Retreat events this month include a short one: This Saturday morning’s Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat, & for the main event for October, theIntegral Meditation Two Day Retreat on the weekend of the 28/29th. The two day retreat is a great opportunity to really deepen your meditation practice in a profound way. Don’t be deceived by the relative shortness of the time span, the methods we use are designed to get practitioners into the ‘zone’ right from the get go…. The new video I have created, entitled ‘Subjects to objects – How meditation helps you grow to greater degrees of freedom’ explores the essential dynamic of meditation, and how short bursts of meditation such as retreats can really catalyze that process!
In the spirit of turning subjects into objects,
Toby
Summary: This video discusses two main subjects related to meditation. The first part explores why and how a meditation practice helps individuals grow as individuals. Meditation is described as a process that transforms subjects of consciousness (e.g., body, emotions, ego) into objects of consciousness, leading to reduced identification with these aspects and increased inner freedom. It aids in personal evolution by moving from one level of consciousness to another. The second part focuses on the long-term effects of a meditation practice, emphasizing that continued meditation leads to increasing degrees of freedom from the objects within one’s consciousness. This liberation allows individuals to endure stress calmly and undertake challenging tasks with ease. The analogy of dissolving salt in water is used to illustrate how a larger, more expansive mind mitigates the impact of suffering and stress. Ultimately, meditation enhances the quality of life, making it less painful and more enjoyable.
In case you missed it this weeks article: Fourteen types & levels of mindful intention
We almost always have an intention, even in our dreams. Some of these intentions are conscious, some of them are unconscious. These intentions drive our actions & acts as the context for our experiences, shaping them substantially. What intentions have you been oriented around today, and how have they been shaping your experiences and actions? One way you could define mindfulness is ‘Living with conscious intentionally’…read full article
“Suppression can be used positively and strategically to enhance our effectiveness and wellbeing in life, whereas repression almost always results in long term inner turbulence and interference in our ability to see and work with our present life as it is”
Dear Integral Meditators,
The distinction between suppression & repression is an important one for preserving our overall sense of inner balance & harmony. One requires temporarily foregoing emotional expression, the second engaging emotion that we might not want to face. If you enjoy the article, then do consider coming along for the Therapeutic mindfulness course starting next week. The aim in a nutshell is to re-wire your relationship to your past in order to engage your present & future with vitality & enthusiasm.
Suppression & repression – the difference, & it’s importance
Why is it important to know the importance between these two? Its important to know the difference between these two because one can be used positively and strategically to enhance our effectiveness and wellbeing in life, whereas the other almost always results in longer term inner turbulence and interference in our ability so see and work with our present life as it is.
What does it mean to supress? Speaking in emotional terms, to supress means to be aware that you have that emotion, and to exert self-control in order not to express it in the moment, for example:
I might be very angry, but refrain from expressing it right now
I might feel sad, but put on a ‘brave face’
I might feel affection and want to hug someone, but it just might not be appropriate for the situation
Conscious suppression enables us to go away with our feelings and deal with them later, in a way that is appropriate. It prevents us doing things that we may later regret or consider unhelpful. Done skillfully, we can consider it a good ability to have! This is with the caveat that, having suppressed the emotion we do not then repress it…
What does it mean to repress? To repress an emotion (or an experience that brings up painful emotion) means to push it out of our conscious awareness, and into our unconscious. It means to ‘pretend’ to ourself that the emotion and/or related experience does not exist, that we do not, in fact have then at all.
I am angry, but when asked, “Anger, what anger? Why would I be angry”
Rather than consciously putting on a brave face while feeling sad, I simply am not sad (even though I am)
I am scared by my affection for someone enough to simply squash it and pretend I don’t have it
Repression constricts and uses up our energy (to repress takes effort). It means we have to lie to ourselves. It messes up our rational thinking, turning it into rationalisation of the denial we want to be true. It often results in our feeling and expressing other surface emotions that are really all about the repressed emotion, for example:
I am angry (the repressed), so I react by feeling sad and bursting into tears (the expressed)
I am sad (the repressed), so I lash out and attack my colleague (the expressed)
Repression makes us suffer, often unconsciously. It makes us less capable in the face of reality. It can create unhealthy physical habits, and in the longer term it can even start to cause physical health issues.
Can you supress & then repress? Of course, you can supress and emotion that you know you’re having, and then conveniently ‘forget’ about it later through repression.
Observing your own habits & patterns mindfully So, the thing here is on a practical level start to watch yourself in real time and assess your patterns of repression and suppression. Just observe honestly and notice if you are using suppression in a healthy or unhealthy manner, and what emotions/experiences you tend to outright repress. Re-working your habits in this domain will serve you well for the rest of your life!
Processing old repressions Of course, all of us have a bunch of repressions from or recent and distant path. Part of the function of Therapeutic Mindfulness is to dig these out and bring them to resolution, so that they stop interfering with our present life and our aspirations for the future. You can see a recent reflection of mine on my own inner child process by clicking the link. The effect of processing past repressions is almost always a resurgence of life force, and an enhanced sense of the joy of being alive.
Special Coaching Offer for the Month of September – Free 20minute coaching session with Toby
For the remaining two weeks of September Integral Meditation Asia is offering free 20minute coaching sessions with Toby! If you have been interested in the idea of getting some personal coaching on a particular issue or challenge, and/or want to explore what 1:1 meditation coaching can do for you in terms of both your quality of and direction in life, this is a great opportunity to find out what it is like with Toby. These 20minute sessions can be done on Zoom or via Whatsapp. You can find read the general write up of Toby’s Life-fullness Coaching here, & his other forms of coaching here. You can read feedback and reviews from Toby’s coaching sessions here.
To arrange your 20minute session or for further enquiries: Email info@tobyouvry.com, or W-App65-96750279
“If you are prepared to do the work, it seems there truly are no edges to your level of inner joy”
Dear Integral Meditators,
The photo of the child with this article is me when I was around 8 or 9. I keep it on the fridge. I noticed last week that the fridge magnet marked ‘l’excitacion’, or excitement in French had been placed on my forehead, which inspired me to write about my own ongoing journey in the domain of Therapeutic mindfulness. If you enjoy the article, then do consider participating in the upcoming Therapeutic mindfulness course, which is full of practices to help you re-connect to the joy of living, and move beyond long-held fears.
Progressively recovering your joie de vivre (Meditating with your inner child)
When I left my life as a Buddhist monk, aged 31, I had been practising eastern meditation forms in a very disciplined manner for a decade. I had experienced many wonderful and amazing meditation states, and had a solid working experience of the awakened state/enlightenment experience. Despite this I noticed that there were still parts of my everyday consciousness that seemed to have been untouched by all this work. I found that certain types of anxiety, irritability and fear had not gone away, and sometimes seemed even worse. This was partly why I left my life as a monk, because I felt I needed to broaden my search for answers to these unresolved areas. The answer was not just ‘do more meditation’, I had to do something differently.
One of the things that I focused on that year was exercises specifically based on the psychological level of my being, based around western theories of trauma and around working with emotional states. I began regular work with my ‘inner child’, exercises including visualization, dialoguing, breathing and body-work. I was very surprised how much work there was to be done! I considered myself pretty well-adjusted as a person, which I think I was, but even so, there was so much to re-connect to, so much to work with, so much to discover. During this period, I really felt I recovered much of my joie de vivre, and got a badly needed ‘second-wind’ for my inner growth that powered me into the next decade of my life. But the amazing thing about this is that even though I felt that I now had a very good relationship to my inner child (and other sub personalities), it is a process that does not seem to end. Fast forward to the beginning of this year. At the beginning of the year, I often check in with my ‘inner family’ in meditation. When meeting my inner child, I had this experience:
“I am walking along the middle of a shallow river that I used to play in as a child. I come to a bridge from which I used to look down at the big fish swimming in and out of the dark water underneath. On the sand to one side of the bridge I see my inner child. I wade over to him, and we squat for a while looking under the bridge. Then he smiles to me and we begin to walk into the water and under the bridge (I never went under the bridge as a child). We stand in silence looking and feeling the fish around our feet, in gentle awe and excitement. After while we walk on and out from the other side of the bridge. We walk on to a meadow next to the river. My child-self utters a cry, and starts to run around the meadow, whooping, and laughing out of pure joy, I watch on, quite amazed, and aware of a new level of joy in myself that I have never experienced before.”
After the meditation, this new level of joy within myself has persisted, and it seems clear to me that some level of inhibition or fear in my child has been resolved. This is a full fifteen years after starting my active relationship with him. So even now my life and experience are expanding and growing from my inner work with my child self and other related therapeutic mindfulness practices aimed at building a strong inner-self psychologically. If you do the work, it seems there truly are no edges to your level of inner joy.
Special Coaching Offer for the Month of September – Free 20minute coaching session with Toby
For the remaining two weeks of September Integral Meditation Asia is offering free 20minute coaching sessions with Toby! If you have been interested in the idea of getting some personal coaching on a particular issue or challenge, and/or want to explore what 1:1 meditation coaching can do for you in terms of both your quality of and direction in life, this is a great opportunity to find out what it is like with Toby. These 20minute sessions can be done on Zoom or via Whatsapp. You can find read the general write up of Toby’s Life-fullness Coaching here, & his other forms of coaching here. You can read feedback and reviews from Toby’s coaching sessions here.
To arrange your 20minute session or for further enquiries: Email info@tobyouvry.com, or W-App65-96750279
“Meditation on the Tree of Life aims to balance and harmonize various aspects of the self by connecting with different universal energies represented by the tree’s structure”
It’s one of my favorite meditation practices, I hope that by posting it here I’ll inspire a few to find out more about it! When reading, you can use the above picture for reference.
In the spirit of the Life Tree,
Toby
Article & meditation summary:
The Tree of Life is a significant concept in Western meditation traditions. The Tree of Life is represented as a diagram with three pillars and three triangles, each symbolizing various aspects of the universe and individual development. Here’s a brief summary of the key points and stages of the meditation:
Visualization of the Tree: Start by visualizing a beautiful tree in nature. Imagine a pillar of light extending from its roots to the sky, with spheres of earth, lunar, solar, and stellar energies along the central column. Two side pillars also contain orbs of energy.
Merging with the Tree: Visualize yourself sitting at the base of the tree and gradually merging into it, aligning with the central column of light. Feel the energies of the earth, moon, sun, and stars flowing into your being, filling you with light and energy.
Ascending and Descending the Central Pillar:
Lunar/Personality Sphere: Move your consciousness up to the lunar sphere, where silvery moon energies strengthen and balance your body, mind (orange light) and emotions (green light).
Solar/Soul Level Sphere: Ascend further to the solar sphere, where golden sun energies balance with your willpower and sense of justice (red/crimson light) and your sense of mercy and compassion (blue/indigo light).
Stellar/Spiritual Sphere: Rise to a sphere beneath the stellar sphere, where white stellar energies balance with your feminine energy and presence (dark light) and masculine energy and creativity (silvery-grey light). Achieve balance and harmony between these aspects.
Merging with the Tree/Body Mandala Practice: Descend the central pillar until you’re back at the base, and then expand your consciousness to become the Tree of Life. Your spine and core represent the central column, while your left and right halves embody the energies of the left and right columns. This step integrates the tree’s energies into your being.
Conclusion: Gradually return your awareness to your physical surroundings, relax your visualization, and conclude the meditation.
This meditation on the Tree of Life aims to balance and harmonize various aspects of the self by connecting with different universal energies represented by the tree’s structure.
Meditating on the Tree of Life(full article)
The Tree of Life is a major strand of the western tradition of meditation. It is essentially a diagram consisting of:
Three pillars: A central pillar of equilibrium/balance, a right-hand pillar (as you look at it) that is ‘masculine’ or yang in nature, and a left-hand pillar that is ‘feminine’ or yin in nature
Three triangles stacked vertically: A bottom one representing the body, mind and emotions, or ‘personality’. A middle one representing justice, compassion & beauty, or the ‘soul’. The third, top triangle represents the energy of primal yin, yang and formless (causal) consciousness, or ‘spirit’
Arranged on the pillars and triangles are 10/11 ‘Sephiroth’ or spheres, each representing a particular universal energy. You can see this depicted in the picture that accompanies this article, which is one that I drew many years ago.
The great thing about the Tree of Life is that it depicts all major aspects of the Universe, and of ourselves as individuals. If we know the Tree, we know where to put all of our meditation practices and other activities, and how to develop ourselves holistically in a balanced manner as a result. Below is a brief meditation on the Tree, traveling up the central column, that is a good basis from which other Tree-practices can be developed.
Basic meditation on the Tree of Life
Stage 1: Visualizing the Tree
Imagine you are facing a beautiful tree, somewhere in nature, if you like pick one that you know and love. Visualizing it in front of you, feel its energy. See a pillar of light extending from the roots up the trunk and into the sky. At the bottom of the pillar, just beneath the Earth, is a sphere of earth-energy. A two/three metres up the column is a lunar sphere made of silvery light. Midway up the trunk us a sphere of golden sun energy. Toward the top of the canopy is a sphere of white, star-energy. Either side of the central pillar you can see two other pillars of light, each with three beautiful orbs of energy along its length.
Stage 2: Merging with the Tree
Now visualize yourself going over and sitting at the base of the tree, with your back resting on the tree trunk. After a while feel yourself moving backwards into the tree, so that you are sitting in the centre of the central column of light, with the energies of the earth rising beneath, grounding you, and the energies of the moon, sun and stars flowing into you from above. Feel your own body glowing with light and energy as this happens.
Stage 3: Ascending & descending the central pillar
The Lunar/Personality sphere
Feel your body ascending the central pillar to the lunar sphere, feel your energy-body being strengthened by the silvery energies of the moon. Feel two streams of light flowing into the sphere.
To your right, feel a flow of orange light flowing into the sphere, strengthening, and balancing your mind
To your left feel a flow of green light flowing into the sphere, strengthening, and balancing your emotions
Feel your mind, body and emotions coming into balance and harmony as these energies flow together within you.
The Solar/Soul level sphere
Feel your body rising again up the central pillar to the solar sphere. feel your energy-body being balanced by the beautiful golden energies of the Sun. Feel two streams of light flowing into the sphere.
To your right, feel a flow of red/crimson light flowing into the sphere, strengthening, and balancing your willpower and sense of justice
To your left feel a flow of blue/indigo light flowing into the sphere, strengthening, and balancing your sense of mercy and compassion
Feel your willpower, compassion, and sense of beauty/harmony coming into balance as these energies flow together within you
The Stellar/Spiritual sphere
Feel your body rising again up the central pillar to a sphere of light a little way beneath the stellar sphere. feel your energy-body being balanced by the beautiful white energies of the stellar sphere descending into you directly from above. Then feel two streams of light flowing into the sphere.
To your right, feel a flow of dark light flowing into the sphere, strengthening, and balancing your feminine energy and presence
To your left feel a flow of silvery-grey light flowing into the sphere, strengthening, and balancing your masculine energy and creativity
Feel your feminine, masculine, and spiritual/stellar energy coming into balance and harmony as these energies flow together within you. At this stage you may like to enter a period of silent awareness for a while.
Stage 4: Merging with the Tree/ body mandala practice
Without being in a hurry, feel yourself descending the middle pillar of the Tree, until you are sitting once more within the base at ground level. Now imagine that your body grows and expands, so that you become the Tree of Life, with your spine and vertical core as the central column, and the left and right halves of your body containing the energies of the left and right columns respectively.
When you are ready, become aware of your immediate physical surroundings, relax your visualization, and bring the meditation to a close.
“You might think about your inner mood as being like the weather. If you are playing a game of tennis in a sunny, lightly breezy day, its completely different from playing it on a rainy, very windy day. We can usually shift ourself at least partially toward a better mood if we try, and this then affects everything for the better”
Dear Integral Meditators,
This week’s newsletter slightly early, and has three things in it:
Firstly, an article on the importance of mindfulness around your mood.
Secondly if you are interested in meditation sound technology, I have been using I-awake for many years now. They have some great products, and they are all on a 30% off Labour day sale until 4th September (US time). This technology is also a great way to help change the mood and ambience of your life for the better!
Thirdly, beneath the article you can find all the courses and workshops for September, quite an exciting line-up, starting with the Qi gong workshop on the 9th September!
From August 31 – September 4, 2023, we are holding our annual Labor Day Weekend Sale, one of our biggest sales this year. This sale features 30% OFF on Digital Tracks and 25% OFF on CDs + Digital. Check out our catalog and take advantage of this annual opportunity to receive huge discounts on iAwake tracks and add to or complete your iAwake toolkit.
Discount Coupon Code for DIGITAL (30% OFF): IAWAKELABOR2023
Mindfulness of mood & atmosphere of your life-story
When trying to improve our daily experience through mindfulness quite often peoples focus is upon
Focusing better
Thinking more positively
Thinking less
Relaxing more
These are all noble pursuits of course, but what I find often gets missed is attention to the mood and the inner atmosphere that we do things. If you think about it our mood is very important. For example, if your mood is habitually anxious and fearful then this naturally
In my classes and coaching recently, one of the things that I have been emphasizing to students and clients is awareness of their habitual moods, and deliberately moving them toward a lighter more benevolent inner atmosphere. For example, if having noticed our inner mood in the moment we then direct it towards a combination of
Curiosity & playful inquisitiveness
Warmth & care
Then if we can establish that as an atmosphere in our body-mind, it then starts to colour our daily experience and activities
Warm & curious atmospheres are easy to build relaxed-focus in
Its natural and quite easy to think positively
We feel less compelled to think all the time
Activities just ‘feel’ naturally more enjoyable
The weather you are playing the game in You might think about your inner mood as being like the weather. If you are playing a game of tennis in a sunny, lightly breezy day, its completely different from playing it on a rainy, very windy day. We can’t always completely control our mood, but we can usually shift ourself at least partially toward a better mood if we try, and this then affects everything for the better. Playing with moods therapeutically In my article last week on Therapeutic mindfulness I outline six practices which might also be thought of as ways of creating inner moods that are both strengthening and healing:
Grounded & sensory
Safety & non-emergency
Warmth & compassion
Appreciation
Curiosity & courage
A sense of being supported
All of these are possible moods that you can cultivate. Of course, there are many more that you could choose to focus on, according to your needs and inclinations. It’s something to have fun cultivating!
“The purpose of therapeutic mindfulness is to go back to previous stages in our development in order to reconnect to feelings, emotions, body sensations & memories that we have repressed, denied, or lost touch with. The healthy re-integration of these experiences sets the scene for a renewed sense of wellbeing within our present life, & for safely engaging in higher, deeper levels of personal growth.”
If you enjoy the article I invite you to click on the link & find our more about the course!
In the spirit of our inner support system,
Toby
Creating an inner therapeutic mindfulness space – six positions
The purpose of therapeutic mindfulness is to go back to previous stages in our development in order to reconnect to feelings, emotions, body sensations and memories that we have repressed, denied, and lost touch with. The healthy re-integration of these experiences sets the scene for a renewed sense of wellbeing within our present life. It also lays the foundation for then exploring the higher, deeper levels of meditation states (psychic, subtle, causal, non-dual) in a way that is balanced and sustainable. Below are a set of qualities to cultivate when engaging in therapeutic mindfulness. Each one of them has benefits in an of themselves, but practiced together they make for a good combination within which we can then go on to do some inner healing work.
Grounding in the senses – Work that involves contacting potentially volatile emotions or feelings needs to be done whilst grounded enough in the present moment in order to feel the stability of our senses supporting us, so that we don’t feel completely ‘carried away’ by the experience.
Safety – Repressed emotions can feel dangerous, so connecting to the basic safety of this moment – recognizing that there are no immanent threats to our present wellbeing – is a fundamental position to be familiar with.
Warmth & compassion – Establishing as far as we can a feeling of basic warmth and compassion toward ourselves at the beginning of the session, and as we encounter our experiences during the TM session.
Appreciation – Having an appropriate sense of our life being a good place with the existence of people, places and experiences that make it rich and enjoyable. This then means that when we encounter challenges in our therapeutic mindfulness practice, it is always contextualized by this sense of overall appreciation/ positivity.
Curiosity & courage – TM can feel like heavy work sometimes, so cultivating a sense of lightness and curiosity is helpful in this regard. It helps us avoid getting overly caught up and identified in the experience. Similarly, courage can help us hugely as, by its nature TM involves contact and sometimes confrontation with parts of us that we fear or would otherwise wish to avoid. This doesn’t mean you have to be some kind of big hero, just that you have whatever courage you possess present and available to you when doing TM.
A sense of being supported – It can be useful if you have any belief or sense of a higher, deeper supporting being or intelligence to invoke or feel the presence of it/her/him before you engage in therapeutic mindfulness practice. This is personal and can be done any way that the practitioner finds acceptable or appropriate.
With these six positions available to you and in place, you should then feel confident in engaging in any kind of therapeutic mindfulness practice that you might want to, with a sense of these qualities supporting and enhancing your practice.
“The ‘teenage self’ is one of several aspects of our inner-self or psyche that, if we take the time to connect to, we can find ourselves being enriched. For example, if I am well connected to my inner teenager, then I can draw upon his innate curiosity, ambition and appetite for life in a way that other middle-aged folk who lack a vital connection to their inner teenager cannot!”
Dear Integral Meditators,
This weeks article comes under the domain of what you might call ‘Theraputic mindfulness’, & has strong, explicit connections to the wellbeing of our psychological self. It relates to the area of coaching work that I offer in my Mindful self-knowledge program.
In the spirit of inner vitality,
Toby
Meditating with your teenage-self
Definitions of your youthful and teenage self: The ‘teenage self’ is one of several aspects of our inner-self or psyche that, if we take the time to connect to, we can find ourselves being enriched in a number of ways. Some of these ways are therapeutic, as in healing inner wounds and burdens from our teenage past. Other ways include connecting to the strengths of our youthful/teenage self that we can draw upon in our present stage of life. For example, at my present age of 51, if I am well connected to my inner teenager, then I can draw upon his innate curiosity, ambition and appetite for life in a way that other 50-somethings who lack a vital connection to their inner teenager cannot! Our teenage self is different from our ‘inner child-self’ (who is worked with commonly in a therapeutic context) in the sense that our inner child is a pre-sexual being, whereas our inner teenager is an adolescent and therefore sexually defined/sexually activated. Consequently, the concerns of the inner child and teenager, and their perspectives/needs differ substantially. Below I point out a few definitions and ways of beginning to relate to your inner teenager.
The youthful or teenage self is that part of us that has matured from the child to the early-adult stage of human development. It sees the initial development of an adult personality; it is concerned with things such as:
Defining and distinguishing ourself from others,
Appetite for and ambitions in life,
Career/life goals,
Sexuality and romantic relationships
Willingness to keep learning new things
A psychological definition:
The teenage-self is the component of the psyche containing the “personality” of the adolescent one once was, with that teenager’s range of values, emotions, needs and responses; not a generic teenager or universal archetype, but a specific, historical one, unique to an individual’s history and development. – Nathaniel Branden, definition taken from the Six Pillars of Self Esteem, page 265ff.
Meditation pointers for the teenage-self:
Free association: Bring to mind the words ‘my teenage, or youthful-self ’. Holding it within your awareness allow your mind to start to free –associate feelings, images, memories, thoughts, and desires around your teenage-self. At this stage the main thing is to focus on being curious as to what sort of memories, feelings and so on arise when you contemplate the idea of your teen self; whether these feelings and memories are pleasant or unpleasant is secondary, the main thing is simply to see what comes up without editing any of the content. If you like you can use the following sentence-stems as departure points for your free association:
When I think of the young adult or teenager within me –
One of the things that I found challenging about growing to adulthood was –
One of my favourite memories about my teenage or young adult life was –
Connecting to your teenage-self: Imagine yourself in a place that you knew and loved as a teenager. As you sit or stand in that place, imagine your teenage self comes to meet you there. Spend time with your teenager, talking, connecting, and building trust. Starting questions for the interaction might include:
What do you need from me to help feel happy and secure?
Is there anything that you want to say to me or offer me at this time?
What do you think about this (choose your domain) aspect of our life?
How can we find more time for play & exploration in our life together?
Like outer teens, your inner–teen needs parenting with an appropriate amount of firmness and love, but with more freedom and autonomy given than you would with your child self. By connecting to your inner-teenager you can also become a better parental self, both toward your inner-teens, and toward outer teenagers!
“Once you get used to it, being creatively powerful in your life feels less and less stressful, and more and more of a pleasure. Rather than ‘life happening to me’ I have the feeling that ‘I am happening to life!’”
Dear Integral Meditators,
This weeks article explores mindfulness to help you become more powerful, engaged & directed in your life. It’s partly my own response to completing a recent course on mindful self-leadership with some of my students, but thematically it’s fairly central to my overall approach to ‘engaged mindfulness’.
Self-belief (the most powerful creative force in your life)
I am the most powerful force in my life, you are the most powerful in yours I’ve recently completed a series on ‘Mindful self-leadership’ with my public program students. It’s a program that I also run with companies and organizations at least six times a year. Each time I deliver it, slightly different themes energy as important for me. This time around the insight that kept coming back again and again as the course went on was ‘I am the most important creative force in my life’. The simple recognition of this is a tremendously powerful object of mindful attention.
The most powerful force in the world? Of course you aren’t, there are many more powerful forces in the world than you or I. But, in terms of your life, it is you that sits in the middle of it, your energy & focus, your choices to do or not to do, your thoughts & emotions. What you choose to focus on and do in your life is the most powerful directional force in it!
The feeling of helplessness Sometimes there can be an overriding feeling of helplessness in the face of events in our life. We can feel like a puppet, the strings of which are being pulled by other people and external forces. Sometimes we can convince ourselves that ‘we have no choice’ and allow ourselves to become a victim of circumstances. There is even comfort in being a victim, we can tell ourselves that we had no choice and blame it on others.
Sometimes things don’t work out It is true that sometimes things don’t work out as we had hoped, despite our best efforts. But even then, we are the ones who decide how we approach the fact that things didn’t work out how we had hoped. We are the ones who decide how to mentally frame what has happened, and how we are going to work with it. We are the ‘eye of the storm’, we are still the primary causal factor in our experience.
It’s sometimes hard work owning your creative power If you own your power, then sure, you have to stay alert, think things through, confront difficult choices and people. But all of this is no harder work than not owning your power, and being buffeted mercilessly by the forces of chance and fate. Once you get used to it, being creatively powerful in your life feels less and less stressful, and more and more of a pleasure. Rather than ‘life happening to me’ I have the feeling that ‘I am happening to life!’. We can be calm, collected, and powerful. If we do so we burn less energy, we feel more in control. From this then a stable experience of self-belief starts to emerge, a faith in our ability to work thru and work out our problems, and enjoy doing it!
Meditating: Sit down quietly. As you breathe, breathe your energy and awareness into the centre of your chest and torso area. Feel your creative power gathering in your body as you inhale, relax into it as you exhale. As you breathe, dwell upon the recognition: “I am the most powerful creative force in my life”. Stay with that recognition and feeling for the time you have set aside for meditation, really letting it sink in. As you go about your daily life, remember the recognition, and act as if you believed it. Play with your power creatively, taking ownership of it. Notice how your experience starts to change.
“In meditation we practice both building a stronger more powerful self, and dropping, or letting go of the self. This enables us to lead ourselves consciously and strongly though our life challenges, and at the same time strategically put down our sense of self, and relax into the regenerative space arising when we do so”
Breathing with your power – Empowering & then dropping the self
In meditation we practice both building a stronger more powerful self, and dropping, or letting go of the self. This enables us to lead ourselves consciously and strongly though our life challenges, and at the same time strategically put down our sense of self, and relax into the regenerative space arising when we do so. As well as practising both individually, it is very important to practice the transition between them, so that we can move from one state to the other in a skillful & flexible way at different times during the day. This article explores how to do this.
Step 1: Empowering the self Centring: Sit comfortably with your spine, neck and head aligned. Spend a little while relaxing and focusing your body-mind by breathing. As you do so breathe through the nose, and down into your lower lungs, so you are connecting your ‘nose to your belly’
Recognizing your self as the centre of your life:
Breathe into the centre of your torso, somewhere between your chest and solar-plexus. Become aware of your physical body and sensory world, recognize the sense of self that is at the centre of this experience, in the centre of your being.
Become aware of your mind; thoughts, ideas, feelings and desires. Observe the sense of self that lies at the centre of this experience.
Recognize that the ‘self’ at the centre of your bodily and mental experience is the primary causal power in what you experience and do in your life. Ideally it should be this self that leads, chooses and decides the path your life takes. If not you, then who else?
Breathe with this recognition for a while, feeling the power and agency of the self that lies within you
Step 2: Dropping the labels around your ‘self’ This second exercise involves noticing, and then dropping all the labels that you associate with yourself;
The roles you play in your family
The roles and titles you have professionally
Your identification of qualities with yourself eg: strong/weak, masculine feminine and so forth
Drop all these labels that you associate with but that are not you, so that you become a man or woman of no rank or position. You can even drop the label of man, woman, human, and just become a being. Notice that the ‘self’ you now experience is mere presence and being, that you can relax into the spaciousness and freedom of.
Practising the transition Either of these meditations are good to do by themselves, but it can be nice to alternate between them in a single session, for example over a 20minute meditation you could spend 5 minutes on step 1, five minutes on step 2, and then repeat. This would give you a 20minute practice where you are practicing both positions and the transitions between them.
“It can be helpful to work on changing our idea of our inner self, and the scale on which it is able to work”
Dear Integral Meditators,
Do you have a question about meditation or mindfulness? If you have a question about meditation & mindfulness, either that you have been wondering about, or you may have asked people before but not received a satisfactory answer? If so then please send me a message with it to: info@tobyouvry.com. I’d like to start integrating some questions into my articles and videos, and it would be fun to do it with questions from you!
New course coming up: Do check out the mindful self-leadership workshop & six week course that I’ll be putting on over the weekend (the workshop), and then beginning next week (six week course).
And finally, please find below the article relating to this weeks Tuesday & Wednesday class.
In the spirit of mindful questioning,
Toby
Making yourself big
When we get onto some kind of evolutionary path, we start to develop bigger intentions and aspirations. Rather than simply thinking about ourself and our close circle of family and friends in a material and temporary manner, we start to think in terms of benefitting the planet and the evolution of humanity. When this happens it can feel intimidating, ‘What can someone as small as I do in the face of such large forces? Can I really make any kid of significant impact?’ If we continue to identify our ‘self’ as being a small being trapped in a small physical body, then this can indeed feel overwhelming, as there is a mismatch between ‘self’ and ‘goal’. It can be helpful therefore to work on changing our idea of our inner self, and the scale on which it is able to work. A traditional Hermetic meditation technique is to visualize yourself as becoming very big, literally! Here is a source quote from a text called ‘the Corpus Hermeticum’:
“Increase thyself to an immeasurable height, leaping clear of all body, and surmounting all time, become eternal and thou shalt know God. There is nothing impossible to thyself. Deem thyself immortal and able to do all things…become higher than all height, and lower than all Depth…to be everything at the same time in earth and sea and heaven. Think that thou art as yet begotten, that thou art in the womb, that thou art young, that thou art old, that thou has died and art beyond death: perceive all things together…and thou shalt know God. But if thou shuttest up thy soul in thy body, and abasest thyself and sayest ‘I know nothing, I can do nothing, I am afraid of earth and sea, I cannot mount heaven, I know not what I was or what I shall be;’ then what hast thou to do with God?”
The basic idea here is that, if I identify myself as a small, limited, ignorant being, then I won’t leap beyond that limited idea of myself into my true potential. There are a lot of ideas to work with in the quote, but to make it very simple, as you sit in meditation you could imagine your body becoming larger, to the size of the room, then the house, then the apartment block, then your feet on the floor your head above the clouds, then country-size, then Planet size….You can go as big as you want or feels appropriate. As your body expands, feel your consciousness expanding with it, experience your everyday personal worries as insignificant, and yourself as a powerful effector of positive change on a great scale. If you relax and start to experiment with this, you will find your consciousness, and your sense of who you are and what you are capable of will change significantly. If you do it in a positive, balanced way all these changes can be used for the good.
But will I become delusional? One fear that we may have in doing this is that we will simply become delusional, using this as a way of evading our reality and getting a completely inappropriate sense of who we are and our importance in the world. So of course, everything has to be held in balance here. If we understand the purpose of the exercise is to transcend our limited self-concept, freeing us to work in a way that currently we cannot. Understanding this specific purpose, we can do this exercise safely and get the benefits without falling into any potential dangers. It is also an exercise you can do when your ‘small self’ is simply feeling overwhelmed by life and its challenges. It can change the context of your experience very powerfully for the good.
