Category: Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit

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Awareness and insight Energy Meditation Enlightened Flow Essential Spirituality Integral Meditation Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Presence and being present spiritual intelligence

The Four Subtle Experiences in Meditation

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks article looks at the path of meditation in three stages, focusing in particular on the second stage, developing and engaging subtle experiences. It is useful to know about these ‘intermediate’ levels of the meditation experience because it enables us to appreciate and explore them without the danger of thinking that they are the end of the journey.

Yours in the spirit of the meditation journey,

Toby

 

The Four Subtle Experiences in Meditation 

In meditation generally there are three stages:

  • Balancing, stilling & harmonizing the body-mind
  • Developing and engaging subtle state experiences
  • Moving into or exploring  the formless/timeless dimension of consciousness

In order to get to the second stage of engaging subtle state experiences, you need to first need to still and unify your body-mind through relaxation, calming and stillness. You can read more about this first stage of meditation here: The first task (and achievement of meditation).

If you can achieve this, then you then naturally start to move into the subtle level of meditation which comprises of four main types of experience:

The intuitive /ideational – This is where your mind starts to come up with ideas, insights and intuitions, quite spontaneously and effortlessly. These ideas may be quite abstract, or they may be entirely pertinent to very specific life situations that you are going through. They are often characterized by their capacity to see patterns, meanings and relationships in apparently random and disparate experiences.

The subtle energetic – This is an awareness of subtle energy flowing through our body and mind in ways that we would not be ordinarily conscious of. This dimension of meditation experience is explained in various ways, in terms of the movement of energy through the energy meridians, the chakras and kundalini, the microcosmic orbit and so on.

The expanded emotional – This is the experience of emotions that go beyond our ordinary every day personal range of emotions, and includes experiences such as

  • Causeless and spontaneous joy
  • Unconditional affection and love
  • Openhearted compassion for all living beings
  • Deep equanimity

The visionary – This means an awakening to spontaneously received visual images of people, places things and sometimes even entire inner worlds. It is a little bit like dreaming, except the images are experienced whilst in full consciousness, and they are distinct from our imagination, that is to say they have an objective quality that is separate from the random images arising from our everyday thinking and imagining mind.

These four subtle types of experience will then give way to the third stage of meditation experience:

The formless – This is the experience of the formless timeless domain of the mind and consciousness that lies beyond both our sensory awareness and our thinking mind. Initially our experience of the formless simply an open spacious experience of awareness with no thoughts in it. However, after a time this deepens, giving rise to various forms of experience of deep unitive and non-dual experience where we experience ourself as ‘one’ with our world and universe, and where our experience of the subject-object, doing-being  divide disappears into a pure experience of is-ness.

So, once you have settled down into your meditation, and your body-mind are feeling a calm and relaxed, these are the four major subtly meditation experiences that you can start to identify, work with and build your experience of: the intuitive/ideational, the subtle energetic, the expanded emotional and the visionary. These in turn will gradually give way to experiences of the formless dimension of meditation experience.

© 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 
 
Categories
Biographical Energy Meditation Integral Meditation Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Meditation techniques Mindful Resilience Mindfulness Stress Transformation

Caring For Your Life-force Through Meditation: Four Levels

Dear Integral Meditators,

I’ve been focusing in my own practice over the last week on taking care of my life-force or libido through meditation. The article below is really some thoughts I have put together as a result. I hope you enjoy it!

Yours  in the spirit of the journey,

Toby

Caring For Your Life-force Through Meditation: Four Levels

Your life-force (as we will be defining it in this article) is your ‘psychic energy’ or ‘libido’. It manifests on the physical, psychological, soul and spiritual levels of your being.

Simply put if your libido or life-force is healthy then it will manifest as a healthy ‘appetite’ for life. If your libido is low then your appetite for life diminishes correspondingly.
Here is a brief resume of the way in which our life-force manifests on the four levels (the soul and spiritual level being counted as one):

Your life-force on the physical/biological level – On this vital level of your being a healthy libido manifests as appetite for food, drink and sex/sensuality, and healthy emotions. It can be sustained by the appropriate engagement with these basic activities (eating & drinking healthily, enjoying sex and sensuality appropriately, feeling emotions fully). Correspondingly it can be damaged by eating and drinking unhealthily, over indulging in sex (or unhealthy expressions of sex) and negative emotions.

Your libido & life-force on the psychological level – On the level of your ego the libido manifests as striving, desiring and willing (to use the Jungian terms). From this we can see that to maintain a healthy psychological libido we need goals to strive towards, and a healthy pleasure in striving for and achieving those goals. Correspondingly our psychological ‘appetite’ can be damaged if we lack motivation, goals and objectives to strive for in life, or if our self-esteem & confidence are low.

Your life-force & libido on the soul& spiritual level – This level of libido is really the psychological level expressed at a deeper level of our being. It involves the pursuit of “the true, the beautiful and the good” as we feel compelled to explore and express them in our life. One way of understanding our own ‘spiritual path’ is how our psychological process of striving, desiring and willing evolves and transforms toward a creative expression of truth, beauty and goodness.

From this we can see that looking after your life-force is a multi-disciplinary activity, ranging from physical diet to psychological motivation to a deeper contemplation of the meaning of your life. Each one of these levels has something to offer you in terms of the overall experience of your life-force and the power of its energy.
Moreover, our life-force can shift from one level to another and back again. For example we can find a new lease of psychological motivation as a result of a changed diet, or we can find a renewed enthusiasm for emotional or sexual expression as a result of finding a deeper level of meaning on the soul level of our being.

Healing, balancing and renewing your life-force thorough meditation.

One very simple way in which you can use meditation as a way of enhancing your life force and libido is to just take the discipline of sitting still and relaxing in a focused, aware way for a certain period of time each day. This will:

  • Enable your physical body to relax and begin regenerating its biological life-force
  • Enable your psychological being to relax and begin regenerating its motivation and energy
  • Enable your soul to become receptive to spiritual and intuitive inspirations that inspire it toward greater meaning and creativity.

You can further enhance this function of meditation as you are sitting and relaxing by:

  • Deliberately imagining and encouraging your body to move into a state of deep, regenerative relaxation
  • Deliberately not pursuing thoughts and discursive thoughts in the mind so that your psychological being can regain its clarity and focus
  • Consciously inviting, being receptive to and noting intuitive inspirations & idea  that arise whilst you are enjoying the process of relaxing your body and mind

This very simple process of meditation, sitting in a state of receptive awareness in the way I have described is not the whole story when it comes to looking after and increasing our life-force on the physical, psychological and soul/spiritual levels, but it will help all of the other efforts that we make to do so!

Two more thoughts: Enhancing your life-force meditation a little further:

1. There are certain simple ways of directing the energy in your body-mind that can enhance and increase the flow of life-force. You can see a couple of simple examples from my qi gong blog here:
Building and strengthening your Qi/Light Body by connecting to Planetary Qi
Qi gong standing exercises 1: Light body standing form/Earth light standing form

2. You can use bio-field and neuro-flow technology to achieve a more rapid and deeper entry into a regenerative state of mind. The one I’m using a lot at the moment is called Harmonic Resonance Meditation, if you’re interested you can scroll down to see the coupon code to get 25% off any of the products at I-Awake technologies.

© 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 

November 26 – December 2,
2014

25% OFF ALL iAwake Products

25% OFF Discount Coupon Code: 

THANKSGIVING2014

Categories
Gods and Goddesses Greenworld Meditation Inner vision Integral Awareness Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Meditation and Psychology Primal Spirituality Shadow meditation Stress Transformation Uncategorized

Mindfully Integrating the Animal and Instinctive Self

Dear Integral Meditators,

What is your animal or instinctive self? What part is it playing in your life? Why is it important to be mindful of it? The article below offers some thoughts in this subject…

If you are interested in going a bit deeper into your animal and instinctive self, then do check out the Shadow Self workshop on Sunday the 30th November!

Yours  in the spirit of the journey,

Toby

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia in November/December:

The Meditation for Creating a Mind of Ease Online Course

Tuesday 25th November, 7.30-9pm  – Evening event – Integral Mindfulness –Co-creating Professional Success and Personal Wellbeing within Organizations and Leaders

Sun 30th Nov, 9.30am-12.30pm – Living Life From Your Inner Center – Meditations for Going With the Flow of the Present Moment

Sun 30th Nov, 2pm-5pm – Finding Freedom From What Holds You Back in Life: Practical Meditations And Techniques For Working With your Shadow-Self – A Three Hour Workshop

Sunday December 7th, 9.30am-12.30pm – Meditations for Activating, Healing and Awakening our Ancestral Karma

Sunday December 14th, 9.30am-12.30pm – An Introduction to Meditation From the Perspective of  Zen

Mindfully Integrating the Animal and Instinctive Self

Your animal and instinctive self is raw vitality. It is the wild and feral part of yourself that has been around for millions of years on the planet, it is entirely at home in the body, with sexual instinct, with fighting, with doing what is necessary to survive in a tough and uncompromising world. It is also a part of you that has a natural dignity, an unconscious affinity with the whole, that feels entirely at home in a body, on the earth, participating in life.
Obviously we need to exert a certain benevolent control over our animal self, but for many of us the animal and instinctive self has become an enemy, a source of terror, of embarrassment, of shame. We often try and lock our animal self in the cellar of our mind, pretend (and hope) that if we ignore it or pretend it is not there for long enough it will go away and leave us in peace.
There comes a time for all of us where it becomes necessary to make friends with our animal self, to learn to make positive use of our instincts, to stop repressing our passions and instead start consciously and heartily expressing them in our life in positive and authentic ways.
The conscious integration of the rational and self with the animal and instinctive self gives the soul within us all the tools and power it needs to start making a difference in the world and manifest its desires. Without the vital dynamism of the animal self the civilized self becomes a ghost, a cardboard cut out, a shell. It’s very difficult for the soul to do something with a shell!

If you are suffering from an absence of vitality, a lack of confidence, a sense of inner conflict, connecting and communing with your animal and instinctive self is definitely a good area within yourself to investigate!

Questions for becoming more aware of and reclaiming our instinctive and mindful self:
Where is my vitality?
What is my animal self asking of me?
What might it mean to make positive use of my instincts?
How can I make friends with my animal self?
How can I put my animal and instinctive self to positive use?

© 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 

25% off for 1 Week Only
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Good until Nov 30, 2014
 

Categories
Insight Meditation Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Meditation and Psychology Mindfulness Shadow meditation Stress Transformation

When the Mask Cracks the Light Shines Out

Over the last few months I have had the good fortune to be able to catch up with a few old friends from school days. The conversation immediately becomes 200% more engaging and compelling between us when we discover that we have been through a similar psychological challenge or difficulty, or where we have come face to face with a part of ourselves that we did not like to admit was there. When this happens the tone of the conversation always goes from ‘pleasant’ to genuinely soulful.

Last weekend I facilitated a stress transformation workshop. It was great to see people becoming excited about the ways in which they could make use of the parts of themselves and their personality that they considered obstacles to happiness, that they considered ‘dysfunctional’ or weak.

We spend a lot of time investing in our ‘persona’, the face that we present to society; to cultivating and preserving a mask behind which we can hide our insecurity and vulnerability. We protect this mask, strengthen it, try to keep both it and ourselves ‘looking right’ in the eyes of those around us. Any cracks that appear in the mask often invoke a crisis in us, something we should avoid at all costs.

The funny thing is that when circumstances come together to crack open the mask of our persona, it is often the very opportunity that our soul has been waiting for to shine its light into the world, to start making a difference.

It’d be a shame to miss such opportunities because we were too busy trying desperately to repair our mask.

Related article: Enlightened Imperfection

Upcoming workshops and events at Integral Meditation Asia

© 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 

Categories
creative imagery Enlightened Flow Inner vision Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques

Wake, up, Grow up, Clean up, Flow

Dear Integral Meditators,

Sometimes when we think of flow states there is the idea that they should be somehow effortless, stress-free and easy. In the article below I describe a state of flow that I’ve called enlightened flow which needs a certain amount of  effort-fullness before it can become effortless. I hope you enjoy it. 

Dear Integral Meditators,

Sometimes when we think of flow states there is the idea that they should be somehow effortless, stress-free and easy. In the article below I describe a state of flow that I’ve called enlightened flow which needs a certain amount of  effort-fullness before it can become effortless. I hope you enjoy it. 

For those of you interested in integral and evolutionary physical fitness, Scott Sonnon has come out with an interesting new offering he calls Six Degree Flow which I am taking a look at right now. I always find it interesting to see ideas of integration, evolution and flow are developing in other fields than my own!

Toby


Wake, up, Grow up, Clean up, Flow – The Art of Enlightened Flow

What comes into your mind when you think of the words “enlightened flow?
What might your life look like if it were lived in this state of enlightened flow?
How would it affect the way in which you help and experienced your body? Your work? Your relationships?
Before you go onto the rest of the article, please just pause for a few moments just to sit with these questions and see what type of images, ideas and experiences start to flow into your awareness.

From the point of view of integral growth and the path that I try and teach at Integral Meditation Asia, enlightened flow has three main aspects of facets:

Waking up – Bringing as much conscious awareness to your physical, mental and spiritual life as possible, keeping the light of your awareness turned on at all times.

Growing up – Doing psychological work in order to go through the stages of inner development outlined by developmental psychology. In its simplest terms this means mastering and integrating three essential levels of development:

  • Awareness and mastery of your instincts and biological self
  • Awareness and mastery of your conceptual and rational mind
  • Awareness and harnessing of your intuitive, trans-rational and trans-logical faculties

Want to know what that means in a single sentence? It means to be continually working to become a playful, mature adult who is actively working on the next level of her/his development.

Cleaning up – This means doing consistent ‘clean up’ work on our emotional, spiritual and psychological selves by doing regular shadow work, or put another way; working to integrate the destructive parts of ourselves that we are afraid of and have disowned or rejected back into our conscious mind in a constructive and positive way.

So, to practice enlightened flow in your life means to bring the following qualities to each moment of your existence, organically and to the best of your ability:

  • To be awake and alert – The torchlight of your awareness in switched ON
  • To take responsibility for what is going on and what you are contributing to each moment of your life – to be an adult
  • To be as fully present to the difficult and challenging aspects of what you are experiencing as you are to the easy, the positive and the pleasurable. Put another way; to clean up the mess that is in your mind on a regular basis!

Enlightened flow then in this means in each moment of your life you are:

  • Awake
  • Self-responsible
  • Not afraid to get your hands dirty

I’m calling this a state of enlightened flow because if you bring these three qualities into each moment of your life, then there will be nothing or at least very little that will be able to knock you of your centre and out of your flow.

Want to start practising enlightened flow? Here is the image for you to hold in your mind over the next week:

  • Visualize an image of yourself as a responsible (yet playful) grown-up adult.
  • In one hand you have a torch which you shine onto your life; you are awake
  • In the other hand you have a mop, you are doing the work of cleaning up your own emotional, mental and spiritual self; you are prepared to get your hands dirty whenever necessary.

So there you go, the three tools you need to stay in your own enlightened flow each day; are you ready to give it a try this week?

© 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 

Categories
creative imagery Enlightened Flow Essential Spirituality Inner vision Integral Meditation Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Meditating on the Self Meditation techniques Primal Spirituality

An Enlightenment Visualization

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks article uses a series of six simple images to try and communicate the basic enlightenment experience. In June I’ll be doing a workshop on meditation for cultivating the enlightenment experience, this article is one way of exploring this space.

I’ll be facilitating the three hour Mindful Self-Leadership workshop again on the 7th June for those interested. It will be at the CLIA workshop space on Khoon Seng Road.

Finally, I-Awake technologies are having a 50% Sale on until Monday evening US time, I’ve placed the details at the bottom of this newsletter, do check it out!

Yours in the spirit of enlightenment,

Toby

Upcoming Meditation Classes and Workshops at Integral Meditation Asia in June:

Mindful Self-Leadership: Taking Control of Your Life Through the Practice of Mindful Self-Leadership – A Five Week Online Course (This is ongoing and can be entered into at any time)

Saturday 7th June, 2.30-5.30pm – Mindful Self-Leadership Course at CLIA(Creative Leadership in Asia)

Enlightened Flow: Finding the Ultimate Relaxation and Release from Stress – A Practical Three Hour Meditation Workshop

Free Preview Talk: Tuesday , 17th June, 7.30-8.30pm at the Reiki Centre

The Three Hour Workshop:  Sunday 29th June, 9.30am-12.30pm

Click title link for details of both Enlightened Flow events.
 

Enlightenment Visualization

The following is a visualization process for connecting experientially to the experience of spiritual enlightenment. By Spiritual Enlightenment here I mean connecting to the formless, timeless, unified dimension or reality that underlies both the outer world of our body and senses, and the inner world of our mind.
The best artists use their pictures/creations to connect the viewer to a deeper dimension of their being. Very often a picture or image speaks louder, more clearly and more practically to us than abstract concepts (not always, but often). The point of this visualization exercise therefore is to describe in a series of 6 key images how to connect to the enlightenment experience without giving too much philosophy; the images connect you to the meaning.

Stage 1: Sit quietly for a while, bringing your attention to your body and the breathing. Use your exhalation to release tension from your mind and body and enter as deep and relaxed a state of awareness as you can.

Stage 2: Now imagine that the world around the room or space in which you are seated gradually dissolves in to light, space and emptiness. It is just you and the room surrounded by an infinity of light and empty space.

Stage 3: Now imagine that the room where you are seated dissolves into light, space and emptiness; it is just you, and your body sitting in this living, empty infinity.

Stage 4: Now imagine that your body itself dissolves away into light, space and emptiness so that all you are experiencing is a huge unified space of light and emptiness with no beginning and no end. For the main section of the meditation, rest in this space of formless timeless spaciousness as deeply as you can. This is the initial focus of the experience of spiritual enlightenment as we are describing it in this exercise.

Stage 5: When you are ready, from this unified space of formless timeless emptiness see the barest trace of your body outlined in that space, in lines and points of light. Gradually your room and the whole world around it also appear in this ghostly white framework of lines and points of light. The main experience is still one of spacious light, emptiness and unity, but traced within that timeless space is now your entire world of time and space, with your body in the centre.

Stage 6: Gradually see your body and the world around you becoming more solid and real, filled with colour, texture, weight, sound and so on. See this solid ‘real’ world emerging or arising from the vast infinity of formless, timeless infinity that you have been resting in during stage 4.
The formless timeless unity of enlightenment and the diverse solid and sometimes chaotic world of time and space exist as one, as a mutually supporting unity.

When you are ready you can bring your meditation to a close. When you are out of meditation the practice them becomes to recognize that the real, solid world around you is arising and one with the timeless domain of enlightenment. They are not two different objects, but the same reality appearing in two different ways.

As I mention below, the I-Awake sale is on, with 50% off all tracks until Monday 26th May. The tracks that best support the meditation I have described in this article would be Audio Serenity, Harmonic Resonance Meditation and Meditative Ocean.

© 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


Our friends at I-Awake technologies are offering a 50% discount on all digital downloads of ALL their products in their 5 day memorial day sale!
Its a great opportunity to get some amazing products and technologies to support your meditation practice and peace of mind at a great price.
Check out the link for full details!

Categories
Enlightened Flow Essential Spirituality Inner vision Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Self-Leadership

Enlightened Imperfection

Dear Integral Meditators,

Are you on a quest for enlightened perfection? This weeks Integral Meditations article explores what enlightened perfection looks like (or doesn’t look like) and how we can start to use it to embrace our own imperfection and the imperfection of the world.
It is kind of a complementary take to the midweek article on “That Which Solves All Your Problems and None“.

Yours in the spirit of the perfectly imperfect,

Toby
 

Enlightened Imperfection

There is a lot of confusion around the idea of perfection and enlightenment. Many people seem to think that, when you attain a ‘spiritual’ enlightenment you become in some way perfect. Actually, what the realization of enlightenment points out is that there is a part of ourself that is already perfect, they always have been and always will be.

When we realize enlightenment we also realize that all things including ourself are totally imperfect and not just that, they always will be.

Let me explain what I mean, starting with what spiritual enlightenment is. There are three domains or aspects of our moment to moment experience:

  1. Our outer physical and sensory experience
  2. Our inner mental experience based around thoughts and images
  3. The experience of awareness itself which is the formless timeless ‘ground’ upon which the rest of our outer and inner experience is based.

To become spiritually enlightened means to gain practical experience of this third domain of formless timeless awareness, and base our core identity around this experience. Thus, enlightenment has nothing to do with what one believes or philosophizes about, and everything to do with what one discovers through meditation and other related practical methods of investigating our moment to moment experience.

In the state of formless timeless awareness (that is number 3 of the above list) there is perfection and only perfection. This is because in such a state of no-form and no-time there is no-thing that could possibly be imperfect. It is the dimension of each moment of our experience that is perfect, pristine, and flawless. You could be blind drunk, be in the middle of nuclear war or have just married to the person of our dreams, it doesn’t matter; the part of that moment that is simply formless timeless awareness is perfect and always will be.

Classical spiritual enlightenment is a discovery you make about this pristine, formless, timeless state that is already there. You don’t create it, you discover it, and it is absolutely perfect.

As for the rest of you, your life, and the rest of the world, it is completely imperfect. Not just that, it always will be. In the physical world and in the world of our everyday mind there is always imperfection, there will always be difficulties, there is no point of final perfection; there is just a changeable present and future extending to the end of our life, to future generations and to infinity.

To be enlightened is to stop looking for perfection in your life, because you understand that it is already there.

To be enlightened is also to commit to responding to the dance of imperfection in your life in the best way you can with curiosity, courage and care. It means not being afraid to make mistakes, to be vulnerable, and to occasionally and when necessary be seen as a bit of a fool.

Enlightened perfection is not something that you can achieve, it is something that you come to know and recognize. From this space of ‘already perfect’ the challenge is then to launch yourself into the imperfection that will always be there, and commit to making it better.

Over the next week or so if you want to start working with this idea, you can try this:
Simply focus on the statement ‘Everything is already perfect’. Allow your mind to rest in this recognition for as long as you wish. Just relax, let go and feel your way into a space of timeless awareness where everything is always perfect, immutable, pristine. Allow yourself to regenerate your energies in that space.
Now bring your attention back to yourself, back to your world, back to the endless beautiful and tragic imperfection. Now smile to yourself, open to your imperfect reality and commit to participating in the most enlightened way you can.

© 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

Categories
Biographical creative imagery Inner vision Insight Meditation Integral Meditation Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Self-Leadership

Enlightenment, Persistence and Knowing What You Really Want

Dear Integral Meditators,

Do you really know what you really want? This weeks article offers a few points for contemplation on this subject.
In case you missed the midweek article, you can click here to read about:  Meditating with the Tree of Yoga – A Twelve Module Online Course for just Sing$39! (Limited time offer) The offer is valid up until this Thursday, 17th April.

I’ve also created a page on the IMA website devoted to Meditation technology to support your practice. I’ve recently affiliate Integral Meditation Asia with I-Awake technologies, and this page explains a little bit about why and what the benefits are.

Yours in the spirit of wants and desires,

Toby

Upcoming Meditation Classes and Workshops at Integral Meditation Asia 

Coming soon: Mindful Self-Leadership
 

Enlightenment, Persistence and Knowing What You Really Want

Meditating each day on the question “what do I really want” is a really important practice. If you don’t know what you want, then what you think you want will almost certainly be determined by factors such as:

  • What your society and culture thinks you should want
  • What lifestyle advertisements and marketers think you should want
  • What other people around you want
  • What you think your parents would approve of you wanting to want
  • What it is good to want in order to get the approval of significant others in your life’
  • What is easy
  • What will not piss others off
  • Ect…

The list goes on, and so you can see it is actually not a neutral space, if you don’t know what you really want then it is going to be decided for you. So what do you really want??

One way (not the only) way of carving up our wants and desires is into three:

  • Ego or personality level desires that wish to find fulfillment in relationships, work and tangible achievements in our life
  • Soul level wants and desires that tend to centre around the expression of deeper meaning, goodness, beauty and truth in our life
  • Spiritual happiness which here I am going to say centres around a connection to a state of being where all wants and desires are released and simultaneously fulfilled at the same time. That’s enlightenment baby.

All of the above types of wants and desires are valid on their own level, and each of them has their place in our life.

What you want has consequences
When you know what you want, following that will have consequences and sacrifices associated with it. But, life has consequences and sacrifices that will happen anyway, whether they are happening on your terms or not. At least if you know what you want and you go for it, then when the challenging consequences come you can say without conflict or bitterness “I chose this, this is what I want, I accept the consequences”.

When I left University I chose to spend a decade training in meditation and with no regard for conventional career, finances or fitting in, because I wanted spiritual enlightenment. Spiritual enlightenment is what I got, but coming back into the world age 32 I realized that my decade sabbatical had profound consequences in terms of my career, finances and outer freedom. The consequences were real and substantial, but I was happy to take those consequences because I knew what I wanted and the price was worth it (at the end of the day).
Now I run a business, Integral Meditation Asia because I want to teach the path of integrated enlightenment. There are plenty of easier ways to make money and gain recognition in the eyes of others, but I will take that consequence because I know what I want.
The thing is, if you know what you want, you will tend to persist, and if you persist intelligently and wisely, there is a good chance you’ll get what you want

A meditation image for focusing on what you want
Once a week I run up and down the stair well of a local HDB flat a few times (Europe or America, read council or public housing). It is 13 stories high. As a practice to remind me to keep focused on what I want without getting distracted here is what I do; as I am running up the stairs I don’t allow myself to look at the story number as I am going by. As I go higher I can feel my lungs straining and my legs hurting, and I want to distract myself by looking at the numbers, I want to know how much farther to go before the pain stops. But I don’t look; I just keep my head down, keep steady and let the top floor come when it comes. During my week when I feel like getting distracted, doubt myself or am getting (mostly well meaning) but contradictory advice from others, I bring my mind back to this image, clarify what it is I want, and keep going.

The curve ball: What if I don’t know what I want?
Then you know something important. If you don’t know what you want you need to know that, and keep asking the question until you get clarity. The tendency can be if you don’t know what you want is simply to drift and let your desires get filled up with other people’s ideas of what you should want, and then you will be lost.

Every day ask the question, “What do I really want?” and persist.
© 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

Support for you Meditation Practice 

If you enjoyed the article above, and are interested in sound technology that can help you actively pursue the question “what do I want? the following two tracks may be worth considering:

Categories
Biographical Essential Spirituality Insight Meditation Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Meditation techniques spiritual intelligence

Fridge Magnet Spiritual Happiness

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks article continues the theme of spiritual happiness. The approach to spiritual happiness is different from that which we employ on other levels of our life, and it is important to understand this difference in approach!

Yours in the spirit of the happiness we cannot lose,

Toby

 

Fridge Magnet Spiritual Happiness

I have a post-it pad message that I wrote to myself years ago that still sits on my fridge, and has survived two moves of house. It reads thus:
“The happiness that you are looking for can never be found. Give up your searching, abandon all hope!”

This is one of my mantras or koans of spiritual happiness. How does it work? Let me explain a little.
Firstly there are three separate but related domains of happiness:

  • Egoic or personality level happiness that finds happiness through success in relationships, work and pastimes.
  • Soul level happiness that is found through finding and expressing deeper meaning and truth in our life
  • Spiritual happiness that comes from being able to rest in a state of perfect “always already” state of timeless formless happiness

(For more on happiness from the POV of ego, soul and spirit see here and here).

So, what does it mean that you can never find the happiness that you are looking for, isn’t abandoning all hope a bit depressing?
Spiritual happiness is all about finding a form of happiness that is permanent, unchangeable, reliable, a happiness that wherever you go, whatever is happening, there is always is.
In the world of our outer senses, relationships and our everyday mind happiness comes and goes according to circumstances and conditions. Sometimes there is pleasure, sometimes there is pain, relationships flower and fade, and resources come and go. Finally it all comes to an end (from the perspective of our ego) at death.
As long as we are searching for final happiness in a world of change, we are bound for disappointment. The only way to find a ‘final’, unchanging and reliable source of ‘true’ happiness is by letting go of any pretence at a search for happiness, give up any hope of ‘finding’ it, and instead learn to relax into and rest in the happiness that is always here and always present in our lives, regardless of our circumstances.

  • Spiritual happiness is always here, therefore it cannot be found, it can only be recognized and experienced
  • Spiritual happiness is ever present, therefore you can’t find it by searching. If you are searching you are going in the wrong direction already!
  • Spiritual happiness is something you already have, so if you are hoping to find happiness, that hope in itself is the obstacle to finding that which is already there and that you already have.

The way to connect to spiritual happiness is to simply let go and rest in the part of your awareness that is ever present, unchanging, formless, timeless, whole, complete, already.

  • If you are looking for it, you have already missed it
  • If you are searching you are on the wrong path
  • If you are hoping to find it, you never will

This week if you like, take a post it, write down the mantra or koan:
“The happiness that you are looking for can never be found. Give up your searching, abandon all hope!”

Then simply take ten minutes to do nothing much, sit comfortably, focus on the words and let go, abandon hope, stop searching. Learn to recognize that finally, you already have that which you seek.

There is no doubt it takes some getting used to, for as Lao Tzu says, the easy is not simple and the simple is not easy.

Final point, in order to have spiritual happiness you do not have to abandon being happy on the changeable level of your ego and soul. With integral meditation it is always both and,  rather than either or. You can have a successful and fulfilling soul and ego life (tho you will also suffer too!) as well as learning to rest in the ultimate spiritual happiness that is always there. They should be mutually supportive rather than mutually contradictory.
There’s a section on my blog devoted to articles on this: Integrating ego, soul and spirit.

© 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

Support for you Meditation Practice 

If you enjoyed the article above, and are interested in sound technology that can help you more easily get into deeper states of meditation, the following two tracks work well with cultivating formless, timeless meditations:

Harmonic Resonance Meditation

Audio Serenity

Categories
Essential Spirituality Insight Meditation Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Meditating on the Self Meditation techniques Presence and being present Primal Spirituality spiritual intelligence Stress Transformation Uncategorized

The Four “-lessnesses” of Enlightenment

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks article looks at four characteristics of enlightened awareness. Explanations of spiritual enlightenment can seem a little like riddles, and this article is a little like that, but at the same time I hope it is accessible enough for you to feel as if you can enjoy exploring enlightened awareness  for yourself.

Yours in the clear and chaotic space of enlightenment,

Toby
 

The Four “-lessnesses” of Enlightenment

Spiritual enlightenment means to locate the centre of your awareness in a place that is radically different from the place where it is for most people.
One of the difficulties of getting to this space of radically different space is that it is really quite difficult to describe, as it is beyond our usual use and experience of language. One of the best ways to try and describe it is by indicating what it is not.
So, with this in mind here are four “-lessnesses” that if we contemplate them can give us an idea of what resting in a state of spiritually enlightened awareness might be like:

Form-lessness – Enlightened awareness itself is formless, it has no physical or mental form. It is just that part of ourself that is pure awareness.
Time-lessness – Enlightened awareness is that part of our awareness that is beyond all ideas of past, present and future
Self-lessness – The Enlightened self is beyond any ordinary concept of self that we might normally have. It has no physical or mental characteristics that we can say ‘this is it’. In this sense it is a selfless-self.
Home-lessness – Our enlightened self has no location in time and space. Its home is in a place where there is no concept of home. Thus is at home everywhere and nowhere.

Four images for connecting to your Enlightened Nature

1. Imagine that the world around you dissolves into space. Then imagine that your body dissolves into space. All that is left is a formless space. Rest quietly in your awareness of that.
2. Drop all concepts of past present and future. Rest entirely in that place that lies beyond our understanding of ordinary time.
3. Forget the person you are. Drop all ideas of your story and personality. Rest in the awareness of that part of you that lies beyond any ideas of who you are.
4. Let go of the idea that ‘home’ is a place that you can ever find or get to. Rest in that part of your awareness is at home wherever you are, whatever you are doing, that does not need a place to go to feel at ease.

Your enlightened nature is a place that you can rest in, a place you can regenerate your energy, a place that gives the rest of your life in time and space perspective a context. It won’t give you the answers to your life, but it is a place that will give you the confidence to go and find those answers for yourself.

For this week you might like to sit and mindfully explore one of the four images above in contemplation, simply allowing your mind to rest for a few minutes in a state of form-lessness, time-lessness, self-lessness or home-lessness.

© 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

Support for you Meditation Practice 

If you enjoyed the article above, and are interested in sound technology that can help you more easily get into deeper states of meditation, the following two tracks work well with cultivating formless, timeless meditations:

Harmonic Resonance Meditation

Audio Serenity