Category: Presence and being present

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Integral Awareness Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Presence and being present Primal Spirituality

What Does it Mean to Meditate on Non-Doing?

Dear Integral Meditators,

In last week’s article I talked about balancing the development of the ego and the spirit, in this week’s article I take a practical look at non-doing, a powerful practice for developing your spiritual being that also has many benefits on the other levels of your being. It comes under the category of practices that are sometimes described as “effortless effort” or “the pathless path”. So, if making progress with no effort sounds like a good deal to you, read on 😉
I have to say in the history of my own life and practice, in my times of deepest discomfort and unhappiness in have found that this practice has offered me a perennially effective path out, or I suppose I should say it has offered me a perennial “non-path” out.

Yours in the spirit of non-doing,

Toby

What Does it Mean to Meditate on Non-Doing? (And why We should be interested in doing It)

Non-Doing: The What and the Why?
The practice of “non-doing” as a meditative “training” (or “non-training”) is most often overtly found in the paths of the Tao and of Zen, but if you look closely you can find analogous practices in all the major wisdom traditions of the world, and in particular those that are consciously teaching and embodying a non-dual path.
To practice non-doing means essentially to practice doing nothing, or no-thing on the physical and mental level and with gentle alertness rest our mind in our own primary awareness. That is to say the awareness that acts as the basis of our daily experience of doing and being, but is normally “hidden by the noise” so to speak. Originally the practice of non-doing was taught as a spiritual practice, that is a method for discovering our own True Nature or Spiritual Self, but the benefits of the practice actually extend to many levels of our being.

The Benefits and Purpose of Non-Doing:

Biological/Body level: On the body/biological level non-doing allows our body to relax deeply and regenerate its energy, as well as encouraging our internal organs and nervous system to come back into balance and harmony. It also sharpens our connection to our physical senses, as well as creating space for us to become more aware of our inner senses (subtle touch, sight, hearing  etc…) and how they function. Of course there is always a certain section of the population who are interested in the development of their “psychic senses” or abilities. One essential ingredient to developing this aspect of inner consciousness development is to spend quality time watching and listening to each moment that arises whilst otherwise doing nothing.

Ego level: On an ego level the practice of non-doing enables us to regularly detach from the goals and activities of our daily life, and reconnect to ourselves as a human-being rather than a human-doing. It gives us the space to assess what is important and what is not, what needs to be held onto and what can be dropped, and creates the inner awareness to make these kinds of decisions consciously and non-compulsively. It also creates time for feeling deeply and allowing our psychological being to “catch up with itself” so to speak, and process whatever baggage we have been carrying around.

Soul Level: Non-doing creates an inner space where we can listen closely and become more aware of the deeper motivations of our soul and callings of our inner heart. It creates space for us to connect to our higher mind and the trans-rational and psychic faculties that go with it. It creates a space where our true depth of being and character can emerge.

Spiritual level: Non-doing is a practice that by explicitly cutting out all of our “doing” and activities encourages us to move into a direct communication the timeless, formless “always already” dimension of or being that was never born, that never dies, that is liberated from suffering and is our “true home”. Non-doing is a “non-exercise” that repeatedly creates an environment for us to recognize that our enlightened nature is, was and always will be something inseparable from our everyday daily awareness. Spiritual enlightenment is not something that we become, it is something that we recognize we are already, but had forgotten.

How to Practice the Meditation on Non-Doing

Step 1: Set aside a period of time, from 3minutes to an hour (whatever you have, and whatever feels appropriate). Short, regular periods of non-doing, say 3-5minutes 3-5 times a day can be really very effective. You can do it as a formal sitting meditation, or just sitting on the couch, having a cup of tea/coffee. Even slow activities like washing up or walking can be a space to practice non-doing. Even though literally  you may in fact be doing the something the activity is simple enough to combine with non-doing practice.

Step 2: Within the time you have allotted yourself here are the “rules”:

  • Be no-one: Forget about who you are, drop your “story”, let go of the continuous ego-conversation in your head about yourself. Don’t worry, it will pick itself up again just fine once you have finished.
  • Do no-thing: Keep your physical and mental activities to a bare minimum. Empty your mind as fully as possible and don’t hold onto any objects that pass through your mental awareness. Physically sit still, or if you are engaging in a simple activity such as walking or doing the washing up, do the activity relatively slowly and with full awareness.
  • Go no-where: Temporarily drop your worldly aspirations, your struggles, dilemmas, anxieties and conundrums. Drop also the things that you normally enjoy and or are attached to filling your mind with. Just be here and pay attention to that.

Relax, be and pay attention to that experience fully.

Step 3:Taking the experience of non-doing into the rest of your life.
As we engage repeatedly in the above two steps, one of the things we start to realize that the person who does not “do” in our life but always “is” can be present in our awareness all of the time, even when we are fully engaged in the busy-ness of our daily life. This awareness can become a rock around which we can build deep inner security, which paradoxically we may find enables us to take greater appropriate “risks” or make big changes in other areas of our life.
The nicest thing about it from a purely energetic point of view is that the practice of non-doing does not require a huge amount of effort, as by its very nature it is all about putting stuff down and doing less! But I guess that is the challenge for many of us; are we prepared to really commit to developing the wisdom of non-doing and make it a priority in our life?
Apart from the benefits mentioned above, one thing I find is that the clarity that comes from non-doing often saves time in the sense that we find more efficient ways of doing what needs to be done and less time chasing our own tail.

© 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

Categories
Awareness and insight Insight Meditation Integral Meditation Meditation Recordings Meditation techniques mind body connection Presence and being present Uncategorized

Guided Insight Meditation: Care of the Physical Body

This is a nine minute guided insight meditation on caring for the physical body, you can simply play it from this page Press play icon below) or download it onto your computer (right click on text below) for personal use.

Care for Physical Body Insight Medi (9mins)

Here is the basic script for the Meditation:

Poem of Care for the Physical Body

1. Breathing in I am aware of my physical body,

Breathing out I extend care and calm to my physical body,

2. Breathing in I am thankful to my physical body,

Breathing out I extend my love and gratitude to my physical body,

3. Breathing in I am aware of psychological tensions I hold within my physical body,

Breathing out I release this tension,

4. Breathing in I feel at home in my physical body,

Breathing out I rest within that homely space.

You can read the article that relates to this meditation and gives some further commentary to it here:

Insight Meditation – Improving your subjective experience by developing your Objective Perspective

Happy meditating!

Toby

Categories
Integral Meditation Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Presence and being present Shadow meditation

When Present Moment Awareness Comes Naturally

Dear All,

Wouldn’t it be nice if living in the present was something that came naturally to us, rather than our having to exert all this effort to drag our minds back into the here and now and away from all our frenetic mental over activity? Well, the good news is that natural present moment awareness is definitely possible, and I can vouch for that. The challenge is that it takes some effort to get to the place of no effort! In the article below I describe what natural present moment awareness is, and how we can start building experience of it into our daily life.

Yours in the spirit of natural presence,

Toby

 

When Present Moment Awareness Comes Naturally

When people come to me for meditation coaching, quite often I will not necessarily emphasize formal meditation in those sessions, so much as a deeper sense of self knowledge and the natural inner harmony that arises from that increase in self knowledge. In this article I want to talk about how present moment awareness can really be seen as a side effect of inner harmony, rather than something that we bring into existence through sheer force of will.

Often in traditional meditation training we are taught how to bring our mind into the present moment by focusing on an object such as the breathing, and learning to take our mind out of the busy linear timeline that it is so often locked into through force of will. We can achieve a certain amount of success in this is if we become familiar with such a meditation practice, but the challenge with it is that it always requires an (often relatively strenuous) act of will, and does not address many of the reasons why our mindACTIVELY AVOIDS the present moment, and  SEEKS OUT the “comfort” of distractions.

Here is my formula for natural present moment awareness:
“Present moment awareness is a natural side product that arises when the instinctive and rational minds move from conflict with each other to harmony with each other.”
Synonyms for the instinctive and rational minds are:

  • The conscious mind and unconscious mind
  • The body self (or biological self) and the egoic (or conceptual) self.

My basic proposition is this, that whenever these two minds, instinctive and rational, conscious and unconscious are in conflict, then this conflict throws us out of the present moment and traps us in that state of distracted conflict.
Whenever the instinctive and rational minds are in harmony with each other, they form a greater or larger self awareness that is naturally and easily grounded in the flow of the present moment.

So, if you want to learn to live a more relaxing life centered in “presence”, then sure, learn a formal meditation technique, but secondly, and equally (perhaps more importantly)work to resolve the stress fear, anxieties that arise from the conflict between your conscious and unconscious minds, your body-self and your egoic (conceptual self).

The next time you find yourself distracted, mentally uncomfortable, unable to focus in the here and now, ask yourself the question “Where is the inner conflict coming from that is preventing me from relaxing naturally into the present moment?” 
If you can answer this question successfully and identify the area of conflict, then are half way to resolving it. One of the other keys to being able to resolve the conflict successfully is being able to create an arena of communication where the conscious and unconscious minds can “have a bit of a chat” and come to an appropriate solution to their conflicts. Here are a couple of examples:

  1. If through enquiry you discover that the unconscious mind is very angry about something, and that the conscious mind has been repressing that anger (hence the conflict), the conscious mind can acknowledge the hurt in the unconscious mind, and perhaps engage in positive action to resolve the situation causing the anger, whilst the unconscious mind can then make the agreement to stop “acting out” so much and disturbing our inner peace.
  2. If the instinctive self has been feeling “sexually frisky”, and the rational mind has been repressing those feelings (because for example it feels them to be inappropriate), then the two minds can have a communication, and perhaps the conscious mind might agree to acknowledge the feelings of the instinctive self, and if possible find a way of expressing them in an appropriate way, and the instinctive self will most probably be MUCH MORE HAPPY to practice contentment and self control now that the conscious mind has acknowledged and expressed recognition if its needs.

This type of dialog work or inner communication work takes a bit of work to develop the skill (which is one of the things that I often do in my coaching work with clients), but the result is a far greater resolution of the inner conflict between the two minds, and an entirely natural improvement in our inner peace, ability to concentrate and rest in the present moment.

Beginning to practice:
As a simple way of starting this work, whenever you notice your mind is distracted, avoiding the present moment, ill at ease, discontent, anxious, ask yourself the question I placed above:
“Where is the inner conflict (between my two minds) coming from that is preventing me from relaxing naturally into the present moment?”
The answers that come back to you questioning in this way are actually the answers that will help you directly build self knowledge and inner wisdom. Articulating your answers to this question as you ask it each day are the building blocks for a gradual increase in your inner peace, natural concentration and effortless present moment awareness.

© 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

Categories
A Mind of Ease Awareness and insight Concentration Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditation and Psychology Motivation and scope Presence and being present

Isn’t it About Time You Got Your Inner Self in Shape? (Integral Inner Fitness Training)

Dear Everyone,

Isn’t it about time you got your inner self in shape? Its time to stop procrastinating and get your mind looking looking sleek, svelte and sexy!

Yes, the Integral Meditation Asia meditation term starts this Sunday with the three hour Mind of Ease workshop (full details below), and then continues with the Mind of Ease Five Week Course beginning on Wednesday 5th September. Seriously, if you have been wanting to get your mind in shape for a while, and are looking for the opportunity, these courses are a great opportunity to get yourself up and running.

This weeks article looks at the interface between inner fitness and outer fitness, and the different ways in which meditation promotes your own integral inner fitness.

Toby

Upcoming Classes and Workshops at Integral Meditation Asia

Meditation for Creating a Mind of Ease, Relaxed Concentration and Positive Intention – An Introduction to Contemporary Meditation Practice

Date: Sunday 2nd September
Time: 9.30am-12.30pm
Location: SCWO Training Room 4, 96 Waterloo Street, Singapore. For map click HERE

This three hour workshop offers a practical introduction to meditation that aims to integrate the fundamentals of traditional meditation practice with contemporary insights from psychology and neuropsychology.

What you will learn
Simple meditation techniques which can be condensed into a ten minute daily practice that:

  • Reduces and transforms anxiety and stress, releases unwanted tension from your body-mind.
  • Helps you to build an intention toward yourself and others genuinely  based around warmth, friendship and love
  • Trains your mind to take in, focus upon and appreciate the positive in your life
  • Develop your concentration skills (the ability to focus one-pointedly upon a single object/task)
  • The ability to find and relax deeply into the natural  inner space and silence of your mind
  • An increased capacity to witness the contents of your consciousness as an observer, rather than being completely identified and wrapped up in it.

Again, all of these skills can be consolidated into a daily meditation practice that can be done in ten minutes!

The Structure of the Workshop:

1st Hour – An explanation of what meditation is, followed by an introduction to and practice of  the basic seven stage meditation on how to develop a mind of ease, relaxed concentration and positive intention.
2nd Hour – Questions and answers, followed by meditation on awareness of our stream of consciousness, and learning to orient our mind around thoughts and perspectives that give rise to happiness, wellbeing and appreciation.
3rd Hour – Talk on how to develop inner focus and concentration, and how to relax into the natural inner space and silence of the mind. Practice of meditation for developing concentration and awareness of the inner space and silence of the mind.

You will also receive:

  • Extensive workshop notes giving a detailed of the meditation practices that are taught.
  • Three ten minute MP3 meditation recordings that you can take away and listen to as a support for your personal practice

Cost of Workshop: Sing $85 per person

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE MIND OF EASE  WORKSHOP BY CREDIT CARD

TO PURCHASE BOTH  THE THREE HOUR MIND OF EASE WORKSHOP AND THE THE FIVE WEEK MIND OF EASE COURSE AT A SPECIAL DISCOUNTED RATE OF SING $145 (SAVE $30!) CLICK HERE!

To register or for further enquiries: Email info@integralmeditationasia.com, or call 65-68714117

Isn’t it About Time You Got Your Inner Self in Shape? (Integral Inner Fitness Training)

As someone trying to live and integral life, I try and practice (in however rudimentary a way) an integral form of physical fitness. I have six basic categories with I try to arrange my physical fitness activities. The idea is that each of these activities keeps a different aspect of my physical body and brain ability used and in good shape. Here they are:

  • Strength training – The development of muscle strength through weights etc…
  • Stamina or cardiovascular training – Eg: Jogging·
  • Flexibility – Stretching, Yoga, Qi gong and so on…
  • Hand-eye co-ordination – Through Racquet sports, or other ball sports for example
  • Spatio-temporal awareness – The ability to think and visualize in three dimensions, for example in order to apply         strategy in ball games
  • Diet and Rest

Each of these activities has its own important and crucial role to play in the overall development of integral physical body fitness.
I have to say that integral physical fitness training is a great way to get your mind in shape as well, but what I want to do now it to talk about how meditation is a type of integral inner fitness training.
What I have done below is to take each of the categories of outer fitness above and show how practicing meditation has a corresponding inner fitness benefit!

The six ways in which you get your inner self in shape through meditation:

  1. Strength Training – Meditation helps us to develop a strong mind by developing our ability to focus our mind on a single object for an extended period of time, thus increasing our mental strength. Done correctly, concentration training in meditation helps us to find more inner and outer energy.
  2. Stamina training – Meditation increases our awareness, appreciation and gratitude for the good, the beautiful and the true in our life, giving us access to deeper levels of happiness and wellbeing. Thus in turn makes us more resilient to temporary setbacks and able to “keep on keeping on” with the goals that are important to us where other people would give up
  3. Flexibility – Integral meditation makes our mind soft and pliable, able to adopt the optimally “positive” perspective on any given situation, rather than getting stuck in viewpoints that are negative or toxic and that are not serving our happiness in any meaningful way.
  4. Mental hand-eye co-ordination – Meditation gives us greater awareness of the way in which our mind, feelings and bodily energies are co-ordinating themselves together. This awareness alerts us when our thoughts and feelings are out of alignment, and encourages us to get them back on the same page
  5. Spatio-Temporal Awareness – Meditation makes us deeply appreciative of and able to rest in the inner space and silence of our mind enabling us to retain clarity of mind even it is busy or when we are under a degree of stress. Meditation also gradually increases our ability to see and visualize objects in our minds eye clearly and vividly and to use this skill consciously to our advantage.
  6. Diet and Rest – One of the central practices that I teach in my meditation coaching is how we can create a safe space, enabling us to rest and regenerate our energies, and also to improve the quality of our sleep. As mentioned in the “strength and stamina” categories above, meditation encourages us to feed ourself a steady diet of positive and energy enhancing thoughts and feelings, rather than negative and toxic emotions and thought patterns.

Finally, for those who may be interested, there are three interesting books by integral practitioners that look at the relationship between physical fitness training and inner meditation training, all very interesting reads in their own way:

 

© 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

Categories
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

Categories
Awareness and insight Integral Awareness Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Motivation and scope Presence and being present spiritual intelligence Uncategorized

Three Levels of Self, Three Levels of Focus-in-Time

Dear Everyone,

Meditation practice encourages us to keep asking the question “who am I?” and to continue to bring awareness to the different aspects of self that we become aware of as we continue to ask this question. This weeks article looks at three different aspects of self, and how we can start to use our awareness of these three selves to improve the way in which we co-ordinate our experience of past, present and future.

You can also find below the schedule for classes over September and October, for those who are not in Singapore, recordings of the classes Will be available if you wish to participate!

Yours in the spirit of the integration of past, present and future,

Toby

 

Three Levels of Self, Three Levels of Focus-in-Time

Our “Egoic Self”, or personality, or habitual self sees life from fundamentally through the eyes of the past. It experiences the present through the context of our past experiences, and projects our past experiences forward whenever we contemplate the future.

Our “Spiritual Self” or our pure witnessing awareness sees life always within the context of the present moment, seeing things as they are, without judgment of preconception. It is entirely present focused.

Our “Evolving Self” or creative self (or perhaps “ever-learning self”?) sees our life through the eyes of the future, of potential, or what could be.

In its higher expression our egoic self gives us an appreciation of the past, of our story. It informs us  how we can use our past experiences to best effect with regard to our present and future.
In its lower expression the ego keeps us clinging to past patterns that prevent us from engaging fully in the present and realizing our creative potential in the future.

In its higher expression the spiritual self or pure witnessing awareness gives us a full and rich appreciation of that which is arising in the present, and a living engagement with that part of every experience that is perfect just as it is.
In its lower expression the spiritual self (as it is being used in this context)holds us back from investing fully in the passion that is necessary to bring change to that which really needs to be changed, both in our life and in the world at large.

In its higher expression the evolving or creative self keeps us awake to the potential for the future that is arising in every moment, encouraging us to mindfully nourish and rejoice in that creative possibility.
In its lower expression the creative self lives only in the future, never stopping to appreciate that which is present in the here and now, and give the necessary focus to past experiences that perhaps still need attending to, either to heal or resolve the past, or to draw upon its wisdom.

In terms of developing an integral awareness we need all three aspects of time-awareness in their higher expression; The appropriate attendance to the past of our ego, the appreciation of the present moment of our spirit, and the attendance to and enthusiasm for the future of our evolutionary or creative self.

© 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

Categories
A Mind of Ease Awareness and insight Inner vision Integral Meditation Meditating on the Self Presence and being present Primal Spirituality

The Three Stages of Non Dual Meditation

Dear Integral Meditators,

At the end of this weeks article below, you will see a reference to something called Integral  Meditation Asia, I will be writing a separate message to you about this later in the week, as it is a new project that I have been working on over the last month or so.
In the mean time enjoy the article on non-dual meditation below. If you ask me what is my primary alternative “healing modality” I would say that it is the meditation on non-duality. Experiential contact with the non-dual state has a completely re-aligning effect on our body mind that I have found effective even in the most difficult and demoralizing mental and physical environments.

Yours in the spirit of the natural union,

Toby


The Three Stages of Non Dual Meditation

There are three stages that you need to engage in order to be a competent non-dual meditator:

  1. Firstly you need to be able to sit in meditation and enter a state of pure formless awareness, where no thoughts objects or perceptions are arising. You should be able to sustain that awareness gradually over longer and longer periods of time, until you can do it at will.
  2. Secondly you need to develop your experience of pure formless awareness so that you can sustain it at the same time as being aware of thoughts, sensations and other objects. Robert Forman calls this second stage a “Dual Consciousness Event”. We are simultaneously aware of both pure formless awareness and the world of form. At this stage the world of form and pure formless awareness appear separate. We simply practice holding awareness of them both at the same time until we can do it naturally and at will.
  3. Thirdly, after a (usually) substantial period of time meditating on stages one and two we start to experience a unitive or non-dual state of awareness, where the experience of pure formless awareness and the appearance of form (ie: mental and sensory objects in our mind and environment) merge together into a single experience. To use the Buddhist expression form appears as empty, and emptiness appears as form. This third stage is paradoxical and cannot be understood by the mind alone(logically how can no-form be form, and form be the same as no-thing?) and it can only really be experienced, understood experientially.

So, three stages; empty the mind and rest in pure formless awareness, secondly learn to be simultaneously aware of both pure consciousness and form, third let them merge together into a natural unitive or non-dual awareness.

Natural Enlightenment


The essential non-dual experience described in stage three above, the unity of form and emptiness is the primary experience of full classical enlightenment as described by the great non-dual schools of meditation, such as Zen, Hindu Vedanta, Tibetan Buddhist Vajrayana and Djogchen and so on. The funny thing about the non-dual state is that it appears as completely ordinary, “nothing special” as they say in Zen. Once you have realized this essential non-dual state, all you then really need to do to stay connected to this enlightened state is simply rest in your own natural moment to moment awareness. Everything that appears to that awareness, form or formless, “good or bad”, sacred or profane is seen simply as a manifestation of the primal and perfect non-dual enlightened state, it is perfect just as it is!

How Long do I Need to Meditate to Develop a Stable Experience of the Non-Dual State?


Starting as a scratch meditator, let’s say meditating for 30mins-1hour a dayevery day and taking occasional retreat-type experiences, it might take you five years to stabilize an experience of stage one; being able to meditate in a state of pure formless awareness.
It might then take you another five years to stabilize your experience of stage two, being able to rest at will in a state where you are simultaneously aware of both the form and formless levels of being.
A further five years would probably be needed until you had then built the capacity to rest in a unitive state, where the form and formless domains of experience appear to arise simultaneously as a single unified reality.
So, fifteen years to a stable working experience of non-dual enlightenment. Whether you choose to do it within the context of a traditional school of enlightenment such as Zen or Dzogchen, or whether you do it within the context of a more contemporary path such as the meditation courses offered at Integral Meditation Asia, with focus and dedication this is perfectly possible for all of us.
If you are interested in a more detailed explanation of the three meditative states outlined above, you can read a very good article by Robert Forman entitled “What Does Mysticism Have to Teach Us About Consciousness”.

Categories
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

Categories
Awareness and insight Enlightened love and loving Gods and Goddesses Inner vision Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Positive anger Presence and being present Primal Spirituality Shadow meditation

Darkness Emerging as Light

Dear Integral Meditators,

Instinctively we shun difficult and dark emotion in our search for happiness and wellbeing. But what if the secret to finding really dynamic, enlightened happiness was to be found within those dark emotions themselves? This weeks article explores this idea.

Yours in the spirit of darkness as light,

Toby

Article of the Week:

Darkness Emerging as Light

Often we hear the spiritual path as described in terms of light fighting against the darkness and conquering it, as if the darkness within us is something so intractably unhelpful and evil that the only constructive thing that we can do is to get rid of it or destroy it.
Consequently when we come across dark and destructive emotions in our mind, the tendency can be to shun them, try and get rid of them, repress them, and fight against them.
A closer examination however reveals that really the process of enlightening our dark emotions and impulses is more a matter of transforming and re-working their essential energy so that from their dark and chaotic core light emerges. If we gain practical experience and insight of this we realize that darkness and light are really two aspects of the same essential energy, merely appearing in different ways.
We can find a precedent for this in the Tibetan Buddhist tantric tradition, where the energy of the five core elements of existence can appear on the emotional and mental level either in their distorted form, or their liberated form.

Element – Earth, Distorted Energy – Arrogance/pride, Liberated Energy – Equanimity/balance/generosity

Element – Water, Distorted Energy – Anger/aggression/violence, Liberated Energy – Clarity/mirror wisdom/penetrating insight

Element – Fire, Distorted Energy – Possessiveness/compulsiveness/obsessiveness/consumerism, Liberated Energy – Discriminating wisdom, compassion, appropriateness
Element – Air, Distorted Energy – Envy, suspicion, jealousy, Liberated Energy – Spontaneity/ free and fluid capacity for action
Element – Space, Distorted Energy – Intentional ignorance/introversion/depression, Liberated Energy – Unrestricted intelligence/Pervasive wisdom.
 
So, this is not an article on Tibetan tantric Buddhism per-se, rather the point of listing the above set of correspondences is to indicate that all negative emotions are expressions of a core creative energy that has been misdirected and distorted. Therefore the way to deal with such misdirected and distorted energies is not to shun them or reject them, but rather to look deeper into them, re-work our understanding of them and re-direct their energy so that it can express itself as enlightened creative energy in our life.
You don’t have to formally be a ‘tantric’ practitioner to do this, but you do need to have the courage and will to look deeply into your emotional pain and darkness and start using your natural intelligence to re-work, re-frame and re-direct that energy in your life. You need to learn to not be afraid of the energy of powerful emotions, but rather to embrace them, recognizing that the energy that intimidates you now is in fact the very same energy that we will later experience  as the light of enlightenment. It is the same basic creative energy seen understood and experienced from a different, larger context and perspective.

So, all of this is not easy work, and it takes consistent time and dedication. If you would like an example of such a re-working from my own life and process you can read an article I wrote called “In order to find real happiness you first have to get mad as hell” which was written during a time when I was specifically re-working my own relationship to the energy of anger.

Practicum

Here is a simple exercise to get started. Whenever you feel a dark negative emotion/emotional space arising in your mind, rather than running away from it, fighting with it or repressing it, try and relax and just feel your way into the “middle” or central core of that emotional vortex. Try and discover that point of stillness that lies at the heart of even the most volatile emotion. Sit there form a while, letting the emotion flow through and over you. Once you are used to this basic activity, then ask yourself the question “How can I re-direct and re-define my relationship to this dynamic and creative energy so that it is working in a liberated way in my life, rather than a distorted way?“

© 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

Categories
Awareness and insight Enlightened love and loving Enlightened service Inner vision Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Presence and being present spiritual intelligence

Tapping into the Ever Present Abundance of Happiness

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks article looks at how we can find an ever present abundance of happiness “right under our nose” so to speak. I really believe that a practice like this only gets more important and more relevant as our planet becomes ever more crowded and interconnected, and the need for us all to “think as one” becomes more and more of a necessity.

Yours in the spirit of ever present abundance,

Toby

Tapping into the Ever Present Abundance of Happiness

There is a source of abundant happiness that is available to us at all times, no matter how badly your life is going. This abundance of happiness is called the happiness of others.
All you have to do in order to be able to tap into this source of happiness is to be able to expand your sense of self and identity beyond the boundary of your skin andmake your “self” big enough to include other living beings. If you can do this, then any happiness that they have you can partake of, because their happiness is the happiness of your expanded self.

So, then the question then becomes “How can I expand my sense of self to include others?” A key to this is understanding that our self sense is much more flexible than we might think. Whenever we care for someone else our self sense moves out to them and includes them without effort on our part. One simple way to develop an expanded sense of self is simply to consider the body of the Earth or Gaia as being our body (rather than our small physical body that we habitually identify with). If we consider the Earth as our body, then all the living creatures, human, animal and so forth automatically become a part of ourself, and any happiness that they have is our happiness to enjoy, partake of and take pleasure from.

With this expanded sense of self the happiness of all living beings becomes our happiness and thus we are able to tap into an almost infinite source of happiness and joy. We feel as if we have a perpetual abidance of happiness that we can tap into anytime you need to.

Try it now:

  • First expand your sense of self by thinking of your body ans being the body of Gaia or the Earth
  • Then partake of the happiness of one or many of the living beings on the earth, seeing their happiness as your happiness. If someone you know got the job s/he has been looking for, then think of their joy as your joy. See a mother and baby exchanging smiles and affection on the street? That happiness is your happiness.  There are so many possible examples I could give here because there is such an incredible amount of happiness to partake of when you expand your self sense in this way. The only problem you now have is which happiness to enjoy and celebrate!

This way of relating to happiness and your world may seem a little artificial at first, but once it becomes a habit, then it really can feel natural, just Iike second nature.

So there you go a simple method to tap into the perpetual abundance of happiness!

© 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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