Category: Meditation and Psychology

Categories
Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques spiritual intelligence

Meditation on Connecting to your Magical Self or Inner Magician

I have recently been working on re-titling and writing notes for some artworks that I completed back in 2005. The first of these, “The Magician” you can see in the image on this page. The image itself is meant as a way of visually connecting to our “Inner Magician”. The inner magician is that part of our inner self that is both creative and magical within us, and that if we harness it effectively has the power to change our daily life and experience for the better.

So, who or what is our inner magician? Here is a working definition:

“The higher expression of our inner magician is that part of self that is able to work with the higher, deeper and spiritualized expression of magic.”

Magic in this context means the following:

  1. Being able to affect or change one level of our reality by working on it from the level or plane of reality above it.
  2. Engaging our creative imagination vividly and consciously to “sculpt” our experience of any given situation for the better.
  3. Not being content to let good ideas remain in our head, but actively finding ways of expressing those ideas concretely in our daily life.

Let’s take a closer look at these three aspects of magic:

1) Being able to affect or change one level of our reality by working on it from the level or plane of reality above it.
In its simplest terms this means that you use your  mind and thoughts to change your physical and emotional reality for the better, and you use your spiritual or intuitive mind (which operates on a level beyond thought) to change your thinking patterns for the better.

A simple example might be this:
– If I experience physical pain because of an injury or illness I use my thinking mind to remain positive, telling myself that the pain won’t last forever, and encouraging myself to practice patience. This is using my thoughts to positively affect my physical reality.
– If I find myself having repetitive negative thoughts about my pain and illness, then I can temporarily suspend my thinking (this is really where meditation comes into the picture) and move into a state of mind beyond thought. Doing this enables me to release the momentum of all the negative thoughts that I was having, so that my mind becomes a “clean slate” so to speak which I can then replace the negative thoughts with more appropriate and affirmative ones.
So this is a very simple example, thinking mind works magic on physical world and emotions, spiritual mind works to affect and control the thinking mind.

2) Engaging our creative imagination vividly and consciously to “sculpt” our experience of any given situation for the better.
We think that there is a concrete reality “out there” waiting to be discovered that has some kind of fixed or inherent qualities. Actually this is not quite the case. What happens is that the “bare facts” our outer reality meets our mind, which then imagines or projects its own ideas onto that outer reality.
From this we can see that what we experience in life has something to do with the “facts” of our life, but equally as much it also has to do with our imaginative response to those facts. To work with magic is to realize the power of your imagination to co-create any given situation in your life, and leverage on that imaginative power effectively. For more on this you can read my past article “Taking your creative imagination as your object of meditation”.
Our imagination is deeply and powerfully magical, it can create great art and great bliss, or it can create our own private hell.

3) Not being content to let good ideas remain in our head, but actively finding ways of expressing those ideas concretely in our daily life.
Our magical self realizes that any good idea that we understand, create or hear about is an INJUNCTION. An injunction is somewhere between an invitation and an obligation. So this means that when we have or hear a great idea we recognize that our understanding of this idea is INVITING us to use the idea as a practical tool with which we can change our life for the better. By virtue of our understanding of the idea we could also say that we have an obligation to try and integrate that idea into our life. If we just let that idea remain in our intellect that would be a great waste right? Many of us are guilty of this; having great insights and ideas about our life, but not implementing them, thus wasting them.
So, our magical self or inner magician is delighted when good idea comes our way and immediately seeks ways to start expressing these ideas in a practical way to change our life for the better.

Practical Work
If you want to follow up on this article on a practical level, here are two suggestions:
1) Use the image above as an object of meditation in order to help you to intuitively connect to your own “Inner Magician”.
2) As soon as you have or understand a good idea intellectually, immediately ask yourself “How can I make this idea a concrete, practical reality in my life?” Do whatever you can to act upon your answer to this question.

© Toby Ouvry 2011, 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
Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Uncategorized

Four Tips for Meditating at Home and Beware of Second Hand Statues!

This week’s article focuses on tips for meditating at home. There is a great article that I read this week by Maria Kapaln (Author of “The Guru Question”) called “10 Spiritually Transmitted Diseases” I really do encourage you to have a look through it. There really is a lot of nonsense masquerading as spirituality these days, and this article gives some really clear pointers for developing your own discernment and ability to clearly see the difference between genuine spirituality and either ego-manifesting-as-spirituality, or just plain confusion.

Enjoy the article below!

Yours in the spirit of the ongoing journey,

Toby

Four Tips for Meditating at Home and Beware of Second Hand Statues!

Of course we all enjoy the support and interactive atmosphere of a meditation class and the occasional retreat, but the fact remains that if our meditation practice is ever going to truly transform our consciousness, then establishing a daily practice is really what we need to focus on. With this in mind here are four ideas regarding how to support your home meditation practice.

1) Just get your bum on the seat!

As we go about our daily activities we get used to the neutral momentum of “doing stuff”. This means that when it comes to the time we have designated for meditation our mind tells us there is “just one more thing” that we need to do before we meditate. Before we know it is late, and we have to go to work, or we are too tired to focus effectively and the day’s meditation opportunity goes begging. The only solution to this is to discipline yourself to STOP, SIT down and BEGIN! You’ll start to feel better as soon as you do!

2) Get your family to support you.

Your family, flatmate, friends are all going to benefit from a happier, more focused and aware you right? So let them know that you have/are trying to develop a meditation practice, and have set aside a particular time each day to do so. Explain that it is going to be of benefit to them as well as you, and ask them to support you and remind you when the time comes for you to say “excuse me for 20 minutes!” We are social animals and getting others to help and support you really helps.

3) Don’t try and do too much in the meditation session itself

Many of us are already struggling with information overload in our life, and so trying to do a meditation form that is overly complex and/or where we have too many expectations can be counterproductive. Make your meditation time spacious; don’t give yourself too many different things to do. On my website I have plenty of meditation techniques that I explain, but it really can be as simple as focusing on two things: Sitting still and practicing “non-doing” for ten minutes!

4) Set up places in your home where you can sit down and meditate comfortably.

I have set up in the living room, two of the bedrooms and the roof balcony small arrangements of candles, crystals and other objects that, when I sit in front of them immediately helps put me in the mood and mindset for meditation. If one room is occupied by other members of my family, I simply go to the space that is unoccupied. Having physical places that you associate with meditation and relaxation in your home really helps you to settle into a regular dally habit!

Watch out for second hand statues!

A final point I want to end with is that, if you are considering putting antiques or otherwise second hand statues or crystals in your meditation space take care. Particularly with second hand religious statues they can come to you “ready energized” in the wrong way by its previous owners. I was reminded strongly of this when I recently acquired a very finely crafted ceramic Quan Yin statue. It looked great, but I placed it in the meditation “shrine” in my bedroom and promptly got woken up that first night feeling extremely energetically uncomfortable, and after tossing and turning for a while was gifted some nasty dreams before waking up in the morning. The entire disturbance was coming from the dissonant energy that the statue had been energized with in its past.

So, what to do? Don’t worry; there is no need to throw such statues away! I have placed mine amongst the pot plants in my garden (see picture above) , where it will remain for six weeks or so and where all the negative elemental energy (for elemental energy think “physicallized mental energy”) can dissipate and be released from the statue to be absorbed and transformed by the natural elemental energy of nature. Once our Quan Yin has been “neutralized” then we will be able to place her wherever we want with no disturbing side effects!

Categories
Enlightened service Inner vision Integral Awareness Meditation and Psychology

Meditating on The Difference Between Your Evolving Self and Your Biological Self

Hi Everyone,

Evolutionary Spirtuality, or the idea of Conscious Evolution is one of the most exciting and cutting edge areas that is being explored in spirituality today. Luminaries include people such as Barbara Marx Hubbard, Andrew Cohen and Craig Hamilton.

This week’s article is a short contemplation on learning to identify your own Evolutionary Self and distinguish it from your biological self. Enjoy!

Yours in the spirit of the evolving universe,

Toby

Meditating on The Difference Between Your Evolving Self and Your Biological Self

In this article I want to draw a distinction between two aspects of self that are often placed together, but are in fact very different. What I will do is define them both first, then explain how to begin working with the Evolutionary Self effectively in daily life.

The Biological Self is the sense of self that we have that is based around our biological programming. This programming is very ancient, and primarily works of past patterns that have evolved over thousands of years. Its needs are primarily based around survival/fight or flight, and it almost exclusively looks to the past for its inspiration. It sees patterns that have worked to fulfill our survival needs in the past, and it seeks to mimic them in our current behaviors. It works out of areas of the brain that are very ancient, and exerts a tremendous influence on our lives. It can be a very good and able servant to us, but if we allow it to be our master then it will lead us along a very limited life path, based around patterns of consciousness that are essentially survival based and aimed at staying in our comfort zone.

Our Evolutionary or Evolving Self is that part of cosmic evolutionary consciousness that is embodied within us. You could say that it is that part of evolution (as in the 13.5 billion year process that began with the Big Bang) that is becoming conscious of itself through us as an individualized human. Our evolutionary self is focused on the future, on becoming, on creating the new, on innovating. The Evolving Self is uninhibited by past patterns of biology and of ego and feels exited and motivated to make our life and life on earth fulfill as much of its potential as possible. The Evolving Self is naturally a good leader, and placing it in the forefront of our awareness enables us to lead other parts of our self and ego int the future without being inhibited by our “past baggage”. The Evolving Self is always looking to reach its highest potential, and to make the biggest and most meaningful contribution to the evolution of the Planet and of humanity that it can.

Our Evolving Self embodies the energy of evolution itself and seeks to catalyze conscious evolution in all situations.

Starting to connect and work with your Evolving Self

Imagine the Big Bang 13.5 million years ago: From out of nothingness an immense explosion of matter, energy and consciousness that gradually transforms over time into our present Universe.

See it continuing to evolve now in our present Universe, in our Planet, and in you, in the core of your own consciousness and being.

Feel within you now the momentum of that cosmic drive toward evolving the new, a dynamic spark of light within you that is focused the future, on becoming, on creating a better and greater life and world. 

Once you have felt your Evolving Self within you, as yourself the question “What is my Evolving Self asking of me right now, today, in this moment?”

After you have finished your contemplation, write down the ideas that came to you try and isolate one action that you can do today, or this week that will be a direct expression of your Evolutionary Self.

In general, whenever you are faced with a challenge in your life, ask yourself the question “What is my Evolving Self encouraging me to do here?”

Categories
Integral Awareness Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Presence and being present

Thoughts As Affirmations: Three Questions To Help Make Your Thoughts Your Allies

“It’s repetition of affirmations that leads to belief, and once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen – Muhammad Ali”

The practice of affirmations – positively worded statements about your life repeated to yourself verbally or mentally or written down – has been given a lot of credence in recent years and appears in various forms of therapy. For example; cognitive psychology, hypnosis, neuro-linguistic programming, creative visualization and some forms of meditation.

From the perspective of transforming our experience through affirmations, one of the most important things to realize is that each thought that we think and word that we say is an affirmation, positive or negative, that re-enforces a belief that we have about our experience and reality. So, from this point of view, the most important aspect of mastering affirmations is being more aware of everything that you think and say, and being as careful as possible to energize only those thoughts and beliefs within you that are helpful and beneficial.

For example if I have injured my body in some way, and mentally I start to complain to myself about how unjust it is that I am injured and how the Universe always seems to be against me, then those thoughts are affirming a negative perspective on the situation. As a result, if I don’t check my thoughts and make appropriate adjustments, then my experience of that injury is going to be a negative one.
If on the other hand I notice that my mind has started complaining, and I ask myself “Is this way of thinking really serving me and helping me to have the best experience of the circumstances?” My answer will most probably be “no!” If I then make the effort to find a new perspective and way of thinking about my situation, then it will become an affirmation that I can use to directly change my experience. For example if I have an injury I may choose to see the situation as a chance to rest my body and allow it to recharge its energies.
Mindfulness of our thoughts is a big part of daily meditation practice. As meditators we understand that each thought is affirming something positive or negative about our experience, and our job is to focus on and energize the thoughts and beliefs that are most helpful, benevolent, and evolutionary to ourself and the other people involved in the situation.

Asking Yourself Three Questions – A Practical Exercise For Turning Your Thoughts Into Positive Affirmations

Step 1: Select a particular life situation to work on that is happening to you at this time, and where you sense that your mind is affirming negative beliefs and thoughts that are hindering your ability to deal with the situation.
If you can it is good to do this exercise in a notebook where you can actually write down your questions and answers as the written word is a more powerful affirmation than an affirmation that is simply thought or verbalized. BUT it is still worth doing as a mental exercise if you really don’t have a pen and paper available!

Step 2: Ask yourself three questions. Write down each question and your reply to it in turn:

  1. What are the negative thoughts and affirmations that I am holding with regard to this situation?
  2. What are the thoughts and affirmations that I can hold in this situation that will enable me to gain a better experience, and that will enable me to respond in the most creative and life-affirming way?
  3. What is the kindest and most compassionate (to both myself and the others involved in the situation) mental approach and perspective that I can affirm in this situation?

Step 3: Practice affirming your answers to these three questions.

  • Your answer to the first question shows you what thoughts and beliefs you want to avoid affirming and energizing.
  • Your answers to the second and third question are the thoughts, perspectives and beliefs that you need to affirm. Whenever you think about your life situation, immediately bring your mind back to your answers to these three questions and affirm accordingly!

© Toby Ouvry 2011, 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
Integral Awareness Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques

Taking Control of Your Happiness and Mental Wellness Through Lifestyle Therapy

As witnessed in a recent article in the “American Psychologist Journal” by transpersonal psychologist Roger Walsh there are eight “lifestyle therapies” that have been proven by scientific research to have a positive effect on our mental wellness. The slightly scary thing is that, in the same article Walsh observes that currently less than 10% of mental healthcare professionals (in America) are actually recommending these lifestyle therapies to clients, and are relying all too heavily on the prescription of psychiatric  drugs for mental health problems such as depression. These lifestyle therapies are FREE, have no unpleasant side effects, and the list of them below offers a “go to” set of strategies that you can employ for your own mental wellness, and also recommend to friends and family experiencing mental stress and unhappiness.

Here is the list:

1. Exercise – Psychotherapy has been shown to be positively effective for approximately two thirds of people experiencing mental problems, with the same success rate for psychiatric intervention (ie: drugs). What is the activity that has been shown to have an almost 100% success rate on improving mental health? No, not electric shock treatment, EXERCISE! Enough said, find a sport or exercise form that you enjoy and engage in it regularly! We have so many options these days, weights ping pong, brisk walking, belly dancing, do something.
Another thing that the benefits of exercise highlight is that an excessively sedentary lifestyle gets you down.

2. Nutrition and Supplements – Ok, huge area, two things that research has shown to have the most positive effect on mental health: Avoiding excessive calorie intake and eating a diet with multi-coloured fruits and vegetables. The supplement that has been shown to be most effective for mental wellness is fish oil. I’m a vegetarian, but this is what the research shows so I’m putting it in. Anyway, the basic thing is that “You are what you eat” is an expression that holds true mentally as well as physically!

3. Time in Nature – Nature has been a source of healing and inspiration for humans for Milena. How much time have you spent in nature recently? If the answer is not much then there is a very good chance your lack of exposure to it and your over exposure to artificial environments is contributing to your mental stress. What has been obvious to generations of humans has now been proven beyond doubt by the science. Go hug a tree, dance barefoot on the lawn  and swim naked in the sea. Or y’know at least go for a regular walk in the park…

4. Relationships and the Acquisition of Friends – Feeling mentally out of balance can often cause us to recede into our shells and shun contact with people. Cultivating good friends and supportive relationships is fundamental to most people’s inner balance and mental health. Learning to leverage positively on your relationships in an appropriate way is a mental wellness life-skill not to be neglected!

5. Recreation and Enjoyable Activities – Yes, having fun regularly is good for your mental health and happiness, now proven by science, so go have some!

6. Relaxation and Stress Management – Activities include meditation, Qi Gong, Tai Qi, Yoga, progressive muscle relaxation techniques, visualization and hypnotherapy. Currently under utilized by many, but gradually becoming main stream.

7. Religious and Spiritual Involvement – Big area with a lot to consider, but basically some form of spiritual community and support for your inner wellbeing has been shown to have very positive effects on mental health. If you are like me and have no local church or temple that really resonates deeply, at least you can make the effort to keep active contact with people of a spiritually like mind virtually and when possible in person.

8. Contribution and Service – Giving happiness to others has a definite and undoubted effect on the sense of meaning, inner fulfillment and happiness of the person giving.

A Special Shout Out For Meditation!
Here is a quote from Roger Walsh directly from the above mentioned article: “In addition to its benefits for relaxation and stress management, meditation may also enhance measures of psychological capacities, health, and maturity in both patients and nonpatients (Walsh & Shapiro, 2006). Particularly important to health care professionals are findings that meditation can enhance valued caregiver qualities such as empathy, sensitivity, emotional stability, and psychological maturity while reducing distress and burnout (Shapiro & Carlson, 2009). On the cognitive side, studies suggest that meditation can enhance some measures of cognition and may reduce age-related cognitive losses and corresponding brain shrinkage (Pagnoni & Cekic, 2007; Xiong & Doraiswamy, 2009).”

A final point from me here, most of the research on meditation to date have been short term studies on relative beginners. I feel pretty certain that when the results of longer term research is done on more advanced practitioners there will be many more remarkable additional benefits to meditation that will come to light!

Starting to Make Practical Use of the Above List:

As mentioned, each of these eight “lifestyle therapies” now has a large body of scientific research behind it indicating that it is of real and tangible benefit to mental health and well being. Again for a fuller breakdown of the actual research please refer to the article by Roger Walsh.
For Yourself:
Go through the above list and with each of the lifestyle therapies simply ask yourself “How well am I leveraging on this activity at the moment?” In the areas that you feel you have been neglecting, write down a couple of things that you can do over the next week or so to start re-integrating them into your life in an effective way.
For Other People:
When you have a friend or family member under mental duress, the above list is a useful one to bear in mind, as you will almost always be able to suggest one or more of them as a way of helping them to deal with their challenge more effectively. The good thing about this list is that (with the exception of number 7) it is totally non-denominational and complex-philosophy free. From your teenage daughter or son, to your partner to your Mum or Dad, this list is going to be easy for them to understand and implement!

© Toby Ouvry 2011, 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
Awareness and insight Enlightened love and loving Meditation and Psychology Motivation and scope Presence and being present Shadow meditation

The Role of Courage in Meditation

Two Types of Courage

In order to build a successful and authentic meditation practice you need courage, and the two types of courage that I want to highlight today are the courage to initiate, and the courage to persist. You need the courage to initiate to get through all the excuses and distractions that are in the way of you starting or restarting your meditation practice, and just ‘put your bum on the seat’ so to speak. You then need the courage of persistence, which is really a steady type of willpower, to simply keep going on a regular basis week in week out, so that your practice has a chance to bear fruit. Without these two types of courage, the inner clarity, wellbeing and centeredness that is within the grasp of anyone who persists in meditation will remain out of your reach.

Two Types of Meditation: Sitting With the Silence and Sitting With the Noise

When many people approach me for the first time to talk about meditation, the most common reason for them wanting to start meditating is that they want to find some headspace, some inner silence that they can relax with. They then tell me that they simply cannot stop their mind chattering, and so they find it “impossible” to actually start a meditation practice. What we need to realize (and this is really important) is that before we can enjoy “sitting with silence” we first need to enjoy the process of “sitting with the noise”, that noise being the inner noise of our mind incessantly chattering with itself!

The way to learn how to sit in silence is first to get comfortable sitting with the noise of your mind. Over time and out of your daily or regular practice of sitting with the noise of your mind you will gradually start to notice an inner silence emerging, at first only occasionally in brief flashes, but the gradually emerging more and more fully as time goes by.

The Story of Tom

Back in the 90’s, when I was a Buddhist monk teaching meditation in the north of England I had a man in his 70’s come to my meditation class called Tom. Tom was an ex coal miner. He was in constant discomfort due to rheumatism, and his wife was a mental and physical invalid (Parkinson’s disease I think) to whom Tom was the sole care giver. He arrived at my class for the first time in deep despair regarding the loss of his wife, of his own physical fitness and of many of the other good things in his life that had previously made it enjoyable. He made a courageous choice to sit down for 20minutes at the beginning of each day to meditate, a choice to which he stuck to. He used to describe his meditation to me, saying that usually for the first 5-10 minutes all of the anger, despair and sadness would well up within him about his life and about how unfair it all was. Then, at some point in the middle of his meditation, patches of silence would start to appear, and the noise in his mind would quieten. Usually, for the last few minutes of his meditation he said, he would find a state of deep peace, and those few minutes at the end of his meditation were enough to get him through the rest of the day.

Tom’s story is a simple story of courage and persistence in meditation. His description of his own meditation experience shows the truth of how very often before we experience peace in meditation we first have to sit with the “storm” so to speak. The way to meditate in silence is first to get comfortable with sitting with the noise!

Practical Work: Get Comfortable Sitting With The Noise

Pick an amount of time that you can commit to every day, from 3-20minutes. Resolve each day during that time to generate courage and self-compassion, and then simply “sit, breathe and be” with the noise inside your mind. Forget about immediately making your mind silent, just focus on sitting breathing and being with what is there, pleasant or unpleasant, happy or sad.

If you do this consistently each day the inner silence will emerge in its own time. If you make this a lifetime practice the inner silence will grow organically within your life a tree. A tree grows too slowly to spot the changes from day to day, but from month to month, year to year it grows from a fragile seedling to a mighty tree.

Long Term Results

The final thing that I want to mention about meditating on inner noise and inner silence is that eventually, after you have been meditating for quite some time you will discover that you are equally happy to experience inner noise or inner silence, you realize that they are really just two sides of the same coin and not so different in reality.

This can be difficult to grasp conceptually without experience, but an analogy may help: In the same way that a bright, sunny day and a thunderstorm are both “weather”, so a loud noisy mind and a silent one are just “mind”. If you are sitting in a strong house looking out of your window, a storm and a sunny day can both be interesting and enjoyable to experience. Similarly once we have grounded our awareness in the centre of our being through meditation, both noise and silence are equally enjoyable 😉

© Toby Ouvry 2011, 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
Awareness and insight Integral Awareness Meditation and Psychology Presence and being present Shadow meditation Uncategorized

The Self-Healing and Self Evolving Power of the Mind and Six Tips For Releasing the Shadow Self

Whenever we engage in meditation or any other activity that promotes greater self awareness, we automatically begin to activate two innate capacities within our mind: Its capacity for self-healing and its capacity for self-evolving.

The minds capacity for self-healing is basically means that, whenever we move into a meditative state, the process of being aware of our mind, whether it I in a state of bliss or pain (or somewhere in between) has a beneficial healing effect upon our mind. Awareness heals.

The minds capacity for self-evolving means that the process of sitting and being alert and aware in meditation brings to the surface of our mind all the latent higher qualities and talents that we might not be aware of or, may even be afraid of.

Meditation makes you more aware of your creative gifts and talents and will over time create an energy in you that actually DEMANDS that you start expressing these talents in your life.

From this we can see that, as well as bringing you greater peace of mind, meditation can also be quite challenging in the sense that:

  • You become more aware of all that is damaged and that needs healing within you
  • You start having a lot of creative urges that start to PULL you toward higher and greater achievement in your life.

If you are not prepared for these side effects they can actually be a bit shocking, and you might even feel that you may be doing something wrong. Actually as often as not it is just your minds capacity for auto-healing and auto-evolving kicking in!

So, although the minds capacity for self-healing and self-evolving  are good things they also challenge us, bringing us face to face with the two aspects of our shadow self:

  • The DARK part of our shadow self; the damaged part of self which we have disowned and rejected, and
  • The LIGHT part of our shadow self; that latent greatness and talent within us that is as yet unknown and unexpressed.

With this in mind here are six tips for starting to get friendly with your shadow self. They are the basic elements of what I call a “Six point shadow reclamation process” that I use with coaching clients, and teach in Integral meditation Asia classes and workshops.

Step 1:

See it – Pay close attention to both strong positive and negative emotions that get triggered in you by people, events, places  or things. Be alert to the meaning that there is in the fact that your mind has been triggered in this way.

Step 2:

Feel it – Rather than immediately repressing or pushing away the strong emotions, thoughts or images that get triggered in your mind, get used to feeling into them, holding them within your conscious awareness

Step 3:

Communicate with it – Once you have some experience of steps 1&2, you can then try inwardly communicating with the person or thing that is triggering the shadow emotion. For example if a person fills you with revulsion, try visualizing them in front of you and asking “what is it about you that is creating such strong feelings of dislike?” – see what answer comes back. (Please note you are not actually communicating with the physical person, but trying to connect to that part of yourself that has been triggered!)

Step 4:

BE it – Practice mentally imagining that you have become the person that you fear or admire. Become that angry person that you run away from all the time, imagine yourself AS that great public speaker that fills you with so much admiration.

Step 5:

Own it – Practice taking responsibility for your shadow self and emotions, the light and the dark:

-“Yes I really am angry and hurt deep down, it is not always the other person that is angry”

– “It’s my job to make the most of this talent, no one else is going to do it for me!”

Step 6:

Transcend and transform it – This is the final step, and needs to be done at the END of the other 5 steps. A BIG mistake people make is to try and transcend their shadow self too soon, before they have properly seen it, felt it, communicated with it, been it and owned it.

To transcend and transform the shadow self simply means to recognize it is NOT your true or ultimate self, but nevertheless it has a potential place and function within your everyday personality of ego self. For example:

  • Your previous fear of anger and projection of it onto others can be transformed into the ability to be powerful and polite with difficult people
  • Your previous admiration of another person’s public speaking skills is transformed into your ownership of that talent within yourself, and the development of your own talent as a passionate and persuasive speaker.

If you simply think about the above six points, and start to try them out in your daily life, I think you will find that you can start to get a feel for this process.

Here’s to the maximization of our minds capacity for self-healing and self-evolving!

© Toby Ouvry 2011, 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
Awareness and insight Integral Awareness Meditation and Psychology Presence and being present

Article: Meditating on Your Body as a Landscape, and the Beauty of Ageing

Hi Everyone,

When we see natural objects in a landscape, such as trees, rocks, cliffs, mountains, lakes and so forth, very often we judge them to be beautiful. For example when we see the way in which a trees branches and bark has twisted and morphed over time we think of this as a tree with character, a tree with a deep sense of spirit. Likewise an old but well maintained house is very easy to love and appreciate.
So, if we think of old objects and aspects of landscape as having character and beauty as they age, what about our own bodies and their signs of ageing? To appreciate the beauty of our own ageing process requires the ability to, at least temporarily, step outside of the intense way in which we have been culturally programmed to value youthful looks only, and instead look at the way in which time changes our features as being something natural, something to be embraced, and finally as something that in many ways actually enhances the character and DEEP beauty of our looks.

To start to work experientially with this idea, you might like to try the following simple meditation:
– Sit or stand in front of a mirror. Close your eyes and relax for a few breaths, as you do so think to yourself that, when you open your eyes you are going to see your face (and your body if you can see it) as a landscape.
– When you open your eyes, try for a while simply to stare at your face without thinking or analysing too much, just try and see and accept it as it is. It can be a good idea to smile gently in acceptance of yourself and what you see.
– Then, thinking of your face as a landscape, reflect on the story behind the  lines that you can see on your face (if you are still young, imagine the lines that will be there!), how each crease and bump has arisen from countless times when you have smiled or laughed, countless times when you may have experienced pain or even cried. Think of the lines on your face as beautiful in the sense that they describe the depth and character that you have created within yourself in the years that you have lived in your body. Think of the lines as describing the knowledge and wisdom that you have within your heart. Reflect that, as time goes by and these lines deepen on your face, as long as you are trying to live your best life, the deepening lines will represent the flowering of a deeper human beauty within you.
Continue this mindful exploration for as long as you like, finish when you are ready.

So, of course we don’t want to grow physically “old before our time” so to speak and I really think that daily meditation and Qi gong are one of the very best methods for staying physically and mentally young for as long as possible (Note, also free, all they require is a little gentle discipline!). However, middle and old age come to us all, and we are at a tremendous advantage in terms of personal happiness if we can embrace them openly, value them, and consciously override the fear and resistance that mass consciousness encourages us to develop toward ageing process.

Thanks for reading,

Yours in the spirit of the journey,

Toby

© Toby Ouvry 2011, you are welcome to use this article, but you must seek Toby’s permission first. Contact info@tobyouvry.com

Categories
Awareness and insight Integral Awareness Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Presence and being present

Meditation for Tapping Into The Natural Creativity of Your Mind

Hi Everyone,

Do you consider yourself to be naturally creative? The following meditation is a simple technique for tapping into awareness of the natural creative quality of the space within our mind, and learning to direct and harness it in a positive way in our life.

Sit down and take a few deep breaths, relax your body-mind as you breathe out, feeling tension leave you on your outward breath.

Now start to become aware of the space within your mind, over a period of time, try and make the inner space within your mind as big as possible, imagine it becoming as big as the sky, or as big as the whole Universe.

Now look at this space in your mind. Initially it seems lifeless, just an empty open space, quite pleasant and peaceful, but not much else. However, if you start to look a little more closely at this space, it is this inner space itself from which all the thoughts, images and feelings within your mind are emerging. If you watch closely in this way you start to see that the “empty” space of your mind is actually a continuously creative source of energy, thinking, images and feeling within you.

Once you have observed this, focus once more upon the inner space within your mind, this time recognizing that this space is a creative, living source of energy, ideas and life force for you. How does it feel to experience directly your own natural inner creative potential? Our creative power can seem like such an elusive beast, yet actually here It is, under our nose all the time within the inner space or formless nature of our consciousness!

Most of the time we don’t use the creative energy of our inner space very well, because as soon as it arises we unconsciously direct it towards old, familiar patterns of thinking and feeling, so the thoughts in our mind don’t feel very creative or inspired at all. Indeed it can feel like our thinking and feeling energy are a burden, a stuck record in our mind that always remains the same whatever we try and do to change it.

Meditating on developing a more lucid and heightened awareness of the creative nature of the space within our mind encourages us to start making use of it in a more flexible, useful fashion, allowing us to respond to the challenges of our life in a more spontaneous and liberated manner. If we do not take responsibility for making good use of the creative energy within our mind, then we can find ourselves oppressed by this creative energy, as again and again it flows into thought patterns that are unhealthy and create feelings of stress, anxiety, fear and unhappiness.

Here’s to enjoying the creative inner space within all of our minds!

Thanks for reading and have a great week!

Toby

PS: This weeks meditation class topic:

You are multi-talented! Meditating on multiple-intelligences as a way of finding inner wholeness

PPS: Related articles that might be of interest to you:

Nurturing your natural intelligence and natural dignity

Finding your deep creativity (in three easy steps)

Categories
Awareness and insight Integral Awareness Meditation and Psychology Motivation and scope

The Story Of A Chance Meeting With A Meditating Taxi Driver – Taking Other Meditation Practitioners As Your Object of Meditation

The physiological and psychological benefits of meditation have been very well documented by science over the last fifty years (the best summary of this scientific research can be found in “The Physical and Psychological Effects of Meditation” by Michael Murphy and Steven Donovan). There is now really no doubt that daily meditation practice makes you look younger, age slower, feel more happy, improves brain function and is THE best method for accelerating personal growth, whatever your station in life or personal philosophy.

Meditation is free, and need take only ten minutes of your time each day, all it requires is a personal commitment based around an understanding of the benefits that you can get from it. I find that one of the best ways of keeping myself motivated to meditate is to look at other mediators and appreciate the very clear benefits of meditation that they are getting.

The other week I was leaving a clients office, and flagged down a cab and got in. The driver was an Indian, I thought perhaps thirty something. As I sat in the back I was really impressed by the positive ambiance in the taxi, and the courteous manner of the driver. We got talking, and very quickly we made the connection that we were both mediators. He talked enthusiastically about his (Hindu) practice, and I shared a little about my own practice and occupation as a meditation coach and artist.

I thought he was thirty something, he turned out to be mid-fifties.

I thought maybe he was some kind of celibate practitioner living in the world and going back home to meditate alone at night, turns out he had five kids, three already at University.

I ask him how he managed financially to raise five kids on a taxi drivers pay? I can’t remember his exact words, but it was something to the effect that people plan a bit too complicated in their financial planning these days, and if you live a simple life, you can provide ok for your family even if your income is not huge.

I left the taxi thinking I really want some of what he has got! Then I remembered, actually I have got some of what he has got, and rejoiced in the pleasure of meeting someone who was such a good living example of what happens when you commit yourself to a daily meditation practice amidst the busyness of a contemporary daily life!

If you have been thinking about starting a meditation practice, or have let your practice slip of late, have a think about friends and acquaintances who you know that meditate and as a result seem to carry a lot of good energy with them at all times. You want a bit of that don’t you? Time to get going!

© Toby Ouvry 2011. You are welcome to use this article, but you must seek Toby’s permission first. Contact info@tobyouvry.com