Category: One Minute Mindfulness

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Awareness and insight Inner vision Integral Awareness Meditation and Art Meditation techniques Mindfulness One Minute Mindfulness Uncategorized

Three Types of Creativity Arising From Mindfulness and Meditation

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks article focuses on mindfulness and meditation in relation to our creative capacity, and how we can enhance three types of creative power within ourself through regular mindfulness practice. Enjoy!

Yours integrally,

Toby


Three Types of Creativity Arising From Mindfulness and Meditation

One of the simplest ways to start understanding how mindfulness increases our powers of creativity is to understand that daily mindfulness practice helps us to consciously shift our brainwave patterns from beta waves, which is our normal, wide awake functional state of mind to alpha and theta waves, which are states of mind associated with deep levels of relaxation, reduced levels of conceptual thought and (if used in the right way) greater levels of creativity/improvisational ability.


Learning to consciously enter into the lightly altered states of relaxation and creativity characterized by alpha and theta waves has three types of way in which it contributes to our creative power, which I have termed macro-creativity, micro-creativity and qualitative creativity.

Macro-creativity is the sort of creativity that helps us to think of new ideas, new directions in life and new ways of doing things. It is an overtly creative state of mind and being. We need macro-creativity if our work is inherently demanding of greater degrees of creativity; for example if we are an entrepreneur, designer, artist or such, or simply when life is demanding of us that we think of  really new approaches to long term problems and challenges.

Micro-creativity is a more low-key but in my opinion equally important level of creativity. It is about the small choices that you make each day, for example:

  •  Choosing to adopt the positive perspective on the feedback that we received from a colleague about our work, rather than reacting negatively and defensively
  • Choosing to accept the limitations that family life places upon our freedom with appreciation, rather than unconsciously resenting it.
  • Taking an opportunity to relax, unwind and enjoy a five minute coffee break, rather than spending the entire time we are drinking neurotically worrying about the day’s activities.

So micro-creativity is all about exercising your creative freedom in the small choices you make each day in order to maximise your enjoyment, happiness and appreciation of whatever it is that you are experiencing. It is a kind of “bread and butter” type of creativity that anyone can get in the habit of using and that mindfulness helps to develop.

Qualitative creativity is more like a feeling of creativity and playfulness, rather than an act of creativity per-se. It is simply a feeling of lightness and playfulness that we can take into our life, use to enhance its quality, and counter the excessive seriousness and or rigid states of thinking and acting that are keeping us trapped in a cycle of negativity.

One Minute Mindfulness: Exercise Your Micro-creativity


This exercise involves simply being aware that you always have more than one choice in your approach to whatever is happening to you during the day, and regularly asking yourself the question “Have I been making the right creative choices to my challenges so far today?” If not, exercise your mindful creative ability to choose an approach or adopt a perspective to what is happening that will serve you better.
© Toby Ouvry 2013, 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

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Integral Awareness Meditation techniques One Minute Mindfulness Presence and being present

The Inevitability of the Present Moment

Dear Integral Meditators,

I’d like to wish you a very happy new lunar new year of the snake, whatever winding and twisting roads that it may take us on!

This weeks article reflects on the fact that one of the main goal of mindfulness and meditation; that of living in the present is in fact somewhere that we already are, but simply don’t recognize. A somewhat curious contradiction!

Yours in the spirit of recognizing where we are,

Toby

The Inevitability of the Present Moment

One of the best ways in which to connect to a deeper awareness of the present moment is simply to recognize that there is no way that you can actually avoid it.

  • Whenever you become preoccupied with thoughts about the past and things that have happened, you are doing so only within the present moment. The idea that you are somehow in the past by thinking of the past is an illusion; in reality you are thinking of the past whilst actually being IN the present moment.
  • Whenever you neglect mindfulness of the present due to being pre-occupied with a future goal, the experience of being lost in the future is an illusion. In reality you are actually IN the present moment, thinking of the future.

Continuing this train of thought, the very idea that you can be anywhere but the present moment is an illusion, the reality is that you cannot be anywhere else, no matter how hard you try.

One minute mindlessness: Try and escape from the present moment.
In this exercise, for one minute try as hard as you can to escape from the present moment.

  • If you are thinking fast, try and think faster
  • Try and re-create the past so hard that you totally lose awareness of the present moment
  • Give yourself a free rein to obsess about the future so much that your awareness of the present is as absent as possible.

At the end of the one minute, simply reflect on the fact that however hard you have tried to escape, for every single moment of that past minute you have been inevitably living and existing in the present moment, you can’t escape from it, it is inevitable. Rest in this recognition for a while.

Rather than trying harder to be more present in our life, sometimes it can be more beneficial to recognize that there is nowhere else that we can possibly be.


© Toby Ouvry 2013, 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

 
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A Mind of Ease Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Motivation and scope One Minute Mindfulness

Why Meditation and Mindfulness Won’t Reduce your Stress (and why this is a good thing)

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks article takes a bit of a closer look at exactly what it is that meditation is supposed to do for us. I look at the idea of mindfulness as stress reduction, and offer a new, what I think is in many ways a more constructive and beneficial perspective within which to view the goals of meditation and mindfulness.

Yours in the spirit of increased tolerance to stress,

Toby

 

Why Meditation and Mindfulness Won’t Reduce your Stress (and why this is a good thing)

It is of course a popular idea these days that meditation and mindfulness are key tools that you can use in order to reduce your stress, and many people come to these disciplines hoping to do exactly that; reduce the amount of stress in their lives. However I like to think of meditation and mindfulness doing something different, namely increasing your tolerance to stress and developing the capacity to remain steady and calm amidst situations that are inherently stressful.

Redefining the purpose and function of meditation in the above way is important I think, because it is all too easy to experience a bit of inner peace through meditation and mindfulness, and this experience then take us in the direction of becoming less tolerant to stress, and seeking out meditation as a way of escaping that which we can’t cope with effectively.

Let’s use a simple analogy. Let’s say your present capacity to deal with stress is the equivalent of doing ten push ups in a row before reaching exhaustion. In the analogy lets then say that your life circumstances present you with circumstances that are the equivalent of doing sixteen push ups in a row. This is presently beyond your capacity or stress threshold. What a meditation or mindfulness practice would aim to do then is train your mind to become progressively more efficient at dealing with stress such that, after a while the “sixteen push up” stress level is something that you can live and cope with without getting flustered.

So, simply put the aim of mindfulness and meditation is to increase your stress threshold in a balanced way, such that you can deal with more without getting exhausted. Mindfulness and meditation when done well teach us to work with and re-direct the stress of our life in creative and dynamic ways that enable us to thrive at levels of stress that would normally be way beyond our capacity to deal with constructively.

I think this is an important point to make because:

  • Living a meaningful, creative and thoughtful life that is outside of the very narrow concerns of societies present level of consciousness involves confronting ever new forms of stress and tension
  • Meditation and mindfulness by their very nature increase the creative power and energy in our mind, which creates “growth stresses” within our being itself. Unless we are prepared for this, and look forward to the new stress tolerance levels that this process will take us to, then there is a good chance that we will give up our practice thinking that it isn’t working!

One Minute Mindfulness; Notice the Space
Even when your mind is busy, and when your physical world is filled with logistical activity, notice that all this activity and busyness exists within the context of space:

  • Your busy mind is like a big, spacious sky filled with clouds; without trying so get rid of the clouds (busy thoughts), you can still notice and open to the spaciousness of the inner sky of your mind
  • Your physical world and activities always take place in the context of an open land or cityscape. Take the time to notice the space of the sky above you, and objects in the middle and far distance of your world, not just what is right in front of you.

Regularly opening to inner and outer space in your day, gives you a bigger context within which you can contain and consciously direct the stress and tension in your life, without feeling so easily overwhelmed.
© Toby Ouvry 2013, 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

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Meditation techniques mind body connection Motivation and scope One Minute Mindfulness Presence and being present

Meditation at Christmas – Mindful Eating

Dear Integral Meditators,

Sincerest best wishes to you and your family for the Christmas season  from myself and Integral Meditation Asia. Enjoy this weeks article!

Yours in the spirit of the journey,

Toby

Mindful Eating As Your Object of Meditation

The Christmas season is upon us, which, amongst other things involves gathering together to enjoy food in (hopefully) good company. With this in mind I got thinking about the different methods I have come across for transforming the act of eating into an act of meditative awareness. In general we eat every day, and so having a method of transforming eating into a mindfulness practice is invaluable for any meditator, as it means that the act of eating itself strengthens ones meditation practice and the practice of states of mind that lead directly or indirectly to the experience of happiness and/or insight.
In particular at Christmas which can have many spiritually and culturally connotations, mindful eating gives us a chance to enjoy the interface between our meditation practice and the enjoyment of delicious food.  I have outlined five techniques below from you can take your pick, or alternate between. With this in mind, here we go:

1. Eating with detachment – Delicious as the food may be, the great wisdom traditions of the world have always advised that food is in fact not a true source of lasting happiness, and have thus recommended that we temper our attachment to what we eat, and enjoy it without getting completely consumed by mindless gluttony. For those that have learned to practice detachment in a balanced way, the insight is that a certain level of detachment actually enhances the pleasure from any given activity, and this is also the case with food. By mindfully eating with a certain level of detachment the amount of enjoyment from the sensual experience of eating actually increases.

2. Eating with an altruistic intention – You can enjoy your food whilst at the same time motivating yourself to use the energy that you get from the food to bring benefit to the world. This is the kind of classic “Bodhisattva training practice” that one finds for example in Mahayana Buddhism. Before one eats one might think something like “My main wish is to be of benefit to others, in order to do this I am now going to sustain my body by eating this food”. With this in mind you can then enjoy your food in the same way that you normally do, but behind it lies a compassionate and loving motivation.

3. Regarding what is eaten as a manifestation of primal bliss and emptiness – This method is primarily a tantric method (for me one I learned within the Tibetan tradition),and consists of regarding the food that is eaten as primarily a manifestation of the causal, formless bliss that underlies that whole of the manifest world. Thus one eats with the recognition that behind the world of ordinary appearances (such as the food one is eating) lies the ever present bliss and spaciousness of spirit. This practice requires a certain level of experience in meditation, but it can be a fun one to play with even on a more elementary level of practice.

4. Eating with appreciation – Before one eats time is taken to appreciate the cooks, the circumstances in one’s life that make such nutritious/delicious food to be possible, the trees, plants and animals that provided the ingredients.  Eating with gratitude and appreciation provides a wonderful inner context for the enjoyment of good food.

5. Eating whilst putting down your baggage and having fun – In meditation classes I often tell people at the beginning of the session to put down their mental baggage before we begin to meditation. Similarly we can take the beginning of a meal as an opportunity to put down our mental baggage and engage in the simple act of eating in the present moment with enjoyment, like a mini eating meditation. If your mind is pre-occupied with its usual nonsense, there is always the danger that we waste the fun and enjoyment of food simply because we are mentally elsewhere!

Enjoy your food!
© Toby Ouvry 2012, 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

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Awareness and insight Enlightened love and loving Integral Awareness Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Motivation and scope One Minute Mindfulness Presence and being present

Light-Heartedness as Your Object of Meditation

Hi Everyone,

Light-heartedness is the theme of this weeks article, a seriously important meditation if you ask me!

 

Happy meditating!

Toby

Taking Light-Heartedness as Your Object of Meditation

Light-heartedness is a state of mind and being that combines the elements of serious mindedness and deep caring with a sense of lightness and fun. It avoids the extremes of either:

  • Being over serious and heavy in our approach, or
  • Resorting to purely superficial/hedonistic fun as an “escape” from the pressures of our life.

Sometimes life can feel like an attritional battle that we are fighting and this is often partly because the imbalanced attitude that we are adopting toward our challenges only adds to the burden. Consciously practising light heartedness is a very good way of increasing our stamina and ability to bear our burdens effectively whilst at the same time having more genuine fun.
The ability to practice light-heartedness arises from the insight that fun and seriousness are not mutually exclusive poles, but qualities that can be (and need to be) combined together in order to experience life fully and richly. When you are having fun with someone whom you care for deeply and seriously, that fun is enhanced and much deeper in quality. When you are in a serious situation and you are able to retain an element of lightness and relaxation, then that serious situation can become fun, and the levels of consequent fulfilment arising from it increases correspondingly.

To be light-hearted is to hold things lightly whist caring deeply.

How to meditate on light-heartedness

“Breathing in I hold it lightly,
Breathing our I care deeply”

Take a situation in your life; at work, at home, in your relationships or whatever. With this situation in mind take a few meditative breaths. As you breathe, focus on the two sentences above:

  • As you breathe in consciously introduce the theme and quality of holding the situation lightly, maybe smile gently to yourself as you do so.
  • As you breathe out open yourself to a deep caring for the situation; don’t duck that which demands that you take this situation with appropriate seriousness.

Continue breathing in this way until you feel as if you have found the balance in your attitude between lightness/fun and caring/appropriate seriousness. You might think of this light-hearted attitude as being like a kind of “playful, involved detachment”. Become familiar with this state of light-heartedness by just breathing with it for a little while longer.

Once you are familiar with light-heartedness as a meditative exercise (and the exercise need only take 3mins or so to practice at any given time) then your job becomes to consciously sustain this attitude whilst in the middle of your daily activities, so that it becomes a habitual approach to what you do. Whenever you feel like you have lost your link to light-heartedness, simply come back to the breathing in the manner described above and re-establish it in your awareness as an approach.

As well as increasing the quality and genuine fun on your own personal experience, I think light-heartedness is a great social skill to have. People naturally appreciate and gravitate towards people who radiate caring and lightness. Why wouldn’t they? Instinctively I believe it is how many of us would like to be, but perhaps don’t quite know how.

This article and meditation technique is an invitation to the “how” of light-heartedness, enjoy!

© Toby Ouvry 2012, 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

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A Mind of Ease Awareness and insight Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques One Minute Mindfulness Presence and being present

Resting in Safety, Thriving on Risk

Dear Integral Meditators,

Do you ever have the experience when you sit down to meditate but you find that your mind and body are so tightly wound up that it takes three quarters of the session to stop fighting with them and actually enjoying some peace of mind?

The practice of “Resting in Safety” is one that I have found very helpful for myself, and that students seem to respond very well to when I teach it.

Yours in the spirit of a mind of ease,

Toby

Resting in Safety, Thriving on Risk

Learning to Rest in a Sense of Safety
Sit comfortably for a moment, and simply imagine these three things:

  • That right now you are safe from any physical threats to your wellbeing.
  • That all psychological attacks and threats to your wellbeing, whether from others or from within your own mind have ceased temporarily; you can relax psychologically.
  • That the creative forces of the Universe are fundamentally friendly toward you and wish you well, rather than disliking you or wishing to destroy you. You are surrounded by the “spiritual” energy of the Universes friendship and good intention toward you.

Now, having taken in these three points, simply rest in the feeling of ease and wellbeing that comes from recognizing and relaxing into these three experiences; physical safety, psychological safety and “spiritual safety”arising from the Universes benevolent intention toward you.
Breathe with this mind of ease for a short while and really allow your mind and body to “soak” in the experience.

Learning to rest in the experience of physical, psychological and spiritual safety is one of the practices that I teach people to help establish a stable context for their meditation practice. Once the mind is relaxed and resting in the experience of safety, it is comparatively easy to then start focusing the mind in a concentrated way, and move into deeper meditative states.

Thriving in a World of Risk
Of course in the “real world” we are all experiencing almost continuous low intensity risk and danger, and occasionally relatively high intensity danger.

  • When we cross the road, without an awareness of the danger and risk we could have an accident.
  • Without having a positive,  appropriate capacity for self-criticism, we would have no way of making adjustments when we are behaving inappropriately.
  • When our office colleague is attacking us verbally or psychologically, it is naïve to pretend it is not happening, and we sometimes need to make quick and appropriate steps to protect ourself.
  • The Universe, whilst on one  level creating and sustaining our life, also seems quite prepared to treat us with complete indifference sometimes, and sometimes as entirely expendable.

The basic point with learning to rest in a sense of safety is that very often our biological and psychological self is exaggerating the real threats to our being, and thus we spend much of our time in a state of worry and high tension, when actually we could be relaxing and enjoying our life a whole lot more.
Moreover, when a real threat does come along if we are feeling relaxed and well rested, then there is a far greater chance that we will be able to respond to the risk appropriately, dynamically and decisively.
Learning to mindfully rest in safety is a simple and wonderful practice that you can do for a couple of minutes at a time, a few times a day to create a habit on your mind that will serve you for the rest of your life.

© Toby Ouvry 2012, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Tobyas the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

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A Mind of Ease Awareness and insight Meditation and Psychology One Minute Mindfulness

Avoiding the Lose-Lose Perspective Trap

Dear All,

I hope this message finds you well, just in case you were wondering why the last few emails have not had a note from me at the top, I have been busy planning new classes and courses for the beginning of September. In particular I am in the process of starting an organization that I am calling “Integral Meditation Asia” which I am quite excited about. The new organization and class schedule should be in place for the beginning of August, so I shall be including more content besides the articles from that time!

Yours in the spirit of the journey,

Toby

Avoiding the Lose-Lose Perspective Trap

One of the major definitions of meditation that I work with in classes and with clients is that it is  a mind that is able to remain focused on a positive object for extended periods. In formal sitting meditation this may involve focusing on a single positive thought, image or feeling without distraction. However, back in the push ad pull of our daily life remaining focused on a positive object means constantly paying attention to the thoughts that we are having about what is happening to us, and mentally framing the situation we are faced with in an optimal way, optimal meaning a way which will give rise to the greatest amount of happiness available.
One of the ways in which we can get “fooled” into thinking in a negative way by our ego is when we are presented with a choice or dilemma. Instead of thinking about the potential good that might come from both choices, we start thinking about the downside of both options until it seems like whichever one we choose (or is chosen for us), we are going to “lose out”.

Here is a simple example that happened for me over the Wimbledon weekend:
Andy Murray and Roger Federer were in the final. As a Brit of course I wanted Any Murray to win (there has not been a British winner since 1936!), but as a kind of fan of Federer I would have liked him to win and equal the record number of Wimbledon titles won by a male competitor. Watching my mind mull this over I could see it starting to feel painful whatever the result;
– If Federer won I would be disappointed because Murray lost, and there was no domestic champion (again!)
– If Murray won I would feel disappointed because one of my favorite players had lost.
With this approach, whatever the result I was going to suffer, it had become a lose-lose situation!

I was smiling a bit about this, because it was really a classic negative maneuver by the conventional ego, a move that it is often unconsciously seeking to make all the time. With  a little bit of thought I mentally re-framed the match something like this:
‘If Murray wins, that is great because Britain finally has a domestic champion, which would be fun for a change! But if Federer wins that is great too, because one of my favorite players will have won and extended his own records, which is something to feel appreciative of!’
With this attitude firmly and mindfully in mind, I was then able to sit back and watch the match unfold, enjoying the quality of tennis.

It’s a simple and slightly funny example, but I think it is a useful illustration of the kind of daily mental “spadework” that we need to be doing each day in order to dig our mind out of lose-lose and other negative perspectives, and keep consciously choosing an approach that is going to reward us with enjoyment an appreciation of ANY situation that we are in.

With this in mind, you might like to ask yourself the questions: “What are the situations in my daily life where I most often get caught in a lose-lose mentality? What would be an appropriate win-win perspective that I could mindfully adopt in such situations and thereby increase my daily happiness?”
A final point here, sometimes the situations where we seem bound to lose out the most can actually in the longer term be very fortuitous, as I read the Dalai Lama say this week “Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck!” So, even if we seem to be stuck in a bona-fide, ‘written in concrete’ lose-lose situation, it is always worthwhile keeping at least a part of our mind open to possibilities!

© Toby Ouvry 2012, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Tobyas the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

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A Mind of Ease Awareness and insight Inner vision Integral Meditation Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology One Minute Mindfulness Presence and being present

Meditation, the Salt Analogy and How Our Self-Sense Changes as Our Meditation Practice Evolves

The salt analogy is this; if you put a teaspoon in a cup of water, stir it in and then taste it, it tastes horrible. However, if you take a bucket of water, stir a teaspoon full of salt into it and then take a sip of it, it will still taste basically ok.

In a similar way, if your mind is habitually small, contracted and claustrophobic then even small sufferings and challenges are going to have substantial power to knock you off balance and cause you pain.

If on the other hand you make a point of habitually relaxing in into the natural expansive space and stillness of your mind, making your experience of it as big as possible then this will mean that you will be able to bear small challenges and sufferings without any problems, and even larger challenges will have much less power to throw you off balance. You will be able to bear them with a much larger degree of equanimity.

At its simplest there are three objects that our sense of self can identify with; our body, our mind or the spacious awareness that surrounds and contains our experience of both our body and our mind. As small children our identification is almost exclusively with our body and sensory awareness. As we grow up our identification shifts from our body to our mind as our ability to think, feel and conceive in complex ways develops.

If we then as adults take up meditation our self sense shifts once more from the mind to the spacious witnessing awareness that surrounds and embraces our mental and sensory experience. The shifting of our self sense from the mind and body to our spacious witnessing awareness is one of the main goals of meditation; it creates a balanced, open inner environment that is able to bear our trails with equanimity and courage, and able to enjoy the gifts that life gives us with conscious appreciation.
I had my fortieth birthday last week, I was thinking about my approach to ageing, and one of the main things that came out of my contemplation is that it is really not so difficult to accept the gradual changes as my body gets older. This is because a substantial proportion of my self-sense is almost always resting in the experience of spacious witnessing awareness that has developed over seventeen years or so of meditation. Ageing just isn’t that big a deal for me, or at least I can say that it is a teaspoon of salt in a very large bucket!

© Toby Ouvry 2012, 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

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Awareness and insight Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques One Minute Mindfulness Presence and being present Shadow meditation

There is Always Something to Feel Insecure About

“The real challenge lies in developing a right relationship to our insecure mind, rather than fixing what it is obsessing about in the moment”

Dear Integral Meditators,

Back in the 1950’s Allan Watts wrote a book called “The Wisdom of Insecurity”. Although written a while back for me it is still one of the most interesting and useful guides on making friends with our insecurity that I have found. This weeks article takes a look at insecurity, and what we can do to start developing a right relationship with it in our life.

Yours in the spirit of the wisdom of insecurity,

Toby

Article of the Week:

There is Always Something to Feel Insecure About

Sometimes we can find ourselves feeling insecure about a particular issue in our life. It might be our age, our looks, giving a speech or talk in public, what somebody may have said about us, finding a relationship, or not losing it if we have one. Our children, or work, the list goes on endlessly.

One of the keys to dealing with our insecurity is to realize that, even if we were to find a relief from the particular insecurity that we are feeling at the moment, often as not, rather than experiencing an absence of insecurity, our insecure mind simply seeks out something else to feel insecure and frightened about. If we can see this, then we will also be able to start to see clearly that actually our insecurity is more of a compulsive habit of our mind, and that in many ways the particular object/situation that we feel insecure about at this time is simply the latest thing that our insecure mind has latched onto worrying about.
If we can gain such a subjective insight into the nature of our own insecurity, then we realize that the real challenge lies in developing a right relationship to our insecure mind, with the particular issue that we feel insecure about at the moment being secondary.
Here are a few ways in which you can begin to work with your insecurity in a constructive way:

  1. Recognize that insecurity and unknowing is a natural part of our life and learn to open to its creative possibilities, rather than always trying to find security in narrow minded “certainties”.
  2. Open to the insecurity that you may be feeling on a daily basis. Acknowledge it and make a friend of it. If you try and reject it, repress it or disown it, it will simply recede into your unconscious and try and exercise control in your life from there. If this happens life can feel like a real inner battle between your conscious self and desires, and your unconscious insecurities which keep sabotaging your peace of mind.
  3. Spend a few minutes each day acknowledging the insecurity you may be feeling, and just breathing with it. Once you have acknowledged it consciously, and can feel the full emotion of it in your body, you can then spend a little time releasing the insecurity on your outward breath.
  4. Talk to your insecurity(if you want to do so literally, which can be a more powerful way of doing it, I recommend you don’t do it on the street (!) Alternatively you can have the conversation in a written journal). Ask it to voice its fears to you, and gently and firmly challenge the logic of its assumptions. If you can help your insecurity to see that much of its emotion is unfounded in objective fact, then it will find it easier to relax.
  5. Demonstrate to your insecurity each day that you are a capable leaderof your personality by engaging in concrete actions each day to take charge of your life in whatever way feels appropriate. Our insecure mind is like a child, if it can see that it is in the company of a competent, powerful leader or ‘inner parent” then it will tend to relax and feel safe.

Related article: The art of non-emergency

© Toby Ouvry 2012, 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

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Awareness and insight Essential Spirituality Inner vision Integral Awareness Meditation techniques One Minute Mindfulness

Mindfulness of the Sacred

Hi Everyone,

How much of your day is spent in expereintial touch with a sense of the sacred as you understand it? How would your life be different if you were to deliberately cultivate that connection to the sacred? This weeks article explores this question.

You can also find below the dates and titles for classes in March.

Yours in the spirit of the sacred,
   
Toby

Upcoming Meditation Classes and Events in March (Full details to follow next week)

Wednesday March 14th, 7.30-8.30pm Meditation Class at Basic Essence: “Awakening to the Sacred – Discovering the benefits of developing a contemporary spiritual practice and meditation practice.”

Wednesday February 21st 7.30-9pm – Zen Walking and Sitting Meditation: “Meditating on The Present Moment: Gateway to Eternity”.

Wednesday March 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th 10.30-11.30am – Qi gong meditation classes at Basic Essence.

Article of the Week:

Mindfulness of the Sacred

We are moving apartments at the moment, and one of the ways that I have been trying to glide through all of the confusion and monotony of box packing is to cultivate regular mindfulness of the sacred or, to put it another way, to bring a sense of the sacred into my day at regular intervals.

What is a sense of the sacred? One way of defining a sacred state of mind is this:
“Sacred awareness is a state of mind where we are simultaneously aware of the wholeness and universality that pervades all life, whilst at the same time having a sense of the preciousness of our own unique individuality, and how the flowering of that individuality is continually cared for and nurtured by God/the creative forces of the Universe/the Tao(or insert expression of choice)”.
So, looked at this way we could say that when we are aware of the sacred we feel life as a whole is a precious and beautiful thing, and that we in whatever small way may have something to add to that preciousness and beauty by living out our life in the best way we can.

So, working with this basic definition of the sacred, you might like to ask yourself, “What stimulates a sense of the sacred within me? What objects, memories or people? How can I bring my mind back to this sense of sanctity at regular times in my daily life in order that I can live my life within the context of a living sense of its sanctity?”

When it seems more than ever before there is more opportunity for cynicism, and for feeling over burdened simply by the over demands of the logistics of our life, deliberately reconnecting to a sense of the sacred at regular times in our day can be an invaluable tool for navigating the challenges of our life more smoothly, humanely and courageously.

© 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