Category: Mindful Resilience

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Awakening, not over-thinking

“Growth is achieved by degrees. Enlightenment is instantaneous”

Dear Integral Meditators,

This week’s article looks at the practice of waking-up, which is something that we can practice ‘leaping’ into anytime, anywhere. If you like the article, you are invited to come along to this week’s Tuesday & Wednesday meditation class, where we will be taking this subject as our object of meditation.

In the spirit of awakening, 

Toby

 


Awakening, not over-thinking
 
Enlightenment – Waking up to the freedom of awareness
There is a precept in soto zen that goes something like “One must not wait for awakening.” What this means is that you can touch the freedom of the present moment simply by letting go of your pre-occupations and awakening to exactly where you are. You might think of this enlightenment or awakening as having three levels. You start at level one, which even a beginner can do in a rudimentary way, and as you build confidence you work onto levels two and three.
 
Level one involves simply being fully present to an experience. It could be physical/sensory, it could be thought, or even the more subtle experience of awareness itself. You might think of it as a non-resistance to what is, an acceptance that facilitates an awakening to life in the moment.
 
Level two involves noticing that there is an observer within you, a witness that is present to whatever is there. This witness is the ‘I Am’ within you. With a bit of practice, you can not only awaken to objects of awareness in the present, but also that which is aware of the objects in the present, which is the witness, or your enlightened nature itself.
 
Level three involves insight into the not oneness and not two-ness of the object of awareness (level one) with that which witnesses the object of awareness (level two)’

  • If the witnessing awareness is like the ocean, the object of awareness is like a wave
  • If the witnessing awareness is like the sun, the object of awareness is like a light-ray from the sun

This non-one, not-two experience moves us toward a non-dual or unitive awakening in the moment.
The above three practices are methods of awakening, or ‘Waking up’, and you really just have to commit to doing it again and again, awakening to this moment of your life as best you can and ‘improving’ through practice.
 
Awakening, not over-thinking – a practical reflection
 
Over the Christmas period I travelled back to see my family, and spent almost the entire time sick with a bad flu. One of the main ways in which I worked with this in terms of enlightenment and awakening was simply practicing the three levels above:

  1. Being present to the experience as it was
  2. Being aware of my witness
  3. Resting the not-one, not-two-ness of positions one and two

This enabled me to:

  • not over-think about the ‘bad luck’ or difficulty of my situation
  • simply accept it as I found it.

As a result, I was able to minimize my pain, make the experience into a form of meditation, and endure it with a degree of patience.
Of course, I did spend some time thinking and reflecting on my experience, but (almost)) always in the context of finding mental perspectives that are useful and helpful, rather than ruminating.
 
I’ll end with a short story from Anthony De Mello entitled “Rebirth” that illustrates nicely some important ideas around awakening related to this article.
 
REBIRTH
“Make a clean break with your past and you will be enlightened,” said the ‘Master.
“I am doing that by degrees.”
“Growth is achieved by degrees. Enlightenment is instantaneous.”
Later he said, “Take the leap! You cannot cross a chasm in little jumps.”


© Toby Ouvry 2025, 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

Meditation classes & workshops in January 2025 with Toby:

Ongoing on Tuesday’s & Wednesday’s (live & online), 7.30-8.30pm – Weekly integral meditation classes

From Tues 7th/Weds 8th January, 7.30-8.30pm – The Wisdom of Awakening Series – Meditation for leaping into reality

Saturday 18th January 9am-12.30pm – Meditations for Developing the Language of Your Shadow Self Workshop

Saturday, 25th January, 9.30-11.30am – Deep-dive breathing meditation masterclass

Saturday, 25th January, 5-6pm – Engaged mindfulness & meditation class – ‘Honesty, release and redirection – three levels of non-judgment’

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

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Inner vision Integral Awareness Life-fullness meditation and creativity Meditation and Psychology Mindful Confidence Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership

Destiny & fate, empowerment or victimhood?

“The micro-actions that we do add up, like drops of water in a pot. Do enough of them and they can create a sea-change in your life, & your destiny”

Dear Integral Meditators,

This week’s article explores the distinctions between destiny & fate, & how to use mindfulness to work with them creatively in your life. 

If you enjoy the article, it will be the focus subject of this week’s Tuesday & Wednesday evening class , you’d be welcome to come along, live or online!
This class is also the first in a series on the ‘Wisdom of awakening’, details of which are below.

In the spirit of destiny,

Toby
 

 
Article of the week

Destiny & fate, empowerment or victimhood?
 
DESTINY
To a woman who complained about her destiny the Master said, “It is you who make
your destiny.”
“But surely I am not responsible for being born a woman?”
“Being born a woman isn’t destiny. That is fate. Destiny is how you accept your
womanhood and-what you make of it.”
– From Anthony De Mellos ‘One minute wisdom’
 
Mindful of your destiny
 
Here we might consider destiny as “what you do with what life has given you”. You may recognize the voice within yourself that says ‘I have no choice or freedom here, I am a victim of circumstance, there is nothing I can do about this (except complain, or feel hard done by). In this context our destiny is understood as what we make of what we have got/have been given. In this sense destiny is a creative word; we create our destiny, it is in our hands. Sitting mindfully with a phrase such as “I am the primary creator of my destiny” and opening to the feelings and energy that comes from that can help us to access this inner power.
 
Accepting of your fate
 
In the same way that creating our destiny is a power, so is accepting our fate. Indeed, creating our destiny depends upon our acceptance of the life and circumstances we have been given. Without this acceptance there is no way that we can work with what we have, because we reject it. This non-acceptance actively prevents us from asking the question “What can I do with what I have got?” In a certain sense, acceptance is a type of positive indifference to our fortune, whether it be good or bad. It simply opens to what is, and this accepting of what is opens the doorway to destiny-creation.
 
Mindful of victimhood
 
Acceptance of our fate is not passive victim-consciousness. It is a strength that pre-ceeds the power of destiny-creation. Pick an area of your life where something maybe has not turned out that great (in your limited opinion), and practice observing and breathing with it in the spirit of acceptance. After a while you will start to see quite clearly that it is calm, collected, and empowering. It is not at all like victim-consciousness or feeling persecuted. It is a power, not a weakness.
 
Empowering yourself to create your destiny though mindful questions
 
These can be asked around a specific part of your life, or in a more general sense:
What is the fate that I need to accept?
What is the destiny that I can choose to embrace and create?
Where is the voice of the victim-of-fate within me? How can I prevent it sabotaging me?
What is/are the next step/s today to creating my destiny?
 
Micro & macro destiny
 
You might think of destiny as being mainly about the big things in your life, and the big achievements. That is not untrue, but equally I think it’s about the things that you choose in small situations, in micro-experiences. After all, the micro-actions that we do add up, like drops of water in a pot. Do enough of them and they can create a sea-change in your life and your destiny!
 
Related article: Intention determines trajectory – Aspects of integrated mindful intention

 © Toby Ouvry 2024, 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

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

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A Mind of Ease Concentration Energy Meditation Integral Awareness Life-fullness Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Resilience Presence and being present Tree of Life Zen Meditation

Your basic mandala of presence – The four trees

“Whenever you feel scattered, sit in your mandala of presence, & feel the return of your basic sanity”

Dear Integral Meditators,

This week’s article explores the idea and practice of a ‘Meditation mandala’ that can be used in various ways to improve the elements of your practice, enjoy!

This week’s Tues/Weds meditation session is on “Envisioning & presence, climbing the mindful mountain”,
And this Saturday at 30th  1700 SG time is the Engaged mindfulness & meditation online class on the subject of the three C’s of engaged mindfulness. 

In the spirit of presence,

Toby
 


Tues & Weds 26th & 27th Nov, 7.30-8.30pm, Integral Meditation class (Live & online): Climbing the mindful mountain; intention & your life-design

“Envisioning involves visualizing with hope, optimism and appropriate ambition a goal that you want to achieve in the future, being specific about what it looks like”

This is a meditation class about:

  1. How to connect what you do each day to the life you want to manifest
  2. To link your medium and long term goals to your everyday actions.
  3. To enjoy this process and build Confidence in yourself as you do it

 
Article of the week: Your basic mandala of presence – The four trees
 
We can consider our basic meditation state as being the following:
Not lost in thought, not falling asleep, in the present moment, and aware of an anchor, or focus point in the present, such as the body and breathing
 
Once we have a sense of our basic meditation state, we can expand the definition a little, just to refine and deepen our sense of presence:
Basic meditative presence is not being lost in thought, not falling asleep, in the present moment, and aware of an anchor, or focus point in the present, such as the body and breathing. Furthermore it is not being absorbed in the future, and not living in the past.
 
These definitions give us a blue-print for building meditative presence, that we can then use as a basic ‘space’ within which we can place any other meditation practice that we may wish to develop,

  • If you want to place basic vipassana or witnessing meditation in there, you can
  • If you want to focus on mantra yoga in there, you can
  • If you want to do sports visualization you can
  • If you want to practice therapeutic mindfulness you can

You get the idea; you can use it for other meditation practices. Equally you can use it as a meditation practice in itself. I like to do this by creating what I call a ‘Mandala of presence’:
 
Imagine yourself sitting in a peaceful place between four trees, one is in front of you, one behind, one to the left, one to the right. See them as being maybe 2-4 meters distance away. Now simply use your body & breathing as an anchor for your awareness in the present moment, and stay there. The trees are your boundary-points:

  • Going beyond the left-hand tree means getting lost in thought
  • Going beyond the right-hand tree means falling asleep
  • Going beyond the tree behind you means living in the past
  • Going beyond the tree in front of you means being lost in the future

 
Notice you can be present to thoughts without being lost in them. You can also feel a little sleepy without falling asleep. You can be aware of a thought about past or future without living in the past or being lost in the future. So, it is quite a broad, forgiving space that you can hang out in and build stable, good quality, increasingly deep meditative presence.
 
A simple way to enhance the practice is to breathe as follows:

  • Breathing in, breathe your energy into your body, into the present and feel the fullness of that presence
  • As you breathe out, relax into the freedom of your awareness in the present

Build your sense of both freedom and fullness of presence as you meditate, dropping gradually deeper and deeper into meditation.
 
This is a practice I use not just in formal meditation, but also informally. Whenever I feel a little scattered, I bring my attention back to the here and now, sit between the four trees for a while, and return to my basic sanity.
 
Related reading:
The foundational pillars or ‘goal-posts’ of meditative presence
Finding Your Spiritual, Physical Home
Making your physical awareness balanced & whole
Sky & sun, freedom & fullness© Toby Ouvry 2024, 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

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

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Playful detached-compassion

“Life experience, combined with playfulness and observational presence can make the power of our compassion grow exponentially”

Dear Integral Meditators,

This week’s article explores resolving the apparent contradiction between detachment & compassion i a playful way! If you enjoy the article, we will be looking at the topic in this week’s meditation session. 

Reminder of this Saturday’s  Making Pearls from Sand: Free online session on mindfully working with your shadow-self, 1700-1800 Singapore time.

In the spirit of compassionate play,

Toby

 


This week’s meditation session Tues 12th/Weds 13th November:  ‘Detached compassion – in the world but not of it’.

This class looks at how to use mindfulness & meditation to:

  • Develop sustainable, high-quality compassion
  • Combine it with healthy detachment
  • Use this combination as an energising & healing force within ourself, our life & the world

 
7.30-8.30pm SG time, live in-person and online

 
Article of the week: Playful detached-compassion
 
Detachment and compassion are qualities that often we consider being separate because they appear to exclude each other.  It seems when you are detached you are disconnected from others, and so cannot feel compassion for them. Likewise, if we were being compassionate we cannot be detached because that means disconnecting from our feeling nature, which is where our compassion is located.
 
However, viewed from the perspective of mindful awareness, it is perfectly possible to bring deep compassion together with a sense of detached, witnessing observation. This is because:
 
We can practice observational detachment from any situation, viewing things from the “big picture” perspective, while at the same time cultivating closeness and intimacy with who or what we observe
 
Good quality mindful awareness is like the sun. It combines the impersonal light of awareness with a nurturing, life-giving warmth. From the perspective of an integrated mindful awareness, we can cultivate an experience of life as impersonally-personal, as deeply involved and at the same time not involved, as compassionate at the same time as being even minded.
 
If you practice bringing observational detachment and compassion together simultaneously in life situations, gradually improving your ability, then you will consistently increase your experience of detached-compassion.
 
Divine Playfulness
 
One of the fundamental qualities of Spirit when we contact it playfulness and a corresponding sense of humour. From its perspective the whole process of creating and evolving a universe is done as a type of game, a way of creatively exploring itself and its potential.
Consequently, if you want to increase the level of spirit in your daily life then entering your daily tasks in the spirit playfulness is a great practice to have.
It is easy to get a little too serious about things and allow our life to become unnecessarily stressful and unhappy. Relating to the challenges in your day as playful games and puzzles set you by the universe to help you grow is a technique that both relieves stress and enhances the deeply felt spiritual nature of your human experience.
 
A five-minute meditation to integrate playfulness and detached compassion into daily life
 
Step 1: Mentally select a particular life situation/challenge that you wish to work on in the meditation
 
Step 2: Recollect your understanding of detached compassion. Open your heart to the feelings that you are experiencing and the other people that are involved at the same time as mentally taking a step back and seeing what is happening from a more impersonal, big picture perspective. Experiment, trying to feel both empathic compassion and witnessing observance. At first do them one after the other, and then simultaneously. Breathe with this combined experience for a while.
 
Step 3: Introduce playful humour to your perspective of the challenge. Think of the challenge as a game that you as a spiritual being are playing to stretch and improve your capability as a human being. Stay with this perspective and the experiences it gives rise to for a time.
If you do this brief exercise a few times you will find that compassionate detachment and playfulness will become an accessible experience for you in your daily life. Life experience, combined with playfulness and observational presence can make the power of our compassion grow exponentially.
 
Related articles: Compassion & care through awareness
Compassionate presence, awakened action
© Toby Ouvry 2024, 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

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

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A Mind of Ease Energy Meditation Inner vision Integral Meditation Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Life-fullness Meditating on the Self meditation and creativity Mindful Resilience Presence and being present Primal Spirituality Zen Meditation

The world as an organism

Dear Integral Meditators,

This week’s article looks at how we can relate to the world an our environment mindfully in a way where we feel like we belong and where we can actively participate. I hope you enjoy it!

In the spirit of organismic connection, 

Toby

 

The world as an organism
 
In the Taoist and Buddhist traditions, particularly in China and Japan, the concept of the world and how it works is very ‘organismic’. By this I mean that the way the world exists is like a living organism, as opposed to say a top-down hierarchy. Rather than everything following the rule of the leader, or God, or the Queen, things kind of ‘do themselves’. For example, you don’t have to make a conscious choice to metabolize your food or regenerate your cells after every meal. Rather your body does it by itself. This is because it, and you are an organism. Taoism sees the world like that.
Many environmental movements and philosophies today have also adopted this view, relating to the Planet as ‘Gaia’, where everything is connected to everything else like cells in the body of an organism.
 
Yourself as a cell in the organism
 
So then, if the world is an organism, what is your relationship to it? The answer is something like you are born from the organism and are a natural part of it, like a cell in your body. Like the cell, you participate in the life of the organism, and your behaviour contributes to and effects the organism as a whole.
 
 
Participating in & with the organism
 
The reality is that we are already interacting with the world, like a cell on a body. However, much of this participation is currently unconscious, so we are not deriving the nourishment and fulfilment we could be by doing it consciously. Mindful participation in the world-as-organism aims to help us access that nourishment. So, what is it that we can participating in specifically?
 
Four spheres and six directions

The four spheres are Earth, Moon, Sun and stars, the basic ‘spheres’ of our world and environment. We also exist within the six directions – above, below, in front, behind, left and right. I have looked at these in some depth in a previous article.
 
Four elements & four kingdoms

Another central aspect of your environment is the four elements, earth, water, air and fire. These exist both within your body and around you in the environment.
‘Inter-being’ with the four elements are the four kingdoms; human, animal, plant, and mineral.
We share the body of our planet with the four kingdoms, and each of these contain beings (other cells in the body) that consist of the four elements in different combinations.
 
Walking or sitting participation

Go for a walk, or sit outside. Notice the different aspects of the four kingdoms and elements in the landscape. Notice how you share and exchange energy with them. For example:

  • How the air in your lungs interacts and exchanges with the sky and the atmosphere
  • How the leaves of the plants around you contain water, like your body does
  • How the warmth in your body resonates with the sun
  • How the rocks are strong and solid, like your bones
  • How some animals and plants are more airy (Like birds, obviously), some fiery, watery or earthy. Commune with them as fellow elemental beings existing like you, cells within the body of the Earth

 
You are a cell in the body of life, communing & interacting with the other cells, all expressions of the one body.
 
Related articles:
Aspects of environmental meditation
Born from Life, not into it
Integrating reality & symbolic reality


© Toby Ouvry 2024, 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

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

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Born from Life, not into it

“What if, rather than being an intruder into life, we relate to ourself as being born from life, & belonging to Life?”

Dear Integral Meditators,

How we conceive our relationship to life is fundamental to how we experience it. This week’s article looks at how to work with this domain in mindfulness & through contemplation.

Heads up for the the Cultivating your Nirvana, or inner freedom mini retreat on the morning of this Saturday the 12th, & for the Meditation & Mindfulness for Creating a Mind of Ease, Relaxed Concentration and Positive Intention workshop on Saturday 26th.


In the spirit of Life,

Toby
 

Born from Life, not into it

One of my main informal objects of meditation for the last few weeks has been the distinction between being born into life and being born from it. There are several significant changes in perception that this invites that I think are worth sharing.   

The challenge of alienation
If our sense of being born is that of being born into life, it is very easy for that to give rise to a sense of separateness from our environment and the place we inhabit. ‘Born into’ can have the connotation of being like an alien or an asteroid landing on the planet, like a foreign entity in a strange world. There is a sense of fundamental unrelatedness to the place we find ourself. This conception then opens us to a feeling of existential anxiety, of being threatened and aggressed by our surroundings, and where we must carve out our space despite of our lack of belonging.   

Being born from
What if, rather than being an intruder into life, we relate to ourself as being born from life, and belonging to and in Life? In terms of the truth of it, there is no question of this. Our body was literally conceived of by our parents, who in turn were born from their parents and their bodies. You can trace this all the way back through the species of animals and plants to life being born in the ocean. As a unit of life we emerged from life, life gives rise to life.

A wave from the ocean
Thinking like this we start to relate to ourself as a natural extension of life, emerging from Life at birth, and returning back to Life at death (Life capital L to denote Life as a principle and underlying energy). Thought of this way life and death are not seen as enemies; we emerge from Life as an expression of Life at birth like a wave from the ocean. When we die our life simply merges back into Life, like a wave back into the ocean. It is a natural, smooth, seamless continuum. Changing our relationship to life like this, we then significantly change our relationship to death.

An apple from a tree
Another way of relating to being born from Life is that we realize our relationship to it is like that of an apple or a leaf to an apple tree. The apple emerges from the Life of the tree itself, not as something separate from the tree. The life of the tree gives rise to the apple. The apple arises from the tree itself, in the same way that the tree came from the life in the apple that it grew from.
You are like the apple being born from the apple tree. The life in you is a part of Life, you are an expression of Life, and Life is you.

No room for impostor syndrome
Relating to yourself as being born from Life, an expression of Life, there is a sense of belonging to Life, being a part of Life, being deeply at home in Life. There is no sense of not belonging where you are, not being appropriate to Life, of somehow being ‘in the wrong place’. You are in fact exactly where you are supposed to be. You belong here as much as anything or anyone else.
The things that you are offered in and by Life you are deserving of, there isn’t even a question of that.

Being born from and (dying) merging back into Life.
A wave arising from and merging back into the ocean.
An apple arising from an apple tree.
You belong absolutely, and you are at home, truly.

Related article: Trees, birds & Octopuses – Achieving harmony by letting be

© Toby Ouvry 2024, 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

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

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Anchoring & moving from center

“Breathe into the fullness of your attention and intention. Breathe out relax into the freedom of awareness. At the bottom of the breath rest in stillness”

Dear Toby, 

This week’s article focuses on centering as a theme, & outlines a practice that you can do to help you center effectively in a number of key ways…
If you enjoy the article, you can explore aspects of it at this weeks Tuesday or Wednesday class, live or online.
And heads up for anyone who may be interested in the Developing Your Self-Confidence Through Mindfulness Workshop on the 28th September.

In the spirit of centered-ness, 

Toby

 


Anchoring & moving from center
 
In this article I want to bring together a few techniques into a ‘Form’. A form basically means a practice that is quite simple, and can be done at the level of the person doing it, beginner or more advanced. The characteristic of a form is that it grows with the abilty of the practitioner, thus remaining relevant to us as we grow. The three domains we bring together in this form are:

  • Physical and energetic centering
  • The ‘holy trinity’ of integral mindfulness; intention, attention and awareness
  • Our foundational freedom, fullness, and stillness

 
Centering

Imagine a line of light coming down from the sky. Imagine it descending through the crown of your head, and down through the dead-center of your body, brain, neck, chest, abdomen hips. It then leaves through your perineum and descends into the earth moving through the center of the Earth’s core. Feel this line of light to be in the middle of the front and back, left and right halves of your body. As you breathe in, breathe your energy into this ‘vertical core’ of your body, as you breathe out, feel yourself relaxing from center, from the core to the periphery of your body.**
After few breaths, locate the mid-point of your vertical core between your crown and your perineum. This is the mid-point of your torso, the absolute physical centre. Imagine this as a point of light, somewhere between your heart-centre and solar-plexus. Breathe into this mid-point, gathering your energy & power there. Breathe out, relax from your mid-point. Feel the inner balance that this practice starts to give rise to.
 
Aligning your mindfulness with your center

Now imagine that the three foundations of mindfulness, your intention, attention and awareness (IAA) are all focused within your vertical core, and particularly your mid-point/center. If you like, imagine your mid-point becomes like a little sun, shining your intention, attention and awareness out from your centre in a balanced, powerful and harmonious manner. Initially you can keep this a general feeling around your IAA, but then if you like you can make it into a practice around a specific domain of your life, reflecting upon particular intentions, and ways of directing your attention and awareness in this situation. Just centring your IAA and then holding a situation in mind, seeing if from this balanced point of center can be a surprisingly powerful and useful practice.
 
Relaxing into freedom, fullness and stillness

As you breathe in, imagine the sun-like fullness of your balanced intention glowing brightly. As you breathe out, imagine it shining out into the freedom of your sky-like awareness. Enjoy this feeling of freedom and fullness. If you like. As you reach the end of your exhalation, pause briefly, and relax into the physical and mental stillness in that pause. So, then we have:

  • Breathing into the fullness of attention and intention
  • Breathing out relaxing into the freedom of awareness
  • At the bottom of the breath resting in stillness

There is a lot in this form, but I hope you can see that the basic elements are really quite simple. The felt benefits are fairly immediate, and as your practice deepens, so will your experience of the form!
 
**When people start to meditate, quite often they notice that they feel ‘lop-sided’ with one side of the body feeling full of energy and the opposite side feeling empty or without feeling. Centering practice can really help with the re-balancing of this.
 
Related reading: Locating your deep centre
The holy trinity of mindfulness
Sky & sun, freedom & fullness

Article & content © Toby Ouvry 2024, 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

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

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The dance of conscious & unconscious intention

“Our intentions are like tuning forks, they tend to attract particular types of things and experiences into our life, and also determine the way in which we experience them”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This week’s article follows on from last week’s article on on intention, further drawing out the power of intention, and some practices to start being mindful around it!
If you enjoy the article, do check out the upcoming course on  Meditating with the power of intention – An eleven module course. It can be participated in live or online, and is starting at the beginning of September. 

In the spirit of intention, 

Toby
 


The dance of conscious & unconscious intention
 
You always have an intention
Intention occupies the ‘why’ space within our consciousness; the reason we are motivated to do things. There is a ‘why’ reason for all our actions or non-actions. The art noticing or being mindful around intention is three-fold:

  1. Noticing intentions that you have that are harmful or destructive, working against your wellbeing and those of others. Once detected we can work on understanding where they come from and what we can do to reduce and re-direct them
  2. Noticing the positive intentions that we have that are helpful, empowering and creative, then continuing to nurture and strengthen them
  3. Opening to new benevolent or creative intentions that we may not have often at the moment, but that we can see the value in developing them and making them a regular part of our life

Intentions are like tuning forks, they tend to attract particular types of things and experiences into our life, and also determine the way in which we experience them. Dancing with our intentions deliberately can radically shift our life-experience quite quickly, sometimes immediately.
 
You don’t always know that you have an intention
Although we almost always have an intention, we aren’t always aware of the intentions that we have.

  • You might have naturally caring intentions regularly toward your family members, but you might not notice it because it’s just a (positive) habit. If you notice this positive intention that arises regularly within you, you can generate it more often consciously, and you can widen the group or type of people that you generate it towards. Making this intention conscious can improve your relationships significantly
  • You might not be aware of the judgements that you have about yourself, and the harmful intentions that come from them. By making these intentions toward yourself conscious, you can see them more clearly, gently starting to ‘de-couple’ yourself from them, reducing, even eliminating the harmful effects that they are having upon you
  • You may not have noticed that your short, medium and long term goals and intentions are contradicting each other in significant ways. By consciously aligning your short, medium and long term intentions and making them a team, you can significantly increase the power of each

 
Practice points – Creating intentions around intention
 
The intention to live intentionally – the first practice point here is to build the power of your intention to live intentionally, on purpose and consciously. This is a mindfulness power-practice 101, building the power of your intentionality.
 
The dance of conscious & unconscious intention – Practice point two is to notice which of the intentions that you generate are deliberate or conscious, and which are instinctual, unconscious and spontaneous. The idea here is to ‘dance’ with both, creating a harmony between them in your life through your intention to align your conscious & unconscious intentions.
 
Related reading: Intention determines trajectory – Aspects of integrated mindful intention
Intention, dedication, meditation
Fourteen levels of mindful intention

Article & content © Toby Ouvry 2024, 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

Watch Toby’s video on mindful intention:

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

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Mindfulness – Liberation through pre-psychology

“Mindful awareness builds a robust pre-psychological base, meaning the feeling or sensibility you have about yourself before you think or conceive who you are. If we get this base right, many good things follow”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This week’s article is on the effectiveness of minddful awareness as a pre-psychological base for navigating and thriving in our lives. If you enjoy it, feel free to join us for the Tuesday or Wednesday meditation class, where it will be a focus point of the meditation. 

In the spirit of awareness,

Toby


Mindfulness – Liberation through pre-psychology
 
In my previous article on the ‘holy trinity of mindfulness’ I outline the role of awareness, intention and attention in mindfulness practice. I describe them as pre-skills that, if you cultivate them will help you develop any other skill relatively quickly and easily.
In this article I want to focus on awareness and what I call its pre-psychological benefits. Again, in the previous article I define mindful awareness as:
“The choice to be consciously aware as we go through life, rather than unconscious, and to direct our conscious awareness skilfully.”
When you make the choice simply to be aware of consciousness in the present moment, there are several fundamental benefits. I want to outline some of these below, in the hope that you will feel inspired to start practicing. Specifically, I want to point out how mindful awareness builds a robust pre-psychological base for ourselves. By pre-psychological I mean the feeling or sensibility you have about yourself before you start to think or conceive who you are. If we get this base right, many good things follow!
 
Full, not empty – When we sit in awareness of the present moment, we start to feel a sense of fullness in that moment. We can then turn up to life with this feeling of fullness, which helps counterbalance the feeling of emptiness that many people feel when they think about themselves and their life.

Empty, not full – Sitting with awareness in the present moment enables us to empty of all the complex thinking and inner noise that our mind is overburdened or overfilled with. We access a sense of ‘empty’ pleasurable inner spaciousness.

Enough, not not -enough – The ‘I am not enough’ script is one of the most common ones that individuals suffer from psychologically. Training to be aware in the present gives us access to a feeling of enough-ness, a sensibility of sufficiency not insufficiency. We can learn to identify with this primary feeling, and meet life from this feeling of ‘enough’, which then becomes a sense of ‘I am enough’.

Strong, not weak – becoming more consciously aware and present leads to a sense of being more gathered and undistracted. Awareness itself is always in the present moment, so focusing upon it leads to less of our energy being dissipated by distraction and thoughts about the past or future. The result of this is a feeling or sensation of being strong in the moment, not weak, and of being centered, not off balance.

Free, not limited – In our mental and physical environment we experience all sorts of limitations,  some external, some internal. In the experience of awareness itself, there is absolute freedom. The choice to be aware is the one thing that no one can take away from us.
 
So, then the practice here is simply to practice being aware of awareness, in the present moment, noticing that when we do so a very basic primal set of pre-cognitive, non-verbal experiences become available to us. We have a sense of being:

  • Full, not empty
  • Empty, not full
  • Enough, not not -enough (sufficiency, not insufficiency)
  • Strong, not weak
  • Free, not limited

If we cultivate these, then we now have a range of pre-psychological, pre-thought building blocks that we can use as a secure base for our sense of self as we think and navigate the world from day to day. This sense of strength, fullness and freedom can accompany us more and more, as our capacity to be aware of awareness grows though our meditation and mindfulness practice.
 
Related reading: Awareness, attention, intention – The holy trinity of integral mindfulness
The freedom of awareness

​© Toby Ouvry 2024, 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

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

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Developmental acceptance – Allowing it to be messy & imperfect

“Skillful acceptance means noticing that you can center yourself in the middle of feelings of chaos, messiness, or dis-orientation, be present to them without panicking”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This week’s article looks at how to use mindfulness to work with your reality in a creative way, even and particularly when it seems messy!

If you enjoy the article, it will be the subject of our meditation at this weeks Tuesday & Wednesday Meditation class: 
 The Wisdom of Awakening Series:  Meditations for cultivating your inner guidance & guru.
All welcome to attend. This series is the course for this week and July.

In the spirit of acceptance,

Toby


Developmental acceptance – Allowing things to be messy & imperfect
 
Harmony from chaos – The way of the artist and creative
At a certain stage in my path, I spent time working with the idea of my art (at the time painting & sculpture) as a path of ‘harmony through conflict’. This basically meant that, to create beauty or harmony, you need to reach into chaos, disorder and sometimes ugliness. Then, by working skilfully with it you can draw out the beauty and order. So, the first part of any creative process then, is to learn to ‘be’ with the disorder/chaos, and start working with it from a centred point of view.
 
Chaos, inner and outer is messy
The tricky part about sitting with chaos is that the feeling of it is very ‘messy’ and confusing. It doesn’t feel comfortable to sit with. One reason why many people are not more creative is because they would prefer to sit with a reality that feels ‘tidy’, ordered and ‘safe’, even if that version of reality is someone else’s, even if it is dysfunctional, and even if the ‘order’ isn’t that appealing to us.
 
Accepting & working with chaos
So, to work with the messiness of reality, and start building our capacity to work with it creatively, we first must practice ‘sitting with the messiness’, which is to say sitting and getting comfortable with it, which actually means ‘getting comfortable with the uncomfortable’(!)
To get comfortable with messiness means accepting that it makes us anxious and dis-oriented. Skillful acceptance means noticing that you can center yourself in the middle of those feelings of chaos and messiness, be present to them without panicking. From the centred comfort that acceptance gives you, you can then look for ways to:

  • Notice what’s useful and good about the current messy-ness
  • Make small initial steps towards ordering the situation
  • Let your intuitive, rational and instinctual intelligence work together to see patterns in the chaos that help you start to see what the situation is offering you, and what it can become

 
Practicing developmental acceptance
On a practical level, I find this type of developmental acceptance enables me to work with what is happening in my day much more creatively. For example, today:

  • Sitting down at my desk to write this article, I found that the initial idea I had did not ‘fit’ like I imagined it would
  • This immediately put me in a place of dis-orientation, discomfort. Centering in that dis-orientation and getting comfortable with it, I became curious about how I could start to mold a new order from the messiness. Staying centered also needed a bit of the qualities of care and courage to stay with it; some gentle positive inner self-talk and re-assurance
  • Acceptance itself started to emerge as a theme, relaxing into it, and without trying too hard I let my intuition, rationality, and instinct start to put some structure to the basic theme, to sculpt and form a harmony from the mess
  • Forty minutes or so later I had written the article that you are now reading

 
You will notice from the above description that the first ‘move’ was noticing and accepting the initial ‘messiness’ of my reality. Accepting and centering like this then enabled me to harmonize my reality much more quickly and effectively than if I had been fighting with it.
You will notice also that I use the three C’s, curiosity, courage and care as a central part of the ‘developmental acceptance’ methodology.
 
Related reading: Cultivating your positive imperfectionist
Applying the Three C’s of Engaged Mindfulness

​© Toby Ouvry 2022, 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

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

Integral Meditation Asia

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