Category: meditation and creativity

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The web of time & the intuitive present

Dear Integral Meditators,

We normally think about time as being in a straight line, running from past to present to future. but what it it were more like a web? The article below investigates how we can begin to meditate on the web of time, and the intuitive present that is its gateway.

In the spirit of intuition,

Toby

PS:  For those in Singapore, you can catch a class on the intuitive present tomorrow, Wednesday at 7.30pm. This Saturday 16th is the Shamanic mandala meditation & art workshop, & do checkout the One Heart Open Day that my and the crew at Oneheart will be putting on on Saturday 30th September!

The web of time & the intuitive present

According to our concrete, logical, linear mind, time unfolds in a sequence, from past to present to future. Time looks like a straight line.
If you look at the way in which we experience time from moment to moment, you can start to see that we experience time in other ways too. From the point of view of our intuitive, or non-linear mind time can be more like a web, with the present moment in time like being in the center of that web. In each moment we are receiving images, ideas, impressions, feelings and so on from these intuitive dimensions of our being and time.

You might think of your intuitive mind as the non-logical, non-rational part of your mind that includes areas such as the subconscious, the creative and imaginative, as well as the higher, trans-rational mind, our ancestral consciousness and dream states. These parts of our mind do not experience time ‘in a straight line’. The past and the future, things that have happened, things that have not happened all appear in a seemingly jumbled up, but often meaningful sequence.

Some of the information we receive in this way can be quite random and not very useful. However, some of it can be very worthwhile and valuable. Indeed, some of it can be more valuable than the information we receive from our logical mind, as our intuitive mind is connected to sources of information that are beyond the reach of our everyday sequential thinking and thoughts.

Sitting in the web of time as the ‘spider of the intuitive present’
Imagine you are sitting in the ‘web of intuitive time’, with threads all around you connecting you to different parts of time and areas of your consciousness. Imagine you are the ‘spider of the intuitive present’, sitting in the middle of your web, waiting, watching and observing. You are very still, feeling the vibrations coming along the threads around you, receiving different impressions, images and information from your intuitive mind. You simply watch, observe and sift through the information distinguishing that which is worthwhile and interesting from that which is probably not useful.
You can do this as a meditation form in and of itself anytime to attune yourself to the web of time and the intuitive, or non-linear present moment.

A personal example: The Buddha & his coat of many colours
A lot of the information I tend to receive from the intuitive present tends to be in the form of images. For example, a few months ago, I started seeing in my meditations a fat, Buddha like figure (a Maitreya figure for those of you who may know him as the popular Chinese laughing Buddha), wearing a coat of many coloured cloths and colours. He was sitting on a pile of gold coins, and seemed to be radiating abundance and wellbeing. Observing and experiencing this I had a feeling that my business was going to take a turn for the better (financially) over the coming months. Sure enough all sorts of business opportunities started coming in. It isn’t that I would not have had the business if I had not seen the image, but the image was an intuitive guide for me to the landscape of my business for the subsequent few months, which was very useful, and complementary to my ‘hard-nosed’, linear and rational methods of planning my work and income!

© Toby Ouvry 2017, 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

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation Classes at One Heart with Toby (East coast)

Starting Tues/Wed September 5th/6th – September & October Five Class Meditation Series: Cultivating Deep Experience of the Present Moment

September 19th/20th: Autumn Equinox balancing & renewing meditation

Saturday September 16th, 10am-5pm –  Shamanic mandala meditation & art workshop

Saturday September 30th, 10am-4.30pm – One Heart Open Day!

Integral Meditation Asia

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

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Awareness and insight Biographical creative imagery Life-fullness meditation and creativity Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Confidence Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness

Nurturing your natural intelligence and natural dignity

Dear Integral Meditators,

One of the most important & enjoyable benefits of being mindful is accessing what I call your natural intelligence & natural dignity. The article below explores how to understand & develop these two skills experientially.

In the spirit of natural dignity,
Toby

Nurturing your natural intelligence and natural dignity

Today I want to talk about two very important qualities that you start to build within yourself through mindfulness. Whenever you do any form of activity that stimulates your mindfulness, you create an inner space where there is an opportunity to build what I call your natural intelligence and natural dignity. Understanding and reflecting upon these two qualities helps us to develop them faster and more deeply.

Natural intelligence.
Natural intelligence is simply your innate ability to learn, problem solve and generally figure things out from direct observation and experience of life. When our mind and bodies are relaxed and calm, we all have a natural facility to just look at things and learn about what works and what doesn’t. This natural intelligence does not require a philosophy (though by using it you may develop one), nor does it require complex conceptual knowledge. However, it does require you to be able to have enough confidence and inner calm to start to trust and use it effectively. Here are two examples of where I have developed and used it in my life:

  • At art school as a sculpture student, I had a lot of technical problems that were involved in how to make sculpture effectively; How tall can I build this clay sculpture before it falls over? How can I communicate an emotional idea that I have in my head in a silent three-dimensional form? How can I make an effective sculpture avoiding any unnecessary processes that harm the environment (e.g. fiberglass etc…)? All of these questions can be informed by asking others, looking at other artworks and so on, but for the most part what I needed was just to keep looking, keep experimenting using trial and error, using my natural intelligence.
  • As a mindfulness and life coach. One thing that I have discovered in my teaching and coaching career is that learning different modalities of coaching and learning will only get me so far in terms of bringing real benefit to the diverse group of people whom I coach and assist. The fulcrum of my coaching practice (and the one that I believe makes me the most valuable to others) is the ability to look at people’s lives and situations with my natural intelligence. This enables me to enter into the person’s life, understand its context, observe it, and then on that basis offer a series of suggestions that are going to be relevant and useful to that person and that will help them direct their life in the way that they want it to go.

Natural dignity
Natural dignity is something that every creature has. For example if you look at a mouse or an ant going about its daily business you will start to observe that, whatever dangers it is fending off or jobs that it is doing, they are basically happy to be themselves. An ant is happy to be an ant, it is not thinking about becoming a grasshopper. A mouse is comfortable in its own skin, in its “mouseness”. It is not trying to be something else, and in this you can sense a natural dignity, an unconscious self respect that the mouse possesses in being what it is.
Humans however, amidst all their mental complexity and egoic insecurity very easily lose touch with their natural dignity, the dignity of their humanness and just being who they are. Humans often look at other humans and want to be the other that they see. They look at their bodies and want another, better looking body. They look at their skill sets, consider them inferior and want someone else’s that seem better. Basically we as humans have lost touch with the natural sense of dignity that comes from being comfortable as we are, warts and all. Natural dignity is completely different from being lazy or a slob. Laziness and slobbiness is almost always accompanied by low self esteem and self loathing “I want to be something else, but I have given up trying” it says. Natural dignity is just a sense that you have, when your mind and body are relaxed enough that says “I am comfortable in my uniqueness and the validity of my place in this world and in the universe, and I don’t have to do more than this to feel dignified in who I am”.

Two questions
Here are two questions that you can ask yourself regularly as a form of mindfulness practice, in order to help stimulate your natural intelligence and natural dignity:

  • If I mindfully bring my natural intelligence to bear upon this situation/circumstance/challenge, what does it help me to see and understand?
  • If I center myself within my natural dignity in this situation, what would it change in terms of the way I experience it?

© Toby Ouvry 2017, 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

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation Classes at One Heart with Toby (East coast)

Starting Tues/Wed August 15th/16th – August meditation three class mini-series: Cultivating engaged-equanimity & positive non-attachment

Saturday September 16th, 10am-5pm –  Shamanic mandala meditation & art workshop

Integral Meditation Asia

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

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Awareness and insight Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Life-fullness meditation and creativity Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Confidence Mindfulness Positive anger Presence and being present

Is calmer always better?

Dear Integral Meditators,

Is the goal of meditation and mindfulness always to make you calmer? The article below considers this question from a number of angles that are important to consider in our day to day practice…

In the spirit of dynamic calm,

Toby

For those in Singapore, this weeks Tuesday & Wednesday class will be meditating on ‘Enlightened Imperfection‘, all welcome!

Is calmer always better? (Passionate preferences)

Is the goal of meditation and mindfulness always to make you calmer? Yesterday I was talking with a friend in the tech and start-up industry who was telling me the story of how he came to mindfulness practice. In short he became so stressed due to his work that he started having physical heart and chest pains. Upon going to the doctor, he was told there was no physical problem, it was mainly psychological stress. It was at that point that he started meditating.
Many people come to meditation and mindfulness in a similar way; the absence of calm in their life forces them to seek out a way of dealing with their stress, and they start using mindfulness meditation as a way of moving toward a less frenetic and frantic state of body, mind and heart.

The spectrum of mindful attention
Once we get beyond mindfulness as an ‘emergency band-aid’ way of calming down, we discover that mindfulness and meditation when done well does not always mean becoming calmer. In fact the help us consciously move ourself along a spectrum of attention. This spectrum of attention moves from a state of total calm & relaxation on one end (On a scale of 1-10, let’s call this 1) and a state of dynamic passion and action on the other end (on our scale of 1-10, this would be 10).
Your ‘job’ as a mindfulness practitioner is to bring the level of mindful intensity appropriate to the particular task at hand, in order to optimize your experience of it both in terms of your effectiveness, and your ability to experience happiness. Here are some examples of how this can go wrong or right:

The lower expression: 
Negative calm – Not enough passion: Let’s say I am having a discussion with my partner about our relationship. If I remain totally calm and dispassionate to the point of dis-interest, this is not going to serve the purpose of our discussion.
Too much passion: To continue with the above example, if in my discussion with my partner I become too passionate and not calm enough, then this can sabotage the conversation as well, so here too much passion becomes negative stress.

The higher expression – Mindful passion or mindful engagement:  In the discussion with my partner I need to bring my emotions and passion to the conversation to communicate that I care, and invest deeply in the process of the relationship. I need passionate engagement, with just enough calm to keep the conversation reasonable, considered and polite!

The above is an example of informal mindfulness in everyday life. Similarly, in our formal meditation practice we need passion and motivation in order to avoid our sense of meditative calm becoming too robotic and cold (see last week’s article on ‘Witnessing like the Sun’). So, in both our formal and informal practice of mindfulness and meditation, there needs to be a balance of calmness and excitement, a harmony between relaxation and focus, an equilibrium between our passion and our detachment. Sometimes we need to dial town toward the calm end of the spectrum, but equally sometimes we need to deliberately engage more passion, excitement and positive urgency!  This deliberate engagement of passion is as much a part of the conscious meditative process as cultivating our inner calm.
Each experience in our life is different, and being mindful in each moment helps us to determine the optimal balance of calmness and passion for that particular situation.

Related articles: The spectrum of mindful attention
Engaged detachment

© Toby Ouvry 2017, 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

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation Classes at One Heart with Toby (East coast)

Saturday August 19th, 10am-5pm, & Monday August 21st,  10am-5pm –  Shamanic mandala meditation & art workshop

Integral Meditation Asia

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

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A Mind of Ease Awareness and insight creative imagery Insight Meditation Integral Meditation meditation and creativity Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Confidence Mindfulness Presence and being present

Witnessing like the Sun

Dear Integral Meditators,

Taking a position as an observer or witness is a fundamental position that we practice when being mindful, but can it make us too cold and detached? The article below explores this theme, and how to build an integrated and balanced witnessing practice.

For those in Singapore, this evening’s  Wednesday class will be on ‘Meditation & spiritual alchemy‘, all welcome!

In the spirit of inner light,

Toby

Witnessing like the Sun

Taking a position as an observer or witness is a fundamental position that we practice when being mindful:

  • We learn to watch our thoughts without interfering, repressing, denying or encouraging.
  • We observe our reactions & responses to what people say to us, noting without judging.
  • We try and hold a third person perspective when we are engaging in daily activities, noting our behaviours and the behaviours of others as consciously as possible.
  • We learn to experience emotions without being completely consumed and over-identified with them. There is a part of us that remains at the center of the experience, balanced amidst the imbalance of our feelings.

There can be an extreme of this witnessing position, whereby we become too detached, too cold, too robotic in our mindful witnessing practice. If we go to this extreme then we can find our mindfulness practice detracting from the quality of our life, as it impairs our ability to engage in experiences with passion, engagement, emotion and humanity. With integral mindfulness, we are trying to set up a complementary, supportive relationship between our emotional engagement in life, and our ability to witness, observe and detach. These two qualities should be working with each other, not against each other!

Witnessing like the Sun
One way in which we can avoid the extreme end of mindful detachment is by practising witnessing like the Sun. From one point of view the sun shines on us with total objectivity. It is so huge, and we are so insignificant and tiny (relative to it), it has no involvement or investment in our life at all. It shines upon us as if by chance, with monolithic objectivity. But, at the same time the Sun is also warm, life-giving, bright and joyful. When we see the Sun we feel enlivened, encouraged and optimistic. So, when we practice mindful witnessing, either in formal practice or informally during the day, we can practice as if we are the Sun, combining objective detachment with warmth, benevolence and joy as we watch!

When my phone content was wiped
Yesterday I traded in my old phone for a newer version. In the process of doing so the shop assistant accidentally wiped out a bunch or photos and Whatsapp messages that had a lot of sentimental value for me. After realizing what had happened, I was feeling pretty angry and upset, and a bit emotionally traumatized at the loss. Realizing I was upset I switched on my ‘mindful witness mode’, but made sure that I combined it with engagement and passion, so that I was able to experience the emotions without repressing them, say what I wanted to say to the shop assistant about the f*#ck up (possibly more polite than he deserved, but I think I got the message across), and went about seeing if I could recover the images and information from other sources. In short I tried to practice witnessing like the Sun, shining the light of my objective awareness on the experience with warmth as I experienced the emotional roller-coaster. Two hours later, with most of my emotions processed, and almost all the important info recovered, I could relax and enjoy my new phone, calmly!

© Toby Ouvry 2017, 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

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation Classes at One Heart with Toby (East coast)

Tuesday & Wednesday evenings – Practical meditations for spiritual awakening & enlightenment – A six week course

Saturday August 19th, 10am-5pm, & Monday August 21st,  10am-5pm –  Shamanic mandala meditation & art workshop

Integral Meditation Asia

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

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Awareness and insight Life-fullness meditation and creativity Meditation and Psychology Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness One Minute Mindfulness Presence and being present Stress Transformation

What happens when you take a mindful pause?

Dear Integral Meditators,

Where are the places in your day where you could start taking a mindful pause, and what might the results and benefits be? The article below offers a practical reflection on this…

In the spirit of pausing,

Toby

What happens when you take a mindful pause? (Breaking with habits)

On most Sunday afternoons, I drop my daughter back at her mother’s place after a day out together and make my way home. My habit after dropping her off is to take out my phone, put my earphones on and listen to some music as I walk and talk the bus back. Last Sunday however I found that I had forgotten my earphones. Unable to listen to music, initially I could feel my mind feeling displeasure about the fact that I couldn’t do what I normally do; enjoy music. After I mindfully made the effort to accept the situation, and my minds displeasure, I was able to relax and think to myself ‘I wonder what I might be able to do with this time?’ Over the course of the 20minute journey to my place, here is what happened:

  • Firstly, I came back to my physical body and spent some time moving my awareness into and taking care of the parts that were tired or stressed. I was able to tangibly reduce the amount of ambient pain and tension on my body, which in turn led to a certain amount of gentle pleasure and regeneration in my body.
  • Secondly I spent part of the time getting in touch with and ‘digesting’ some of the quite intense emotions that had been stirred up over the course of the day and the weekend. I could acknowledge the challenging emotions that were present and take care of them. I was also able to enjoy and appreciate in a deeper way the pleasurable and positive emotions that were there. This led to a deeper sense of peace and ‘at homeness’ in my experience of myself in the moment, as well as some genuine love for the others that I had been with over the weekend.
  • Thirdly, I turned my attention to my business for a short while. I planned activities and prioritized my tasks for Monday. This ‘future focused’ mindfulness enabled me to feel greater enthusiasm for my work, as well as clarity around what I needed to do.
  • Lastly, I even remembered to do a few eye exercises (You know, the ones that really help to slow the deterioration of your sight, but that hardly anyone does??) which I have been meaning to start a habit of for a while.

You can see that there were four good results that came from the original ‘forced pause’ that not having my earphones created for me. It illustrates perfectly what happens when we break a habitual, unconscious pattern, and allow ourself to take a mindful pause. Once the resistance has been overcome, our mind naturally starts to seek ways to use the time in ways that promote awareness, recovery and wellbeing within ourselves.
As well as the ‘accidental’ mindful pauses such as the example above, I also deliberately create spaces in my day to pause between tasks. Often the initial experience is resistance; my mind wants to be ‘getting on’ with what I do out of habit but, after a short while this dissolves, and it starts to think creatively in the moment. Often mindful pausing helps us to shift from automatic, habit-based thinking to creative, intelligent, non-habit based thinking.
Where are the places in your day where you could start taking a mindful pause, and enjoying the results?

© Toby Ouvry 2017, 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

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation Classes at One Heart with Toby (East coast)

Tuesday & Wednesday evenings from June 6-7th – Practical meditations for spiritual awakening & enlightenment – A six week course

Saturday July 15th, 10am-5pm, & Monday July 17th,  10am-5pm –  Shamanic mandala meditation & art workshop

Integral Meditation Asia

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

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Energy Meditation Life-fullness meditation and creativity Meditation and Psychology Mindful Confidence Mindful Self-Leadership Motivation and scope

Turning frustration into motivation

Dear Integral Meditators,

Frustration & friction are experiences we normally consider undesirable, but what if there were a way that we could start to take advantage of them? The article below considers how we might start to do this…

In the spirit of motivation,

Toby

Turning frustration into motivation

Last week I was feeling frustrated about the slow pace of a project that I was working on with colleagues. Although the work should have been simple to do, somehow all sorts of complications arose, both in the actual work and in our communication with each other. As I was experiencing this I noticed that there were two things coming up for me:

  1. The effort and friction coming simply from trying to work out a solution
  2. The frustration, emotional friction and resistance coming up inside me because the project was proving more difficult than I thought, and I did not want it to be difficult.

In this situation, I could see very clearly that there was no way to avoid the first part; I had to exert my effort and intelligence to patiently find solutions to the problems. However, I also started to see very clearly that the energy and effort that I was expending on feeling frustrated about what was happening was largely energy wasted.
Often emotional friction and frustration are a substantial drain on our energy. This is not necessary, but in order to avoid it we need to learn how to transform the friction into motivation. I’m going to outline how to do this in three simple stages; accepting, releasing and transforming.

Stage 1 – Accepting – Seeing and accepting frustration 
When we find ourself frustrated with and fighting our reality, the first thing we need to do is see what is happening, and accept the fact that we may be frustrated and upset. In the case above I needed to see and accept my resentment that things were not as easy as I wanted them to be.

Stage 2 – Releasing – Becoming ergonomic & working with what is there
Often the simple act of accepting our frustration enables us to let go of it, at least to a degree. This then frees our energy and intelligence to focus upon solving the actual problem at hand. To use my example above, by seeing and accepting my frustration I am able to start releasing it. I can then focus the energy that was previously trapped in my frustration toward simply solving the problems at hand. This gives me a quiet and stable patience, making me more effective at dealing with the issues.

Stage 3 – Transforming frustration into motivation
Stage two has already begun the transformation process; energy previously trapped in emotional frustration has been re-directed toward the task at hand. As we get better at this, we start to experience finding the solution to the challenge as a motivation that we can enjoy and delight in solving. Rather than feeling despondent and agitated, because we accept the difficulty patiently, we can be curious about how we may solve the problem. Difficulties no longer make us despondent and agitated, they make us motivated and determined.

So the next time you notice yourself frustrated with a situation, and stuck in a state of emotional friction, and wasting energy, you might like to see if you can mindfully apply this three stage process to your experience:

  1. Notice and accept your frustration
  2. Release your frustration so you can focus on the actual task at hand
  3. Finally, consciously re-direct the energy inside you trapped in frustration, transforming it into motivation and determination.

Becoming good at stage one is really the key that unlocks the door!

Related article: When Vulnerability Ceases to be a Problem – Three levels of self-confidence

© Toby Ouvry 2017, 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

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation Classes at One Heart with Toby (East coast)

Tuesday & Wednesday evenings from June 6-7th – Practical meditations for spiritual awakening & enlightenment – A six week course

Saturday June 17th, 2-5pm – Developing mindful self-confidence – A three hour workshop
June 20th & 21st – Summer solstice  balancing and renewing meditation 

Integral Meditation Asia

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

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

Meditation – Life as a positive mindfulness game

Dear Integral meditators,
What if meditation was not something so much that you sit down and ‘do’each day as a way of paying attention to your world? The article below looks at this idea in a practical way.

In the spirit of the journey,

Toby

 

Meditation – Life as a positive mindfulness game

Meditation is a word whose meaning depends upon the context within which it is presented. Different schools of meditation have quite different ideas about what meditation is exactly. For myself, I like to use multiple definitions as it broadens my ability to apply meditation practically to my daily life, making it more effective. Here is the one of the central definitions that I use:

“Meditation means to focus our attention on an object that, when we contemplate it, causes our mind to become positive, calm and/or happy.”

This is the definition that I learned when I first joined the Tibetan Buddhist group that I was connected to for some years and that, as a Buddhist monk, I would teach to people. It is quite specific, telling us that meditation is a form of attention training that functions to generate and hold positive states of mind. It is also quite general, leaving scope for the meditator to choose the objects that he or she wishes to focus on. During my training in Tibetan Buddhism, the foundation of the daily meditation practice that we had were twenty one specific positive or specific mind states that we would train to be mindful of.

What I want to explain now is a mindfulness game that we can do as a form of meditation. In this exercise the positive object of meditation is not so much one particular object, feeling or affirmation. Rather it is a process of paying attention that functions to make our mind calmer and more appreciative. One of the benefits of this exercise is that it gradually trains our mind to orientate itself around positive thoughts and feelings, making them the ‘front and center’ of our moment to moment experience.

STEP 1: Sit down and either think of or write down three things in your life that you feel positive and happy about. There are infinite possibilities. Here are three that I am going to pull out of my mental hat right now:

  1. I enjoyed my Qi Gong class this morning: I was encouraged by the progress that people seemed to be making.
  2. Enjoying learning about how to create a website
  3. Daughter was happy going to school this morning, no tears!

So, there we are – three simple things.

STEP 2: Set aside a certain time, say five to ten minutes. During this time you can choose to sit in meditation, or you might choose to go for a walk, have a bath or any activity where you can maintain a relative state of relaxation and focus.
Once you have settled yourself and the allotted time has begun, your job is simply to keep your mind oriented around the three topics, and the positive feelings, thoughts and images that are generated in your mind in association with them. Your mind may wonder onto any object that is positively related to the above, but it MAY NOT move on to an object of contemplation that is either unrelated to your three topics, or that is a negative contemplation of them.
So, for an example of what I MAY contemplate about my three topics above are:

  • A sense of the positive flow of qi/light and energy within my body (relating to point one).
  • The harmonious sense I get from one of the artworks that I have placed on the website I have created
  • An appreciation of my relationship to my daughter.

Examples of what I may NOT contemplate or get distracted by:

  • Dwelling on something I disliked about one of the Qi Gong class members
  • Getting involved in a ‘to do’ list for my website
  • Worrying about my daughter on any level

So, you get the idea. If you are keeping to an aspect of the three topics that is making your mind positive, happy, peaceful, appreciative etc, then you are on the right track. Any negative or worrisome thoughts are not to be followed, as are any thoughts that are simply distractions!
This is a simple meditation or mindfulness form is very good for the overall long term health of our consciousness. It leaves plenty of room for us to make the practice ‘our own’ and be creative. It enables us to experience first-hand how to train in the meditative activity of learning to generate and hold positive and peaceful states of mind for extended periods.

Guided meditation recording: Three aspects of the positive mindfulness game

© Toby Ouvry 2017, 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

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation Classes at One Heart with Toby (East coast)

Monday 15th & 29th May, 10-11am – Bi-monthly Monday morning meditation classes (East coast)

Tuesday & Wednesday evenings – Meditations for creating a mind of ease, relaxed concentration and positive intention – A six week course

Monday 8th May, 10am-5pm – How to do Soul Portraits Workshop

Saturday 20th May, 2-5.30pm – Meditations for Transforming Negativity and Stress into Energy, Positivity and Enlightenment – A 3.5 Hour Workshop

Saturday June 10th, 9.30am-12.30pm – Integral meditation & mindfulness deep dive half day retreat

 

Integral Meditation Asia

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On boredom, creativity & ‘mindful fishing’

Dear Integral Meditators,

How can being mindful of our boredom make us more creative and enhance the quality of our life? The article below considers the answer to this question in a practical way.

In the spirit of ‘mindful fishing’,
Toby

PS: New schedule of live classes and workshops is out, check out the list below the article!

On boredom, creativity & ‘mindful fishing’

One of the problems of having distractions always available to us at hand which we all do now with handphones, is that we are not forced to encounter and learn to value the state of boredom. Why is boredom valuable? For the purposes of this article I want to suggest that boredom is a valuable state of mind as it often happens when we are transitioning from a functional, non-creative, information-consuming mental state to a creative, imaginative mind-state.
What do I mean by this? Let’s say I am coming home from work on an evening. My work tasks have been completed, and I find myself on the train or bus. My functional mind that I have been using at work now starts to get bored because there is nothing to do; it wants some information to consume, a distraction, it does not want to have to sit still and simply ‘be’ because it finds it uncomfortable.
At this point, what normally happens is we reach for our phone and distract ourselves by reading the online news, texting, playing a video game and so on. This re-engages our functional, doing mind, distracts us from our anxiety, and alleviates our boredom temporarily. It doesn’t necessarily make us happy per-se, it just alleviates the discomfort of the boredom.
But let’s say we are feeling bored on the train and we resist the temptation to distract ourselves, and just sit with the state of boredom, sinking into it patiently. What we find will then starts to happen is our mind will begin to shift from a consuming, non-creative state to a slightly deeper, creative, contemplative state. Put another way, instead of looking to be entertained or distracted, our mind will start coming up with its own creative content and entertainment, it starts to produce rather than consume.
Once this shift happens we naturally transition out of our ‘bored’ mind state, and begin to enjoy the relaxed, contemplative, imaginative state that our mind has now moved into, because of having patiently tolerated and moved through our boredom.
Basically, what I am advocating here is that when we find ourselves getting bored, instead of looking impulsively for distractions, we can mindfully relax into that state of boredom. This in turn will enable us to transition from a non-creative, functional mind state to a creative, contemplative, ‘self-entertaining’ state. In this creative state, we discover the part of us that is ‘the artist and philosopher’ in our life; that part of us that is self-directed and self-entertaining. This part of ourself enjoys thinking for him/herself, enjoys finding her own opinions, enjoys seeing things from new angles and thinking thoughts that have not occurred to us before.

Transitioning boredom though ‘mindful fishing’.
The next time you are in a place where there is nothing to ‘do’ (Eg: a commute home) and you sense your mind getting restless, bored and looking for a distraction, recognize the opportunity at hand to transition to a more creative mode. Relax into your boredom, perhaps imagine yourself fishing by a lake, just looking at the line and the water in front of you; relax into that state of ‘waiting for a bite from the fish’. In this case the ‘bite from the fish’ that you are looking for is the emergence of creative thoughts and ideas as you transition into your creative contemplative state. This happens not by trying hard, but relaxing into the boredom and allowing your mind to ‘change gears’ naturally, by itself, without being in a hurry.
So, the next time you start feeling bored instead of finding something to distract yourself, try a bit of mindful fishing!

© Toby Ouvry 2017, 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

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings from November, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation Classes at One Heart with Toby (East coast)

Saturday April 1st, 1.30-5pm – Meditations for Transforming Negativity and Stress into Energy, Positivity and Enlightenment – A Three Hour Workshop

Saturday April 8th, 9.30am-12.30pm – Integral meditation & mindfulness deep dive half day retreat

Saturday 29th April, 10am-5pm & Monday 8th May, 10am-5pm – How to do Soul Portraits Workshop

Integral Meditation Asia

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

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Concentration creative imagery Enlightened love and loving Inner vision Integral Meditation Life-fullness meditation and creativity Meditation techniques Motivation and scope spiritual intelligence

Five Steps To Creating Your Own Meditation Objects

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Dear Integral Meditators,
Is it possible to create your own, personal objects of meditation, your own ‘mindful vocabulary’? The article below explores how you can start doing exactly that, today!

In the spirit of creative awareness,

Toby

Five steps to creating your own meditation objects (Building your own mindful vocabulary)

For me meditation is not just about following a formal set of rules and processes like a robot, it is about being creative and building my own mindful language of living ‘meditation objects’ that I experience in a very personal way and that moves me, changing the way in which I experience my world. This article explains a simple method by which you can create your own meditation objects using a simple, five stage process, using compassion as an example:

Stage 1: Select and define your object – If I want to meditate on compassion I need to come up with a working definition. When doing this by yourself, you have full license to define it in your own way, but here is mine for the sake of this example: Compassion is a state of mind that arises when I experience care or love for others or myself, I understand the ways in which they or I suffer, and I develop the wish to alleviate that suffering, or at least express understanding and/or healthy empathy.

Stage 2: Contemplate in a freeform way around your object – Having defined it, now ask key questions about your experience of compassion such as:

  1. When have I personally experienced compassion in the past, what did it feel like?
  2. Which people I know, personally or from the public sphere really embody the energy of compassion for me?
  3. If I practised 10% more compassion today, what might change in my perception and experience?

Contemplate these questions one by one in a freeform way. Explore the ways in which you have experienced compassion, who inspires you in terms of their compassion, and what the benefits of compassion might be in terms of bringing it into your own life.

Stage 3: Focus in – Having contemplated in a general way, now select the most powerful experience of compassion that arises from stage 2; the most powerful memory, the most inspiring person, or the most motivational insight into the benefits of compassion. The defining characteristic of your selection is that it must move you personally, such that the emotional experience/energy of compassion arises in your body, it is not just an intellectual abstraction.

Stage 4: Sink into, absorb – Once you have decided on the particularly powerful object of compassion in stage 3, you then simply focus your attention gently upon your object, allowing the feeling and power of it to sink deeply into your awareness, creating a gentle but powerful impact. It can be nice at this stage to mount the feeling of compassion in the breathing; as you breathe in feel yourself connecting and experiencing the compassion, as you breathe out feel yourself sinking into and absorbing the experience.

Continue to explore in daily life – After the formal meditation, keep looking for ways to explore, feel and express compassion in your life. Flex the ‘compassionate muscle’ that you have started to build in your meditation as you go about your daily activities, looking for ways to integrate it into your way of going and being in the world.

So there you go, a five stage process for building your own meditation objects. What objects of meditation would you like to build into your own practice this week?

© Toby Ouvry 2017, 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

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A Mind of Ease Enlightened love and loving Integral Meditation Life-fullness meditation and creativity Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Resilience Mindfulness Motivation and scope Presence and being present

Goodwill as your object of mindfulness

Dear Integral Meditators,

How much more warmth, benevolence & emotional richness can you bring into your life through simple acts of attention? The answer is a lot, as I explore in the article on goodwill below…

In the spirit of warm attention,

Toby

Goodwill as your object of mindfulness

With all the anxiety and uncertainty that we face today, in conjunction with our minds tendency to exaggerate the problems that we face at the expense of the good things, it can seem that the world and people around us are a little short of goodwill. One of the things that I have been working with over the last week or so is really trying to notice and appreciate the goodwill that comes my way during the day from different people and sources. As I have continued in this practice, it has really struck me how much goodwill there is around me, and how nice it feels to really note it and enjoy it when it happens.

For example, if I look back over the last day or so:

  • I am aware of the goodwill expressed toward me from the students in the two mindfulness classes I have taken
  • I am aware of the goodwill extended to me by the barman who served me a drink this evening, and by the friend I met
  • I am aware of the goodwill extended to me by my neighbours and colleagues, helping me out with some minor menial tasks
  • I notice the almost continual and explicit goodwill coming from my family members
  • I appreciate the time and effort some acquaintances have taken to extend a welcome to my daughter and I and include us in their social circle
  • I appreciated the goodwill a shop assistant extended to me selling me a hard drive for my computer at the sale price, even though technically the sale date had gone past already
  • I noticed the incidental smile and goodwill of the bus driver as he re-opened the door when he saw me running for the bus.
  • I note the professional help and endorsement that I have received from colleagues, helping introduce me to new clients

The abundance of goodwill
When I focus in this way it seems like there is really a huge abundance of goodwill being directed at me by a large number of people. Much of this is easy to miss because it is so regular and everyday; it is just normal. But then if its normal then it means I have a huge amount of goodwill to tap into each day right?

Spreading the goodwill
Having been mindful of the goodwill I am receiving each day, I start to feel like I have something of a surplus of goodwill. So then perhaps I can start spreading it around to other people I meet, give it to them with a smile or a small act, or a bigger act. I can choose to be a source of goodwill almost as an act of gratitude for all the goodwill that I objectively and genuinely receive each day from others.

Does this practice of mindfully noticing, receiving and then giving goodwill sound like fun? Give it a go and find out!

© Toby Ouvry 2017, 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

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings from November, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation Classes at One Heart with Toby (East coast)

Saturday 4th March, 10am-5pm – Meditation from the Perspective of Shamanism Level 2 – Deeper into the Shamanic journey

Saturday 11th March 2-5.30pm – Qi Gong for Improving your Health and Energy Levels & for Self-Healing – A 3.5 hour workshop

Tues&Wed, 21st&22nd of March, 7.30-8.30pm – Spring equinox balancing & renewing meditation

Integral Meditation Asia

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