously deciding to think about yourself; to take care of your feelings, attend to your challenges and responsibilities, plan your approach to life and so on. Attending to the self is a healthy way of mindfully taking care of yourself and your needs. Then, once you have processed the needs and wants of yourself, you then make a mindful choice, “Ok, that is as far as I am going to get with this today, now I can drop the self again!”

Facilitating change through dropping the self
One of the things that I have noticed about this practice (and I have had it confirmed by others who have attended my classes) is that dropping the self can be a very good way of facilitating change in your life; when you stop thinking about a problem, or stop telling someone what to do, or let go of your worry about something, often things start to change without any effort on your part. There is something about the practice of leaving things alone and letting go that sometimes gives us the changes we wanted in the first place!

Dropping the self is not saying our self is not important, it is just realizing that it is only relatively important. It is also a way of discovering the inner joys, relaxation and wisdom that comes to you quite naturally when your I is not sticking its fingers into everything!

© Toby Ouvry 2015, 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 events at Integral Meditation Asia (Full October schedule coming soon!)

Every Wednesday, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Saturday 3rd October, 2.30-5.30pm – Going From Over-whelmed to Over-well: Meditation for Quietening the Mind – a three hour workshop

Saturday 17th October, 2.30-5.30pm – Meditation & Mindfulness for Creating a Mind of Ease, Relaxed Concentration and Positive Intention 3 Hour workshop

Integral Meditation Asia

 

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Awareness and insight Insight Meditation Integral Meditation Meditating on the Self Motivation and scope Uncategorized

What is a Meditator?

Dear Integral Meditators,

What is a meditator? The article below offers 5 working definitions, each of which offer an insight into what the meditation process can offer us…

For those in Singapore, a reminder of workshops this Saturday 12th September; 9.30am-12.30 – Meditations For Creating a mind of Ease & 2.30-5.30pm – Mindful Dreaming. Wednesday 9th Sept Drop in Medi Class at 7.30pm.

In the spirit meditative hedonism ,

Toby

 

What is a Meditator? 

What is a meditator? Why do you meditate? Here are five definitions of what a meditator is or can be.

1. A wise hedonist – When I was a monk and people asked me ‘Why did you become a monk?’ I used to reply ‘Because I’m a hedonist; I’m making my personal happiness a priority. I have become a monk because I want to set aside time to meditate, and I meditate because I want to be happy, and I recognize that meditation is one of the best ways to do that, because happiness is primarily something that comes from within me.’ I’m no longer a monk, but I still practice meditation for the same reason!

2. Someone committed to self-healing – A meditator is someone who is committed to looking inward in order to see, taking care of and heal the parts of themselves that are injured, wounded or broken and returning them to health. I’m talking primarily about the psychological parts of self here rather than physical self, although meditation can and does have a substantial effect on physical healing.

3. A person committed to developing and consolidating their innerstrengths– If meditation is a mind that focuses on a positive object, then a meditator is a person who is committed to systematically developing their inner positivity, strengths and wellbeing by focusing on and growing these strengths daily, perhaps a little bit like an inner gym-rat!

4.Someone committed to looking deeper – A meditator is someone who is committed to looking deeply at what is going on, and really bringing their intelligence (both mental intelligence and the other types of intelligence we have) to bear upon their life. A meditator is not satisfied with the merely superficial; a meditator is committed to knowing and seeing their reality as deeply as they are capable of at any given time.

5. A walker between worlds – A meditator is someone who is developing their capacity to move consciously and easily between the solid, outer world of matter, the subtle inner world of the mind and the very subtle formless timeless world that lies beyond the mind.  Ideally a meditator should be equally at home in either of these three worlds and equally competent in the skills required to navigate each.

So, any practice that you have in your life for engaging in any of the above five activities might be considered a form of meditation, and make you a meditator of sorts.
If you were to pick one of the five areas above and investigate it a little bit further in your life this week, which one would it be?

Related Article:A Meditation Map – The Art of State Training

© Toby Ouvry 2015, 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 Courses at Integral Meditation Asia in 

Every Wednesday, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Saturday 12th September, 9.30am-12.30pm – Mindfulness and Meditation For Creating a Mind of Ease, Relaxed Concentration

Saturday 12th September, 2.30-5.30pm – Mindful Dreaming – Meditation Practices for Integrating Conscious Dreaming into Your Daily Life

Saturday 19th September, 2.30-5.30pm – Mindful Relationships: Improving Your Relationships and Social Skills Through Mindfulness

Integral Meditation Asia

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Awareness and insight creative imagery Inner vision Insight Meditation Integral Awareness Life-fullness meditation and creativity Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques

Riding the Waves of the Mind

Dear Integral Meditators,

What does it really mean to be in control of your mind and emotions? The article below explores the image of our emotions as waves, and offers mindful perspective on how we can use this image to relax into and enjoy both the highs and the lows of our inner life. Enjoy!

In the spirit of waves,

Toby

Riding the Waves of the Mind

Our emotions come from many different sources, sometimes it seems like we are in control of our emotions and feelings; they behave predictably and respond to our efforts to stay in control, but at other times they seem to be completely unpredictable and fly in the face of our efforts at control.

Often our attempt to control our mind and emotions involves trying to hold onto pleasant emotions, thoughts and feelings, and running away from or blocking negative/feelings/thoughts. One slightly more skillful way of learning to navigate the changeability of our mind and feelings is to simply learn to relax into whatever thoughts or feelings that we have, riding them like waves on an ocean. From the point of view of this image and method, our ‘negative’ thoughts/feelings and experiences are like the low troughs of the waves on the ocean. Out ‘positive’ thoughts/feelings/experiences are like the crests or high points of the waves.

We are like a rider on a small boat or surfboard bobbing up and down on the waves of our mind; sometimes we find ourself riding a crest, other times we find ourselves down in a trough. The main thing is to pay attention to the movement, keep balanced and learn to relax into the motion as we go up and down; if you are in a trough, just keep relaxed and balanced and after a while you will find yourself rising up again as the waves move. If you are on the crest of a ‘happy’ wave, ride that and enjoy it, relax into it, keeping balanced so that when it changes again and you start going down, you can do so smoothly and easily.

Our emotions, like waves are elemental and wild in their power. In the same way that a skilled sailor can harness the power of the sea by relaxing and working with it, so we can learn to harness the power of our mind and emotions and by relaxing and working with the energy we find there each day.

Mindful Exercise:
You are on a small boat in the open ocean, rising and falling with the waves. It doesn’t matter whether you are on the crest of the wave (emotional high)  or in a trough (emotional low), just keep relaxed, balanced and work with the energy of the waves rather than against it.

Related article: Breaking like a wave
Meditating on the inner weather of our mind

© Toby Ouvry 2015, 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 Courses at Integral Meditation Asia 

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Five Methods for Quietening the Mind

Dear Integral Meditators,

Some people give up or don’t even try meditation as they think their mind is just too busy, and they can’t still it. Below are five simple methods that you can use to quieten the mind when you feel the need, as well as an outline of some of the benefits.

In the spirit of the quiet but strong,

Toby

 

 

Five Methods for Quietening the Mind 

Why should we be interested in quietening the mind?
In a nutshell, to de-stress, improve task related performance, & develop your capacity to reflect and observe. Quietening or stilling the mind is also a pre-requisite for access to  deeper states of meditation.

1. Ducking beneath your mind – Breathing through the hara
This first method involves bringing your awareness down into the belly (or ‘hara’ to use the Zen term) and breathing with your attention focused there. Most of the mental busyness that we experience happens within the head and the heart centres, so bringing your awareness down into your belly enables you to access a state of focused, non-conceptual quietude more easily.

Taking care of your heart-space – Feeling emotions properly
Much of the inner conflict that we experience actually originates in our heart as unresolved feelings and emotions. Attuning yourself to the feelings in your heart centre and learning to acknowledge them, feel them and resolve or release them makes it hugely easier to quieten and still the mind. As the saying goes; If You Feel Properly You Will Think Clearly.

Finding the still point in the center of the brain
There is a ‘still point’ in the center of the brain that you can learn to place your attention upon. When you do this you find that it is possible to still the mind without too much effort. It is called the ‘cavity of original spirit’ by the Taoists. It is in the area where the thymus and hypothalamus are located in the brain, but you really don’t need to know too much about the brains’ actual anatomy, if you just go into the middle of your brain and explore, you’ll find that there is a specific place where, if you place your attention there it has a naturally quietening effect upon the mind.

Listening to the sound of silence
If you’ve ever been in a place where there is absolute outer quiet, you might have noticed there is a kind of high frequency ‘sound’ or ringing in your ears. This is what I mean by the sound of silence. With practice you can learn to recognize and focus your attention on this sound even when there are other noises around you. The sound of silence has a kind of pleasant hypnotic, focusing effect that is very good for quietening the mind.

Recognizing the power of your environment
This final method is really about learning to be aware of environments where there is a lot of negative psychological energy around, and ensuring that you don’t allow yourself to be victimized by it; the crowded bus on the commute home, the hostile office, the anger from a family member. One thing that I do quite often if I am in such an environment is to imagine my energy field or aura covered externally by a bubble of insulating black light that blocks negative energy from my surroundings. The bubble is open at the top and the bottom; letting in light from the sky and stars above and the earth below, but it is closed off from my immediate surroundings. This last ‘psychic self-defence’ technique is as close as you’ll get to an occult exercise in this article!
So there you go, five methods for you to try out in your own time. If you like you can practice one each day during the weekdays for five minutes each. Do that for a month to gain a little experience of each!

Related articles: The Mind in the Heart
The Sound of Silence
If You Feel Properly You Will Think Clearly

© Toby Ouvry 2015, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

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